Could it possibly be too early to congratulate Ryan North and Jenn Klug on their upcoming (this weekend) nuptials? No, it could not possibly. In fact, Ryan is such a large man, I suspect that each year will require several days of congratulations on either side of the actual date to adequately express ones appreciation of said marriage. Happy first night of RyanAndJennyMas, everybody.

Also, there will be rad Dinosaur Comics guest strips for a while, such as the above standout by John Allison.

• Breaking news! David Malki ! and Dave Kellett, in accordance with ancient Dave Law (and that community service thing they got slapped with) are raising money for 826 Valencia‘s Los Angeles chapter, 826LA. They are doing so by competing in a spelling bee that allows teams to cheat based on how much money they raise. I’ll let Mr Malki ! explain:
  

  [I]t takes place August 14 in Santa Monica, CA. Keith, Dave Kellett and I are on a team called “The Sweaty Hams,” because we are all men and, well, sometimes things happen. We’re somewhat late-comers to the fundraising game, so we are trying to raise pledges to buy “cheats” so we can be competitive in the event!

  Cheats include passing on a difficult word, buying immunity after spelling a word wrong, swapping places with another team member, and other non-officially-endorsed-by-the-American-Spelling-Association deviousnesses. (See how I used a word that’s probably not in their official lexicon?) We only get cheats — and thus, a fighting chance against the other teams with loads of cheats — if we raise money! 826LA is a volunteer-based organization that helps kids in a number of remarkable and wonderful ways. Will you please help our team with a donation?

  The event is less than two weeks away and thanks to rudderless team leadership we are entering the fundraising race way at the back of the pack. PLEASE DO NOT LET US FAIL IN THIS

  AS WE DO MOST EVERYTHING ELSE [emphasis original]

  Guys, I’m going to be honest here. Neither David nor Dave is necessarily “down” enough with your arbitrary “rules” to spell words “correctly” and if they bomb at this competition it will look bad for webcomics as a whole. They are going to need all the help they can get to keep from embarrassing you personally; even getting a simple one-letter hint costs a hundred smackers, and something tells me they’re going to rely on the Invent-A-Word ploy ($1500 each) a lot. A couple bucks now could save a lot of heartache later.

• New Octopus Pie after Meredith Gran’s book-tour hiatus, and even better — there will be more every Monday-Wednesday-Friday! Also, her studiomate (and Latin Heartthrob) Aaron Diaz has the results of the Dresden Codak Reenactment Contest, meaning it’s been a hell of a productive time at Dunning-Kreger Solutions, Ltd.

I’ve largely completed my SDCC acquired media binge. Selected two-sentence reviews follow:

• Flight 7: Prepare to have your mind blown as Michel Gagné’s Rex folds back on itself recursively, with captions connecting to the next part of the story, found in Flight 2. The rest is simply wonderful, with Kazu Kibuishi adhering most closely to the now largely-forgotten theme suggested by the series title.
• Family Man: Dylan Meconis is very, very good with the art, very, very complete with the footnotes, and very, very evil to leave us on the cliffhanger she did. Give her your attention and money.
• SMBC Theater Goes To Hell: This DVD collection of sketches goes out of its way to convince me that Zach Weiner and James Ashby are the rudest, foulest, and generally worst people in the world, and succeeds. So I guess that’s good for them?
• Koko Be Good Not actually obtained in San Diego because Gina Gagliano assured me a complimentary review copy would be waiting for me at home and it was. Jen Wang’s story of finding out that what you think you want isn’t always what you really want has been haunting me, and is easily the best thing I’ve read since Tracy White’s How I Made It To Eighteen; highest recommendation, obtain on day-of-release if you enjoy things that are awesome.

Edit to clarify: the SMBC Theater DVD was given to me by the creators, and to add previously-missed links.

Let’s start with the fun stuff.

• Do you like free booze? Sure, we all do.¹ Good news for you, Sparky — Dave Kellett has worked his magic and (yet again) lined up a free booze sponsor for his latest book launch party. Those of you lucky enough to be in the vicinity of Beverly Hills can check out the latest Sheldon and Drive collections, and pound down completely free tequila until the very fancy people eject you from the venue, and possibly the city limits. If you’re found two days later in a tub full o’ ice missing a kidney, don’t blame Dave; tequila must be treated with respect.
• Heard on the premiere business-information program of these shores on Monday afternoon: a story on policing internet behavior and a reference to the Greater Internet uh, Jerkwad, Theory. Heard on the same program Tuesday afternoon, a belated recognition of the authors of said theory. Dunno if Mike and Jerry listen to Marketplace or not, but this is as close as you can get to an official imprimatur from the business community that They Matter.
• Speaking of commerce, Andy Bell sold literally a thousand of his Android toys at San Diego, and only via careful rationing did they last to almost lunchtime on Saturday. For those of you not lucky enough to score some, the newest resupply is due up at the Dead Zebra site in the next week or two.
• Guess what I’m getting: Dr McNinja Boy Scout patches! The Potomac Council is selling its leftovers, details of which can be found here. If you’re interested I’d email sooner rather than later, but it’s one very nice woman named Susan that’s taking care of this sudden influx of attention, so be polite and patient with her. Also, she’s trying to keep track of order requests, addresses, and payment info, which is much simpler if you reply to her emails instead of starting new ones with each exchange.

Okay, time to get serious. Go read this piece at The Comics Journal on censorship in Sweden, then come back. For those of you who are contrary and don’t feel like reading, it concerns an established, long-respected manga translator who was convicted in June on the charge of possessing child pornography, for having on his computer a few dozen scanned manga pages related to translation projects. The pictures were deemed to be “of a sexual nature” and to depict “characters under the age of 18”. Woo, pedophile off the streets, we can all sleep better at night, forces of decency triumph.

Maybe.

Nobody knows how explicit the pictures (again, not photos, not anything that actually depicts any living person, much less a child) might be because it’s illegal for them to be seen by anybody, and therefore we have only the prosecutor’s word to go on. And here’s the kicker:

In Sweden, all images – be it photos, movies, animations or drawings – depicting what one can understand to be a child (i.e. under the age of 18) in a sexual situation, are regarded as child pornography, since the legislators agreed on using the word “image” instead of “photo” in the law. The ban does not apply to text, though, only images.

This law has been active for almost a decade, but this ruling is the first one ever in Sweden where drawn images have been deemed child pornography in a court of law, and it might thus create a precedent. This could have far-reaching consequences for comics, both for artists and readers. Serious depictions of abuse, autobiographical stories of sexual debut, or simply children without clothes on, may now be classified as child pornography. [emphasis added]

We’ll neglect for the moment the fact that the age of consent in Sweden is 15, and that it’s impossible to decide if a cartoon character that’s meant to be an adult is “too young-looking”. Instead, let’s concentrate on this:

One major problem is the fact that since it is illegal to even look at images like these, the images that were the grounds for the conviction cannot be shown anywhere. This leads to a Catch-22 situation where it is virtually impossible for anyone to decide whether something is illegal or not.

Until this gets settled? You probably shouldn’t read Rene Engström‘s highly-regarded work within the geographical boundaries of Sweden, since Johan and Tina might have been underage, Little Shit might look too young, and diary comics of bathing your kids are obviously criminal in nature.

Those links don’t work, because as much as we know that none of those things described is wrong in any way, somebody out there is screaming Won’t you please think of the children? and might make things difficult for Rene and I won’t make it any easier for them to start their witch-hunt. The fact that I need to think in those terms really pisses me off.
_______________
¹ For maximum impact, read that line in the voice of Informercial Sally Struthers.

So the tradition of webcomics-attended convention attracting the attention of emergency services continued, with Otakon seeing the Baltimore Convention Center evacuated due to a reported kitchen fire. Alarms were struck about 2:00pm local time, with people re-entering about 40 minutes later.

Just to make things perfectly clear in case you’re ever in one of these situations: “evacuated” does not mean “out of the building and onto the sidewalk”. It means “far enough clear of the building that everybody behind you can also get out.” If there’s nobody behind you, keep walking anyway — the collapse zone on a building is larger than the building’s height.

In other, non-crisis news:

• I got a really interesting email from a gentleman named Derek Sivers over the weekend; he was previously the owner of CD Baby (from whom I have made purchases) and presently has a couple of ventures. One I would commend to your attention: MuckWork, taglined assistants to do your uncreative dirty work, so you can do what only you can do. It’s designed specifically for musicians near as I can tell, but it’s verging on territory that your pro-grade webcomicker might find useful, for when the running-the-bidness side of things is taking away from the creative side. While you’re checking out MuckWork, you might also find a fascinating read in the form of how Sivers decided to sell and how he essentially gave the multimillion dollar proceeds to charity.
• Ten years of mad science? Saturday marked the anniversary of Narbonic. Congrats to Shaenon Garrity, who also wrapped up pre-orders on Skin Horse book 2 on Saturday with precisely twice the necessary amount. Ms Garrity, you remain Radness Queen of the Greater Bay Area.
• Did anybody else see this? Pearls Before Swine proved that online can provide a needed complement to print strips. The 2 August update depended on a gag that was impossibly small to read in my newspaper (yes, I actually still get one), but the Comics Dot Com site offers a zoom feature (although it’s not obvious at first — you have to hover over the image and have Javascript active) that actually made the gag visible.

  Now I may subscribe to a newspaper, but I’m easily 20 years younger than their core demographic and my eyes ain’t that bad yet — I can’t imagine anybody was able to appreciate this joke that doesn’t read the comic online. For all intents and purposes, Stephan Pastis may as well have just submitted a strip to papers that said Go to this URL or don’t bother. [editor’s note: in case that strip goes away or gets locked behind a paywall, here’s a copy]

• Ben Franklin knows: Chucks are universally comfortable.

Friday. Last day off work of vacation, weekend a-comin’. Let’s do this.

• Re: Penny Arcade‘s PATV season one finale. Wow. Just watch it.
• Re: Skin Horse book2 pre-order on Kickstarter ends in 23 hours (as of this writing). Hint: the minimum pledge that will get you a physical book (which includes a sketch) actually works out about the same as what you’d pay for a non-sketch edition of the book once you take shipping and handling into account.
• Re: The unique ability of comics to reach audiences (particularly those underserved by traditional media); sometimes this approach provokes a WHAT reaction that may undermine the intended message, but sometimes it works really well. For an example of the latter, may I refer you to Adrean Clark’s Eight Ways To Be Deaf?

  Originally run as a B&W webcomic, 8 Ways is now fully colored and available as an e-book, with print coming next month. This is how you teach somebody about your culture, cause, or goal — organically, with a bit of humor, and remembering that people are people. Over-the-top cliched demonization? That just gets you laughed at. Not “with”. At.

• Re: Missed it entirely. Blank It, the webcomic forced to be creative by trapping its only characters in an infinite, featureless plane, has shaken things up first by constraining the characters, then by transferring the cast to the opposite of the infinite, featureless plane: the interior of a box. Interesting.

For reals, there is almost nothing guaranteed to make me smile as much as Kate Beaton’s take on Wonder Woman. And with it comes the news that she’ll be contributing to Marvel’s Strange Tales II anthology. Let’s see what else is coming up, shall we?

• Otakon is coming up, oh, tomorrowish, and lots of webcomics folk will be involved. On the Official Guest List we find Clarine Harp, anime voice actress & producer, and the real life counterpart to Something*Positive’s Aubrey. In San Diego, I met the real life version of Jason (also in that strip), found him charming, affable and pretty much like strip Jason, so draw your own conclusions. Randy Milholland tells me that his readers sometimes approach Ms Harp very politely, utter some kind words, and back away without making eye contact, possibly in fear of their lives. I want to see that happen in person some day.
• J Baird of the Create a Comic Project also sends along a list of webcomics-related programming events at Otakon, including two he’s running on manga-making and the use of comics in literacy. Full details after the cut. Lots of webomickers in the Artists Alley, as well (and even some that will be squatting boothspace with others); tell ’em I said hi.
• Here’s a name that long-time readers may recall: Øyvind Thorsby; creator of the nearly 600-installment Hitmen for Destiny, which upended the notion that art is necessary to a webcomic with its weird, compelling story. Thorsby is back with a new webcomic — onewhich features neither three-and-a-half dimensional fight scenes (click forward for about a dozen strips) nor throat-inflation fetishism (at least, not that we get to see) — called Lies, Sisters, and Wives. It’s a complete story in 34 strips, and it reminds me of nothing so much as a French bedroom farce — think Feydeau’s A Flea In Her Ear with enormous heads.

(more…)

By the time I get through all the stuff I brought home (purchased, given, and would have been given but Gina Gagliano told me it would be waiting for me when I got home and she was right)¹ from San Diego, webcomics will be over, done, a quaint form of amusement from Ye Olde Dayes. So in the meantime, here’s what’s going on:

• Box Brown is taking a creative leap and ending the comic that he’s best associated with; Bellen! is in the midst of breaking down the boundaries between the real Box and the thinly-disguised Ben, and when that’s done, it’s over. The good news is that this is so Brown can concentrate on the very interesting and creatively-fulfilling Everything Dies, which will become a webcomic in addition to a print series.

  This, I think, is what web/indy comics allow that print/corporate comics don’t — the ability to wrap up a story or strip, or turn it into something completely different, and let the creator not get subsumed by the creation. Look back at the early days of comic strips, and you’ll find creators that let one strip finish and another take its place all the time. Today, get into the papers with a big enough hit and that’s it — you’re locked in forever (I believe the legal term is in perpetuity) and long after you’re dead, something you thought might last for a decade is still be put together by the former assistants of former assistants or children and grandchildren.

  The ability to change direction, try an experiment on a whim, or get out on top and do something new? I think that flexibility is the unique characteristic that answers Valerie D’Orazio’s concern that webcomics might have come and gone. Les webcomics sont morts, vive les webcomics.

• Speaking of the web/indy vs print/corporate divide, the first question from the Webcomics Lightning Round Pseudo-Transcript has been getting a lot of attention, and it may be time for a clarification. Chris Eliopolous rightly comments:
  

  [T]here are a couple of us in print comics, also trying to make a go of web comics as well. Karl Kerschel, me, Skottie Young has given it a go. I’ve always been taught not to take one path-diversify. Web and print aren’t opposite ends, they are different venues.

  And I’ll have to say that this confusion is more on me than on Brad Guigar. I was typing as fast as I could, but answers were condensed and I’m pretty sure that if we asked Guigar for a clarification of his position, it would be that no one creation is both print- and webcomics; certainly a given creator can work in both worlds. Fleen apologizes for the confusion.

• Speaking of the flexibility to try something new — Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie collection provides a case in point. Covering more than 200 comics that ran over a period of a year and a half, the shift of tools and techniques is apparent, and it’s a delight to see Gran switch from pencil and pens to purely digital to her current arrangement of pencils on the Cintiq and final production with brush on Bristol. Providing a different example of flexibility, a year ago Gran decided to update Octopus Pie with whole story arcs in a massive update, but now has decided to go back to three times a week:
  

  In August, Octopus Pie is going back to a 3-a-week update schedule. …[M]ainly comes down to productivity. I know I can do way more pages on a self-imposed deadline.

• Speaking of August, one of my favorite webcomics, A Girl and Her Fed comes back from a short house-moving hiatus next week. The second part to the story kicks in then, and I’m hoping there are lots of opportunities for creator K Brooke “Otter” Spangler to use the word stabby. It’s a fun word.
• Following up on our story last week, here are the details on the new publishing ventures for Girl Genius: starting next year, three major new ventures with three publishers will spread the tale of madgirls and madboys further and wider than every before.
  
  1. Night Shade Books will publish prose novelizations of the series, starting with the first volume in Spring 2011 and subsequent volumes in 2012 and 2013. At the same time, Brilliance Audio will be releasing audio adaptations of each of these novels.
  2. TOR Books will launch their new graphic novel line in Fall 2011 with a color omnibus edition of the first three Girl Genius volumes even as Studio Foglio is publishing volumes 10 and 11, completing the first great arc of the Girl Genius saga.
  3. Finally, Alpha Entertainment (couldn’t find a link) of Copenhagen will begin publication of a Danish version of Girl Genius, in their new magazine, Comic Party in spring 2011.

  Finally, various game licenses are expected to be released in 2011: the Girl Genius ‘The Works’ card game is in for a reissue, and iPhone and Facebook games are in development.

Tomorrow: catching up with all the emails.

_______________
¹ You can find these fine wares from the following cool people.

• Purchased: Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O’Malley; Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars in Brooklyn by Meredith Gran; Penny Arcade: The Halls Below by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik; Templar, AZ: Trouble Every Day by Spike; Flight 7 edited by Kazu Kibuishi; Much The Miller’s Son Books 1 & 2 by Steve LeCoulliard; Drive: A Hero Rises by Dave Kellett; Overcompensating: A Dangerous Obsession by Jeffrey Rowland; Chainsawsuit 3 and F-Chords by Kris Straub; Android toy by Andy Bell.
• Given: Shi Long Pang book 1 by Ben Costa; SMBC Theater DVD by various; Tent Sale by Ian Jones-Quartey.
• Would Have Been Given But: Brain Camp By Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan, and Faith Erin Hicks; Koko Be Good by Jen Wang
• Missed Them When I Took The Earlier Photo, Dammit: Super Stupor #3 by Randy Milholland (given in conjunction with original art purchase); Family Man volume 1 by Dylan Meconis (previously ordered, picked up in person).

SDCC wears more heavily on my aged, stooped body every year, so please forgive the lateness of this post; it’s also going to be a big one, to cover my travel tomorrow, and then I can see about actually reading webcomics again. I’ve fallen a bit behind in the last five days.

• First up, news from Zach Weiner, who was at his booth with fellow SMBC Theater principal James Ashby. It was a bit odd meeting Ashby, as he’s specialized in playing some monumentally unlikeable characters on SMBCT, and I found him to be affable, funny, and not at all somebody who would kill me at the first opportunity. Probably.

  Weiner and Ashby presented me with a copy of SMBCT’s first DVD compilation, and it looks like an hour and a half of pure, distilled fun. I can’t say for certain, since the netbook that I’m travelling with has no optical drive, but it’s getting watched at the first opportunity. Weiner also shared the news that one of his previous projects (Captain Excelsior, with Chris Jones on art) is getting a book release via IDW — look for it in October, or heck, just pre-order it now.

• Speaking of pre-orders, I bumped into Ben Costa of Shi Long Pang, who was kind enough to gift me with a copy of his brand new (you can still pre-order, actually) first book. All I can say is hoo, the Xeric grant gives you a lot of options when it comes to printing your book. It’s got a gorgeous, solid visual appeal, the colors are vibrant or subtle as required, and the paper stock is thick and satisfying. It even smells good. This is going to require a leisurely read to provide a more worthwhile review, but for almost 200 pages, full color, in hardcover? $20 is a steal.
• Speaking of new print ventures, Ryan Sohmer had some interesting news about his first non-comedy comics work. BOOM! Studios will be publishing a Sohmer-penned, Jean Diaz-drawn 6-issue series (with the possibility of ongoing) called Messiah. Sohmer described it as the story of an ordinary guy called by God to be the new messiah — but not the first one. Turns out, God’s been calling messiahs for millenia, but gives them free will to redeem and save the world or not. Capitalizing on Diaz’s work with Mark Waid on Incorruptible, Waid may end up editing Messiah, which would just slightly be a good thing.
• Speaking of good things, Jeff Zugale came by to talk about some of his projects, and has said that there are discussions for a print/poster release of The Greatest Painting In The History of Art.
• The Webcomics Lightning Round panel produced a lot of information in a very brief timeframe; to keep this page from bogging down, the “transcript” (it’s not a word-for-word of what was said at the panel, but it’s as close as I can make it) is below the cut, and it’s a long ‘un. Groundrules: Brad Guigar, Robert Khoo and Scott Kurtz were given 20 seconds to answer each question, with no repeat answers — if one panelist agreed in essence with another, he just said so and moved on. Answer durations were enforced by Airhornsworman official timekeeper Erika Greco (PA designer extraordinaire), who cut off the panelists with an insistent WOOOP if their actual answer went on too long.

  The panel was held in a room with a posted capacity of 500, and was pretty much full up; however, it became apparent during the panel that a portion of the audience were camping out for a LOST panel that was being held next in the room. This earned multiple digressions onto the topic of LOST by Kurtz, each of which led to at least one forlorn LOSTie slinking out of the room, presumably upset by spoilers. That was awesome.

(more…)

But for now, I’m busy transcribing the Khoo/Kurtz/Guigar panel, and have news to share from Ryan Sohmer and Zach Weiner. Good stuff, I promise.

Okay, no photos and limited links — it’s just too painful fighting with the spare wifi available to me, which frequently achieves speeds measurable in the double-digit KB/sec. The hub of nerdery and modern cultural passions is in a location that runs on dial-up. If there are errors of formatting, I’ll fix it later.

• The thing about Nick Gurewitch is, you never know how much of what he’s doing is a put-on. He started his presentation with the immortal words, “Does anybody have a laptop? Can it burn DVDs?” and proceeded to put the final technological touches on his talk there in the room. Okay, that was probably real.

  To fill time while the DVD burned, he started with an open Q&A, which was punctuated by a very polite conversation with an attendee to one side of the room who was engaged in a very loud cell phone conversation.

  If you were to script out a scene with a clueless person having a loud, interruptive conversation in an inappropriate setting, and then having to explain to the person on the other side of that conversation that he was being told to stop having this loud, interruptive conversation, and made it feature the most socially graceless protagonist acting in the most socially graceless manner possible? What actually happened in room 5AB would be rejected by the script editor for being too cliched and stereotypical.

  I honestly don’t know if that was a real socially awkward person (and how many of those do you find at Comic Con?) or a minor entertainment for our benefit; call it 50-50 either way.

  The actual presentation led to conclusions that were drawn so broadly and so obviously for laughs (yet so seriously, earnestly, and in the manner of most academic papers I’ve read) that Gurewitch was clearly having fun with us — but like most of his works, there was a kernel of truth at the center that was fascinating and insightful.

  Namely, in a multi-panel comic (and this is extended to final scenes/shots in movies and other staged entertainments), the final panel is a summation of all that goes before it. It encapsulates all of what previously happened and could in many cases stand alone as a single-panel gag. This perspective hadn’t occurred to me previously, and has had me looking at comics more carefully since yesterday; it’s an interesting idea and maybe an universal phenomenon.

  Gurewitch also dropped some hints about his current projects: his next book will be a graphic novel “the size of a wallet”, done with a “scratching” technique that hurts his hand; as a result, production is a bit slow, and it’s due out at “some future Halloween.”

  He also shared some cartoons that he’s finished for the BBC’s online arm (produced through a subsidiary of Endemol, the UK-Dutch production company that owns massive entertainments like Survivor); these are due to go up next month under the series title Sometimes This Happens, and they are hilarious (particularly the ones set in outer space, and one featuring a bear animated by the awesome Rebecca Sugar).

  Gurewitch is also writing a lot of movies, has just finished a draft of a feature film, and is likely to do some comics sooner rather than later — he has ideas sketched out that need to be finished. Likely none of those comics will be what he described as the most awful idea for a comic [he] ever had:

  A giant penis and a giant vagina say “let’s fuck”, and they have little human beings where genitals would be, and the little people have a sophisticated conversation.

  Nicholas Gurewitch, ladies and gentlemen — there’s nobody else like him.

Booth busytimes kept me from the other presentations I wanted to see, but there was plenty happening to make up for it.

• The California Board of Equalization — aka the tax collector, aka The Man — was on the floor at the start of the day, and presumably throughout show hours. They were checking vendor’s permits, getting descriptions of offerings and employee counts, and generally making sure that the state will get its cut. This is the first time I’ve seen them at Comic-Con, so vendors that haven’t had an encounter with them (and by “they”, I mean a very nice guy with a tablet computer and a moustache), keep your paperwork handy.
• I was lucky enough to see Karl Kerschl when he found me at the Dumbrella booth; as he isn’t boothing this year, it was probably the only way I would have run into him. As you may know, he and fellow Transmission-X studiomate Cameron Stewart are just back from St Petersburg on a research trip for their current project, a comics adaptation/extension of the Assassin’s Creed videogame series.

  The three-issue comic is due out in the fall, and Kerschl says they will likely be working on it extensively until end of the year, then hopefully have more time for creator projects. Projects like clearing the backlog of sketch editions of the Abominable Charles Christopher books (he’s got about 100 still to do, and working on them as fast as he can — believe me when I say it’s worth the wait, because what Kerschl calls a “sketch” is unbelievably delicate and complex and beautiful), and Stewart’s newly Eisner-minted webcomic, Sin Titulo. Naturally, Stewart’s most serious competition for the Best Digital Comic award was Kerschl, which will doubtless lead to happy good times back in their Montreal studio.

• Erika Moen, fans, rejoice. DAR! is deeply missed, but she gave me the lowdown on the two (two!) new projects that she’s working on, which should see online debuts in the coming months. The first is a “dick and fart joke murder mystery”, and the second a young-adult graphic novel featuring ayoung woman whose sketchbook comes to life. I’m not sure I can think of a better story hook for a graphic novel than fighting ones own sketches to save the world.

  In both cases, she’s collaborating with a writer, and in both cases the early art that she was gracious enough to share with me is some of the best comics work she’s done in her career. Also, she’s selling original pages from DAR! for ridiculously low prices; I came this close to buying the original of Junk Waxing Party, and still might if I can find a safe way to transport it. Even if it doesn’t go home with me, I now know why the dude at the junk waxing party has a squirrel on his head. Good times.

Up today: Webcomics Lightning round at 5:00pm in room 8; Robert Khoo, Brad Guigar, and Scott Kurtz answer questions on all aspects of webcomicking without bogging down in details and rat-holes. I’ll be trying to get as many notes as I can.

“I’m sure Jeph Jacques was responsible.”

WIth those damning words, Sam Logan laid responsibility for his difficulties getting to SDCC squarely at the feet of his greatest rival. What should have been a routine trip from Logan’s home in British Columbia to the airport in Bellingham, Washington was fatally compromised by “delays at the border”, which caused Logan to miss the only flight of the day to San Diego, and necessitated a 2000km roadtrip, accomplished in 22 hours. Reached for comment that his minions had been responsible for the delays at the US-Canadian border, Jacques said, “I wouldn’t say that they were officially my minons.”

In less menacing news, Fleen can confidently report:

• The various members of Dumbrella met the public in their annual roundtable session, with an emphasis on the changes to their work and working styles — Jon Rosenberg has shifted his focus from continuity storytelling to new creations each week; Andy Bell has worked with a top corporation to bring a mascot to 3D life; Chris Yates has partnered with a major manufacturer of puzzles to bring his designs to the mass market; Meredith Gran has done a very similar thing in compiling her self-published books into a new compendium via a top-line publisher; and Rich Stevens remains Rich Stevens, bouncing from project to project and becoming a one-man movie/TV costumer’s supply shop.

  The other practical upshot of the session: working on items that gain a mass-market consciousness is that they can take over your identity. To a degree, Rich Stevens is now known as “the Scott Pilgrim shirt guy”, Andy Bell as “the Android guy”, and Chris Yates as “the poop sign guy” (all of which items are available for purchase at the Dumbrella booth, #1337; NB: Fleen is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dumbrella Hosting. This disclaimer may contain forward-looking statements that should not be relied upon as definitive guidance; consult a financial professional before making any investing decisions, and see a doctor if you experience erections lasting more than four hours).

• Kazu Kibuishi has the most adorable and good-natured child in southern California, and possibly the entire time zone. Impressively, before I could even offer to come back later when he didn’t have an armful of offspring, he sketched and signed my copy of Flight 7 while holding his infant son in the other arm. This will someday be known as the “Juni Maneuver” and will eventually form one of the qualifying tests for the Master Comics Artist certification.
• Ever wonder what WOWIO (no link) was doing with all the money it wasn’t paying to webcomickers for a very long time (although, to be fair, they have paid up since)? Me too. Thank goodness it wasn’t anything frivolous like saving up for a party yacht.
• The TopatoCo party was more fun than a crowd of webcomickers & webcomics fans plied with overflowing platters of little hamburgers and tiny hot dogs, and beer and champagne in abundance. No, wait, that’s exactly how much fun it was, with Jeff Rowland and Sam Logan holding court at a banquette piled high with books for the early part of the party, and a general migration to the nominally fenced-in porch in the latter portion.

  It was from this vantage point that the Scott Pilgrim party bus was observed to arrive at the same venue, as even fancy-pants Hollywood types want to be as close to a TopatoCo party as possible (it’s rumored but unconfirmed at this time that Michael Cera tried to crash, but was turned back by TopatoCo’s hired goons).

  Making it past the goons was Hope Larson, who dropped some tantalizing hints about her magical girl graphic novel (with Tintin Pantoja on art) and A Wrinkle in Time adaptation, due in 2012 and 2013; it’s a bit early in the process to be entirely certain, but at this point it’s about 98% certain that both of these books will continue the trend of each Hope Larson project somehow managing to be even better than the one before it.

Up today: the Nappy Hour panel with Keith Knight, Spike, and Dwayne McDuffie (10:30 in room 3; by the time you read this you should be heading up there); the Nicholas Gurewitch panel (3:30 in room 5AB) and the Archaia panel (6:30 in room 9; Tom Siddell of Gunnerkrigg Court, whom I spoke to only briefly at the TopatoCo party, will be part of the panel).