It appears that Cathy Guisewite’s eponymous newspaper strip wrapped yesterday, which wouldn’t merit a mention here except for something that happened in the country immediately north — Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper went looking for interpretations of Cathy‘s wrap, and they went to webcomickers.

Angela Melick, Ryan Pequin, Kate Beaton, and Mike Winters offered up their visions of how the strip’s end might have looked, while mercifully offering an APPR (aaacks-per-panel ratio) of 0.61538, a value so low that scientists are still figuring it out.

NYCC exhibitors with a webcomics bent seem to be centered roughly in the 2200 – 2500 aisle region, with some offshoots into the small press area (300 – 500 or so) and Artist Alley. Speaking of Artist Alley, the listings are both brilliant and a pain — brilliant because there’s a gallery view that shows samples of the artwork in case you don’t remember a creators name, a pain because not every artist is represented in the gallery, and even in the comprehensive list there’s no table numbers (yet). On the other hand, wandering the AA aisles is a good way to find new creators you didn’t know about previously, so call it a wash.

As usual, I probably missed a bunch (for instance, the SMBC Theater will have a session on Saturday, but I couldn’t find a booth listing), and anybody that you suspect will be at the show but isn’t listed here, check the Dumbrella booth (where KC Green and Becky & Frank, among others, will be found).

The first of October is a big webcomicsversary date, marking nine and six years of Achewood and Girls With Slingshots, respectively. Do yourself a favor and check out those first two links, then do the compare/contrast thing on the second pair; don’t forget to show your work and as always, spelling counts. Oh, and don’t blame me if you end up on an archive binge or two.

• Skin Horse, by contrast, is a bit less than three years old. But if you add it to the five and a half plus years of its predecessor, Narbonic, you’re going back a good decade or so. And furthermore, Skin Horse’s second book is newly released, at least for those who backed it with Kickstarted pre-orders. Everybody else, I imagine copies will go up at the Couscous Collective store eventually, but not until after I have my copy, moo-ha-ha-ha. Anyway, pick up Volume 1, and by the time you’re done with it, you can probably get Volume 2. Also, book launch party at Borderland Books in San Francisco on Saturday the 23rd at 5:00pm (or see if Shaenon & Jeff will sell you a copy at APE the week before).
• Marissa’s Bunny has popped up again, this time with the Blind Ferret (although it’s been there for a good long time, I hadn’t noticed until Sohmer’s post on same). Previously seen at PAX and Tim Buckley’s house, the little lapin is emblematic of a need for your attention and generosity (and if there’s one thing that webcomickers are, it’s generous to those in need). Thanks to Jordan Anderson for the head’s up.
• Amazing coincidence department: Colleen Doran is apparently running a Project Wonderful button ad on Fleen today, and I was going to draw your attention to a tweet from Mike Russell this morning recommending you head over to Ms Doran’s site and check out her epic tale of Bad Publishers:
  

  If you’ve never read Colleen Doran epic (and instructive) saga of bad-publisher perfidy, remedy this oversight here

  Ms Doran has recently made said tale of perfidy (what a great word) much easier to follow, and it contains much wisdom for those of you looking to make your comicking into a business. I was once taken to task by Mr T for asserting that [A]ll contracts are inherently about ensuring that — if needed — you can cut the other guy’s heart out and he’s legally obligated to provide the blade; a quick read over Ms Doran’s experiences with Bad Publishers provides a plethora of anecdotal evidence.

Update to add: make that 20 — Dr McNinja is five today.

Given the topics and demeanor of previous updates at Jon Rosenberg‘s Scenes From a Multiverse, I can’t help but think that today’s update is meant to lull us into some kind of complacency. Is this a trap? I think it might be a trap. Everybody go check it out and tell me if it’s a trap.¹

• Brad Guigar is at it again — members of Webcomics Dot Com now get 15% off of all orders from Blue Line Pro‘s website. Reached for comment, Guigar related how Blue Line Pro contacted him with an offer to provide swag for attendees of the NYCC Webcomics Bootcamp, and he spun that into an ongoing sponsorship. With three months still to go to the new WDC’s 1 year anniversary, can Guigar make it an even 10 partnership discounts by then? Also, bootcamp attendees, be sure to tell us about what’s in those swag bags.
• Alexander Danner went to last weekend’s inaugural Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo in Boston, and would like you to know how it went. Spoiler alert: it went pretty good! With another year or two under its belt, MICE may become the third jewel in the East Coast Indy Comics show Triple Crown (with MoCCA and SPX).
• Digital distribution and comics — latest musings on What The Future Portends (with a nice bit about how digital + indy/freely-distributed comics might contrast with digital + big-ass publishers) in two parts, courtesy of Tom K Mason and friends (who, by Mason’s own assessment, get “a little blowhardy”, but still some good ideas in there).

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¹ As of this writing it’s still bunnies, but I remain unconvinced. Check again.

Sorry about the interruption, everybody. Let’s get back to it, shall we?

• There was my short blurb about the Guigar/Kurtz/Rall debate upcoming at NYCC, but it’s not the only session of interest to webcomicdom. Consider also the following:
  Friday, 7:00pm to 8:00pm, room 1A24
  The Digital Age of Comics — Not about webcomics as we use the term around here (with a heavy bias towards the creator-owned and direct audience contact), more about how comics in general (that is, major publishers) are moving into digital distribution. High odds of forward-looking discussion on iPads and future iPad competitors, which means you webcomics types will want to keep an ear to the ground to figure out what formatting to use to best capture that channel.

  Saturday, 2:15pm – 3:15pm, room 1A15
  SMBC Theater — Some of the nicest, most talented people you’ll ever meet talk about making short films in which they portray the worst people in the world. Guaranteed laugh-chuckles.

  Saturday, 7:30pm – 8:30pm, room 1A14
  Kurtz v. Rall: The Print/Web Debate — As previously mentioned.

  Sunday, 10:45am – 12:45pm, room 1E02
  Webcomics Bootcamp with Brad Guigar and Scott Kurtz — Lots of time, an intimate setting, a roaring fire and Barry White on the stereo eager creators looking for a seminar-type round-robin critique of their work. Join in if you think you’re ready for the experience.

• Speaking of conventions, the after-action reports on Intervention have been interesting reading, particularly this dissection of what went wrong with PayPal processing of membership fees. Anybody looking to use PayPal at a convention in any scope, give this a good read.
• Looking for experience in the comics-production field? Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman are looking for an intern (unpaid). Yeah, lack of pay is no fun, but like Ira Glass once said:
  

  [Y]ou work somewhere for a year or two for free or for next to nothing while they get to know you and you get some skills…. It’s not a great system but at least it’s cheaper than grad school.

  The actual quote pertained specifically to public radio, but it parallels the situation in comics (with the exception that you’re even less likely to be hired by an independent creator than by a public radio station, but hey — weirder things have happened).

• Final thoughts: For going on three one and a half years now [Thanks, Roman!], Tatsuya Ishida’s been running a story arc around Fuchsia Devil Girl and Criminy in the pages of Sinfest, and it’s been as sweet as, um, hell. But for the past two weeks or so, Ishida has been stunningly, outstandingly good. It would be easy for this arc to get cloying and saccharine, but instead it just makes you smile. Check it out if you haven’t.

That is all.

Work just said, “Go to another city, be there in two hours” so my posting plans are in disarray. In the meantime, go check out New York Comic Con’s programming. Look on Saturday, oh, around 6:00, 6:30pm. Look for the names Guigar, Kurtz, and Rall. And let’s get ready to rumble!

Okay, so Angela Melick does a webcomic, knows her way around the right-hand rule, and married a guy with a talent for website development. End result: Webcomictweets, a combination Twitter reader, aggregator of statistics, and single point of contact for what’s going on in the webcomics world (once the list of included folks is sufficiently beefed up, that is). It’s got a lot of on-page functionality, it doesn’t turn up its nose at my (admittedly niche) browser of choice, probably isn’t blocked from your place of work (yet), and it’s fast. Heck, if not for the fact that I follow a few folks outside of webcomics, I’d probably make it my new Twitter client.

Submit your site for inclusion (or heck, just submit webcomics superfan Mike Kinyon‘s lists of webcomickers — comics and creators only, we bloggers would only clog up the place), and start following the community.

• Label dead, comic continues: High Moon has been a critical darling for the (just about) three year of its existence, and the disappearance of home base Zuda be damned, creators David Gallagher and Steve Ellis still have stories to tell. If you haven’t checked out High Moon yet (with the Zuda imprint no longer extant, the publishing of future volumes on paper would seem to be up in the air), you can always check ’em out at ComiXology. Expect to see other Zuda refugees over there in the immediate short term.
• October Events: MoCCA is continuing its series of comics classes, with topics such as anatomy (general) anatomy (hand), writing, collaboration, plotting, animation teamwork, and more. Details at MoCCA’s education page.

  On the other side of the country, the Cartoon Art Museum will be having a party in conjunction with APE, with proceeds to support the museum’s mission. Special guest will come from the featured artists of the concurrently-running Storytime! exhibition, and will include Dave Roman, Raina Telgemeier, Amy Martin, and Keith Knight. Check out the CAM booth at APE for a complete list of attendees.

Oh yeah — #werewolfcomics.

• I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of Johnny Wander Volume 1: Don’t Burn The House Down (available at fine online stores starting next Monday), and I couldn’t put it down. What Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya have created is nothing less than a more modern, authentic-feeling, young-adult (in the sense of being out of college, not in the sense of a “Young Adult” reader) version of Archie.

  Bear with me a moment.

  The thing about Archie comics (and JWV1:DBTHD approximates the size and feel of the Archie digests) is, you don’t need to have been reading for the past 70 years to know that Archie Andrews is Everyteen, Reggie’s a jerk, Veronica’s a snob, Jughead’s most likely asexual, and Betty is freakin’ insane. You can pick up literally any Archie story ever written, and by the end of the story (frequently only six or eight pages) you know who these characters are and what their typical behaviors will be. It’s self-contained, self-explanatory, and above all, as accessible to the first time reader as to the obsessive fan.

  And that’s what maybe sets Johnny Wander, essentially an autobio webcomic, apart from most of its contemporaries. No in-jokes or mythologies, no history that’s needed to read the current update and get a laugh-chuckle in return. Whoever these people are, they’re funny. Reading from the beginning makes them funnier and more “real”, but the barrier to entry is nil, and that is a significant accomplishment. As Yuko and Ananth (one rarely sees them referred to singly, except as a merged hybrid creature) note in the back matter, this c’mon in the webcomic’s fine approach was deliberate:

  Comics like Yotsuba&! have a universal appeal that doesn’t require an ecyclopedic geek knowledge, and that’s what we began striving for.

  Not only did they hit what they were striving for, Yotsuba&! may be the only short vignette model comic that is guaranteed to make me smile more than Johnny Wander. Next time I see Yuko and Ananth (mecha or otherwise), the Beard Papa’s is on me (that sentence actually is grammatically correct, and the shop is right around the corner from my office, yay). Now, exactly do I have to pour ants on to get Volume 2?

• Puppets! Moviemaking! Progress! Steve Troop’s Melonpool photo set (with video coming soon).
• Quite a bit of discussion of some various It Moves! type webcomics; I got tipped off to one that’s particularly implemented in HTML5 (although somewhat hilariously, it doesn’t like my use of HTML5-compliant Opera and recommends I install forbidden-from-my-computer IE9). I’m deeply torn about these (and let me stress I’m not talking about any particular comic right now, just the idea of semi-interaction within the comic offering).

  On the one hand, webcomics, should be open to things you can’t do in print, push the boundaries, I get it. On the other hand, when there’s so much going on, characters moving around, panels shifting and fading, it’s like the comic is driving the reading experience instead of me. It puts me almost irretrievably in mind of an old Life In Hell where young Bongo the one-eared rabbit was asked why TV is the coolest invention ever: When you’re tired, TV does the playing for you. As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Yeah, okay, sometimes the Theme Of The Day doesn’t come together quite as strongly as I’d like. Mea culpa.

• New York Comic Con will be here in just a few weeks, and while the panels & screenings schedule is a little behind anticipated release, we do have at least a few hints of what’s coming down the ‘pike. For instance, the always-entertaining combo deal of Brad Guigar and Scott Kurtz will be doing an intensive, workshop-type session on Sunday morning. The description at Webcomics Dot Com is behind the subscription wall, but El Guigaro Magnifico has the gist of it at his own site:
  

  [A] one-on-one bootcamp for aspiring webcartoonists. Brad and Scott will present a lecture on the art and commerce of webcomics and then take their class through a collegiate-level critique of their work.

  This is a limited-attendance seminar. Students will be asked to bring examples of their work for critique, and be prepared to take and offer constructive criticism in the hopes of bettering each other’s work.

  So, interesting — not a portfolio review, and not seeking to attract attendees so much as participants. Given Guigar’s previously-stated dislike of sessions where the audience involves itself to the detriment of the speakers, the limited enrollment makes sense. If you attend, expect a small room, a large table, no podium, to work with your peers to improve everybody’s work, and for the ending time to be highly flexible. And as seems to be usual these days, Guigar has negotiated a discount on the enrollment fee, with WDC members getting in for $30 rather than the standard $50. Exact time and location to be announced.

• New book alert! Gordon McAlpin (my sporting bet nemesis — and by coincidence that link leads to a post with a picture of a looming Brad Guigar … much like Chickenman, he’s everywhere) has announced that his first collection of Multiplex strips, Enjoy Your Show, is now available for your purchase consideration.

  Unfortunately, ushers will not be walking through the aisles to offer EYS prior to the start of the movie (Will Rogers has that distribution channel locked up, and dead or not, he ain’t giving it up without a fight), so you’ll have to make a quick trip over to his internet-facing booksellery.

• Within yesterday’s DC Comics wholesale restructuring announcement(s) was the somewhat unusual news that Zudacomics is to be closed. Or perhaps more closed than it already was? I know that I wasn’t exactly a fan of the entire Zudaproject, but even I never proposed killing it twice. During the prior … I dunno, pre-closing? anouncement, I wrote:
  

  It’s no secret that I thought that the competition model of Zuda wasn’t the best thing that [web]comics could develop, but everybody I’ve met associated with Zuda has been an absolutely stellar, professional, admirable person. Here’s hoping that in the condensation of the the imprint into regular ol’ DC, the individuals find their way to stable, rewarding work quickly.

  When news of wholesale bloodletting didn’t come through, I breathed a sigh of relief for the Zudafolk. But now that it appears 20% of DC staff may be cut, I would guess that those working at a twice-killed imprint are nervous, and my good wishes go out to them doubly.

• Smut Peddler, comics porn by ladies, is lookin’ for contributors. Details here, a nice long submission deadline (31 December 2011), and plenty of people whose work I like means I have to start thinking up justifications for a future purchase that my wife will accept. Just one thing, though:
  

  And finally, there’s a difference between “porn” and “naked people telling jokes.” We want porn. Filthy porn.

  As the creators of Oglaf [NSFW, yo] will tell you:

  This comic started out as an attempt to make pornography. It degenerated into sex comedy pretty much immediately.

  Ain’t nothin’ wrong with sex comedy. And please, please, do what ever you have to in order to get the Oglafistas in on Smut Peddler. That would rule so hard. Err, so to speak.

As opposed to bad ass-kittens, I suppose. Witness the dreams of a frustrated second-generation puddingcat at from Randy Milholland, and the hellish scape of Kittenpocalypse Now courtesy of Jon Rosenberg. Should you meet either of these gentlemen, we at Fleen advise you to back away slowly, avoiding sudden movements and eye contact, perhaps leaving large bottles of industrial-strength booze as an offering.

• Mike Russell over at CulturePulp has been known to livetweet performances of the Portland Opera, but he’s likely to drop something even more intriguing in the coming days. Last night, a group of perhaps 15 or 20 Portland cartooners and comickers dropped by the opera for a performance of Pagliacci and sketched the whole time (union rules preventing pictures of the cast, but drawings allowed). You can follow the evening at Russell’s twitter, or search for the hashtag #pdxoperacomics, and watch CulturePulp for a cartoon rendering of the story of the sad clown (in-progress sketches from Russell and others at Twitpic).
• When Phil “Frumph” Hofer (prime instigator of ComicPress, which he is trying to step back from, although they keep pulling him back in) decides to drop ComicPress-related news, webcomics as a whole ought to listen. So when he says that he won’t be part of ComicPress 3.0, I’d tend to believe him; but (and this is a big but) he will be part of something new.

  Enter Comic Easel. I’ll leave those of you running webcomics sites to read the details yourself, but the short version is, instead of a theme for WordPress (as ComicPress is), Comic Easel is a plug-in that will work with any theme (but can work with the ComicPress CSS, so don’t go thinking your efforts to date were wasted). Release date (subject to full documentation and FAQs) is presently scheduled for 18 December, with news to come at the (presently under construction) home site. Watch this one closely, I’d say.

• Laugh of the Day: A webcomicker (whom I will not name — there was dire legal boilerplate about not disseminating information involved) forwarded me a recent (like, two days ago) email offering to distribute books on their behalf. From WOWIO [no link]. Yes, that WOWIO [still no link].

  I guess since we’re now coming up on a full year since WOWIO [you guessed it — no link] made payments owed for Q2 of 2008, the people in charge figured that webcomicdom as a whole forgot the entire you didn’t pay us for more than 14 months thing. Still, new management (cough, Platinum, cough) and all that — maybe they deserve the benefit of the doubt, have turned over a new leaf, and are entirely different than the company that couldn’t pay what it owed.¹

• Hey, looka there — new TopatoCo store for your old pal Paul Southworth and (less of a pal really, more of a guy you met once in a bar) Bill Barnes for their nerdoffice strip Not Invented Here.

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¹ But those of us of a low and suspicious nature will harbor doubts.