Things not happening today: bank counter hours, mail delivery, my usual job, much reading of webcomics. Things happening today: a whole lotta errand-running. Fortunately, the things I wanted to mention don’t require a whole lot of due diligence. Contrary to the view of some, the slightly dashed-off nature of this post does not make today “just another Monday.”

• The SMILE launch party was on Saturday, and an official Good Time was had by all. In case you could doubt such an outcome, there’s photographic proof. While we’re on the topic of Raina Telgemeier, I wish to draw your attention of one of her retweets: kids comic creators who are going to be at Wondercon in April are wanted for a panel; ping Jenni Holm if interested.
• Speaking of California, Scott Kurtz has been on a pretty impressive march through the state, with gigs at the Cartoon Art Musuem and the Schulz Museum, and he’s about to address Macworld. There’s a nice interview with him in the pages of The Washington Post about how he’s not really trying to destroy newspapers.
• Some of you may be acquainted with The IT Crowd, a British televised humor programme which deals with technologist in particular and their nerdery in general; they have a history of using webcomickry as set-dressing. And as a new block of shows is in production, there is a call for appropriately nerdy artifacts to appear in the background, which perhaps one or more of you might be able to help with?
• Speaking of The IT Crowd, it bears some resemblance to the venerable Bastard Operator From Hell (past ten years or so worth of installments here — warning: high risk to free time and higher risk of being inspired to inappropriate behavior if you’ve ever worked in IT).

  A long, long time ago, the BOFH’s early adventures were collected in book form, and volume 4 (now long since out of print) was my introduction to the work of one Bradley J. Guigar (side note: all great cartoon characters, have “J” as a middle initial, like Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocket J. Squirrel, not to mention Homer J. and Bartholomew J. Simpson; I’m not saying that Brad is fictional, I’m just saying that’s a mighty big coincidence).

  Anyway, that was where I first took notice of youngling Brad; as it turned out, he’d been engaged in daily cartooning for a couple of years at that point:

  On Valentine’s Day, as many people celebrated romance, Brad Guigar raised a toast to a passion that has been a driving force in his life for ten years — daily comics.

  That’s from the press release, where Brad talks about himself in the third person a lot; a more personal take is at Evil, Inc. today: Brad’s adventures in cartooning at college, his syndicate rejections, launching Greystone Inn, Courting Disaster, Phables, and E,I. There there was this:

  It’s been an incredible journey. And I’m thankful that you’ve been around to help make it happen. To that end, I’m going to be celebrating this anniversary all year long.

  … which is just one heck of a warm-fuzzy moment. But for my money, the big summation of his career comes at the end of the press release:

  Surprisingly enough, his wife of 12 years hasn’t divorced him.

  … which by my math means that the lovely Mrs Guigar had Brad to herself for two years before she had to share him with his inky, bristolly, pun-laden mistress, which makes her the Best Cartoonist Wife Ever. In all seriousness, nobody who does what Brad’s done can make any realistic claim that cartooning doesn’t involve the support of their entire family, so it’s as much her achievement as his. Since it was Valentine’s Day that stole away her husband, I suggest that if you feel inclined to drop Brad a note of congrats, maybe you should pass them along to her instead. Or is “condolences” the right word?

News from Kazu Kibuishi (whose Copper is really quite wonderful and you should go get a copy; although suffused with a certain melancholy, it become progressively more optimistic as Copper and Fred have their adventures) regarding that which he is still, perhaps, best known for: Flight. It’s ending. Save your boos and hisses and let the man explain himself:

We will be wrapping it all up with Flight Volume Eight. We had a pretty good run, but it is now time for us to focus on producing full graphic novels. When I started the project, many of us on the book were kids coming out of college with little experience as professional working artists. Years later, the majority of the artists on the project have gone on to create graphic novels of their own, or are now working at major animation, film, and game studios. The original book was created to serve a need. That need was to get our core group published, to have our work be seen, and to get enough practice under our belts to be able to do books of our own. After 7 years, I feel the original needs were met, and the artists are more than ready to go the distance on their own.

So there you have it — two more volumes, and think of how many anthologies Flight has (and will continue to) inspire(d). It would be nigh-impossible for Kibuishi to juggle the editorial duties on Flight, up the production of Amulet to two volumes a year, after volume 5, not to mention the demands of fatherhood. Something almost slipped by in that last sentence that I want to make sure that nobody missed — namely, hard confirmation that Amulet will go beyond the trilogy stage (one knowledgeable source puts the series at ten books), and at a fast production clip. There’s nothing in that thought that isn’t pure, distilled awesome-sauce. Oh, and then there’s this tidbit:

I will, however, continue to produce Flight Explorer, which will be retitled Explorer. Its purpose, to introduce kids to comics and reading through bite-sized stories, remains unfulfilled, and a book like this is truly essential, especially now that there are so few places kids can find new comics. With the demise of Disney Adventures and now Nickelodeon Magazine, parents and kids are going to have a difficult time finding premium comics content that is entirely age-appropriate. We hope we can fill that need.

Flight Explorer (which was released nearly two years ago) was a terrific compendium of all-ages work, and to hear that we’re going to get more of it? Yeah, I’m pre-emptively sad over the loss of Flight in the coming years, but all the rest of Kibuishi’s projects more than make up for it. Flight is [nearly] dead, long live Flight.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see a man about an interstate highway, and with any luck the drive home will take less than eight hours. Yay?

So what happens when you throw somebody functional in among the dysfunctional? Pure comedy gold, my friends.

Meredith Gran has dropped her latest Octopus Pie update (14 pages worth of awesome), and we’re given a 14 page tale of a magical awesome guy, told in media res. Who is the mysterious, handsomely mustachioed individual sleeping on the couch, and why does Eve smile at him so sweetly around her yogurt spoon? Why do Marek, Hanna, and even Manuel find him so comfortable to be around? And why, oh why does the coffee get served by sock puppets?

You want answers to these questions? The answers are inside you. Except for the one about the sock puppets. I have no idea what that’s about. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Gran has knocked herself out with facial expressions in this update (warning: that last link has the SUPRISE TWIST ENDING, so don’t read it early); her characters always have had a certain transformability that mere mortals lack, but this time, it’s grounded in a way that’s both cartoony and restrained (bonus points for the feline anatomical study which so beautifully expressed frenetic action in static images). Bravo.

• Not webcomics, but close enough: Eloise makes stuff in the UK, mostly prints with a strong fairy-tale component. Paperchase are a stationery store chain in the UK. They have also apparently taken elements of one of Eloise’s prints and traced it badly onto a tote bag (scroll down) and possibly an album. Good news: they’ve apparently taken the offending album down from Amazon.uk, but they’re stonewalling Eloise’s attempts to get them to agree to not sell this stuff.

  We’ve been through this nonsense plenty of times with webcomickers, and it’s always the same thing that needs to be done: contact the offender and let them know that they’ve got to do better than issue a statement that says, “Not our fault”. Since that statement just happens to end up on a page that would let one contact Paperchase, well gosh — it could hardly be more convenient to let them know (politely, please) what you think of the situation. Go forth, my minions, and protect the interests of the independent creator.

• New funding mechanism for said independent creator, and Eric Snark-White has some thoughts on it. I’ll admit I didn’t get what Flattr was trying to achieve until Eric identified it as the busker model — you can’t possible get money unless you’ve already given away the product. Not likely to be a huge amount, but free money is free money. Expect to see Flattr links (and hopefully, a new name for the service, because that one’s just stupid) on webcomic sites in the immediate future.

Holed up at my hotel with a whopping 384 kbps complimentary network. Not the best for reading webcomics.

There is an excellent chance that I will spend at least some of the immediate future trying to evade the winter storm that is bearing down on me, and get my ass home where my wife and dog are. If so, this may be the only posting you get for the next day or so. Apologies in advance.

At one point in life, snow was fun, and not the icy harbinger of my doom, and oh look — more on the way. Let’s find that silver lining together, shall we?

• The latest My Space Dark Horse Presents includes a pair of absolute gems by Graham Annable and the Yuko Ota/Ananth Panagariya combo package; both of them are tales of love gone creepy (pay careful attention to the last panel of “Callie Eats Feathers” and tell me you don’t feel a little shiver up your spine). Take that, Valentine’s Day!
• For those of you in the Rochester, NY area, the Rochester Institute of Technology will be hosting a talk (it’s free!) by Nick Gurewitch and Chris Onstad entitled Internet Famous: Comic Time with Nick and Chris. The fun kicks off Wednesday, 10 February at 8:00pm in Webb Auditorium on the campus of RIT.
• Could this be the end of Little Dee? More than five years in the woods with the critters, and she still remembers her old home. There’s still some weeks of story, but this is definitely the endgame.
• Lastly, we brought you word last week of a new CMS for webcomicking being developed by some of the habitués of Webcomics Community. Rob Tracy informs us today that BlkKnight is calling for beta testers willing to give Comic Reef (for use with a PHP/MySQL hosting solution) a whirl. Those interested, please contact Mr (Ms?) Knight, also known as blkknight1007, which is an address to be found within Google’s email. It’s a company.

No spoilers. No spoilers, no spoilers, no spoilers.

Anders Loves Maria wrapped a few hours ago, and I knew that when this day came, however Anders, and Maria, and all the others ended up, Rene Engström would wind up breaking my heart, because I didn’t (still don’t) want to say goodbye to these characters. A little more than two years ago, I wrote:

And that’s where we are, on the cusp of 100 strips, with a pair of protagonists that I feel emotionally drained by. They act so utterly, confusingly, exasperatingly real, that I want to comfort them, scream at them, advise them, and kick their asses. Engström has put me through this wringer, leaving me enraged and empathetic towards her creations at the same time. The last time a character left me this deeply conflicted, he wore a red ski cap and a Speedo (for the record, that’s a very good thing to remind me of); seriously, I halfway believe that Rene Engström is really just a front for Wes Anderson. There is a precedent, after all.

One last thought — I’d emailed Engström earlier in the week that I was possibly going to hold this review to sometime past strip #100; I was waiting for a point of resolution in the story to say, Okay, here’s a good break, jump in. She pointed out that I might be waiting for a while if I was waiting for these latest emotional wounds to close — they aren’t even fully open yet.

And that right there is why I adore this strip — just like real life, there are no clear intervals in the story, there is no upswell of music at the end of the reel, there never will be a neat resolution where everybody gets to go Awwwww.

Nearly 200 strips later, all of those feelings are mangnified. Engström could have made the ending sunshine and lollipops — I’m not sayin’ she did, and I’m not sayin’ she didn’t … no spoilers — and I’d still be on the verge of welling up¹ right now anyway, because I love this work and now it’s over. I could be angry and ask if she set the end of this story in place just so she could touch us and keep us, and the response would be a slightly guilty shift of the eyes before a defiant SO!

She wins this round; this story is over (even as it goes on), and she has more stories to tell, more characters to introduce us to, and I am eager to read them, no matter what emotional sucker-punches await.

Thank you, Rene. Thank you.

_______________
¹ Are you surprised at my tears, sir? Strong men also cry.

Will this be the last time I feel the need to talk about Raina Telgemeier‘s stellar new graphic novel, SMILE? Maybe! I mean, there’s the launch party next week at Rocketship in Brooklyn, and it’ll certainly be making the rounds of the awards at shows for the next year or so. But it’s out now, I’ve gorged myself on it, and you should too.

Here’s the deal: I know Raina personally. I met her as an adult, I never knew the sixth-grader who when through a nearly five-year ordeal to repair a busted set of teeth. I know firsthand that things turned out okay, but I still found myself flipping pages in the grips of the story, wondering if it would all turn out okay. I winced with Young Raina, hurt with her, triumphed with her, and around the corners of memory of my own dental dramas, tasted way too much blood with her as I read along.

SMILE is more than the tale of one person, it’s a Hero’s Journey from gangly still-a-kid to almost-adult; the teeth are the hook that the story hangs on, but it’s really about the pain and effort to grow up. It’s telling that at times, Telegemeier draws herself as still looking like her 12 year old self, while her friends seem to already be grown women — have any of us at that age not wondered why we seem not to be as at ease with ourselves, not as grown-up as those around us?

SMILE is also the book that’s destined to put a stake in the heart of Highlights for Children, which has haunted every pediatric dentist’s and orthodontist’s office since the Truman administration. It struck me as awful, ugly, insipid, and insulting when I was 7, and I was desperately convinced that some day, somebody would come up with something better to read while waiting for the guy with the drill to call my name. If there’s anything on this planet that would improve trips to the dentist than a story that says, “Yeah, I was sitting where you are now, I went through the pain, and the headgear, and the teasing, and it turned out okay, promise”, I can’t imagine it.

A few side notes before we wrap up today:

• What The Hell?! Con is scheduled for Greensboro, NC this weekend, but a major storm system looks like it might smack the area, at least peripherally. As NC native Otter puts it:
  

  [P]lease check the main page and the weather reports before you [head to the show]. North Carolina has a Zero Tolerance policy for snow and since a minor dusting of flurries is expected, there’s a chance the convention might be canceled. Check, check, triple-check, and save yourself the gas!

• Good couple of comments in the followup to yesterday’s story of Karl Kerschl’s woes. ComicPress is a terrific product, but as a dominant player, it runs the risk of monocultures everywhere — susceptibility to disease. As Rob Tracy (also mentioned in yesterday’s dispatches) notes, Webcomics Community is working up some ComicPress alternatives, which can only be a good thing.
• Finally, nice pro-tip at Wapsi Square today: when causing a supernatural event, convince the cops that nothing happened by babbling about flying saucers. Works every time!

Karl Kerschl writes to tell us that the malware-distributing hack to The Abominable Charles Christopher is sorted out. He also tells us that he’s received news that a WordPress/ComicPress-targeting hack may be making the rounds. It’s not clear yet how serious this is, but since ComicPress is pretty much the dominant ecosystem for self-hosted webcomics, it would have the potential to really abuse our community.

Like we said before, it’s never a bad time to doublecheck your versions, make sure your backups are current (it’s my understanding that a WordPress XML backup is safe from the risk of accidentally carrying over nastyware), and update anything that needs updating. Many thanks to Kerschl for doing his bit to make this a teachable moment.

Readers of this page know that I love me some Abominable Charles Christopher (no link, as will become clear momentarily); Karl Kerschl’s artwork is sublime, and the story is by turns heartbreaking, poignant, hilarious, and intriguing.

It’s also dangerous right now.

It’s Wednesday, so during a quick break I browsed over to the ACC site to get my chuckle on (successfully, I might note), and after reading the comic, noticed a blogpost from Kerschl that the site had been hacked earlier in the day. Then I noticed a pop-up warning from my virus scanner. Then I pulled the network cable and started researching.

These things change so quickly, it’s impossible to say if Kerschl’s site was seeded with just one variant of nasty, but at least in my case, I got a drive-by infection with what some call “Netsky Spyware Alert” or “Fake Worm”. Did a bit of research (thank you HijackThis) some repair (thank you, LSPFix), and some cleanup (thank you, Malwarebytes), with invaluable reference info from people who hate badware even more than I do. And this is on a machine that uses Opera instead of Internet Explorer, as well as resident rogue blockers.

Anyway, as of this writing, Kerschl is working on cleaning things up with the able assistance of Official Smart Dude and ComicPress creator Tyler Martin. Karl will let us know when it’s safe to go back in the water, and in the meantime, I need your help. I have promised Kerschl my assistance in beating the snot out of the lowlifes that targeted him in this fashion, and I’ll possibly need bail money at some point in the future; you don’t have to send anything now, just if you have a spare five bucks that could go to the cause, we’ll let you know.

Also, please take this opportunity to double-check your own security arrangements, both on your personal machine and any sites that you may have. We will always have those that seek to do us harm, whether for jollies or for padding their own pockets. We will take hits from time to time. But we don’t have to make it easy for them.

Okay, onto the non-suck:

• Achewood in the real world sighting (thanks to longtime buddy/Best Boy at my wedding Brett g Porter for the heads-up): from the NPR jazz blog (“A Blog Supreme”), Patrick Jarenwattananon notes the eerie similarity between Terence Blanchard and Ray Smuckles.
• Andy (I always assumed it was short for “Andrew”, but perhaps it’s for “Android”?) Bell ups the stakes regarding his Android figures, adding the first of the variant profiles, pricing info ($7.25 a pop, with case discounts) and a sale date (Feb 10 online from Dead Zebra, presumably here).
• You may have heard that Heidi MacDonald had announced that her bloggery would be moving from its Publishers Weekly-sponsored home; that’s been accomplished, and one may now find The Beat at its own site. I always like hanging out and comparing notes with Heidi, and we at Fleen wish her all the best as the archives transition continues.
• You may also have heard of Webcomics Community, one of several open fora that launched in the aftermath of the Webcomics Dot Com shift to subscriptions. Rob Tracy, general in-charge guy at WC, sends word of a pretty interesting series of how-to articles, with one of particular interest: Scott Raymond, Ustream system admin, talking on how to do effective streaming presentations. Good stuff.