Sometimes, it’s so very incremental that changes take place that you scarcely realize they’re happening, but in the past day or so, I realized that some things are now here with us for good:

• Achewood has become a subscription site, with zero (0) new strips since 5 January, but 50 pages in the Fanflow.
• Howard Tayler has been paid off by Jerry Holkins to produce art inspired directly by his fetish. So slender.

Okay, that last one is actually true. One may note that —

• How to Make Webcomics has entered a third printing in as many years and is now again generally available after a period of drought.
• Christopher Baldwin’s first Spacetrawler print collection has now made its way through the mails (and a complimentary review copy has landed on my doorstep), meaning that the pre-order blues are done. I’ll admit that I was slightly concerned — not about the story or art, which I have been following since the strip launched and have reaved about here in the past — by the possibility that print technology might not do justice to what Baldwin’s been drawing.

  Luckily, the colors are deep, rich, and satisfying, the paper stock shows no artifacts or bleeding, and fancy details (check out the last panel of this strip, where a space city is seen through the jet-wash of the titular ‘trawler) come through as wonderfully precise on the page as on my screen. In all honesty, I didn’t think you could do a print job this good and still price the book at twenty bucks. Guess the global economic slowdown means excess press capacity.

• Tyler Page has made both print volumes of his charming and entertaining Nothing Better, available in PDF form for free under a Creative Commons license. And he did it because:
  

  I want as many people as possible to see and enjoy my work. I’ve been putting it online for years for people to see for free, and I’ve enjoyed a small but loyal group of fans who have bought the book collections I’ve put out. Offering a PDF of the books seemed like a great way to expand that readership.

  Initially I thought I should sell the PDFs. But in doing so I really hoped that what would happen was that a few people would buy the PDFs and then spread the files around online. Eventually I started thinking, “why not just start the sharing myself?”

  A big influence on that line of thought was re-reading about the experience the Machine of Death folks had with their book. If I wanted as many people as possible to experience my work, why put that payment roadblock out in front?

  This is good work. It just needs more eyeballs on it. And once that happens I’m confident at least some of those people will pay for it.

  And if you feel like you’ve been entertained, consider paying something for it.

If I didn’t already own both Nothing Better books, I’d be doing just that right about now.

Other new things (predominantly books) of note:

• Ryan Sias may not be working on Silent Kimbly anymore (boo!), but that doesn’t mean he isn’t doing creative work. Balloon Toons: Zoe and Robot, Let’s Pretend is now available for the kid in your life that you actually like and want to encourage to be creative and imaginative. You never know what imagination in a kid will lead to.
• A Girl And Her Fed, readers of this page may recall, is one of my preferred strips. It’s grown so very much since it launched lo those many years ago, and just keeps getting deeper and better. The first volume of AGAHF, Rise Up Swearing, is now available for your pre-order attentions.

  I hear that in addition to the prologue and first chapter of the story (we’re on chapter seven now), there’s a bonus story entitled, Some Bad Choices I Have Made: An Illustrated Primer (I shudder to think what kind of bad choices a webcomicker could have made) and an Introduction by some hack webcomics pseudojournalist. This one’s gonna be a keeper.

• Finally, I clearly have to invest in a new shelf for my [web]comics toys. Between the army of Androids getting ready to expand, and the just-announced plushy McPedro (pre-order), I’m out of room. Of course I have to get a McPedro! Did you see the moustache on that thing? So bushy.

You want achievements in the pursuit of webcomics? You got it, Bunky.

• Brad Guigar, occasional channeler of Jack Cole, is known primarily for two things: his melodious, soothing laughter (which trips lightly over the listener’s subconscious and is never, ever grating — especially not here, starting at 7:50 and continuing to 8:36 as Scott Kurtz strangles on his own tongue) and being a webcomicking machine.

  Since 14 February 2000, he’s been producing daily comic strips in a continuous (if sometimes divergent) narrative. Heck, people wondered if this Evil, Inc. thing was gonna last when he switched over from the original Greystone Inn — and about half a year ago EI passed GI for longevity. This officially makes Guigar one of webcomics metaphorical Nine Old Men. Did we mention that he’s a handsome dude? Add it all up and we at Fleen must once again conclude that Mrs Guigar is a lucky woman.

• Long time readers of this page will recall that I stand second to no man in my admiration of my chosen tribe of peers, the noblest of professions, the engineers. Weirdly, given how so much of engineering consists of approximating, simplifying, making it work, and how effective comics are at conveying complex technical information, few engineers have become deeply involved in the cartoon arts.

  One of them, Angela Melick, hit 500 updates of her autobio strip today, and did so with a look straight into a secret at the heart of the engineer: we tend think analytically more than emotionally¹. For her 500 sneak peeks into the world of the engineer and her ongoing efforts to demystify our sometimes poorly-understood culture, we at Fleen declare Melick a credit to all who wear the Iron Ring and offer up a right-hand rule in her general direction. Respect.

• Details are still slight at this time, but we’re working on it — this afternoon Latin Art-throb Aaron Diaz has moved up from presenting his Grand Unified Theories of Comics via his Tumbler to (shortly) offering them up in public:
  

  Hey New York kids: I’m going to be teaching a webcomics course at CCNY this June! #professordiaz

  Reached for further information, Diaz was only able to confirm the start date (6 June) and the fact that it’s the first webcomics course offered by The City College of New York (and, I’ll be willing to bet, one of the first courses specifically on webcomics creation anywhere).

  As further information becomes available (particularly, is this class open to anybody that wants to take it, or is it only for CCNY students in a particular program of study?), we’ll be sure to bring it to you. I’m also going to see if I can weasel a sit-in-on-lecture invite from Diaz; for those that don’t know, I spend most of my days teaching and I’m always interested to see how very smart, very skilled people present their lessons, if only so I can steal their instructional techniques let everybody know what a wonderful job Aaron’s doing.

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¹ I know, shocking!

It’s true. But much as I respect Mr Spiner’s work I am talking here about facts and figures and (especially) numbers. Specifically, the very intriguing set of data released by David Malki ! over at the Machine of Death blog (hands up those of you that think it should be called “Blog of Death”) regarding MoD and e-book channels.

As you may recall, the editors of MoD (Modditors?) had always planned to release the collection under a Creative Commons license, including as a free PDF, and they did so remarkably soon after the print edition was released. Such free distribution has not hurt the book’s sales (which are in a fourth printing, bringing the total number of physical copies by my estimate to somewhere north of 25,000); indeed, people were asking as the PDF released (for free) if they could voluntarily pay money for it. In addition to the basic single- and double-page spread PDFs, MoD has been available in a variety of e-book formats from a variety of vendors, including (as of yesterday) Apple’s iBooks.

But which is the best channel? I don’t have a book to release electronically, and I probably won’t have one in the forseeable future, so the question is entirely academic, but dang if it isn’t an interesting one. Malki ! et. al. had been told by e-book publishers and distributors (seriously, why do you need a distributor, which is a business model designed to move physical items from place to place, for e-books?) that these be treacherous waters:

“We reach thousands of ebook sales partners,” they said. “Even if you do a Kindle version yourself, that’s only one of thousands of sales channels.”

“Are there really thousands of ebook sales channels?” we responded. “Why have we never heard of any but about five?”

Ultimately, we decided that while there might be thousands of ebook sales channels, we only cared about a couple of them, and we could manage a couple of them on our own. We ended negotiations with ebook companies, released our PDF, and looked into selling ebooks of our own in the few sales channels that make up the majority of the market. [emphasis original]

But that still left the question of which channel is the best, and with numbers widely varying from different sources (and different points in time — Apple is a relatively recent addition to the game), any numbers are useful. And those numbers (for the month of January) show a clear winner:

• Kindle sales accounted for 84.5% of all ebook sales in January
• Nook sales accounted for 10.4% of all ebook sales in January
• The remaining 5% were mainly ePub sales through our site, although a few iBooks sales are recorded there too (the iBooks version only went live at the very end of January). [emphasis original]

The practical upshot being, if you’re going to release an e-book, the Kindle would seem to be your first priority. Hopefully, more numbers will be forthcoming in future months.

In other news, it appears that webcartoonist For Science! Darryl Cunningham (cf: here, here, here, and here) tweets that his work has garnered the attentions of NPR, which will be interviewing him. As he is British, Mr Cunningham may not have recognized the name of Linda Wertheimer, but as she does mostly fill-in hosting duties on NPR’s major general news programs, it’s likely to be on a fairly high-profile program. I’m betting Weekend All Things Considered. Countdown to Mr Cunningham being vilified by Fox News starts … now.

Anybody else remember the Henry Mancini-penned “Viewer Mail” theme that Letterman had back on NBC? I once saw the Red Army Chorus sing it with awesome Russian accents. That was great.

• Gingerbread Houses, by Alexander Danner and Edward J. Grug III reached the end of its story. Two years and nearly 100 updates in the making, it’s a modern twist on the Hansel & Gretel story, with a particular focus on the question, Okay, we’re back home with parents that tried to kill us — now what? One may note that both Danner and Grugg are webcomics vets, and a two year story is kind of like a warmup for them; Danner’s got plenty of comics work on his website and Grug came within a half-dozen guys of winning the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge, racking up more than five years of longevity in the ultimate contest of Man and Machine. No, wait, that’s the Indianapolis 500. The DGIMC is the ultimate contest of Cartoonist and Internet. Anyway, congrats to Grug and Danner, and don’t forget that if you liked Gingerbread Houses, mini comics (three so far, fourth and final coming soon) are available for your purchase. Any chance of a collected volume, guys?
• Discovered recently: Death At Your Door; it’s been running since last May, but I only heard about it via an email from creator Rod Salm recently. It’s interesting in that it almost entirely reminds me of other things, yet manages to appeal on its own merits. The art is reminiscent of early Chex-N mixed with (really dating myself here) Angst Technology and a soupçon of Larry Marder’s Beanworld. The main plot point — that Death (that’s capital-D death, and no perky Goth girls here) gets to live in the ‘burbs with housemates — reminds me of the situation with Mort over at Chris Eilopolous’ (perhaps permanently hiatused) Misery Loves Sherman. But somehow DAYD feels fresh.

  I think the likeliest candidate for that fresh feeling became pretty apparent on Monday. DAYD has a sense of place; it’s firmly set in Manitoba and while it doesn’t go out of its way to beat you over the head with that fact, it does show up just enough from time to time to root the strip in a way that lots of comics don’t. They could take place anywhere, but that just means that they aren’t really taking place anywhere. DAYD might have brought up Louis Riel Day, but that’s just the icing on the Prairie Provinces cake. Much like Octopus Pie‘s Brooklyn, or Alien Loves Predator‘s Manhattan, DAYD’s Manitoba is almost a part of the cast.

• Finally, I got an email from a gentleman (presumably) that signed himself (presumably) as -3-. Not the most obvious moniker, but hey — internet. Mister (presumably) -3- pointed me towards a webcomic known as eMT, which name immediately caught my eye and which (somewhat disappointingly) turns out to stand for experiMental Theatre.

  Pretty wacky stuff, sometimes verging on wacky for the sake of being wacky, but there’s something grabbing me. It’s like how a lot of people that work with aggressively experimental or alternative forms, it’s quickly clear that that’s all they can do? By contrast, -3-‘s work gives hints that there’s much more craft and technical skill lurking underneath. The bio page bears this out, revealing that -3- worked on a mess o’ videogames, can work in lots of different styles, and colored a now-concluded webcomic that I quite liked, La Muse. So we’ll see — as long as I keep getting glimpses of structure behind the experiment (after all, the scientific method teaches that experiments require rigor and formal structure), I’ll keep looking back from time to time.

Coupla things happened yesterday, after I’d done my story-collecting for the day. My pardon if you’ve seen either of these stories already, but they’re worth mentioning again.

• It’s not every day that webcomickers decide to go full time, and even less common when they take the opportunity to branch out into other media at the same time. But Curt Franklin and Chris Haley of Let’s Be Friends Again have done just that. With respect to the first, yesterday they announced that comics will be their full-time gig, having been working at laying the groundwork for more than two years.

  To throw a multimedia spanner in the works, LBFA will be a three-person endeavor, as Franklin and Haley are joining forces with rappeur nerdique Eugene Ahn, aka Adam War Rock. Mr Rock, of course, has plenty of connections to webcomickry, having released songs in honor of webcomics¹ as diverse as Nedroid, Johnny Wander, and earlier today, Dresden Codak.

  Weirdly for one who spends so much time on webcomics, I first became aware of Rock because of his tribute to/adaptation of the theme song for The Sound of Young America; then again, TSOYA and the rest of the Maximum Fun empire have their merchandise distributed by TopatoCo, so it all comes full circle.

• You know what else rarely makes the transition to sustained support? Museums. Even the most established have to be creative about funding their collections and exhibitions, but I think that the Cartoon Art Museum may have just set a new standard. In conjunction with the just-launched Berke Breathed exhibit, CAM are looking to fund the print run of exhibition catalog via Kickstarter. With one day down and 29 to go, From Bloom County to Mars: The Art of Berkeley Breathed is, as of this writing, a little more than a third of the way towards its $3000 goal.

  Among the first wave of webcomickers, Breathed’s Bloom County stands as one of the Holy Trinity of Cited Inspirations (along with Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes, and Gary Larson’s The Far Side); I can see a lot of old Breathed fans (not to mention those just learning about his work for the first time via the IDW reprint collection) wanting to get their hands on this.

  Adding to the webcomics appeal, the catalog will contain contributions from Bill Amend and Keith Knight, who may work with syndicates, but “get it” when the discussion turns to webcomics. There’s even a lengthy interview with Breathed by Nexus of All Webcomics Realities (non-Canadian division) Shaenon Garrity; okay, so she’s married to CAM curator Andrew Farago, but Garrity does a hell of a job at interviewing, and so does Breathed when you give him the right person or situation to bounce off of.

  As a bonus, being funded directly by the purchasers means a balanced look at Breathed’s entire career. Disney are getting ready to release a movie based on Breathed’s Mars Needs Moms and I’m sure they could have found three grand in the couch cushions to fund this project, but how much of the catalog would then have have to focus on one not-yet-released movie?

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¹ Said songs may be found at the following locations; this list is not meant to be comprehensive, it was just what I recalled off the top of my head.

• Dresden Codak — I Will Do Science To It (kHill Remix)
• Johnny Wander — Call Me Johnny Wander
• Nedroid — Best Friends! (Nedroid!)
• The Sound of Young America — The Sound

Gahhh, busy busy busy. So let me point you at people that have useful advice for you:

• Howard Tayler, on various forms of publishing and the rewards one may anticipate from them
• Kate Beaton, on what to do and what to expect as a webcomicker (scroll allll the way down, and pay special attention to the last ‘graf)
• Gax the Gaxian, on wedding etiquette, jobs, and dealing with insomnia

In other news:

• Today is the 750th page of Digger, as we progress into the coda of this most unusual epic. In the face of the rapidly approaching end of the story of one determined wombat, we at Fleen appeal for calm. Yes, the adventures will be finishing, but they will still be there online and in the books and you can read them again whenever you like!
• Speaking of books, the first year and first story arc of Spacetrawler finished up pretty much concurrently, which means that it’s time to make a book out of them. It? The comics from that year/arc. It’s available now, and even though I’ve been reading the story from the beginning, you’ll have to wait for a review until I’ve got a copy in hand.

One of the very best things that’s come about from talking about web/indy comics and their creators is getting on :01 Books reviewers list. Almost embarrassingly often, one of their new offerings (my preference list skews heavily towards YA and/or graphic novels) shows up in the mail, and then I get to read the likes of Walker Bean, Koko Be Good, or Dawn Land, and that makes my day (often, my week).

And before I even get to open the book, I get to revel in yet another gorgeous book design, because :01’s secret weapon is Colleen AF Venable. Even if Ms Venable isn’t doing her webcomic anymore, she’s expending a lot of creative muscle on the embosses, debosses, glosses, foils, and shiny mirror finishes (case in point: the advance copy of Astronaut Academy — née Astronaut Elementary — I got last week) that appear on her covers. Where careless use of such features just makes things look cheap (cf: the entire “speculator boom” of 1990s comic books), Venable uses each carefully, adding maximum interest without overwhelming the essential purpose of the cover, which is to be appealing and intriguing.

Because good design is something that deserves attention, please spend a little of yours on this new interview with Collen AF Venable by That Cover Girl, complete with sneak previews of forthcoming projects. If you aren’t salivating to get your hands on those Feynman and Anya’s Ghost covers, there’s something wrong with you.

• I’m going to confess that I understand almost none of this next item, but then again, I don’t know squat about Photoshop. John Allison worked himself up a way to greatly reduce the time necessary to get from pencils to ready-to-colo[u]r lineart. And because he’s a nice guy, he’s sharing his technique with you over at his blog. Might I echo his very polite suggestion that if this saves you time, a brief shopping trip could be in order by way of saying Thank You?
• Gallery time! Those that follow this page may be aware that some of the most whimsical webcomickry being produced comes from (at least, from the reference point of myself, in the upper-right corner of the US) the literal Far Side of the World. Namely, Frank Gibson & Becky Dreistadt’s Tiny Kitten Teeth, from New Zealand, and the various projects of Rebecca Clements (easily accessible at KinokoFry), from Australia. Now they are teaming up for great comics (and possibly great justice), along with illustrators Melanie Matthews and Erin Hunting, for a show at the Owl & Pussycat Gallery in suburban Melbourne.

  The O&P webpage isn’t providing details yet, but Gibson informs us that the show goes up on 19 February (that’s a Saturday) at 6pm, and runs until the 22nd. Those of you not dropping everything to fly Down Under for the show, expect to see more of Dreistadt & Gibson in North America in the future, as Gibson has finally been given permission to Have Freedom; with access to the major studios now much easier, look for Dreistadt to be a major fixture in animation in the immediate future.

• A new theory of mythogenesis for you to consider.
• And finally, because he knows why: Howard Tayler.

So let me just note that Zach Weiner has been mathematically proven to be The Man. In the time since the National Organization for Marriage managed to Not Get The Joke, they have at least learned not to hotlink images, and their misinterpretation of Zach’s cartoon is now being served as a local copy.

Also, I suppose some sort of grudging respect is due to NOM in not killing the post entirely, and for not moderating away comments that both question their interpretation and reference the now-removed Jefferson quote. At least, that’s sort of the state of things as of this writing — the Weiner post is directly accessible from the one that came before it, but not the one that came after it, nor from the tag list or the main page.

Actually, strike that whole thought — NOM have apparently tried to bury the post, and didn’t manage to do so completely. I would describe that as weaselly behavior, but I have a liking for mustelids in general and one in particular so let’s just say that it’s pretty cowardly.

In other news, and apropos of nothing, this is the most horrifying photo I have ever seen.

From their call for nominees back in the autumn to the declaration of winners, the Webcomics List Awards have moved at a brisk clip (certainly, far faster than their predecessor, the Web Cartoonist Choice Awards). The 2010 iteration (that would be the second one) of the WCL has released the results of their jury’s deliberation for your edification and enlightenment.

Although the utility of any such awards remains a matter of some disagreement, it’s pretty hard to entirely discount a process where the only multiple-winner was The Abominable Charles Christopher. Also, for the record, I believe that the incidence of Ted Rall and Scott Kurtz essentially agreeing in the comment thread at The Daily Cartoonist about these awards is what doomed us to this eternal winter. Thanks a lot, Scott and Ted.

Anyhoo, I couldn’t find a text list of the winners at the WCLA site, but Brigid Alverson kindly put one together so that’s all right. For future reference, anybody that announces stuff in pictorial form only? That only delays you getting your news out as everybody waits for somebody else to transcribe your essential information. One of these days we’ll all be lazy at the same time and then nobody will spread the news. The ability to copy/paste is critical to getting your information out — Protip!

• First seen via the twitterfeed of Internet Jesus: news of a webcomic from one of the world’s best writers of speculative fiction:
  

  The incredible China Miéville has given us permission to post his entire web comic “London Intrusion” http://ow.ly/3PKjL

  Duly note that the tweet was originally from the Twitter account of Mulholland Books (an imprint of Little, Brown, dealing in suspense), and that Ellis was one of many retweeters. Also duly note that since the link in question is only sporadically available, presumably due to over-access issues. Loss of access to the posting could be for any one of a number of issues, but let’s face facts — when Warren Ellis points you at a link, you click it or risk his displeasure, and this would be a completely logical reason for an inadvertent DOS.

  In any event, Miéville’s webcomic (previously run in small daily installments) is now available in complete form for the first time at Mulholland’s website, and boy is it purty. Might want to give ’em a few hours for the demand to taper off or the website to get beefed up a bit.

• Also calling back to last autumn, Mike Russell (and various others of Portland, Oregon’s kartoonin’ kommunity) have paid another visit to the Portland Opera for the purposes of portraying a performance in words and pictures. Last time it was (if memory serves) Rigoletto and this time it’s Turandot. I had a professor¹ (also my advisor, as luck would have it) back in my college days that would digress during lectures (various classes in electrical engineering) about opera, his love thereof, and the plots contained therein. As a result, I know to this day, more than 20 years hence, that Turandot concerns a Heartless Princess, the Price of Love for whom is most likely Death, and the eventual Melting of Her Heart, but not before Needless Death².

  Russell is much more detailed that I, and his pictures really bring across the tragedy of certain moments. As with prior PDX Opera comics adaptations, this one was live-sketched during dress rehearsal, and presented with minimal reworking, given that the performance was Monday night. If you’re a fan of culture (or just want to be able to fake it plausibly), or if you’re a fan of blood ‘n’ guts in your high-brow entertainments, give ‘er a good reading. And if you’re not, give ‘er a good reading anyway, and maybe you’ll find out you’re more of a fan than you thought.

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¹ Doctor Henry Winton, as capable a teacher as ever I’ve seen. Yes, he really did kind of look like Papa Smurf, and yes, his office really looked like that. In fact, I’m pretty sure my senior network synthesis design projects is in that stack behind his head.

² To be fair, there are basically only two plots in all of classical opera; the other one is the high-born young man who falls in love with the low-born young woman (or vice versa), thus producing a pair of Doomed Lovers. Family Disapproval, Madness, and/or Death soon follow.

Remarkably, some modern opera will follow these basic plots as well — the love duet between Pat Nixon and Mao Zedong from Nixon In China? Breathtaking in its majesty, heartbreaking in its sexy earnestness³.

³ Okay, you caught me — Nixon In China is a real opera, but I lied about Pat Nixon and Mao being lovers. It’s actually Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

No, not news that the Killer Ice Storm of Aught-Eleven (that construction doesn’t really work any more, does it?) is over/done with/bypassing me; I’m still going to die in a wintry tomb tonight or tomorrow.

No, the Finally! refers to something I’ve been waiting on since last July, when Hurricane Erika told me about her post-DAR! projects. The first of them, the “dick and fart joke murder mystery” is now live, and going by the name Bucko, with words by Periscope Studio-mate and Marvel (Agents of Atlas, notably) and indy comic book (Underground with Steve Lieber) scribe Jeff Parker. It’s off to a rousing, triple-sized start, with future installments promised Tuesdays and Fridays, and this teaser on the plot yet to come:

Poor Rich “Bucko” Richardson just wants to finally get a job and maybe have another opportunity to talk to that one cute girl he met at that party.

A chance case of alcohol-fueled diarrhea at his job interview leaves him desperately running for the bathroom where he discovers a brutally murdered body.

Now it’s up to Bucko to solve this case! And just maybe get that threesome after all…

I’m sold. Parker’s got a wry sense of humor, and nobody draws dick-and-fart jokes better/more adorably cringeworthy than Moen. Jump in now while the jumpin’s good.

• Speaking of Icy Doom, let’s turn to Our Friend To The North for a moment or two. First of all, the big news teasered yesterday from TCAF has released, and c’est une whopper — making her first North American appearance will be Natsume Ono, internationally acclaimed creator of manga. Yeah, there are plenty of internationally acclaimed creators of manga, but Ono’s work is very much in the independent mold of TCAF and its other guests — lots of different visual styles, wide variety of subjects, and many stories that take place in non-Japanese settings.

  Full details at the announcement page, and am I the only one that thinks festival organizer Christopher Butcher might have still more surprises up his sleeve? I mean, it would be ungracious to expect more, but I have suspicions that there will be more Big Announcements.

• Staying north of the 49th parallel for the moment, the Joe Shuster Awards announced their 2011 nominees and I’m betting you can guess the ones of interest to this page already. Webcomickers Cameron Stewart and Jim Zubkavitch got nominated in the categories of Outstanding Comic Book Artist / Dessinateur Exceptionnel de Bandes Dessinées and Outstanding Comic Book Writer(s) / Écrivain(s) Exceptionnel de Bandes Dessinées, respectively (for work that includes Batman [Stewart] and Skullkickers [Zub]).

  The nominations for Outstanding Web Comics Creator(s) /Créateur(s) Exceptionnel de Bandes Dessinées Web are, as is usual with the Shusters, the best slate of names to appear attached to a major award, and include Attila Adorjany, Kate Beaton, Emily Carroll, Karl Kerschl, Drazen Kozjan, Simon Roy/Simon Roy and Ed Brisson, Salgood Sam, and Connor Willumsen. There’s an enormous variety of works there, with different formats, approaches to comics, lengths, story treatments, everything. Though we may all have our favorites, any of the nominees would be a worthy winner. The Joe Shuster Awards will be presented 18 June in conjunction with the 2011 Calgary Comics Expo.

• Finally, dragging our way back southwards, specifically to that section of Manhattan I can see from the office windows — happy first anniversary to the all-independent incarnation of The Beat. Heidi MacDonald gives webcomics the attention they deserve (both good and bad, in their proper measure), and has nothing but love for all forms of this, our beloved comics medium. Next time you see her at a show, give her a damn big high-five.