So I got an email from a creator asking me to check out a strip over at Comics Sherpa aka Your Guide To Undiscovered Comics. For those not familiar with it, CS is a we’ll give you exposure instead of money service of GoComics, which itself a subscription service of Universal Press Syndicate (who claim to be syndicating the now-deceased William F Buckley Jr) and which also has no problems inflicting James Dobson and Ann Coulter on our nation’s once-proud newspapers, and thus not an environment likely to make me want to visit.

But dang it — the email came from Bob Scott, Pixar animator, and it’s pointing to a strip that’s pretty good. Molly and the Bear has been running five days a week since January, and it occupies a spot midway between Little Dee (in that a kid and an animal interact in an all-ages appropriate manner) and (of all things) the Least I Could Do Beginnings strips on Sundays (which have a very similar, ’60s-era gag cartoon feel to the artwork).

Scott’s bio points out that he’ll be including MatB in the forthcoming Afterworks 3 anthology (by various talented animators), some of which you can see previewed here; some damn good work there, and perhaps Scott will take the opportunity to put up his own website and get clear of the corporate master with his personal project. In the meantime, give it a look.

• Hey, who wants to win stuff? Max Riffner wrote:
  

  I do a webcomic called DRUNK ELEPHANT COMICS (I also draw Kevin Church‘s The Rack spin-off, LYDIA). Anyway, I thought your readers may want to know about a little contest I’m doing on Twitter. Tell me your best drunk story — you can win an iPhone from me. Use the hashtag #bestdrunkstory in a tweet.

  Remember, that’s in a tweet, with the hashtag, so keep it brief.

• Speaking of iPhones, a creator who wishes to be anonymous wrote to point out something found during a web crawl:
  

  I am surprised to see so many copyrighted titles in the non-Net comics list, though. I’d be very interested to learn the sticky ins-and-outs of royalties and copyrights if someone has just lifted a bunch of RSS feeds or whatever and turned them into a single collected iPhone app.

  For the record, the developers of that app are charging $3.99 … I suppose it’s no different that somebody convincing you to buy an RSS reader, then restricting it to display only certain RSS sites. Speaking of which, there appear to be perfectly good RSS apps for the iPhone for $0.00, so I guess what your four bucks buys is the knowledge that the developer really likes certain comics. If your choice is spending it there, or shooting smack into a vein, I guess it’s not a bad use of your money. Then again, I’m told that an armful of horse is pretty sweet. Up to you, I guess.

Very little time today, so let’s jump to it:

• Howard Tayler starts his tenth year of daily cartoonin’ (with no skipped days or guest strips) over at Schlock Mercenary tomorrow. Wow.
• David Malki !‘s release party for the newest Wondermark book is Wednesday in the city of angels.
• In light of Brigid Alverson’s thoughts on the Eisner nominees for Best Digital Comic (i.e.: webcomic), and how they pretty much don’t rely on anything that would be unique about the web, please consider the Andrew Hussie guest strip at Dinosaur Comics today. Take your time.
• Finally, if you wanted to get a copy of Kate Beaton‘s newly re-available book, get it quickly. The review panel at The AV Club (for my money, the best collection of media commenters and reviewers on the planet) got their mitts on it and were pretty damn effusive:
  

  The young Canadian artist has turned a history degree into a non-stop laffs-generating machine, as her book Never Learn Anything From History (TopatoCo) illustrates; the great leaders, military figures, artists, and philosophers of the past are her usual subjects, but they’re usually portrayed as consumed by petty ego and expressing themselves in the freewheeling, dismissive argot of snotty adolescents. Add to that a keen sense of the absurd (in her footnotes, Beaton herself cannot explain why a weeping Napoleon stuffing his face with cookies while Josephine carries on a wild affair is so damn funny, but it is) and you’ve got a book full of comics that are generally hilarious even for those who don’t fully recall the history behind the stories. Beaton’s art is likewise impressive; her neat linework and terrific grasp of simple caricature and facial expression sells a lot of the best strips, including Sasaki Kojiro meeting an undignified end, Jane Austen and Nikola Tesla being pestered by their fans, and Lord Byron muttering “Bitches, man” to a grieving Percy Bysshe Shelley. A-

We’re approaching the middle of June in the Greater Manhattan Metrosphere, and the only word I can use to describe today is dank. It’s grey, drizzly, chilly, and other thinks that end in -y, and absolutely the weather that I would normally associate with late March. Bleh.

But at least it’s not Too Damn Hot, which is a recurring theme in the discussion of the just-concluded MoCCA ’09 which we will now mention for (promise!) the last time. Short form: yes, the fact that it was sauna-ish matters, and the museum really needs to think about that for the future — between the physical atmosphere and the costs of the show, you have challenges to the festival’s long-term viability. Next year could be make-or-break for them.

• This is just the season for webcomics books, isn’t it? Krishna Sadasivam has finished layout for the first PC Weenies trade, as well as having a proof copy of the PCW/Uncubed sampler comic. Note to self: buy an extra-large bookshelf.
• Tintin Chris Yates appears to be somewhat lukewarm towards Jon Rosenberg‘s Random House debut book. Working on the review of that particular opus, as well as several other books.
• Last chance to vote for the Eisners! Polls close on Monday, and webcomics creators are eligible to cast ballots. Also, I can’t help but notice this notice:
  

  You also have the opportunity to write in votes if something you wish to vote for wasn’t nominated.

  If a webcomic creator were to perhaps decide that the Best Digital Comic category was not particularly representative of our medium’s brightest stars, well, there’s your place to make your opinion count.

• If you missed the exchange on Twitter earlier in the week, I left a freshly-purchased copy The Eternal Smile on Box Brown‘s table on Sunday, and by last night it was already back in my hands. People, that is what we call customer service, and I wasn’t even a customer. Just sayin’, if you were to order something from Box, you’d probably get it really fast.

Whoo, lots of book news for you today — Raina Telgemeier‘s SMILE is now street-dated for February, Hope Larson‘s Mercury for early January, Chris Baldwin’s third Little Dee collection went off to the printer yesterday, and Chris Hastings (helped ably as always by Kent Archer, Carly Monardo, and Anthony Clark) will soon be able to give us a date for the third Dr McNinja collection. Note to self: buy more bookshelves.

• Everybody see where Penny Arcade has a job opening posted? As of this writing, it appears that applications have probably passed the 500 mark.
• So for those of you wondering if you could ever have enough comics shows in your life, there’s a new one on the block: this October will see the first iteration of the Long Beach Comic Con, perhaps filling the void of the defunct Wizard LA show. New show, unknown at this time how the “feel” of it will play out, but I was encouraged by this bit from the show’s homepage:
  

  We love everything about the medium and the message – from Silver Age bottle cities, to indy mini-comics based on poetry. We want you to experience it all. That’s why we’re lining up more than the trendy guests and sneak peeks that Hollywood wants you to see (though we’ve got that, too!).

  We’re getting the best, the coolest, the most experimental and the … well, quite simply, the grooviest stuff we can.

  West coast creators of indy/web comickry, take note.

• If memory serves correctly, one of the criticisms that Mr T made about the state of webcomics in his book (three years back, which is about 37 lifetimes in this medium) is that too many webcomics didn’t take the opportunity to provide more cultural context for their world-wide readerships.

  I wasn’t convinced that such ambassadorships are a necessary thing to occur, but the argument came back to me as I started flipping through Odori Park, which tells the story of an American/Japanese couple and their multilingual toddler, and which bears absolutely no relationship to the life of the creator, who is part of an American/Japanese couple with a multilingual toddler.

  Specifically, I thought that this comic might make both me and T happy in its approach to such cultural issues — they’re addressed, but in a nicely organic way that serves the story rather than being explicit exposition. Hooray for middle grounds, and check out Odori Park — it’s good. (time from publication to T showing up in the comments starts: now!)

Edit to add: TIME! 13 days, 9 hours, 34 minutes. You’re slipping, T.

As you might imagine, I’m horribly behind on webcomics news as a result of MoCCA; I’m not even going to weigh in on the whole Marketplace Morning Report thing except to say that the reporting oversight was pretty thoroughly refuted. Reports on MoCCA itself that I particularly recommend include Dave Roman‘s and Evan Dorkin‘s; gotta say that it’s a real treat to see a guy as unrelentingly positive, level-headed, and pleasant as Dave Roman refer to a show as a “death camp”. He and Dorkin are right on the money though, regarding the improvements that MoCCA needs to make if it’s going to be a viable show in two – three years.

Book news! Digger volume 4 will be available for preorder on 10 July; Kate Beaton‘s book is back in stock at Topatoco. And Aaron Diaz is offering a limited-edition softcover of Hob, and there are even (as of this writing) still some left from last night’s announcement. Go get ’em.

Pictures! How to sum up MoCCA ’09? It was hot, leading to a weary, but still game crowd. It’s not a t-shirt intensive show, but books, prints, promises of sex, and interesting knick-knackery do well (even when they’re just preview items). In any event, moustaches and beards rule, Dylan looks better in a suit than you do, Magnolia is willing to get her photo taken with random vagrants, and outside air was good. Also: there were visitors to our shores from the far antipodes and the near frozen north.

Photo guide! Roughly in order of the links above, you had crowd shots, merch selections from various creators, printed-on water bottles from QC, fair-trade, microfinanced Red Robot dolls, Andy Bell‘s newest toy (availabe at SDCC), Jon Rosenberg‘s first major-publisher book (available in a few weeks), Dern rockin’ the Snidely Whiplash, David Malki !, Dylan Meconis, Magnolia Porter (with Kris Straub), Bernie Hou & Rick Marshall, Becky & Frank and Joey Comeau. Please note that the red-eye filter was working in that last photo; the residual eye weirdness is because Joey’s evil.

Walking with Heidi MacDonald towards the end of MoCCA ’09, she asked me about the takeaway for the event. What one thing summed it up, more than anything else? That was a tough one — there wasn’t a standout book that dominated the show, or an event, and there was (it’s fair to say) a measurable amount of disorganization on Saturday that threw off the cadences of the show for the day. And there’s your theme for the show — determination.

Despite the lack of some very capable people who left the MoCCA board back in October, the Museum was determined to put on the show. Despite organizational problems that prevented the show from opening for its first hour on Saturday, the attendees stayed in line (around the corner and down the block), determined to enter. Despite that late opening making a jumble of the programming schedule, the audiences determined the new times and packed the rooms. Despite the dead air circulation and lack of A/C, all concerned were determined to have a good time.

Lots of exhibitors spoke to me about selling out or nearly so, and if there was a lot of expressed nostalgia for the recent TCAF show, nobody I spoke to was hating on the show — at least, not after getting some air outside. As somebody lucky enough to be a booth sherpa during setup on Saturday morning, the dead first hour gave me an opportunity to connect with creators I’d met previously but didn’t know very well, and to have the time to enjoy it without blocking fans from seeing them. I got to compare notes with MacDonald, Rick Marshall, and Johanna Draper Carlson. I got the lowdown on the previous night’s Drink & Draw Like a Lady and the inside scoop on the dudes who tried to crash the party. Not a perfect show, but a mess o’ fun nevertheless.

Oh, and by means of skillful reportage, I can now let Fleen readers know exclusively that a significant creator has plans to create a new model of webcomicking that will change everything from this point forward — money will be made, competitors will be crushed, and life as we know it will never be the same. I know! Shocking!

Webcomics types in attendance and/or showing included (in no particular order) Bernie Hou, Magnolia Porter (who was slumming with an incognito Kris Straub), Rosemary Mosco (who was not showing, but always a pleasure to talk science with her), Hope Larson (who has excellent new hair and plans for more DDLL in the future), Frank Gibson & Beck Dreistadt (all the way from New Zealand!), Cat Garza (who has found that his recent student advisee at CCS has him thinking about new approaches to comics), Cameron Stewart (who made what’s maybe the single greatest contribution to the Beards & Moustaches theme sketchbook), Darren J Gedron (who waxes ‘stache with the best of them), Ami B & Bree Rubin (who are clever, young, talented, and just starting the show circuit), Spike (whose books are very heavy by the case), John Keogh, and Ian Jones-Quartey (whose unfinished opus, RPG World, got its return pushed back by a year when I enquired when it would finish).

Over on Webcomics Island, one would find Andy Bell, Jon Rosenberg (whose first major-publisher book is hitting the pre-release circuit … we’ll be having a giveaway soon), Sam Brown, Steven Cloud, Rich Stevens, Meredith Gran, Ryan North (whose new book we may see by end of the year), David Malki !, Chris Hastings (whose new book we may see by San Diego), Jeph Jacques (whose first book is still missing a few strips, as the original high-res files have gone missing), Randall Munroe (who for the first time found his table space slightly blocked by another creator instead of being the blocker, and whose update today should provoke groans and beatings), Kate Beaton (who is totally awesome in person and whose crowd was going elbow-to-elbow with Munroe’s), Dave Roman (who wonders if there will ever be another general-interest kids magazine on the newstand racks), Raina Telgemeier, Dylan Meconis (who looks sharper in a suit than I ever will), Kean Soo (who, sadly, I spaced on coming to the show, and didn’t bring my copy of Jellaby 2 for sketchin’ & signin’).

Other things to note:

• Scott Campbell‘s Double Fine Action Comics volume 1 is a trip and a half; he’s thinking about doing a children’s book with images from the recent HOME SLICE gallery show, with little lift-up doors to reveal everything in the homes. Also, once he gets a definite story idea, an Igloo Head & Tree Head book!
• Box Brown‘s girlfriend Sarah (and inspiration for “Ellen”) has totally got the patient cartoonist spouse/partner thing down; she was a delight to meet, and it’s obvious why Brown finds her such an inspiring muse. Brown also had one of the cooler table items at the show, an eight-page newsprint comics section, filled with strips (daily and Sunday) for the proposed Bellen! syndicated strip, which didn’t end up happening. Similarly, the Transmission X collective found that a simple postcard with their names and comic titles wasn’t working, but a full-color newsprint broadsheet with full strip samples of each of their work is a terrific attention-getter.
• Dylan Meconis’s Bite Me! might be my favorite purchase of the show. Ask me in a week when I’ve had a chance to read everything, but any book that provides a “Revolution Starter Kit” in the form of a drawing of Marie Antoinette’s head (Tab A) and a guillotine (Slot B), with instructions to insert A into B? Genius. Possible competitors: And Don’t Forget The Droids and Only What You Take With You, sequels to last year’s Harvest Is When I Need You The Most — whimsical takes on the minutae of the Star Wars universe. How does one apologize to Lord Vader? What does it mean to “bulls-eye womp rats”? How can a whiny farm-boy upset the economy of moisture farming, and what happens if you do kiss a Wookie?
• But then, Frank & Becky’s Tiny Kitten Teeth book (and portfolio of Becky’s paintings) looked better than any printed material has a right to, and was more adorable (in an acid-flashback whirlwind kind of way) than human eyes can tolerate. Catch them on their tour of the US, culminating in San Diego next month.
• Drink & Draw attracted 70 – 75 ladies, much fun was had, and the dudes trying to sneak in from the unrelated speed-dating event elsewhere in the bar were dealt with summarily. Organizer Hope Larson definitely will repeat the event next year (hopefully with sponsors), and wants to expand to at least a West Coast iteration for those that couldn’t make it to New York. Asked about the possibility of running DDLL prior to SPX, Stumptown, APE, TCAF, and other indy-friendly shows, only the amount of difficulty in arranging things long-distance seemed to deter her. Give it a year or two, there’ll be these things popping up all over.
• I totally forgot that I met you, and I’m sorry. Also, I spelled your name wrong. I suck, but I promise to make it up with some pictures tomorrow, and with book reviews in the coming days.

I’m sure you’ve seen the news — Nickelodeon magazine is shutting down immediately, and what had been a reasonably-paying venue for terrific indy/webcomics artists (including co-editor and Friend of Fleen Dave Roman) is now dead.

You know what? A lot of those artists (who did such great work) are going to be at MoCCA this weekend. If you come across any, thank ’em. Resolve to follow their work in other places. Support them as you can.

So I’m picking up comics yesterday, getting ready to enjoy the hell out of Box Brown‘s Love Is A Peculiar Type Of Thing when I notice it on the wall behind the registers: the DVD of Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Yes! Having seen Joss Whedon as the special musical guest at the recent This American Life movie theater event, I couldn’t wait to hear Commentary! The Musical. Okay, change of plans — read LIAPTOT on the train home (a trifle rushed, but one must), and then the DVD goes in.

Except Erika Moen ruined it.

Waiting for me at home was a copy of her new book: DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary Volume One. I had resigned myself to not getting a copy until SPX, when I could look Moen in the eye, thank her for her awesome work, and maybe get a sketch. And she went and made all that unnecessary with her very kind gift, complete with a sketch that’s beyond awesome in its moustachery. I’m still gonna get a copy from her at SPX, because I know this is a book that, when lent to others, comes back late and in significantly more worn condition. The next copy will be the loaner, this one is mine and you can’t have it.

But now — no Dr Horrible for me. Sad face lasted about twelve seconds until I realized this meant that I now had two diary-style collections in front of me, and the opportunity to look at them both at my leisure was overwhelming.

Both LIAPTOT and D:ASGTSCDV1 tell the stories of their creators, but they come at those stories from different perspectives. Box Brown’s work is filtered through the perspective of Ben, who isn’t Box, but isn’t quite not-Box; there’s a nice one-pager in the book (from which the cover image is taken) that talks about how the fictional character Ben had things more together than the real Box — in love, sober, happier.

And it talks about how Box is becoming Ben. The character that started as not quite so much a stand-in for the creator and more of a metaphor is possibly the real-er of the two, or at least of the unseen Box Brown that speaks with a disembodied voice throughout the book. By the end of the book (and its slow, fits-and-starts progress towards the realization that all of us are just making life up as we go along), it’s tough for me to decide whether Box or Ben is the metaphor.

At times, the journey is melancholy, at times it’s guarded, at times it’s revealing or hopeful, and it gets a zillion bonus points for appropriating a Frank Zappa lyric for a comic title. It’s a masterful piece of introverted storytelling, and if more people (not just comics creators) were able to look at themselves and tell these kinds of stories, we’d probably have fewer therapists and social workers.

In contrast, D:ASGTSCDV1 works from a fundamentally an extroverted point of view; while Erika Moen does talk a great deal about what makes her tick, I think it’s fair to say that hers is a story of living in your skin rather than in your mind. Her comics celebrate experiences, whether they’re happy or sad, miserable or joyous, simple or complicated, and (recurringly) sensual in every meaning of the word.

Moen wants you to know how much she’s attracted to women and (confusingly at first) one guy. She wants you to know that she burps, farts, bleeds, and poops. She has sex, she has compulsions, and strippers dig her. Above all, she has a life that is sometimes good, sometimes bad, and always met head-on in a full-bore attack that says Show me what you’ve got, and I’ll show you mine.

In lesser hands, it would be too revealing, too narcissistic, too much like watching unavoidble “reality stars” go on and on about themselves. From Moen, it feels like you’re sitting next to your most energetic friend, the whirlwind that doesn’t sit still before she starts in on the caffeine, and she wants to tell you about her day and hear about yours and don’t leave out the good stuff.

Reading D:ASGTSCDV1 is likely to leave you slightly out of breath, like you’ve been on a really good roller coaster called The Erikanator, and as luck would have it, there’s no line so you can go ride again. Oh, and Erika? Damn right, twinsies! Rest of you, don’t worry about it — she knows what I’m talking about.

MoCCA Updates!
Press access has come through, so in addition to everything mentioned previously this week, I’ll be able to see:

• Darren J. Gendron: table 410
• The Timony Twins: table 332
• Transmission X: tables 708 and 709 (everybody tell Cameron Stewart how awesome Seaguy was)
• Johanna Draper Carlson, Heidi MacDonald, Rick Marshall, and other fellow pixel-stained wretches, wherever we may be; maybe we ought to set a place to meet, guys?

Finally, there was one other item in my mailbox yesterday — a notice that the post office needs my signature so that I may claim THIS.

Notice in my mailbox that a parcel is awaiting my signature at the post office … a parcel from Ryan North, containing the only thing better than a grappling hook. Hell, yes.

Keith Knight cuts to the chase, re: syndicated cartoonists and indy/web cartoonists.

MoCCA updates:

• L Nichols of Jumbly Junkery will be at table 328 and Chris Andersen of The Ego and the Squid will be at table 221; see yesterday’s post below the cut for a more extensive list of exhibitors/tables
• NERD Comics have a portion of their table available; direct message @breegeek on Twitter if you’re interested in showing, couldn’t get a table, and can help cover the table fees
• Floor map of the Armory here; the RED ZONE is for loading and unloading only, please do not loiter in the RED ZONE.

Mailbag!

• John Woakes wrote:
  

  I have a little pet project where I put up a webcomic every hour on my site. I have been collecting my favourite web comics for some time. My collection is all over the map. Check it out.

  Checked. Seems to mostly be single-panel gag strips culled from the syndicate websites (each comic I’ve noticed so far today has been from GoComics, a division of Andrews McMeel. Woakes provides full credit and links to the originals, and appears to host the images himself instead of bandwith-leaching.

  Of course, the comics are presented without the context of their home sites, but the random factor does seem to up the chances of serendipitously coming across something that otherwise would have been unknown. Comments on the legality/ethics of this welcome below.

• Kent Vaughn wrote:
  

  I started creating my webcomic Mixed Brood about 6 months ago and have compiled a small archive of around 60 or so comics. I feel like I’m now starting to get the hang of it and improving with each one (which is the goal I guess right?).

  Okay, this shouldn’t be taken as an invitation for every new webcomicker to ask me for full feedback — I get a zillion such requests. But Kent used the magic words with me (and, having used them up, they won’t work in the future — sorry, find your own angle): I feel like I’m now starting to get the hang of it and improving. I don’t think that any comic has launched hitting on all cylinders from day one unless the creator was already crazy experienced — that first six-months-to-a-year is where the most radical improvements are likely to come in.

  And I can see those improvements in Vaughn’s work. Reading from the beginning, I was thinking something about Mixed Brood remarkably similar to what Brigid Alverson wrote yesterday at CBR (she was writing about Zudaentries, but it applies here, and in many, many webcomics):

  Each Zuda page includes a space for a text-only synopsis, and that is where I would often find finely crafted, intricately thought out backstories and alternate universes.

  Unfortunately, that’s not where they belong. They belong in the comic.

  Too often, I see elaborate descriptions of characters that don’t seem to relate to what’s actually in a comic. In Mixed Brood, the three characters (a dog, a goose, another dog) have bios, but didn’t seem to have much in the way of distinguishing characters at first — but that’s changing, especially in the case of Flash, who’s developing what can only be described as a lazily cruel streak. He’s distinguishing himself from the other dog, Barney (who has a bit of Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel in his visual design but as there’s a lot of Groening in all the character designs, I can’t always tell Flash and Barney apart in a quick scan), and is starting to come into his own.

  The joke constructions are starting to tighten up nicely, and Vaughn has even pulled off a rare successful post-punchline extra laugh line, which almost always fails no matter who attempts it. That’s easily a 7.8 on the difficulty scale, and he nailed it. And pleasingly, Vaughn isn’t afraid to set his strip someplace definite, instead of the usual and nebulous a house, somewhere. These critters are Canadian, and prominently so.

  Is it a new masterpiece, a nascent classic that everybody will be studying in the future? Not yet. Maybe someday. But it’s improving, and Vaughn is conscious about trying to make every strip better than the one before, and that’s good enough for now.

With the tax permit thing behind us, anticipation for the MoCCA Art Fest is beginning to take on serious momentum. Although we don’t have a floor map of exhibitors (and to be fair, not every convention does that), we do have a list of webcomickers who now know their table assignments and have shared them with us below the cut. We will update the list as we hear from more creators.

Update to add: new info!
Speaking of MoCCA, Neil Swaab will be premiering his new Rehabilitating Mr Wiggles book (that would be #3) at the show; after the weekend, it will be available via Amazon and some comics stores in New York and California, starting on 1 July. If you want it before then, your only real option is to buy directly from Swaab’s store or come see him in person this weekend.

Finally, don’t forget to Drink and Draw Like a Lady, if you are a) a lady, who likes to b) drink and c) draw. Dudes, you will have to find a way to contain their disappointment at not being ladies once again.

(more…)