So Cameron Stewart (who is not Kristen Stewart‘s brother, so please stop emailing him asking for her) spent most of a month in Europe with his studiomates; they went many places and saw many people and drew many neato things and drank a lot. But maybe the most interesting thing was done as the iPhone equivalent of finger-painting — not wanting to weigh himself down with sketchbooks, he used Brushes for the iPhone to do some really interesting work. Go check ’em out and ask yourself if you could do that with the tip of your little finger; I sure as hell couldn’t.

• Schlock Mercenary iPhone app approved, available now. Those of us on Android suck, I guess.
  
• My one must-buy item every Christmas is the new pack of Wondermark calendar cards; they’re back!
• The MoCCA Art Festival of Aught-Nine had some problems, nobody is disputing that. There needs to be a much more smoothly-running show this year, or it may well be in danger of shedding the higher-profile exhibitors. In order to deal with the heat problem, the show is moving almost two months forward, to 9 & 10 April. And programming organization has been started good and early, the better to get a well-developed curriculum put together. The Panel Director will be Brian Heater, editor and founder of the alternative comics review and interview site, The Daily Cross Hatch; the Program Director will be Jeff Newalt, the “Minister of Hype” of ACT-I-VATE; more on both from MoCCA:
  

  [Heater’s] writing has appeared in Spin, The Onion, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Press, The Oklahoma Gazette, The Metro Santa Cruz, Heeb, Skyscraper, Rockpile, DIW, Comic Foundry, and various other magazines and websites. He also works as a senior editor at PC Magazine.

  Newelt is comics editor of SMITH, Heeb, and Royal Flush magazines. He is editor / producer of The Pekar Project on SMITH as well as a PR / social media consultant for clients including Paul Pope, Doug Rushkoff, DJ Spooky, Molly Crabapple, CBLDF, Rick Veitch, Larry Marder, NBM Publishing and other comics / culture / media superheroes.

  So hopefully, that’s all right. They won’t be able to do anything about logistical anomalies, but a strong set of programming tracks will go a long way to re-establishing the show’s greatness. We at Fleen look forward to seeing how they do.

Limited access to network duing the day, and probably the same situation next week as well. Thus, we’re going to be heavy on pre-written things that miss the latest news, or late things that address the latest news after everybody else. I imagine that you will, as you have in the past, adapt to this unsettling turn. Onwards.

• The Spurge is looking for input into what’s likely the Definitive List of Comics People and Places, by Locality. Quite a few webcomickers on there already, and if there are some that should be, contact the gentleman so that updates may be made.
• Photos of an early copy of Raina Telgemeier‘s SMILE. Oh, and be sure to check out the blurb on the back cover; less-good work at the end of a long career aside, dang if that isn’t a hell of a quote. Everybody go “yay!” for Raina.
• Speaking of “yay”, Telgemeier’s husband Dave Roman is finalizing the disposition of the physical remains of Nick Magazine, where he was one of editors of one of the best markets for kid-friendly ‘toons. In other worlds, there’s one last stack of old magazines and books, and he’d love to share them with you.
• Scott Campbell in a LOST-themed gallery show in LA? Yes, please.

Okay, more likely-outdated stuff tomorrow. Have a good Monday, everybody.

It doesn’t matter how it started, really, but it did — fa ake fight between David Willis and Jeph Jacques on Twitter escalated into art duel at 20 paces: the first blow was struck, then the response (very NSFW), and the counter-response (really NSFW), then the butthurt started.

Not Willis and Jacques, mind you, they’re just cartoonists talkin’ shit about each other and that never fails to go straight to the nasty pictorial representations (hell, you should see some of the vicious artistic slanders I’ve seen close personal friends inflict on Brad Guigar, and how hard he laughed at each one). Also, not so much from fans offended that somebody had made fun of their very favoritest creator ever; mostly it was people pissed at Jacques that he didn’t put his drawing behind a cut.

Either they saw it at work and [almost] got in trouble, or they saw it in front of {mom|significant other|maiden aunt who’s a nun|small child} and had some ‘splainin’ to do, or they just didn’t want to have such things inflicted on their retinas. And that’s where it got interesting. From Jacques, via Twitter:

It’s pretty amazing that even in this cynical Internet age a stupid drawing can elicit such a visceral response from people.

If i were still in school I’d totally write a research paper about Internet art as a weapon.

When you think about it, 80% of the “fine art” produced in the past 100 years is basically trolling.

Dadaism? Trolling. Cubism? Trolling. Abstraction? Minimalism? Found objects? Trolling. Taking a shit on the Virgin Mary? EPIC TROLL.

When fine art divorced itself from technical skill it became dedicated to eliciting a reaction rather than protraying the transcendental.

I guess my ideal piece of art is something that evokes primal, Neanderthal-in-a-hurricane-level fear in all who witness it.

And that’s where we are now, as of this writing — a discussion on art and emotional reaction, born out two guys one-upping each other’s insults. That was a pretty nice capper to the week.

Is this a first? I think it might be a first. Scott Kurtz needs to show a character’s comic strip work in-story, and he got KC Green to supply the art. Having a completely different artist (with a different aesthetic and different approach to humor) provide in-continuity work in this fashion is something with enormous potential and I’d love to see how other webcomics might use this approach.

• Speaking of Kurtz and Green, they’ll be guests of the Webcomics Rampage next weekend in Austin, with some of the luminaries of the medium doing the in-store meet/greet thing. Those of you in Texas, check it out. Those of you in Portland, Legends of Webcomics takes place at Dunning-Kruger Solutions (i.e.: Meredith & Aaron’s studio) this Saturday, with more luminaries. Finally, every remaining webcomics luminary will be at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco for Monsters of Webcomics: Webcomic-Con 2009 on Saturday the 12th. If your favorite creators aren’t at any of these, I guess they just aren’t luminous enough.
• Just over a day remains to buy yourself (or a loved one) a sort-of guest appearance in Schlock Mercenary; let’s let my evil twin tell the story:
  

  The upcoming “Mallcop Command” chapter will feature several human side-characters, all of whom need names. In the spirit of giving, we’ve decided to auction off the rights to put your name (or a friend’s name) on one of those characters. The proceeds of these auctions will benefit the Utah County Family Support and Treatment Center, which helps families in crisis and works to prevent abuse. The winner of each auction will supply the name, and Howard will decide how to apply it. This is a great gift for that hard-to-shop-for Schlock fan in your life.

  Please note that unlike corporations buying naming rights to things like the local sports stadium, there’s no guarantee that your namesake will be around for the long haul; Tayler reserves the right to kill off any/all of these background players in horrible and/or amusing ways. More details of what you get if you’re the winner at Tayler’s blog, and the auctions themselves are handily aggregated onto one page here. As of press time, the auctions have raised a hair over $375; it would be nice to hit a nice round number like $500.

• Yeah, can’t really work the “guest” theme into this one; Alice Hunt of Goodbye Chains needs some assistance to make a shared resource complete:
  

  As a service to our readers, we’ve been working on a little project for a while now: a comprehensive listing of historical webcomics. We’d like it to be exhaustive, but the Internet is vast and wide, and I’m sure there’s plenty we don’t have on the list. Could we enlist your help (and maybe the help of your readers) in fleshing it out?

  If you’re aware of comics that we missed, would you be so kind as to let us know?

  That would be webcomics with a theme/subject matter that’s historical in nature, not webcomics that are themselves history-making. You’ll get the idea, just take a peek at the list and let the GC crew know of any they should add.

Holy crap you guys, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened — T-Rex has decided to start stomping, and he’s stomping a half-dozen Admiral Ackbars. There’s no way that can turn out well. Guess you’ll need to find a home for him as far away from any Ackbars that might still be running for their lives.

• In other trap-related news, the 2010 Eisners have opened up their nominations, with the specifics in the PDF here. The category potentially of interest to readers of this blog is described as:
  

  he best digital comic category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2009. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to us by clicking here.

  Why “trap-related”? Because this category has a history of changing the interpretation of “long-form original comics work” from year to year, just waiting to ensnare the unwary potential nominee. Strips appear to be out, but does the story have to be over and done with? Would on ongoing, serialized story with a clear beginning, middle, and end (although not completed in 2009) be eligible? ‘Cause there’s a bunch of those that represent some of the best of comics but I don’t think they’ll be considered (despite some of those being considerably similar in scope and long-formness to one of last year’s nominees).

  How long is “long-form”? What about a single storyline from an ongoing comic? Or something that actually requires a digital presentation? Venture into these waters carefully, but let’s see if we can’t get some consideration for some of our best work, yes?

• My God — it’s full of Rikers. You may be trapped here half the day soaking up the awesome.
• Aspiring cartooners still have more than a week to enter the guest-strip contest at Calamaties of Nature; the trap here is that you could end up with a comic running on a site that disrespects moustaches. Tread carefully before you make a deal with The Devil.
• Up for a little casual blasphemy? From (to the best of the knowledge, previously unrepresented in the world of webcomickry) Slovenia comes Paradise Misplaced, where each week God tries to get creation going and those pesky humans find a new way to not quite get it right. Produced by the not-at-all-pseudonymous Anonymous Gosh, it’s got a lot of R. Crumb influence, by way of The PBF perhaps. Readers, naturally, run the risk of offending the ineffable name and being trapped in dire punishments for all eternity. On the other hand: cartoon boobies. For extra fun, click on the link to render the site in Slovenian.
• Finally, there’s a free sketch on offer from Brian Carroll of Instant Classic; for two more days, Carroll will draw anything you want (within reason) as part of The Great Instant Classic Graphite Marathon 2009. If you take up Carroll on his generous offer, how about you kick him a little bit in the ol’ PayPal link to offset his materials and shipping costs? The trap, naturally, is that graphite smears if not handled carefully, and you could totally get black goo on your fingers.

Because a bunch of things just sort of happened all at once, many of them of the milestone variety. Viz:

• Little Gamers turns nine years old today.
• Today is the arithmetic mean of the day that Irregular Webcomic hit 2500 strips and the day that Misery Loves Sherman hits 500 strips (no link until tomorrow). Also, I’m about five days late on this one (but I like to do these round-numbers deals in big chunks when I can), but Tweep pretty much put itself outside of casual Archive Bingery last week when it crossed the 1000 mark.
• Today marks two years of Bill Barnes making Unshelved his entire job, and one day since Jeph Jacques sold enough t-shirts to buy a house.
• And if all these variations on damn that is a lot of webcomickry going on isn’t enough for you, you can slurp up two and a half hours more in this vidcast, starring Dylan Meconis, Bill Mudron, Katie Lane, and Erika Moen (who is totally awesome at both thinking up titles and spelling); it’s all about making comics and navigating the world of freelancing (that last part is especially important if you ever consider doing such work yourself).
• Finally, there’s a thinky piece by Eric Burns-White yesterday on why paywalls on the internet (whether it’s newspapers or comics or encyclopaediae) are doomed to failure. I will register my usual and token objection to one thought that crops up in the comments (and often does in these contexts): that very few internet ventures make money purely by providing content (with the unspoken assumption being that this is why old-time comics guys look down on webcomickers as t-shirt merchants).

  My objection being, I don’t care how many newspapers paid to carry Peanuts, that’s not what got Sparky his own private hockey rink; he got richer than God by licensing his characters to appear on everything from snack cakes to insurance companies. The ratio of direct revenue from the comic to revenue from merchandise (including the dreaded t-shirts) is probably not significantly different from that seen by the average self-sufficient webcomicker when comparing direct website revenue (say, advertising) to that brought in by the sales of tangible stuff.

  It’s not a critical point, but I have a great affection for it, so let me have this one thing, okay? It doesn’t detract from the logical basis of Mr Snark-White’s argument, and doesn’t lessen the strength of his conclusions.

I took off from blogulation on Friday, which happened to be my birthday; I mention this only because I want to mention a present that I received, namely an animated GIF of Wil Wheaton wearing the scary clown sweater, driving the (black, windowless panel van) Candy Mobile. The world will forever wonder at the identity of the giver, although some may harbor suspicions.

• Once again — the power of MOUSTACHE. Don’t mess with us, man.
• Meredith Gran is again doing a series of paintings to mark the holiday season. Last year it was eight originals up for grabs (which often went in mere minutes after being posted); this year, there will be Twelve Days of Hipsters, starting with today’s (already sold, sorry) Twelve Inch Records. On a related note, may I point out despite having raised her game and skill considerably in the past year, Gran has actually dropped her prices? Start camping her site and snag up the ones you want before she realizes this tactical error.
• In this season of goodwill and giving, may I point out that Kiva Team Webcomics (in existence a mere 298 days as of today) has (to date) 613 members, made 1514 loans, for a total of US$64,525? Or if your charitable giving is less of the entrepreneur microfinancial bent, this year’s Child’s Play is currently sitting somewhere north of US$750,000? Just thought I’d mention.
• It might be easier to mention creators that aren’t Kickstarting their webcomickry these days, but just for kicks (oh my Darwin, I think I caught The Guigar) I’ll mention one more — after this point, we’ll just assume if you gots a book or other project, there’s a funding mechanism. ANYhoo, Kel McDonald jumped in with both feet, looking to make a full-size, full-color book.

Okay, that’s it. Time to start combing through the past week’s mail. Have a good one.

For those of you not in the precincts of the Greater Statesian Freedomparty, you probably have little care that it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow (and if you’re in Canadia, you still wonder why we’re six weeks late on this deal). Nevertheless, I’m going to share some things that I’m reasonably grateful for, as I intend to take tomorrow the hell off (and maybe Friday, too). So, in no particular order, this year I’m grateful because:

• JRo doesn’t hate me for whatever degree of complicity my ancestors have in screwing over his.
• Ursula Vernon recognizes scams when she sees them and is willing to call shenanigans for the benefit of others.
• I’ve met a lot of really cool people since I started writing this blog, and this year I met a few more of them face-to-face for the first time.
• With any luck, I will qualify for Enemies List 3B again this year. Happy Birthday, Jon!
• By this time tomorrow, I expect to be reading a promised Thanksgiving Day update of Octopus Pie while consuming my thirty-seventh serving of actual pie. It won’t be baked by my niece C, but I’m beyond thankful that her heart surgery yesterday went well. If you’ll pardon my language for just a moment, she’s baddassery personified; the rest of that yellow wristband reads OF KICKING YOU IN THE FACE.
• Finally, perhaps most of all, I’m thankful that my brother and sister came through their auto accident with manageable injuries. I don’t think I ever gave a full accounting, but that accident added up to two paramedics, fourteen trauma docs, surgeons, nurses, and PAs, two broken femurs, one broken knee, one hip socket punch-through (or acetabular, for those of you that like medical terminology) fracture, one C7 flexion-rotation (grab one of your neck bones and give it a good spin on your spinal cord), three weeks in [S]ICU, about 18 weeks of in-patient rehab, half a year (and counting) of outpatient rehab, lots of really good drugs, one halo immobilization rig, one case of MRSA, a metric crapload of really strong antibiotics, two power drills, two Rascal™ brand mobility scooters, four crutches, two canes, a walker, 11 months of disability, one totalled Saturn, another vehicle whose final disposition I don’t know, and a total bill that likely approaches the price of my house.

  It’s been a hell of a long journey, neither of them is walking entirely on their own, but they’re alive, neurologically intact, and

  I

  am

  thankful.

Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s bread starter to mix up.

Sometimes, there’s just a window where it’s all Big Players that announce/do things.

• In terms of audience, influence, and longevity, Penny Arcade is the biggest deal in our corner of the web, no? I figure over the next 1 – 3 years that statement will become less definitive, but for now, they’ve been doing it bigger and longer than anybody else (and get your mind out of the gutter). Having produced the comic, custom content for game publishers, a game series, a scholarship, a convention series, and a multi-million dollar charity, there really wasn’t anyplace else to go besides reality TV.

  So they did that.

  The pilot episode is up now (with what looks like six more episodes in the works), including the year’s biggest Awwwww moment as Jerry Holkins introduces his new daughter to the world. If you enjoy the kind of TV that doesn’t involve pretty people eating gross things and scheming in “alliances” (but I guess Alliances are okay), take a gander.

• In the world of print comickry, DC are one of the proverbial Big Guns, and their move into webcomics has proven to be both more long-lasting and influential than I figured it would be (but, for the record, the interface is still pretty hateful on my browser). There’s a pretty good interview/article (it’s sort of midway between the two) at the blogsite of a Louisiana TV channel with Zudaboss Ron Perazza. Perazza’s a really nice guy, genuine in his goals and intentions (and if he and I don’t have entirely parallel viewpoints on webcomicking, that doesn’t mean that either of us is deluded or wrong). I particularly want to recommend the interview to you because it’s got an unusually good bit of reportage behind it — there’s none of the (hopefully, formerly) obligatory “Biff! Pow!” nonsense, nor the mistaken assertion that comics-on-the-web are a brand-new phenomenon spearheaded by forward-thinking publishers. In fact, I quite liked the second ‘graf:
  

  Today, companies are still trying to find the most user-friendly mode of consumption and more importantly, the right business model. Digital comics, or Web comics as they have become known, have been highly successful for many independent creators with comic strips, but have not been much more than a glorified marketing gimmick to the major players in the industry.

  Don’t worry, Zudafans, the remainder of the piece focuses on how the majors reacted to that state of affairs; in fact, the majority of what’s in the piece won’t be a surprise to anybody that regularly reads this page, but it’s the first I’ve seen out in the wider world that acknowledges that there are different approaches to comics+internet that will work differently for different constituencies of business, creators, and readers. Hell, that’s something that we at Fleen could stand to be reminded of from time to time.

• One of the larger hosting companies out there, at least in that it hosts an unusually large number of webcomics, is Dreamhost. Unfortunately, that can create what paranoid types like me call a Single Point of Failure, and problems there can have outsized consequences. Late last night (or early this morning, or perhaps a bit past tea-time, depending where you are), Dreamhost did a wobbly and while the core failure seems to have been contained in about three hours, lingering aftereffects were reported a good twelve hours after initial report. If you couldn’t get to your preferred free entertainment last night (or this morning, or tea-time), give it a while. And as this isn’t a new occurence, there may be some shifts of provider in the near-to-medium term.
• Finally, it’s well understood that the world’s greatest (indeed, the Cartoonist Extraordinaire) is Bill Connolly. His videos on how to draw have inspired more people than Bob Ross and Commander Mark put together. Now, a bunch of artists have created a new website in tribute to Connolly’s most well-loved lesson of all. Thus, the Beautiful Asian Lady Collection is ready for your adoration and participation (thanks to Yuko Ota for letting the world know about this marvel).

There will be a time, probably not too far distant, when this page and I will no longer be necessary; just follow enough people on Twitter and you’ll get all the webcomics amuse/amazement you require. Also, for some reason I appear to be typing poorly today, with way too many vowels showing up in words; my apologies if I don’t catch them all before publishing.

• So, Box Brown has been doing a fair amount of stuff outside his Bellen! comics, with a print projects oriented blog to go along with his print projects. Now Brown (Xeric grantee for Love Is A Peculiar Type Of Thing) is looking to kickstart a pair of dead-tree comics with, uh, Kickstarter:
  

  I love webcomics and love creating my webcomic but I also have a passion for print comics. So, I publish print comics every few month that do not appear on the web. I keep a blog documenting the progress of my print work. My current project is called Everything Dies. I’ve always envisioned the project to be ongoing with the first two issues being companion pieces.

  Everything Dies will feature three stories, including a retelling of the Book of Job, a series of shorts about a young Buddhist monk, and various myths from around the world about how the began and how it will end. The peldge campaign has 52 days to go and for anybody out there that collects original artwork, original pages are available at a number of the pledge levels.

• Still in the realm of books, Jess Fink (it’s so good to do a story on her that doesn’t involve her designs getting ripped off by corporate hawkers of wearables) shared some good news with us a few hours ago, namely, Chester 5000 and We Can Fix It are getting published, by Top Shelf no less:
  

  It’s been a really rough couple of years for me where nothing seemed to go right. I’ve also got a ridiculously demanding and frustrating day job that requires long ours and lots of hair pulling. All this stuff just made me feel like I couldn’t hack it and I was failing at making comics my real job. So this influx of good news all of a sudden has sort of held me in shock.

  I’ve had a hard time talking about this with people because it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me and I don’t know how to express that without feeling like I am bragging or a douche. Maybe I’m just so used to complaining!

  Anyway, if you want to check it out the books are listed in Top Shelf’s 2010 publishing schedule! EXCITE BIKE!!!

  Yep, there they are in August, right between Jeffrey Brown (Incredible Change-Bots, vol 2) and Alex Robinson (Tricked, 3rd printing). Pretty good company you’re keeping these days, Ms. Fink.

• Finally, thanks to the first (and thankfully, so far only) me–cosplayer, Emily Vasseur, I now know about a webcomic with which I was not previously familiar, one that know what this season of Thanksgiving is all about: vicious, turkey-based retribution on oppressors. There is some seriously beautiful work in Lead Paint by Mike Cornnell and Dana Wulfekotte; so pretty to look at, a manageable archive (it appears to have started about 7 months back), and hand-turkeys. Always hand-turkeys (oh, the humanity). In fact, any strip with Kid Avery is pretty much gold. Gonna be keeping my eye on this one.