Note to self: Park cars at the street end of the long-ass driveway prior to snowstorms. Dumbass. Also, ow my back.

• Box Brown‘s Everything Dies now up for ordering.
• See this? It’s the Blank Label homepage. Once it had a more-than-passing resemblance to the main title screen of The Brady Bunch, with characters from nine different creators there. Then the Halfpixel guys left, and of late Paul Taylor wandered away, and now we find a general jumbling of the roster. Gone: Greg Dean and Howard Taylor. Still there: David Willis and Steve Troop Added: Spike and Kel McDonald.

  I’ve spoken to several of the principals, and they report that this shift in membership is just the way that their respective businesses have developed; no animosity reported, there won’t be throwdowns on the show floor at conventions. Picking up McDonald in the aftermath of the Keenquake seems logical, as does the addition of Spike (given that she’s been a member of Bomb Shelter, Love Shack, and as many as fourteen other collectives, some of which don’t exist yet).

  In fact, the only loser in all of this is me, as I no longer have one convenient page to read so many comics on. I now must click between multiple tabs and subscribe to multiple RSS feeds, which as any reasonable person know, is practically the same as living under a fascist dictatorship. Clicks! On tabs! This does not fit well with my busy lifestyle! Also, I fear change.¹

• Update: Cheyenne Wright is much better than he was previously reported to be. In the words of Kaja Foglio:
  

  [I]t appears that what he has is some weird virus that only imitates the symptoms of congestive heart failure.

  So that’s definitely the good news of the good news/bad news pairing. The bad news would be the costs associated with finding out that Wright’s heart isn’t failing, toward which end the previously-mentioned fundraiser is still on.

• Finally, KC Green threw us a massive update to the Anime Club saga today. How massive? How about 173 panels worth? No permalink yet, but dang that’s good stuff, and now’s the time to get caught up, because it promises in the last panel — To Be Concluded.

_______________
¹ Not really. Congratulations to all involved.

Via Vera Brosgol’s twitter:

I heard back from Hot Topic and the shirt is going down by tomorrow and will be pulled from stores. Woohoo!

Well done.

Yeah, so I get to go bust my back and turn my feet into soakers, so this is gonna be short.

• Erika Moen once got an indescribably awesome birthday gift from Vera Brosgol. Hot Topic, who have pulled this shit repeatedly, are selling a t-shirt with artwork blatantly stolen from Moen’s birthday gift. Let’s jump to the punchline, shall we?
  

  Blah blah, independent design shop, blah blah, we didn’t know, blah blah, they’re responsible for not being thieves, blah blah, we promise we won’t do it again.

  In the past, I’ve counseled politeness in communicating with the corporate behemoth, letting them know as gently as possible that they were engaged in the most outrageous thefts, and thanking them when they stopped doing it. Yeah, fuck that.

  Here’s the phone number for Jim McGinty, primary contact for Investor Relations at Hot Topic. That puts him further up the food chain than the blameless 800-number operators, and it’s always awesome when you want something done to pester the people that spend their time sucking up to mutual fund managers on an expense account, not being told that their company is screwing up badly in public. My guess is after the 20th call, some serious hell is going to get raised. Go forth and ask if Hot Topic intends to live up to its Standards of Business Ethics [PDF] sometime this century.

• In happier news, Chris Sims is part of a joint undertaking that brings some new webcomickry to these shores. Why does Sims get special attention on a day of launch, with but one strip in the archive? Because Chris Sims is the sort of funny that can be summed up in two words: haunted vagina (do I really need to say that link is only marginally safe for anything, much less work?). I look forward to Awesome Hospital with great anticipation.

You know when we don’t get blizzards? September. I long for September. And just in case September is too boring, what with the lack of white death from the skies, there’s a new con on the horizon that looks to be of particular interest to those of you reading this — think one part NEWW, one part ROFLCon, and one part trade show, if the not-quite professional society that Brad Guigar is building at Webcomics Dot Com were to escalate to face-to-face seminars.

It’s called Intervention. The goal here is to focus on those that make their art (whatever form that may take) and/or living via Internettery. And since getting a new con off the ground is an act of utmost optimism mixed with desperation, you really want a whirlwind of energy driving the whole damn thing; fortunately, anybody that’s ever spent time around sometimes webcomicker/sometimes glamazon Onezumi has spent the next ten minutes trying to catch their breath, so that’s good.

And since the programming track has an emphasis on the How do I make this work? aspects of Internettery, it’s a good thing that Oni’s married to Harknell, who keeps a number of webcomics hosted and happy and knows whereof he speaks. In particular, I’m told that the Web Development Track will feature real-time tutorials — walk-into-a-room-and-two-hours-later, new-website-configured-with-CMS-and-comics-updating type tutorials (with an equivalent spin to the Art track).

Oni & Hark had a pretty long run on con staff with Katsucon before spinning off to roll their own, and it’s my understanding they’ve got the help of a lot of experienced show-runners, so that’s good. Nevertheless there has to be a special challenge in any new show, and this one looks to come down to time and location: Intervention will run September 10 – 12 at the Hilton in Rockville, Maryland, or about 1.8km and zero hours from SPX the same weekend.

This is either going to make getting the audience in tricky at best, or create a reinforcing feedback loop as people make their way up and down Rockville Pike between the two shows. With Intervention’s emphasis on electronic, and SPX’s on print, it might actually provide a nice complement, as perhaps the after-hours programming at Intervention (plans are for round-the-clock programming) will. Might the two shows mesh well together? They might, rabbit, they might.

• In other (sadder) news, Cheyenne Wright, colorist of Girl Genius, has fallen ill, and it doesn’t look great right now; we’ll let Kaja Foglio take up the tale:
  

  The doctors are not yet sure what’s wrong, but it’s actually sounding fairly alarming. We’re quite worried.

  I will be setting up a fund-raiser (yes, probably more wallpapers, to start with) to help out with the medical bills. Freelance artists are, after all, notorious for their lack of health insurance. (Of course, if you just can’t wait for me to post those wallpapers, you can always send money directly to Cheyenne’s PayPal address).

  So, yeah. If the pool of webcomickers and freelance artists could get organized in one place with enough names for it to form a viable population for a health insurer to want to provide policies, that would be awesome. In the meantime, click back one page from that link and see what a difference color makes.

• For anybody that’s ever doubted that Lore Sjöberg is a comedic genius, I have four words for you: depeleted uranium beholder statue. Alternately: The Cyborg Name Decoder, which Lore has now ported to the iPhone and is available for your amusements. I don’t have an iPhone, but dang if this kinda doesn’t make me want one.

Everybody read the interview by Rick Marshall Will and Holly with Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins over at MTV Splash Page? It’s a good ‘un. I particularly liked this bit:

MTV: While “Penny Arcade” has certainly evolved over time, one thing you’ve never really embraced is a pay model for the comics — something we’re starting to see more of around the webcomic landscape as more publishers move to the digital world. Why have you avoided the subscription model or other types of pay-for-content systems?

HOLKINS: I consider that a political discussion, and we don’t really traffic in politics generally. As somebody who’s followed webcomics as you have, you know how strenuous those arguments about pay become. For us, I would take it a step before that and say that we think a webcomic is a freely available comic.

We think that’s one of the things that defines a webcomic. It can’t just be that it’s on the web — though that’s the term we have and it makes sense. For us, a webcomic is a comic that is freely available, with an author who is a real person, and who is accessible to the consumers of their work. I would say those are tenets that we think are inextricable from webcomics.

KRAHULIK: As soon as you put up a pay barrier, you really limit the number of people who are going to be willing to look at your work. As “Penny Arcade” was growing, I don’t think we were ever in the position where we wanted to limit the number of people who could look at the comic. That always seemed like a bad idea.

A’course, we’re no closer to a single definition of webcomic that everybody will agree upon; my working definition is probably closer to that espoused above than any other I’ve seen, although I’m not sure that I’d make an absolute requirement of freely available. It’s too nice a day (as it rains upon the just and un-just alike) for political discussions, manifestos, and the like. One day we’ll have to have a summit of all interested parties whereupon such things are decided once and for all (until the beer runs out and we instantly fall into squabbling factions full of muderous intent — which is pretty much the same state as before the beer).

• In other news, I got a nice package in the mail from Tom Dell’aringa, who you probably know best from Marooned. This was a minicomic — so mini, in fact, that the envelope was sized such that it could have been mistaken for a tasteful greeting card from a respectable publisher of such. Inside was a copy of Rag The Viking: The Cubicles of Valhalla, the first joint effort between Dellaringa and Steve Ogden, newly released by their nascent WishTales Publishing Studio.

  It’s a clever riff on fantasy that left me not quite sure whether Rag Ragnarsson is indeed a viking trapped in cubicle hell, or merely a guy daydreaming about how much awesomer his ancestors had it. It’s a hoot and a half, and I’m seriously impressed by how much story and character can fit into just sixteen pages. Since RtV:TCoV is listed as the first minicomic from WishTales, I’m looking forward to what others might be coming down the pike. Also whether or not that pike has the head of Rag’s enemy upon it (in the coffee room, over by the artificial sweetener).

• Stray thought for the day: Scott Kurtz notes that Scripps is looking to dump United Media Licensing (the story is a little vague, but it appears the sale does not include the related United Feature Syndicate, but UML definitely includes licensing rights to a bunch of comic strips). Since Kurtz is singlehandedly killing newspapers, it makes sense that Ryan Sohmer suggested that he and Kurtz buy up the corpse (at press time, it has not yet been determined if their aim is revivification or desecration).

  The real punchline here — in another three to five years, the economics might actually make such a thing possible.

Have you seen this? I hope you’ve seen this, because it’s really a cool prospect: James Kochalka + video game studio = playable James Kochalka world:

I’ve teamed up with the great little indy video game studio Pixeljam to make my Glorkian Warrior videogame. I’ve been dreaming about making this game for years, and Pixeljam are really talented. The game is going to be awesome.

Dare I hope that if Glorkian Warrior is a success, we might get a playble Monster Attack by Eli Kochalka some day? I think I just blew my own mind.

Anyhoo, videogames don’t develop themselves, and everybody involved would like to, you know, eat during the development phase, so it’s fundraising time. Kochalka’s got a Kickstarter page set up and in nearly 1/3 of the way to the $10,000 goal that will allow development to go forward. There are goodies for backers up grabs that include original development skteches, original paintings, and more. I defy you to tell me that you can watch the video on that page and not want to kick in at least ten bucks — and if you can, perhaps the Glorkian Warrior will some day defeat the final boss that will allow you to once again feel joy.

• Do you read Girl Genius? ‘Cause there’s big things happening over there as we get to the first big fight of Volume Ten (co-creator Phil Foglo once told me that Girl Genius will run about twenty volumes, so this could well be the big mid-point battle that reveals the depth of the challenge in front of the heroes). The Unstoppable Airman Higgs has been kicking around the background for going on three years now, and he’s suddenly become a lot more interesting.

  Professors Foglio and Foglio have a habit of promoting bit players to important status, but this … this feels like a big reveal. The casual way a lowly airman talks to a Tarvek (a prince, head of a secret order that may conquer Europa, and a pretty powerful spark) is … intriguing. And that profile of him in the second panel of the latest page looks … familiar? There’s a little bit of Bill Heterodyne in that face, and there’s a missing heir to contend with. I think we just had a major game-changer dropped on us.

• Presumably in the mania leading up to their book tour, the lads at Penny Arcade have taken their game-creating skills to the next level. No longer content with Staredith [via Google cache], presumably because you need a Meredith, they have now invented The Game. Confound your friends and disturb complete strangers today!

A little less than 14 hours ago, :01 Books (who do such great graphic novels) launched a new online serial project, Zahra’s Paradise, and you need to stop right now and go read the pages already posted.

Back? Good. Let’s talk about what it’s about:

So a Persian writer, an Arab artist and a Jewish editor walk into a room…

Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. Actually, that’s something like the start of this unusual editorial adventure, the first of its kind. Here for your reading pleasure is an online, serial webcomic in English, Farsi, Arabic, French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch—with more joining on the horizon. First Second books proudly presents Zahra’s Paradise by Amir and Khalil, together with Casterman in French and Dutch, Rizzoli Lizard in Italian, and Norma Editorial in Spanish.

Set in the aftermath of Iran’s fraudulent elections of 2009, Zahra’s Paradise is the fictional story of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has disappeared in the Islamic Republic’s gulags. Mehdi has vanished in an extrajudicial twilight zone where habeas corpus is suspended. What stops his memory from being obliterated is not the law. It is the grit and guts of a mother who refuses to surrender her son to fate and the tenacity of a brother—a blogger—who fuses culture and technology to explore and explode absence: the void in which Mehdi has vanished.

The creators (anonymous for obvious political reasons) have produced something special. It’s unfolding so slowly, and you can tell how good this one is going to be from how much it hurts to hit the ‘Next’ button. Hurts, because you’re wondering when being afraid of what might happen to Mehdi suddenly becomes knowing what happened to Mehdi, and whatever that is, it’s probably even worse than we can imagine. Even though Mehdi is fictional, there were so many Mehdi’s taken in the aftermath of the elections, and so many more still. There are eight pages up, and more due each Monday/Wednesday/Friday.

In other news, webcartoonists are evil, grasping scum. You heard it here first. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to see a gentleman about some kitchen knives.

This page has previously mentioned Max Huffman, youthful creator of Mocktopus, and the zany stew of absurdity that he brings to his webcomic. Characters (and even styles) come and go on a nearly daily basis, perhaps to be re-used at a future time, perhaps not. Enter: Detective Facepuncher; as you might expect, he’s a cop on the edge, a loose cannon that needs to be reined in by his exasperated captain. One-note gag right?

Today, Facepuncher is back, as Huffman grabs a page from McCloud (who, as we all know, asks the really big questions about comics and other things) and uses the rudderless detective to push the boundaries of what comics can do. Taking a cue from Choose Your Own Carl (completed nine years ago, when Huffman would have been a tender six years old — I wonder that Malachai Nicolle will be coming up with in nine years), Mocktopus today lets you decide Facepuncher’s fate. Will he punch a robot, console an emo kid, or be devoured by Alan Moore’s sentient beard?

You guys, any day that lets me type the words devoured by Alan Moore’s sentient beard is automatically a good day.

• Speaking of Malachai Nicolle, I trust everybody is keeping up with the new installments at Axe Cop, the new revealed wisdom from Ask Axe Cop, and political wisdom for the upcoming election cycle:
  

  As Malachai explained to me, if you are president you never run out of bombs. I am pretty that is pretty close to true, and useful until you run out of bad guys to destroy.

  Naturally, as Axe Cop takes up more of Malachai’s time (and that of older brother Ethan, who helps out), the subject of remuneration becomes relevant. Axe Cop’s explosive growth means server bills, and it’s possible for you to drop a couple of bucks to the creators via PayPal on the main page. Unlike other creators, who go on about their need for “rent” or “groceries”, your donations will go directly to Malachai Nicolle’s college fund, for use in a dozen years or so. Just consider what kind of craziness we could get in return for that modest investment. With any luck, Malachai won’t have his creativity stifled in the ensuing years.

• For those that have had your creativity stifled in the ensuing years, perhaps a class might help you tap into the comic that you always wanted to write: MoCCA is resuming its education offerings next month with just such a class, running Tuesday nights with Chris Claremont, Tom DeFalco, and Dennis O’Neil. Those of you wondering if there’s any good advice out there for creators of longform webcomics might particularly find this series to be of use, provided any of you are a) in the New York City area, and b) don’t mind dropping $40 per class or $100 for the three-class series (with discounts for members). The fun continues in April with classes on anatomy and comic/graphic novel writing (details forthcoming).

Not because of my pants, mind you … because I make a habit of getting out of a nice warm bed in the middle of the night to ride an ambulance for free. This occasionally puts me in the same category of sleep deprivation as my friends who have reproduced themselves, only without the added benefit of having offspring that I could guilt into taking care of me someday. Genius. Anyhoo, I got almost nothing in the way of higher thought processes going today. With any luck, I’ll be more coherent tomorrow. Onwards.

• Photos of a Tiny Kitten Teeth gallery show in Godzone are available for you, as is a new episode of the Frank’n’Becky project; they’ve been a bit busy of late putting together the Tigerbuttah book and dealing with a three-continent migraine as a result (the printer is in Hong Kong, but the books will largely be shipped to the US for easy distribution during their Spring/Summer convention trek/death march). As a bonus, headache-inducing part of the book production appears to be waning, TKT itself is updating again, with a goal of getting the first storyline done before said trek starts. Neat!
• Anybody out there a) got a Kindle, and b) reading comics on it? A search of the term comic at the Kindle store produces 3318 results as of this writing, although how many of those are actually comics, versus books with the word “comic” in the title is anybody’s guess. Second question, is how many of those are expressly designed for the Kindle (or the Nook, or the forthcoming Jesus Pad)? So far, I’ve found one, by a fellow named Mark Goodwell, but I’m certain that there are others. Big question is, will the future presence (and probably, eventual prevalence) of e-readers finally obliterate the division between webcomics and other (let’s restrict to independently-owned, freely-delivered) comics? I’m warning you now, I’m not buying different format e-readers to keep up with the offerings on each platform, but I am interested in your views.
• Received via the contact link, reproduced in its entirety:
  

  Phlip wrote:
  review request! C-:

  http://zeekland.zeroplayer.com/

  Website: http://zeekland.zeroplayer.com/

  Per Phlip’s request, I am reviewing ZeekLand and giving it the requested grade of C-, unless that’s some emoticon that I’ve never seen before. Although I will say that the art in the later installments is quite a bit better than a C- might indicate, and the use of language is vaguely Pogo-esque. Object lesson here, which I have to repeat a couple of times a year: the most bare-bones the communication, the less likely you’re going to get what you want out of it and the more likely I will use you as an object lesson (although, props to Phlip for knowing the Uncle Wiggily stories, as few people these days do).

Hating snow, happy thoughts. Like a Vera Brosgol Alice watercolor — if you can look at this and not smile, you have a heart of stone.

• You know who might be the most subversive webcomicker out there? Francesco “Ces” Marciuliano. Guy writes Sally Forth, an occasionally snarky, but still entirely typical newspaper strip. And he relentlessly mocks the conventions of his own profession in his web strip, Medium Large.

  He’s now been doing so for more than 1000 installments, including a bite-the-hand-that-feeds-him gem (which I can’t find in his archives, curses!) about “the many moods of Sally Forth” (here were repeated head-and-shoulder shots of Sally, with the little dots that form her eyes shifting left and right in an otherwise static image; if anybody can find that beauty, link it in the comments, please). Anybody willing to mock the static conventions of his own field is good by me — here’s to the next 1000 installments.

• One may recall that late last year, the Dallas Art News did a piece on webcomics and famous works of fine art; it was apparently intriguing enough to contine the experiment. Samantha Wikan points to the announcement on the DAN page:
  

  Dallas Art News is starting a webcomic section that will feature a new art-related webcomic each week. We are inviting all established webcomic artists to participate via our Guest Webcomic Artist Program.

  Dallas Art News received the most web traffic for a single post for Special Feature: Webcomics Imitating Art, which featured nineteen talented artists.

  We would like to start the Guest Webcomic Artist Program when Dallas Art News turns one year old in April. If all goes well, we would like to compile all 52 weeks of webcomics into a book.

  Some relevant points to consider:

  • Each guest artist will product 4 or 5 comics, one per week for a designated month
  • You can use your current characters, or create a something totally new
  • It’s got to be related to art somehow
  • Keep it friendly for a general audience (although, y’know, an arty audience, so boobies and even knobbly bits are probably cool if properly classical and/or abstract)
  • DAN gets first dibs on displaying your submissions
  • You keep all rights, and they’re figuring out if they can afford to pay you a little something

  All interested webcomic artists should contact Dallas Art News via the account called comics, which may be found at dallasartnews, which is a dot-com.

• Via Tom Siddell‘s twitter: the first volume of Gunnerkrigg Court 2009 award for Best Graphic Novel for Young Adults from the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards. My only objection: labelling stories as “Young Adult” tends to make actual Adult Adults pass them over, and Gunnerkrigg is some damn fine storytelling regardless of your age. Well done, Mr Siddell.