I like my brother-in-law the meteorologist a lot, but when his forecast emails contain lines like that one, I kind of wish for sweet, sweet ignorance. Given the possibility of power outages due to icing of power lines starting this time tomorrow, and going for as much as 48 hours past that, please forgive me in advance if I miss an update or six in that time frame. In the meantime, webcomics.

• Dammit, Andy, I’m not sure what’s worse — the fact that you have Series 2 Android figures on the way to siphon off my money:
  

  Will get a little Android S2 preview up tomorrow, too much other stuff to do tonight!

  … or the fact that you’re making me wait to see what the money-sink looks like. I don’t want to give into Completist Mania, and I don’t want to not see the toys that I’m trying to resist purchasing. No part of that last sentence made any sense.

• Show news: Big announcement pending from TCAF, very hush-hush for the moment, but showrunner Christopher Butcher doesn’t mess around. If he says it’s exciting, it’s exciting. Keep your eyes peeled for tomorrow’s announcement. And following up on the earlier announcement that Intervention attendee registration is open, today comes the news that Artists Alley/vendor applications are now available.
• Until the news of the aforementioned Killer Ice Storm reached me, this was going to be the header image for today’s posting, if for no other reason that to be able to use the phrase sac weevils. Though Digger may be close to finishing for good, as long as Ursula Vernon cranks out art from the depths of her subconscious, I’ll remain a happy guy.

That would be trying to catch up everything at work the day after a snow day. Which is why I’m terribly behind on my reading (again), and will be dipping into the mailbag so as not to post nothing. If the Fimbulvetr continues, those of you with press releases will have a much better chance than usual to get them run.

• Item! Friend to words-with-pictures everywhere and curator of the Cartoon Art Museum Andrew Farago (aka Prince Consort to the Radness Queen of the Greater Bay Area) would like very much for you to come to an event next month:
  

  San Francisco, CA: The Cartoon Art Museum welcomes celebrated cartoonists Aaron Renier and Jason Shiga on Thursday, February 17, 2011 as Renier celebrates the release of his new book, The Unsinkable Walker Bean, published by First Second Books and Shiga presents his innovative graphic novel Meanwhile, published by Abrams ComicArts. Please join Renier and Shiga at 7:00pm for a discussion of their latest books, followed by a signing in the museum’s bookstore. Copies of The Unsinkable Walker Bean and Meanwhile will be available for purchase onsite. Please call 415.227.8666, ext. 310 to reserve a copy. The suggested donation for this event is $5.

  If you didn’t read Meanwhile, go find a copy and leaf through it — it’s a pick-your-path comic so complex that new computer software had to be constructed from base theory in order to track all of the story paths. And Walker Bean was one of the standout books that First Second sent me last year, one that I’d recommend to reader that’s … let’s say eight and up. Fabulous stuff.

• Item! Back in the Spring, when snow seemed far away, we spoke a bit about Flash interface comics (also about David Malki !‘s Big Paper conspiracy theory), and as such brought up Red Light Properties. Creator Dan Goldman has been hard at work, seeing as how he’s about to crank out his 250th update in just over a year; given that he has to construct interactive features into each update, that’s quite a accomplishment. If you haven’t read the story of a Miami real estate office run by a hallcinogen-boosted shaman, his broker ex-wife, and the“previously-haunted” homes that they flip, maybe you should.
• Item! Speaking of Mr Malki !, everybody should read this. Doesn’t matter if you’re working on a webcomic, or any kind of creative endeavour. Just read it.
• Item! Spy talk, cryptic remark, offhand reference to Eben07 by Eben Burgoon. Clancyesque, overblown description of clandestine meeting. Fake intelligence report on the wrap-up of the second chapter of the on-going series Operation: 3-Ring Bound. Mission instructions that Burgoon is expected to lie low for a two month hiatus to build up a buffer of comics and to obtain all possible information on his work in the meantime, perhaps by listening to the Full Disclosure podcast.

  Tip that known associate Lauren Monardo of Brainfood Comics (which succeeded with its Kickstart, woo!) is providing the variant cover to the new Eben07 book, now available for pre-order. Cut-off sentence evoking danger and disaster. Honestly, it all reads a bit like a semi-drunken pastiche of the far superior work of Department Head Rawlings¹.

_______________
¹ REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS, EYES ONLY
Have planted rumor that previous leaked intelligence reports regarding subject: Burgoon were only meant as attempts at humor. Believe that this version of events will take root and become dominant. Continue operations as normal and initiate protocol omega.

For the record, my driveway is 32 meters long, 3.7 meters wide, and was covered to an average depth of 40 centimeters of moderately wet, drift-packed snow; that’s a total of 47.36 cubic meters, or 47,360 liters. Snow samples averaged 200 grams per liter, or about one fifth the 1 kilogram/liter density of water. The approximately 9500 kg of snow that is now no longer in my driveway is why this post is both late and minimal. The only upside of this, the seventh snowfall of the season (and I should note that the average snowfall per year round these parts is about 70 cm, which was just about equaled on the first snowfall of the season), was watching my greyhound trying to walk through the yard, which was more than chest-high on her. That was hilarious.

So I want to thank my occasional nemesis Gordon McAlpin for sending me a quick note about a new interview he’s done with MTV Geek, ’cause otherwise I’d have no damn idea what was going on today. Side thought: am I the only one that thinks its weird that comics journalism superstar and friend of webcomics Rick Marshall Willenholly isn’t writing for the MTV comics and other nerdery site? I mean, he does great at the MTV comics-meets-movies site, but this seems like a case of not exploiting your assets. Like I said, weird, but as MTV Geek is starting to pay attention to webcomics, no complaints here.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go take all the Advil.

With any luck, I won’t spend hours upon hours in transit.

In the meantime: Cat Rackham book! Debuts at TCAF! And later today, the greatest of all possible strip subjects — squirrel chew.

Sure, these news items are reported elsewhere, but sometimes you just get pulled in by the particular flavor that Heidi Mac puts on a story. Thus, we’ll be referencing The Beat‘s versions today.

• By now, I imagine that everybody and their dog has heard of the demise of Megan Fox Tits Wolverine magazine; actually, my dog (above) was napping pretty hard yesterday, so maybe she hasn’t. And since the mighty has fallen, I suppose we’ll break with the Fleen Style Guide and refer to MFTW by its former name, Wizard. Having studiously ignored the ever-descending fortunes of said magazine, a thought occurred to me yesterday in the aftermath of the implosion.

  Let’s be clear — I am not qualified to comment on the legalities of securities transactions, and I am not saying that anything I’m about to comment on was less than perfectly legal. But a paper transaction that effectively allows one company to cease to exist while an almost identical company (run by the same people) suddenly begins to exist, but allowing a clean break from the old company? We’ve seen it before in comics, which you may cross-reference under the names WOWIO/Platinum, and Dreamwave/Dream Engine to name two. These situations strike me as extraordinarily distasteful.

  I’ve seen the disappearance and new-name-reappearance of a company from the inside; close to fifteen years ago, I worked for a tech consultancy (about whom I have nothing but good things to say) that one day ceased operations and restarted them. In a bid for investment capital, the founder/principal signed a deal with some money guys who took a previously-unused, publicly traded company that had zero activity, bought the consultancy, and immediately spun it back off via a penny-stock issuance under a name practically identical to the old one. Go back to the story at The Beat and re-read the 2nd and 7th grafs, and the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th comments. Note the parallels.

  Things got real interesting for me at that point. The money guys promptly fired the owner/principal, and in the course of about 10 weeks screwed the remaining employees sideways, then declared the business a failure without paying us everything we were owed¹. This is, hopefully, as close as I’ll ever get to personally experiencing the historical business practices of the comics industry.

  Wizard staffers, as of this writing, don’t seem to have much expectation of severance, although one would hope that they do qualify for unemployment (but that’s a can o’ worms right there, with advanced legal degrees needed to determine what has to be true for somebody to claim unemployment insurance beyond the entirely-logical and therefore almost certainly-insufficient fact of being unemployed).

  Now here’s where it intersects webcomicdom; one of the interesting parts of this story is that Wizard World (the new public company) is keeping its convention business (the last year or so saw it aggressively purchase small- to medium-sized conventions all over North America). If the conventions are what keeps the business going, they’re going to need to stock up on guests. I happen to know that prior to the dissolution of the “old Wizard” and the formation of the “new Wizard”, a number of webcomickers were being aggressively courted to show at various Wizard cons in 2011.

  This is where the bad taste in my mouth (over the securities deals) starts turning into … let’s call it a “heightened situational awareness”. If I were being asked to exhibit at a Wizard show (I haven’t been), and they were offering more than table space (say, flight & hotel) I would want a damn good lawyer to look over the contracts to make sure I wouldn’t be on the hook for anything. After all, in the words of “new Wizard”‘s own press release:

  Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Statements in this press release relating to Wizard World’s future plans, expectations, beliefs, intentions and prospects are “forward-looking statements” and are subject to material risks and uncertainties. When used in this press release, the words “will”, “future”, “expect”, “look forward to”, similar expressions and any other statements that are not historical facts are intended to identify those assertions as forward-looking statements. Any such statement may be influenced by a variety of factors, many of which are beyond the control of Wizard World that could cause actual outcomes and results to be materially different from those projected, described, expressed or implied in this press release due to a number of risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, no assurances can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur. A detailed discussion of these factors and other risks that affect our business is contained in our SEC filings, including our most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, particularly under the heading “Risk Factors.” Copies of these filings are available online from the SEC or by contacting Joe Favorito at (917) 566-8345 or fatherknickerbocker1@yahoo.com. All information set forth in this press release is current as of January 24, 2011. Wizard World undertakes no duty to update any statement in light of new information or future events. [emphasis mine]

  Yeah, it’s boilerplate. I’m also interpreting it to mean, if “new Wizard” suddenly gets replaced by “new new Wizard”, creditors may have a long slog in front of them to get what is theirs by right. Any lawyers want to chime in on the comments page with a correction or reasons why anybody that does business with “new Wizard” shouldn’t be more cautious than usual? I’d love to hear your take on it.

• Let’s end on the very good news — again, lots of places to get background on this story, but let’s just stay with The Beat — that James Kochalka has been named the first-ever Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont (or anyplace else, near as I can tell). You’d be hard pressed to find a better CL, and you can be sure that this story will only become more awesome between now and the official investiture? coronation? accolade? Whatever the correct term, Kochalka starts fulfilling the duties of his office on 10 March. Everybody be glad for James!

_______________
¹ From the distance of time and cynicism, I’d say that the money guys had some money that they desperately needed to make disappear, because they all seemed to come out of it smelling like roses. I eventually got a chunk of my outstanding pay by offering to have a chat with the state Attorney General and IRS about whether or not it was legal for the money guys to tell me, as they were handing me my paycheck, that I hadn’t been an employee for the past two weeks, but had actually been an independent contractor and thus only entitled to half my previous salary. Classy.

Since we’re in the grip o’ arctic doom here in the Greater New York Mediasphere, may I point you towards the snowiest, frostiest, most chilly (in a toasty hearth with a roaring fire kind of way), Snowflakes? Chris Jones, regular artist for the lovable (maybe) scamps (definitely) in the far-off orphanage decided that “supporting his wife” while she “gave birth” was I dunno, important or something, thus necessitating a short break from drawin’ duties. Three weeks without art? Disaster.

Into the breach: one Christopher Baldwin, who can certainly draw kids. But given the subject matter of Snowflakes, Baldwin has opted to use is somewhat more crazed style, as found in Spacetrawler; check out Wray’s expression in the last panel of today’s strip and tell me she doesn’t have a relative or two crewing the I.A. Star Banger. The frenetic style suits the perpetual motion and near-panic of our favorite orphans to the proverbial T. If you don’t regularly read Snowflakes, these strips act as a stand-alone story, and are a great place to get a feel for the characters.

• Is there anything better than Sexy Batman? Science says no; science also says that as this is being written, Kate Beaton is having Q&A funtimes at Yale University, so I guess if you’re not already there, you’re out of luck, Sparky. Doubly so, considering that Latin Art-Throb Aaron Diaz accompanied Beaton, and is surely visually blending in with the dapper classes. Although as Mr Diaz is missing the typical elbow patches on his jacket, he may be given away as being too well dressed even for an Ivy League campus.
• Something I’ve been meaning to get around to for a couple of weeks now (and thanks to Tony Piro for prodding me via email): Colleen Doran (most recently mentioned on this page in conjunction with her cautionary tales of dealing with publishers) put up a State of the Webcomic posting at the beginning of the year that’s worth your close study.

  For those not sufficiently familiar with Ms Doran’s work, she’s been doing comics a long time — she’s been in print since her teen years, has worked on literally hundreds of titles and characters for nearly every publisher imaginable, and through all that time has continued work on her creator-owned project, A Distant Soil. Much like the Foglios and Carla Speed McNeil, Doran found it expedient to move away from the struggle to self-publish floppy-style comics, and moved ADS online; like her colleagues, she had the advantage of a loyal audience and the disadvantage of a longform narrative with years of backstory. On the other hand, “years of backstory” also means “lots of content that can go up immediately”.

  Naturally, there are no promises or guarantees in webcomicking, no matter how loyal a following you bring with you. It’s been a challenging transition, and Doran’s post is useful because it puts numbers on exactly how challenging — breakdowns of traffic patterns, effects of site redesign, and audience reading habits. It’s the most complete look inside of a metaphorical kimono since the last time Dorothy Gambrell revealed income data. The practical upshot comes near the end of Doran’s post:

  Most of the traffic on the old website was driven by blog posts. Most of the traffic on the new website is driven by webcomic readers. The more attractive pages later in the series account for much of the site’s appeal. Webcomic readers have short attention spans and are unlikely to stick with a site if the first page they see is unappealing. Earlier ADS pages are less likely to grab new readers and keep them. Later pages show a significant increase in staying power.

  Which leads a little later to the payoff line:

  A Distant Soil will run M-W-F through 2011. The sales on the site are up, the site is self supporting.

  That first quote is far more important than the second. Yes, it’s terrific news that Doran has achieved self-support and growth, but the lesson that you need to take away is how hard a process it was to get to that point; how much analysis was necessary to figure out what was going to grab readers and what was going to keep them. There’s no such thing as an overnight success, and once that self-sustenance comes along, the only rational response is to build on it:

  GOALS:

  1) Triple traffic in 2011.
  2) Work part-time on ADS in 2011
  3) Full time throughout 2012. It could happen.

  My money’s on her succeeding, but only because decades as a self-managed artist have honed Doran’s business, promotion, and creative survival skills to the point that the frantic scrambling of a young person’s career actually pays off. Read her story, be prepared to be at least as tenacious and skilled in the non-creative fields if you want to succeed in the creative one.

No update; see you on Monday.

There’s an essay by Dean Haspiel (who understands webcomickry, but also works on stuff by other creators, with his Harvey Pekar collaborations being an excellent example) that’s going ’round the nets today. It neatly addresses a dilemma for the modern creator: publishers don’t legitimize your work, only you can do that, but that’s going to require a lot of work on your part.

The services that a publisher would put behind a property that they really believed in (translation: one that is going to make them a boatload of money, which means however much you make is reduced by that boatload) are things that creators, of needs, can (and increasingly in the future, must) do for themselves. It’s brief enough that others have reproduced it in its entirety, but I’ma let you read it in situ for a reason that will shortly be made apparent. He might oversell the “death of print” angle, but from that position he stakes out actions that are beneficial regardless of whether or not you agree with that conclusion: don’t be afraid to network, make your creation as good/valuable as possible, don’t give anything away.

The reason I wanted you to read Haspiel’s minifesto is because of a bit in the comments that I caught. James A. Owen, comic creator/publisher and novelist, directs Haspiel (and we along with him) to a recent tale at his own LJ, regarding a recent interaction with Hollywood (a publisher of sorts — sure, they make movies, but the idea’s the same) and the absolutely vicious screw-job attempt that was foisted upon him. It’s a lesson that could be titled Why You Always Need To Read The Contract Especially The Addenda At The Back, or, (to quote Owen) Never Ever Give Up What You Want The Most For What You Want The Most At That Moment. Go read it now; it’s a little long, but it’s an absolutely necessary cautionary tale for anybody that wants to make a living from their creative efforts.

Speaking of publishing, it’s been a year (more or less) since news of Keenspot‘s reorganization broke, and six months (more or less) since the changes announced at that time went into effect. I was curious as to what was up at The Big K, since I’ve recently been noticing strips associated with them — emails pointing me towards Shockwave, Darkside (and the associated movie) or Exposure (new to Keenspot this week), along Head Trip getting ‘Spotted a few days back and Road Waffles recently returning to the land of updates). Given that the major goals of the reorg were to reduce the number of comics, and to concentrate Keenspot’s resources on the efforts of the Crosbys and the associated Blatant Comics brand (which is entirely logical — if you start a business to handle creative works, it’s only right that the first works you deal with are your own), I got curious as to how concentrated Keenspot has become.

As of today there appear to be 31 titles listed on the front page; 20 are currently updating, 11 are complete or update sporadically. A total of 13 titles are associated with Chris Crosby, Bobby Crosby, or artists that are closely associated with them (Owen Gieni and Remy “Eisu” Mokhtar); we’ll arbitrarily designate these creators as being the core Keenspot “family”, for lack of a better term. If you want to break it down, it’s 6 family strips vs 14 non-family (currently updating), and 7 family vs 4 non-family (complete). So the core creators represent approximately 2/3 of the completed comics, less than 1/3 of the active, or about 42% of overall content.

A’course, some of those comics are more extensive than others (trying to figure out a weighting factor that would adequately adjust for nearly twelve years of Superosity would require mathematics not yet devised), but given that Keenspot has probably been associated with 80 – 100 different comics over its lifespan, I’d say that the goals were pretty well met. Making changes that amount to a re-engineering of your business, within a year, in a six-month timeframe for execution? I’m going to call that move reasonably ballsy and one requiring a fair bit of skill.

What’s that? A day’s respite without freezing rain, slush, and general suicide-inducing ick from the skies? I’ll take it, particularly since it looks like another snowfall is heading our way Thursday into Friday. At least it isn’t the theoretical California murderstorm.

• It seems like just yesterday I was going on about visual references and talking about how even with terrific mastery over facial expressions and body types, you still have to draw hands and feet or you’re just half-assing it. Lo and behold, Meredith Gran comes to the rescue, linking to a treasure trove of hand samples. That there are so many, with such a variety of anatomies and range of expressions should come as no surprise, as most of them are by legendary (literally) Disney animator Milt Kahl. Even if you can’t put all of the liveliness into hands that Kahl did (and honestly, who can?), at least don’t give Josh Fruhlinger’s the jibblies over your mutant digits.
• The latest Xeric season continues apace, and although the foundation’s website is a little behind the times, we hear today that John Martz will get to publish a new edition of Heaven All Day thanks to the grant. If you don’t want to wait until the Spring for that new printing, Heaven All Day is available online, along with other mini (print)/longish (web) comics, as well as shorter experiments (under the Machine Gum branding) at his website. Good stuff, and well done Mr Martz.

  Just prior to press time, news of another webcomicky Xeric grant, this one for Kevin Fraser Mutch, for his previous webcomic, Fantastic Life (the first chapter of which is still online). Mutch’s current webcomic, The Moon Prince is also well worth your time, and well done Mr Mutch. As a side note, if a third Xeric grant is given to another webcomicker with a family name starting with “M”, we’ll know that it’s a conspiracy; please prepare your tinfoil hats in advance.

• Speaking of well done, last week’s Girl Genius Day (aka Kaja Foglio’s birthday) was a roaring success, with the first Girl Genius novelization heading back to print. Let’s go to the official announcement for details:
  

  [Tuesday 18 January 2011], Night Shade Books, the publisher of Agatha H and the Airship City by Phil & Kaja Foglio, announced that the first hardcover print run of 4000 copies had sold out and that they will be going back to press.

  On January 12th, The Foglios coordinated a “Girl Genius Day” promotion. In this they were aided by many luminaries in the web comics world, such as Scott Kurtz and David Malki [sic], as well as a plethora of others who helped spread the word. This proved remarkably successful: the book actually sold out on Amazon.com, but not before it cracked the site’s Top Twenty list of best sellers for the day.

  Let’s be clear: 4000 copies in hardcover is nothing to sneeze at for any author, even one with such as following as the Foglios, because they don’t have a history of moving traditional books without pictures (actually, you will find Phil Foglio’s name attached to a couple of book-books, not specifically as illustrator, none of which get very far into Amazon’s Top 100,000 best sellers); hitting the Top 20 for the day is pretty significant.

  Even more significantly, it appears the Machine of Death strategy works, with the important caveat that you have to bring a motivated audience with you in order for it to work. There’s no telling how far Airship City would have gone if it didn’t hit backorder status, and it’s current positioning (as of this writing, in the Top 100 of several specialty lists, and around 3800 overall) is certainly enough to be proud of (best I ever managed was around 19,000).

  With luck, the return to print will happen quickly enough to drop the current Amazon expected shipping time from 1 to 3 months (if you follow that link and it doesn’t say “1 to 3 months”, the awesome — everybody wins). If the presses don’t get up to speed quickly enough just take solace from the fact that “out of print” doesn’t mean that every single copy in the world is spoken for — it means that booksellers can’t get any more shipments. You’ll still find copies on the shelves, and no doubt every sale tickles the (slightly mercenary, and I mean that in the best possible way) heart-strings of the Foglios.

There’s some useful tools for artists burning up the nets, and on the off chance you haven’t seen them, here they are.

• At the end of last week, a bunch of people were mentioning a wonderful set of photos posted by Nina “Space Coyote” Matsumoto (I first noticed it when Ananth Panagariya tweeted) of athletes. These are all Olympic-caliber competitors, but they look radically different from each other; artists will have to extrapolate out to what non-athletic types might look like, but with this variety to use as models, there’s really no excuse for overly-similar body types.
• Taking that variety to its logical place, Yuko Ota did a lineup of her recurring female characters (dudes will be tomorrow), giving a compare-and-contrast to her cast.
• The big news, though, was from Tracy Butler over at Lackadaisy; just because you’ve got a cast of anthropomorphic felines doesn’t mean that you get to cheap out on facial expressions, and Butler put together an absolutely stellar how-to on making expressions pop. It all comes down to anatomy, kids, and the recognition that you can’t really move one part of your face without skin and muscle tugging on a bunch of other parts (unless you’re Botoxed to the point that you can’t frown, but let’s leave that to the side).
• There’s a similar discussion in McCloud’s Making Comics (which, goodness, is coming up on five years in print?), which goes a bit further in discussing how this brow shape here, combined with that mouth shape there makes a basic emotion, and combining the basic emotions makes more complex ones (my favorite being Surprise + Disgust = Who Farted?).
• In fact, you can take that a bit further into instant expression reference if you follow the link from McCloud’s site to The Grimace Project, which allows real-time generation of faces based on the relative strength of one or two different emotions. Now don’t stop at the bodies and faces; if you go out of your way to not draw hands or feet, everybody’ll call you Rob.
• Convention season is nearly upon us in full force (indeed, Arisia happened last weekend), and planning time is here again. Last year SPX and the brand-new Intervention wound up scarce 2 km from each other on the same weekend (and even found advantages in cross-honoring passes, I hear), but this year they’re on consecutive weekends. Too early to tell if this reduces the audience for either, but tables and guest registration info are now available for both. SPX hits 10-11 September at the North Bethesda Marriott, with a 20% discount on exhibitor tables booked before 1 March. Guest registration is at the door.

  Intervention hits the following weekend, 16-18 September, at the Rockville Hilton, with guest pre-reg at $30 for the weekend. While the exhibitors are more by-invitation than open-application, watch that space for news of open table space later in the year — there’s always some last minute guest cancellations at a show; alternately, you could contact showrunners Oni Hartstein & James Harknell and see if they can hook you up.