From time to time, this page notes the efforts and work of Ms Carly Monardo, animator on Venture Bros., illustrator, original Dr McNinja colorist, poster designer, superhero character (re-)designer, etc., etc. Well, she’s back, and this is a big one.

Spurred by various fundraisers from creative types to support cleanup and restoration efforts in the Gulf of Mexico, Carly has decided to organize an auction of originals from webcomickers, which was announced Saturday afternoon via Twitter and is just now ramping up. Ms Monardo took time from her busy charity efforts to talk with Fleen about it.

Yes, it’s true — while the interview was being transcribed, Ms Monardo was sending through updates, because creators keep pledging. We’ll wrap this up so she can get back to organizing things.

If you want to get in on the auction and support the best of causes, contact Carly, whose family name is Monardo, and who keeps an email account at the Google-run email service, which is a dot-com.

Editor’s note: Books today — for the most part, the three volumes that make up Jon Rosenberg‘s The Infinite Pendergast Cycle: Infinite Typewriters, The Corndog Imperative, and Showcase Showdown. In the interests of full disclosure, Rosenberg is the one that bribed me to start this blog back in 2005 and remained its publisher for the next six months; additionally, I am directly responsible for Hell being located at exit 9C, and possibly other gags that appear in the stories.

I’ve held off on talking about the first two volumes of Rosenberg’s magnum opus as they were released over the past year, figuring that the overall story demanded an overall consideration. On the one hand, this was a good plan, re-reading some 29 months worth of strips (from here to here, or 819 updates across 27 separate story arcs), seeing all the pieces that Rosenberg set in motion (sometimes years before the strips in these collections ran).

On the other hand, Rosenberg practices a particularly fluid kind of storytelling, meaning that just about any of those arcs can (with a bit of backfill) provide a hearty laugh-chuckle without having read a dozen years worth of strips. In fact, the boundaries of the strips in the books can be hard to identify — open a page at random, and try to figure out which panels appeared originally on one day, and which on the next, if you can. For the most part, these discrete chunks flow as a single, continuous narrative, although that’s not how they were originally designed.

Rosenberg has story beats mapped out that he wants to hit before the big wrap-up — in this way, it’s almost the opposite of Karl Kerschl’s freeform, improvisatory approach to Charles Christopher, and even if the entire story isn’t constructed at any one time, the whole outline of it is in his skull. But when an idea strikes his fancy, he has the flexibility to follow it where it might lead. Much like Jeff Smith found a throwaway gag demanded to be expanded upon (and became probably the most popular storyline in BONE), Rosenberg might hear a digression (over beer, no doubt) on facial-hair competition and Japanese snack foods and bingo: The Great Moustache Fight.

It doesn’t get us any closer to the ultimate goal of the story than the 78 strips of Good Hitler movie installments, but dang if the digressions don’t make us not care that we aren’t getting closer (negative … double negative … triple … yes, that’s right). That ultimate goal, by the bye? The universe is going to end due to a programming error. Unfortunately, solving other problems (demonic telepath wants to burn down all reality) has put a few more obstacles in the way of resolving the big crash. By the time the story wraps up, Randall Munroe will have to create a diagram to follow all the perambulations and peradventures of the cast, but any small fragment of the story independently reflects the insanity of the whole, like a full-color cartoon fractal on a three-week tequila bender.

That’s really all you need to know to jump into The Infinite Pendergast Cycle anyplace you like. It’s funny, it’s crazy in the best ways, and it moves from place to place with such chaotic speed and grace as to defy conventional description. It’s not gag-a-day, it’s not a graphic novel, it’s not hard sci-fi, it’s not straight humor, it’s not all-ages safe, it’s not unchallenging with respect to the nature of reality here on the streets of Manhattan Three. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have three books I need to read again.

• But before I do, a quick note: I can only hope that all future TopatoCo book releases have a fake dustjacket option. That would be so rad.

Spent a couple hours running down what appeared to be a virus on my computer before I figured out that somebody had messed with a DNS server upstream, and that’s why trying to browse to google.com (but not www.google.com) was redirecting browsers in my office to a crappy social network with a history of such stunts. So frustrating when people make the active to decision to suck.

• Speaking of sucking, got a rough story to share with you. Indigo Kelleigh does some pretty neat comics, including Ellie Connelly and the pretty awesome 8-bit Tarot deck. Long, unfortunate story short, Kelleigh’s in a financial bind and is liquidating his entire stock of merch at below-cost. Long story slightly longer, it’s in anticipation of bankruptcy. Long story fully told at Kelleigh’s site, which should probably be taken as a companion piece with Brad Guigar’s thoughts on preparing for retirement [subscription required], which doubles as a cushion for financial ups and downs.
• Let’s get to the non-suck, shall we? Kids Read Comics kicks off this weekend in Dearborn, MI, with a stack of guests including webcomics own Raina Telgemeier & Dave Roman, John Green, Krishna Sadasivam, and organized by the people behind the Art & Story podcast. Upper Midwesterners, go check it out.
• Those of you that haven’t ordered Karl Kerschl’s first collection of Abominable Charles Christopher, you’re doing yourselves a disservice. For what was originally designed by Kerschl as an exercise in spontaneous creation (no plotting ahead, no sketching, just sit down on Wednesday and draw whatever popped into his head), there’s a remarkably rich narrative that doesn’t reveal itself easily when going update-by-update.

  Sure, you could read the strips online, but there’s been some judicious re-arrangement, leading to stronger story arcs interleaved with one another. My favorite arc, curiously, isn’t about the big guy, or even Vivol and Moon Bear … it’s the story of this bird, trying to be a good husband and father, and not finding it as easy as he’d hoped. Of course, she could do worse.

  Second favorite: the bug psychiatrist. He’s awesome. But what’s really awesome is I care about these characters — most of whom don’t even have names that we’ve learned (aside from the irrepressible Sissi Skunk) — because they’re living, breathing, distinct personalities that make themselves known to Kerschl on Wednesdays.

(Skipping a bunch of links — you’ll thank me later)

So WOWIO went and bought itself Drunk Duck a few days ago; formerly purchased by Platinum (which also previously owned Drunk Duck), WOWIO was apparently spun off some time ago, although it appears to still be owned by the same people that own Platinum. From my perspective, it appears that Platinum sold off a portion of itself to a portion of itself that it previously sold to itself? Insert obligatory incest reference here.

If you want to actually understand less of the deal than I do, you can watch to WOWIO/Platinum (remember — they’re different companies now) honcho Brian Altounian talk with MoneyTV on the acquisitions (thanks to Rob Tracy for pointing me to the video). But first, a disclaimer about MoneyTV …

Self-described as The longest running business television program of its kind, MoneyTV interviews CEOs of companies, having first agreed on the parameters of the interview:

We will research your company and create the questions to be asked during the 11-minute interview, providing them to you in advance for your review and approval. [emphasis mine]

This puff piece hard-hitting news investigation of your company can be yours for the low, low cost of $11,500. Presumably if you throw them enough money, they’ll get the Slap Chop guy to talk about how awesome your company is.

There are some great partnerships in creative life, and sometimes a great one gives way to a greater one. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were an unstoppable combo platter in the world of musical entertainment that would never be topped — until Rodgers partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II re-invented entertainment in their first collaboration and kept surpassing themselves for almost twenty years.

What I’m trying to say is, just as Rodgers & Hart led to Rodgers & Hammerstein, Straub & Malki ! have inevitably given way to Straub & Malki, the latter being David Malki !‘s mom, who filled in for her absent son on episode 47 of Tweet Me Harder and demonstrated a fundamental truth about parents: they shape who we are by teaching us what we know, but they don’t necessarily teach us everything they know. In this case, Mrs Malki knows about the Dewey Decimal System, ninjas, cats, ninja cats, and stinging insects. Maybe if she’s not available for some future podblast, Kris can have David back as a sub.

• Out today: How I Made It To Eighteen. My thoughts on the book are here. My question to you: Do you have a better use for seventeen bucks? Food, rent, stuff like that, you get a pass. Otherwise, this is your next purchase.
• Or maybe The Blood Cloud should be your next purchase, featuring KC Green’s own brand of special thoughts and guest strippers galore. Pre-orders up now.
• He was talking about making radio, but Ira Glass’s thoughts on wrongness are worthy of your consideration:
  

  Totally. One of the reasons I was interested in doing this interview is because I feel like being wrong is really important to doing decent work. To do any kind of creative work well, you have to run at stuff knowing that it’s usually going to fail. You have to take that into account and you have to make peace with it. We spend a lot of money and time on stuff that goes nowhere. It’s not unusual for us to go through 25 or 30 ideas and then go into production on eight or 10 and then kill everything but three or four. In my experience, most stuff that you start is mediocre for a really long time before it actually gets good. And you can’t tell if it’s going to be good until you’re really late in the process. So the only thing you can do is have faith that if you do enough stuff, something will turn out great and really surprise you.

Where to start, where to start?

• How about with congratulations, as Karl Kerschl’s The Abominable Charles Christophertook the Joe Shuster Award (for outstanding achievement in cartooning by Canadians) in the Webcomics/Bandes Dessinées Web category. Other Shuster winners of interest to our little community include the Harry Kremer Award for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Retailer/Le Prix Harry Kremer pour Détaillant Exceptionnel Canadien de Bandes Dessinées, recognizing The Beguiling (managed by Christopher Butcher, who also runs the very webcomics-friendly TCAF) and the Artist/Dessinateur award to Stuart Immonen (creator, with his wife Kathryn, of the astonishingly good Moving Pictures). Congratulations to all the winners, the nominees, and to their parents, who worked so hard on the costumes.
• As noted last week, Christopher Baldwin’s Little Dee starts its re-run with commentary today. Not noted last week: Christopher Baldwin’s Bruno also starts its re-run with commentary today; Bruno ran from 1996 to 2007 and had a proverbial cast of thousands, so if nothing else the modern ability to tag strips will make it much, much easier to follow the comings and goings of occasionally-appearing characters. According to Baldwin, Bruno originals will even be made available for purchase, and hopefully this return of the strip will drive a few more people to check out the ten-book collection.
• Third Christopher (and second Canadian Christopher) of the day: Christopher Bird writes on comics and other things at Mighty God King (seriously, check out his series on Rex The Motherfucking Wonder Dog), and today he appears to have put his comics punditry where his mouth is: Part One, Page One of what may be titled Al’Rashad, but about which there is presently little information. Given the vast treasure trove of comics ideas that Bird has shared, I’m ready for Part One, Page Two.
• I’m calling it: Kris Straub just coined the two most disturbingly funny lines in webcomics of 2010; everybody else, accept runner-up status next to Sauce is go, sir and Daddy’s home, sir.
• New PBF? New PBF!

Seriously, the yard needs work.

• Obtained yesterday: Showcase Showdown. Short version: man, I’d forgotten half of this insanity, and I was there for the creation of some of it. Long form: come back next week, when we’ll look at the full Infinite Pendergast Cycle and muse on the wackiest trip through the space-time continuum yet.
• I was pointed towards a couple of comics by Brian Huisman, but Space Base 8 is the one that grabbed me. There’s a highly-stylized look to the art that’s one part Muppets, one part 1960s swinging space-age bachelor pad, and one part Keef. There’s a bit less than 200 strips in the archive, and the quality of the art is remarkably consistent from the first strip (almost exactly a year ago) to the present day. Creator David Smith hit the ground running, and is doing a really nice job. Check ‘er out.
• A while back, Latin Heartthrob Aaron Diaz metnioned that Dresden Codak would be running independent storylines — one featuring the Tokamak Twins, one featuring Rupert & Hubert and/or Tiny Carl Jung (my memory is imprecise on this point), and one featuring Kim Ross. He just launched the first strip of the latter arc, and it’s based around a premise so beautiful that my mere description can do it no justice. Lagies and genklefins: Dark Science, with a promise of part two next week.

Finally, Ryan North gets up close and personal with a nigh-omnipotent trickster. My envy knows no bounds.

Re: never getting the hang of same. Things for you to consider in the meantime

• I’m about a week early on this, but the day itself will be a Saturday and I’ll probably forget between then and now; if my sums have worked out correctly, my evil twin will celebrate 10 years of uninterrupted, daily updates here-ish. Well done, Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary (assuming you don’t suffer catastrophic server failure, get hit on the head with a rock from outer space, or see the destruction of the world in the meantime — any of which might actually be in character with the strip in question).
• The New Yorker isn’t the only magazine that sees comics from one of our tribe in the latest issue. Granted, Boating World isn’t known for its cartoons, but it does have a feature on TEEN BOAT in the May issue, to the undouted bemusement of co-creators Dave Roman and John Green.
• I’ll admit it — even though I know that the contestants aren’t really randomly picked up off the street, and that the money they wave at the end is a prop, every time I hail a taxi in New York, I secretly hope that it’s the Cash Cab. Maybe it’s because watching that show, I have a higher incidence of shouting, Idiot! That money is rightfully mine! than even Jeopardy! provokes. So at the moment, I can’t quite decide whether I’m happy or offended that Abe and Preston got picked up by Ben Bailey instead of me; they better hope that they get the next two questions right, or Bailey’s gonna kick ’em out of the cab somewhere around 1996.
• Lecture alert: Huw “Lem” Davies will be giving a talk on webcomics as part of a cultural festival in Leeds, England, UK, at Crash Records. The fun starts Saturday at 4:00pm local time, in the basement, and I’m told he’s got lots of awesome examples from tons (or “tonnes”, if you prefer) of creators. Those in middle England, check it out.

Gary, people say to me sometimes, why haven’t you had kids? The world obviously needs your genetic legacy to be continued, you wonderful man, you.

Because, I reply demurely, I get to not sleep on a regular basis by taking ambulance calls in the middle of the night, and while children will grow out of it, the slightly ill (who will end up in waiting room chairs, whether I wheel ’em in on a stretcher or not) will always be there for me. I don’t have to put them through college, but neither will they take care of me when I’m old and decrepit. I am today questioning whether I made the right life choice. Let’s knock down some news items while I’m still conscious.

• New NEWW guests announced; time for me to make some hotel reservations, I’m thinking.
• As mentioned last week, Hello With Cheese loses artist Bryan Prindiville with strip #250, and today Darren J. Gendron announces the new arteest:
  

  Hailing from the coffee-scented land known as Colombia, Obsidian, or “O” has been working as a comic artist since 2003. He started his own webcomic Commissioned in 2004, which already has over 1,400 pages online.

  Dern and Obsidian met last year at ConnectiCon, which was only O’s second trip to a convention in the USA ever. But because of an invite doled out by Rosscott, O was tempted by the terror of on-panel battle known as Super Art Fight.
  When putting together a short list of artists capable of replacing Prindiville, a brainstorm was held. Essentially, we had to define what worked so well about him as an artist. First, Hello With Cheese was not his first webcomic. He’d already developed his own style long before drawing Tom Selleck was a job description. Second, there was a speed element to it, something that makes Prindiville a formidable heel in Super Art Fight. And third, there has to be a similar sense of humor.

  This mythical short list of artists that dern put together started first and foremost with Super Art Fighters. They’re the best at getting it done fast and funny. But because of O’s extensive history and consistent style and feel on Commissioned, he was the No. 1 Draft Pick Dream.

  And then, he actually said yes.

  Welcome, Obsidian, and speaking of SAF, we’ll note that it’s just turned two years old. Expect bratty behavior and incessant repetition of “Why?” for the next couple of years.

• Nina Paley has been mentioned on this page before, most notably for the free-distribution model she adopted for Sita Sings The Blues. Her experiences with copyright (and copyleft) have prompted her to go back and re-release all of her earlier work under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license, and she’ll be talking about this (and other issues of independent art production & intellectual property) with our friends from the Cartoon Art Museum:
  

  The Cartoon Art Museum is honored to host Before Sita Sang The Blues: Spotlight on Nina Paley, the first comprehensive exhibition of award-winning cartoonist and animator Nina Paley, creator of the critically acclaimed animated feature Sita Sings The Blues. This retrospective will feature a selection of Paley’s syndicated comic strips, illustrations, and a series of prints, paintings and behind-the-scenes materials from Sita.

  The exhibition will run from 3 July to 24 October at CAM in San Francisco, with a screening of SSTB on 20 July. Those of you making your way to San Diego down the left coast, this might be a cool place to stop over on the way.

When you teased this, you didn’t tell us it was going to be this amazing. Cry havoc, and let loose the fanfic.

In other news that broke over the long weekend:

• Our Kate continues to tear up the world of cartooning, with contributions accepted by The New Yorker, the first of which is due to hit the newstands today.
• Recently received in the mail: Little Dee volume 4 (now that pre-orders are done, expect it to move to TopatoCo) and Recklessly Yours, the eighth and final Scary Go Round book. Both worth the wait, and your money, and both with quick notes attached — Little Dee will start re-running from the beginning next Monday, with director’s commentary; Scary Go Round strips that wouldn’t reproduce well in the book are presented as PDFs online, but you’ll have to buy the book to find out where, ’cause I ain’t tellin’.
• Speaking of books, Jon Rosenberg’s Showcase Showdown has been in bookstores for a week, and hits local comic shops on Thursday (as soon as I grab my copy, expect a review of the full Infinite Pedergast Cycle); give it a read so you’re all up to speed for Rosenberg’s new venture, which has been mysteriously code-named SFAM. The mystery makes it a better value for your retina-humorgland intersection needs.
• HeroesCon this weekend in North Carolina, and plenty of webcomickers in the Indy Island section of the floor, but heck — you knew that already. For those looking a little further out, Jamie Noguchi will be at SPX with a new minicomic about … well, it’s a secret for now. But I’ve had a peek and can assure you that anybody who enjoys cute cuddly things and/or tales of vicious revenge will enjoy … PANDOOM.