Item the First
I got an email request for my mailing address about a week and a half ago; throwing caution to the wind (it’s not that I mind the occasional flaming bag of poop in the mailbox, but I hate it when they come postage due), I supplied it. As a result, many thanks to Chris Hallbeck, who gifted me with a copy of The Book of Biff #3: Fresh Toast, which is notable for two things:

1. Eyebrows! I’m in stark disagreement with Brad Guigar here, who finds them distracting; I’m impressed by how expressive those unholy antennae are on Biff. But since you want to see Biff with the eyebrows gone — check it, Brad.
2. Dittos! Okay, a bunch of you are too young to remember the ditto, which was an earlier form of paper reproduction much used by schools in my youth. The pages used a wet transfer system with a fluid that was heavy on alcohols and volatile chemicals with a distinctive smell.

   If you got one of those faintly purple sheets and it was still damp, you’d sniff it for the lamest, most low-rent high in all of history. The inks used in TBOB#3:FT must have been formulated in an old ditto spirit distillery, ’cause they brought back memories of pop quizzes, #2 pencils, and filmstrips.

So it’s fair to say that TBOB#3:FT had a significant, visceral impact on me, right from the opening pages. I can’t guarantee that your copy will flash you back to a bored and misspent youth, but it’s worth a shot.

Item the Second
The lads at Unshelved have revealed the winners of the 2008 Pimp My Bookcart contest, and the top winners (out of … it looks like nearly 100 entries) are really amazing.

That foodcart looks just like the real thing (although hopefully it lacks the taxi exhaust, caked-on grease, and unkillable mutant strains of pathogens resulting from untold generations of evolution). The fire engine looks better equipped to handle structure fires than some real apparatus I’ve been around. And the Dr Suess model down the page is both delightfully loopy, complete with a cute ‘n’ cheerful librarian driving it¹.

Item the Third
Zuda got a great deal of attention from me in the time between announcement and launch; my views on the service are pretty well-known, and I haven’t spent many brain cycles on it since then (mostly because the viewer is a nightmare of bad interface design, memory bloat, and severely lack the ability to play nice with my browser of choice).

However, I’ve heard nothing but good about several of the stories that have come out of Zuda, and now some of them are getting the dead-tree treatment. Look for High Moon and Bayou to hit the stores in 2009, and let’s hope that they’re such big sellers that the 1% royalty the creators get actually adds up to real money.

________________
¹ Purchasers of this model are advised that they must supply their own cute ‘n’ cheerful librarian.

Considering that I’m not really a gamer, it’s a bit peculier how very funny I find Penny Arcade. In fact, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins could each kick me repeatedly in the beanbag, and it still wouldn’t counterbalance the intense pleasure I get from contemplating carrot cake soup.

When you’re in the position of being arguably the most influential webcomic in a rapidly growing medium, when your efforts keep (at last report) a dozen-odd people on payroll, and you reach a milestone like ten years of updates, it’s time to kick back and celebrate bad-ass style:

Also, Penny Arcade turns 10 years old today. We’re going to the Olive Garden!

-Gabe out

I’m reminded of a blog post by Ed Roberston of Barenaked Ladies in a tour blog — a friend from back home was hanging with him in LA for a few days, and had apparently expected a non-stop whirl of parties, playmates, and papparazi. Instead, it was evenings of pizza and Playstation, afternoons on the golf course, and a final summation: You guys are the worst millionaire rock stars ever. Jerry and Mike, thank you for being the worst millionaire rock stars of webcomics, and thanks for the laughs.

In other news:

• Ever notice how you never see Howard Tayler and Jerry Holkins in the same place at the same time? Mighty supsicious if’n you ask me. Anyway, “Howard” gave a keynote address in August to the Utah Open Source Conference on “The Free Content Business Model”, which for “Tayler” means webcomicking as a business with actual numbers. A 33 minute long video of the session is now available, and likely of interest to anybody that’s trying to make internet scribbling their livelihood.
• New interview with Greg Carter at Palace in the Sky Webcomic News, on the whys and wherefores of his vampire epic. Also, Carter, Gina Biggs, and James Burns will be on the webcomics panel at 4pm on Saturday at Altanta Supercon.
• URL alert! A site redesign means that Krishna Sadasivam’s PC Weenies has shifted from a .net to a .com address. Please update your bookmarks accordingly.

Did you notice this bit at The AV Club, about web features that made the jump to books? It’s in the writeup of Garfield Minus Garfield:

So many webcomics eventually get collected into book form that we decided to leave webcomics as a whole off this list […]

Now I may be a hack pseduo-journalist, but I remember hearing once that in a newspapery context, you don’t use a term without defining it, unless you’re absolutely certain that every member of your audience knows what you’re talking about. I guess that means that we’re ubiquitous now. Keen.

Also ubiquitous on the internets: Porn. Stick with me, I’m going somewhere with this. There’s a particularly schizophrenic approach to sexuality in this country — culture high and low utilizes sex as its lingua franca, but we’re taught from a young age that sex is bad, dirty, nasty, and if done outside of the sacred bond of marriage, will blow your legs off. And judging by the joyless parade of moisture that characterizes most porn, I’m not surprised.

True story: I once stayed in a hotel with a flaw in its in-room movie system; near as I could tell, anytime anybody on my floor ordered a movie, it showed up on one of five channels on my TV (my fellow travellers have terrible taste, by the way — that many people paying for Pauly Shore movies?). I could generally catch about 45 minutes of a feature before somebody else entered an order and displaced the current offering, but all the porn movies were on the same channel. No displacement there — on average, eight minutes after the feature started, the screen would go gray and stay that way until the next order came in. My interpretation — whoever ordered the porn was done with it and turned the channel off; insert obligatory David Bowie lyrics here.

But the real punchline? That major hotel chain, family-run by nice, God-fearing people, almost certainly makes more money off porn than anybody named Hefner or Flynt. And it’s not even fun to watch, much less amusing or (heaven forfend) funny.

Which, in my typically roundabout way, is why I was so happy to receive the following announcement the other day:

Beginning November 15th 2008, Slipshine.net and Studio Zoe, in conjunction with Studio Foglio, are proud to announce that we will be featuring for all of our customers, the works of Xxxenophile by artist and writer Phil Foglio. Xxxenophile is a six volume masterpiece originally released between 1988 and 2000, and has been acclaimed for it’s skillful storytelling as well as beautiful artwork. Xxxenophile has also been nominated for an Eisner award – a great honor for any book in the industry.

These books, brought to you by the wonderful folks at Studio Foglio, will soon be available for a digital purchase at www.studiofoglio.com.

For those of you not familiar with it, XXXenophile was an occasional comic book series by Phil Foglio, a gentleman of the highest calibre, who knows that legitimately funny porn can only improve one’s life (indeed, reports abound of Foglio wearing a “Gentleman Pornographer” nametag on the convention circuit during XXXenophile’s run).

If you’re of the oh-no-I-couldn’t variety, just consider the covers that Foglio designed for the series — my favorite featured a mostly-naked young woman lounging in bed covered in model skycrapers and pagodas while her eager young paramour zipped himself into a Godzilla suit. The imagination would certain lead you from that image towards the prurient, but only after a hearty laugh-chuckle. Hell, I’ll go so far as to say that no matter how serious Foglio gets, the sweet release of laughter is only a page or too away (and if you think that the faces you make during the other kind of sweet release aren’t worthy of a smirk or two, I’ve got a bridge to sell you). Go check out XXXenophile — it’s good, clean (dirty) fun.

• Speaking of triple-Xs, Xaviar Xerexes would like you to know that he’s got a domain up for grabs:
  

  Fright Night began as a big cross-promotional webcomic effort in 1999 and continued in that vein for a couple of years (I took over the organization of it in 2000). Later on, I used the site for “events” sponsored by ComixTalk. More recently it’s been fairly dormant.

  I am never going to have time to properly use the URL and I’d love to see someone else use it. The only hitch is I want to see the existing archives of past events stay up at the URL but otherwise I’m open to ideas on its future use.

  Follow the link for your chance at stewardship.

• Who doesn’t like gallery shows chock full o’ animatin’ talent? Communists and Nazis, that’s who. And even they would love what class act Carly Monardo‘s up to:
  

  The show, called “Too Art For TV 3“, is curated by Venture Bros. Color Supervisor/BG Painter Liz Artinian, and features non-industry work from people in the animation biz. ([website] still under construction; artist bios are in the process of being edited).

  Fleen will be doing its (our? my? gotta work out these pronouns sometime … ) best to be there and bring you a report. In the meantime, make your plans for Friday, Dec 5 at 6pm.

Some time back, I wondered if Ninja Bunny might not have been the ultimate confluence of webcomics memes. You got yer cute animal, yer single-panel gag and no continuity to worry about, yer ninja … and yet, the confluence has hung on for 300 on-average-sorta-weekly updates, and more. And since the big round number, we’ve had color, and a sumptuous style similar to ukiyo-e. If this style is what Ninja Bunny stays with, you’re going to have to drop by more regularly than you do now.

• Speaking of 300 (but not 300, except when we are speaking of 300), Multiplex hit the storied number on Friday (yes, I know, Thursday, but I read it MWF because that’s the way my brain works — movies open on Friday), with a bit of dun-dun-DUNNNNN-worthy drama.
• Did everybody see that E! Online quoted Liz Walsh of Tao of Geek on Barack Obama’s geek cred? Nice one, Liz.
• Since April, serial do-gooder and benefactor of humanity Mike Rouse-Deane has been running guest strips, one after another, at The Guest Strip Project in support of the Make A Wish Foundation; it’s about halfway through its one year lifespan, and it’s looking for your input:
  

  This Christmas, we’re doing another Donationathon. On the 1st December is our 100th strip and that spot could go to you. If you haven’t already contributed to the Guest Strip Project all you need to do is a Christmas strip and be one of the 31 artists, webcomic artists or even just fans. As long as you can pick up a pencil, that’s all we need!

  The strip must be 700 x 221, in a gif format and have a Christmas theme including one (or all) of our characters. Don’t forget in your email to include your website you want to be linked to and let’s raise some much needed funds for the Make-A-Wish Foundation!

  Contact Rouse-Deane at moovok which is an email address of the Yahooligan variety in this world of dot-coms.

• Finally, a note on digital media, from a creator of Big-Two print comics — John Rogers on DC’s cancellation of Blue Beetle:
  

  Both DC and Marvel are in a weird place right now — are they publishing companies in a dying market or IP companies in a growing one? The answers to these questions demand different strategies, neither of which are necessarily the best circumstances for the creative participants.

  Time to go creator-owned, and digitally distributed. Because that’s the only solution that makes sense for our side of the equation.
  …
  But it seems damn silly to bend storytelling to a format sold almost exclusively in low-attendance, often creepy specialty shops scattered across the nation.

  Even if it’s a fool’s errand, I’d rather bend my storytelling to fit boxes that almost everyone has in their living room or back pocket.

  Will you get even the paltry tens of thousands of paying customers that comics now get? I don’t know. But without the publishing overhead, you may not need that many. Let’s put it this way — stripping out distribution costs and our share of the rent for those nice DC offices in Mahattan, Blue Beetle could have cost fifty cents an issue at its worst sales level, and still paid Rafael and myself more than we made on the run of the book.

Discuss.

Couple things going on in the world of webcomics. For starters, the Applegeeks crew are due in next month’s Dark Horse Presents on MySpace. The topic of Dark Horse in general came up at lunch with Rick Marshall yesterday, and we’re astonished by the string o’ webcomics talent that they’ve been trafficking in.

But the big story is undoutedbly the news from CBR that Platinum have entered into a deal to produce a Hero By Night TV show. You remember Hero By Night? Created by a guy named DJ Coffman who, as of this writing, hasn’t actually been contacted by Platinum regarding said deal? Since the partner mentioned by Platinum in their press release, IM Global, appears to have a track record in distribution and has a number of projects in the pipeline, this may be more than just a PR announcement where the project at issue never comes to fruition.

That leaves the obvious question, What about DJ? The contracts offered by Platinum for the 2006 Comic Book Challenge aren’t public (momentary pause here to offer some kudos to Zuda for their disclosure of the contracts; I don’t like a lot of the terms they contain, but at least they’re where we can all see them), so I asked DJ for some broad outlines about the agreement he has with Platinum. I didn’t ask for the particulars of rates or dollar figures, but did get some interesting details:

Judging from that clip, not too much to ask at all.

Finally, following up on Tuesday’s story about Help Desk’s financial woes, creator Christopher Wright is reporting that his readers have dug down into their pockets, and that the site will remain up for at least another month. Obviously, it’s not a long-term solution, but it’s at least a short-term happy ending.

Working on something else right now, but I just read a piece on the power of comics by Ursula Vernon that you need to read now, please.

The holiday (or, if you prefer, Holiday) season is upon us, which means it’s time to find gifts for those on your lists. It’s too soon to say how the ongoing brand dilution is affecting webcomics, but I’m cautiously optimistic. During previous economic downturns, movies, comics, and other relatively cheap entertainment did pretty well — golden age, like.

Today, movies and comics are pretty pricey (although I haven’t gone out and adjusted for inflation or anything, I have a feeling that today’s $10.50 movie ticket is more expensive than the 10 cent matinee with cartoon, serial short, newsreels, and a feature) and big-name comics are likewise trying to support creators in a modest manner, which neccesitates a dollars-per-page cover price that’s a little on the high side. But webcomics — they are mostly free and feature creators worthy of your support, especially when you find designs that would be so awesome to have a loved one unwrap on a religiously-signficant morning (tree optional) and wear to services.

• If you feel like getting something a little more … all-ages appropriate? — there are still options. For all that he seems like a cynic with a crippling coffee addiction, Rich Stevens actually has one of the fluffiest hearts I’ve ever known; case in point: video kitties out the wazoo. There is so much concentrated cute here that I’d get diabetes just from the trailer, were it not for the presence of Hitlercat about five seconds in. But rest assured, when that kitten murders us all, it’ll be adorable. I’ll see your adorable kittens Mr Stevens, and raise you greyhound puppies.
• For me, one of the highlights of the last couple Flight anthologies has been the Igloohead and Treehead offerings by Scott Campbell, who you may recognize from the new Frontalot CD cover, or (if you’re in San Francisco) the Imaginary Friends show running at Gallery 1988 (which also stars fellow Flighter Israel Sanchez and nightmare monger Andy Bell). Some new photos from the show are up at Bell’s LiveJournal, and they look great.
• Speaking of the Left Coast, and art shows therein, James Kochalka will be bringing paintings and even a few songs to Giant Robot LA for “Little Paintings 3” on Saturday the 15th at 6:30 pm. The paintings in question are mostly 2″ x 2″, with a few up to 6″ x 6″ (for those of you outside America, that’s about 5 cm and 15 cm, respectively), with the show running until 10 December.
• Finally, Best of the Year lists are starting to show up — Tucker Stone kicks off the annual crop of webcomics tallies at Comixology. I particularly noted item #4 on his “best of” list: Kate Beaton, anything, and everything, by Kate Beaton. Considering that she doesn’t do a comic, per se, it should tell you something about the quality of her work that it gets recognized as often as it does. I can pretty much promise that nobody besides Stone will completely agree with this Year’s Best list, so let’s get bickering.

There’s not so much going on in webcomics and I’m running on way too damn little sleep (I thought you had to have young children to be this tired during the day), so this is gonna be quick.

• Because I’ll probably forget next week: Happy 2990th Stripaversary to Tatsuya Ishida’s Sinfest. That’s a lot of damn strips.
• Webcomics Idol down to four — Soul Driver out; Lawn Darts, Marooned, Shi Long Pang, and the chronically underreviewed Simulated Comic Product remain. Also, the feedback from judge Brad Guigar is an education for all who do webcomics. Check out this thread for a prime example. It’s a testament to this year’s Final Four that I can’t decide who should move forward and who should be dropped at this point. Well done, all.
• And just because it’s got the angriest-looking characters in all of comic-shop themed webcomics (an estimated 12.84% of the total medium), props to Capes & Babes on hitting a year of strips today. Now scowl for the camera and say “Grrrr!”

Christopher Wright’s been at the webcomics game for a long time — Help Desk started on a now-defunct computing website more than twelve years ago, and has been running on its own site for the past nine. In that time, life has interrupted the strip on occasion, and it looks as if it may do so again:

[T]he summary is that I’m running out of money, and as a result I may have to take down EvisceratiNet (eviscerati.net, ubersoft.net, evsicerati.org) for a while until I can afford to resume publishing. There are ways out of this predicament–a sudden influx of money from enthusiastic supporters, a sudden offer of a decent job, a sudden winning lottery ticket–but given the current economic climate I’m thinking the lottery ticket is my best shot.

The full piece is an enlightening read — Wright isn’t begging for support, just laying out the economic facts about how he presents us with Help Desk (and Kernel Panic, and Old Skool Webcomic, and now PCTown, not to mention the editorial sites under the Eviscerati umbrella); basically, he pays to provide these items to us for free, and via that distribution to get things off his chest that need off-getting. Think Thomas Paine with a grudge against Microsoft. And the thing about Paine and his philosophical descendents? You really can’t get them over the urge to shout from the metaphorical rooftops for very long:

If I’m forced to shut down the server due to lack of funds to keep it going, it won’t be the end of the world. This was the risk I took when I made the decisions I did so very long ago, and when you take risks you need to be willing to face those consequences. When I have money again, Help Desk will come back — and hopefully you will as well.

Fleen wishes Wright the best of luck, and should the worst happen, we’ll be waiting with bated breath for his triumphant return to editorializing and muckraking.

• In other news, did y’all in England know there’s a show on this weekend? The one-day-only Thought Bubble Festival in Leeds runs on Saturday the 15th, with the likes of Lil’ Johnny A and Liz Cusack as invited guests, and a whole mess o’ exhibitors including a cat charity. US comic shows get past-their-prime Playmates and Hooters calendar girls, UK shows get cats in need of help — I know which one I’d rather have a booth next to.
• Finally, ’tis the season and all that. Childs Play 2008 kicked off five days ago, and as of this writing has already cleared the $100,000 mark. The economy can be as much of a bitch as it wants to be, and the better angels of our natures will still prevail. Well done, and keep up the good work.

So Chris Onstad made it to the New York Metro area on Friday evening; I had never met the gentleman before (unsurprising, as he keeps a relatively low profile, with even photos of the man being Pynchonesque in their rarity until this year), and found him a capital fellow. I have only one regret about the entire affair, which we will get to presently.

My buddy Brett and I met up with Chris Hastings, David McGuire, and Rick Marshall Willenholly at the bar next door to Rocketship. Our intrepid crew can be seen in this photo from the Rocketship blog report.

As it turns out, the line would wind through the comic shop, into the back hallways, and through a door back into the bar by the time we were done — Onstad, faced with a signing line more than five hours long, wisely fortified himself with all that the very skilled bartenders had at hand.

Finding out that Onstad was signing for five hours really puts the two and a half we spent in line in perspective — in part, it was so long because he took the time to greet every person that came up to him, shake their hand, and talk with them for a minute or two. For that time, the fan in question was his entire focus, which is a remarkably kind act on his part. Having obtained a sketch in my copy of The Great Outdoor Fight, I walked the line backwards and estimated that 150 people still remained at that time.

Things that stuck out during the evening:

• Asking Onstad about his interview with Steve “Ratboy” Inskeep, I was told that it was “weird”. The taping took place at 8am with Onstad in a west coast studio, and inexplicably there was nothing to drink. There was no coffee, nothing in the studio … all I could think was, ‘There’s a warm Sapporo in my car … let’s rock.’ Weird or not, it was great to hear what Ray and Beef’s voices sound like.
• Onstad drew a lot of Roast Beefs, but I chose Mr Bear, based on his self-evident badassery of the past few weeks. Here’s where the one regret comes in — had there been a light turnout and plenty of time to talk without holding up the line, I definitely would have asked for Ray ripping off Cody Travis’s face. But only after I got home did I even think that I should have asked for a picture of Ramses Luther Smuckles. Next time for sure.
• Standing in line just behind Hastings, I was able to observe what two webcomics pros are like when they admire each others work, meet for the first time, and come to the near-instant decision that they need to work on a project togther.
• McGuire has a terrific new giveaway to promote Gastrophobia — a sticker of an entire strip. Stickers I’ve seen plenty, but I think this is the first one I’ve collected with a full story in just a few square inches. Very clever.
• There had been hopes to meet up with Magnolia Porter, but alas we missed each other.
• Onstad confirmed to Hastings the answer to one of the great enduring mysteries of webcomics! Namely, the person in the gorilla suit at SPX07 has now been positively identified! As suspected in some quarters, the gorilla is a prominent webcomicker! Contacted via email for comment, the faux-simian muttered something about getting away with it, if not for those darn kids !

On an unrelated, but no less important note, Fleen wishes a very happy birthday to Meredith Gran. It’s absolutely astonishing that you are only 24 years old and have already produced a body of such good work going back nearly a decade.