Hey, did you see this thing over at Octopus Pie where originals are now up for sale? If it’s a strip in the post-digital production period (basically, since August) and you’re the first to hit the buttons, you can have it for 150 clams. If you’re after a strip that’s digital, already sold, or you don’t have that many bivalves, you can get a print of anything for only 25. I made my early holiday purchases — how ’bout you?

Speaking of Octopie, did you notice the style homage over at Bellen earlier in the week? The Boxster is doing his comic in the styles of other webcomics this week and next, leading up to Halloween. A’course, the use of disguises for characters has a long and distinguished history in webcomics. Halloween 2000, anyone?

Finally, I think it’s fair to say that User Friendly doesn’t get much mention in webcomics circles; creator JD Frazer has always seemed to float more in the Linux nerd circles — it’s a classic case of have no general audience appeal. You either live and breathe this stuff and it’s the one bit of cultural ephemera that caters to your tribe, or it’s not for you. There’s a comfortable niche to be occupied being a premiere (or even exclusive) supplier of laugh-chuckles to a tribe — just ask the guys at Unshelved (although a lot more people have direct personal interaction with, and understanding of what is done by, librarians than with the running of an ISP).

But even with a webcomic that exists off to the side (as it were), there are things you have to pay attention to. Case in point: a comprehensive, hardcover, ten-year strip collection. That’s more than 1000 pages (at least, that’s what the ad says … the product description says 1000 strips, but it also says all the cartoons, so I’m believing the page count), and unless it’s on really crappy paper, I’m guessing about 7.5kg of dry weight. If you’re the sort that reads UF (and contrary to what many, even this page, may have said, the strip has improved since it debuted), put on the shelf next to your Far Side or Calvin & Hobbes slipcover editions.

Hob, 17 Jan 2007 – 23 Oct 2008. We hardly knew ye, although Latin Heartthrob Aaron Diaz probably feels like he’s known you a little too well by this time:

Jesus GOD, it’s finally over. I hope you all enjoyed the Hob storyline; it’s been one heck of a ride for me, let me tell you.

Just so you know, I’m not going anywhere. The comic will take a bold new direction, with updates hopefully more frequent than they currently are. Also next week I’m unveiling an extra secret project that is a spinoff of DC. [emphasis original]

Now wait for the server load to die down a little, then go back and read that sucker from the beginning.

• Andy Bell had a wedding, a honeymoon, and some adventures; photos here.
• Remember Out of Sequence? Opens tomorrow, with a reception tonight for those of you in east-central Illinois; checklist of images here. The show catalogue (hopefully available here) includes a new essay by nexus of all webcomics realities Shaenon Garrity.
• Update to the Update: Scott Kurtz informs us that while webcomics.com is operated by the Halfpixel cabal, it’s actually owned by the Penny Arcade cartel. We at Fleen note with mild horror the confluence of these major players in webcomicdom banding together to define the future of the medium, and are somewhat hurt that we weren’t invited to form part of the new ruling elite. Expect bloody, violent revolution soon¹.

_______________
¹ On the other hand, wouldn’t a shadowy, secret conspiracy that included Brad Guigar be the most polite secret powerbrokers ever? I understand his goons are under strict orders to say “Please” and “Thank You” when crushing dissidence.

Mr T announced that webcomics.com was for sale. For some time now, WHOIS information publicly available has listed one Robert Khoo as registrant and contact. And now it appears that ’twere the Halfpixel lads that snagged it. From the Kurtzmeister:

Dave, Brad, Kris, and myself really wanted to turn Webcomics.com into a hub of learning and research for the young men and women who are hungry to create the next generation of comic books and comic strips.

We want Webcomics.com to be a virtual water-cooler for anyone making an entrepreneurial effort with their artwork. We all have chosen a career without office buildings, cubicles, or job-listings in the classified sections. But we can learn from each other. And that’s what we want Webcomics.com to be about.
…
Webcomics.com has an open submission policy. We’re looking for ideas, articles, columns, tips, how-to-guides, production videos, success stories, and personal anecdotes. If it helps us all learn to be better entrepreneurs, we want it on the site for others to benefit from.

We at Fleen welcome the new hub. Drop by and tell the boys I said howdy.

But not today. Krishna “Big K” Sadasivam hits the decade mark of PC Weenies and (ironically enough) may have to close up for being too popular and pummeling his non-dedicated server’s CPU. Show the guy some love and spread out your clicks, and maybe browse his store when it’s available again?

Meanwhile, Help Desk is updating again, with the recent computing noir storyline splitting off to its own identity and update schedule. I believe that Christopher Wright is consicentious enough to drive the PCTown story to conclusion, but it may take a while to get there.

Finally, anybody been checking out Moose Mountain? Been following this one casually since it debuted back in the summer (complete with several months of archive ready to go on day one). It’s like what Mark Trail would be, if Mark Trail didn’t suck the joy out of life every day that Mark isn’t punching out scum (which happens all too rarely). In fact, that’s all that’s missing from Moose Mountain — punching the hair off scum.

John Campbell is a genius. A genius, I tell you!

• The 94% opium-free Wondermark marks (ha, ha) its departure from Modern Tales today; if you were to follow the links, you get a placeholder that promises the afootness of a thing. The Wondermark homepage similarly heralds this mysterious thing, which is revealed (at last) as a rather spiffy new web design, once again using Tyler Martin‘s ComicPress theme. Really, this is all just an excuse to point the five of you that don’t use ComicPress for your webcomic over to it, and the make sure the rest of you knew about Martin’s new advice regarding WordPress caching.
• Speaking of design and redesign, I want to point you to some nifty Design Things. We at Fleen have been enjoying The System since it launched over the summer, and more recently, have been digging into the Rosscott, Inc blog. It’s heavily focused on a) graphic design and b) Mad Men; I don’t watch the latter, but the former has some really nifty stuff highlighted. Go check out fake movie posters, typeface porn, cool error pages, brilliant infographics, and more.
• As long as we’re off of webcomics for a moment, have you seen this? One day only showing of classic MAD magazine covers at MoCCA, serving as a preview to an auction of same (including the first appearance of Alfred E. Neuman). It’s next Wednesday, 29 October, from 10 am to 5 pm at 594 Broadway #401 in New York ($5.00 donation at the door). I’ll be in Boston, dammit, so somebody go see this for me.
• Finally, people have been emailing with news of the 2008 Webcomic Readers Choice Awards at Frumph. Quick thoughts:
  • Another set of webcomics awards? Really?
  • A manageable number of categories — that’s good
  • Winner plus three runners-up, plus honorable mention per category — that’s less good
  • Some high-quality judges, including Steve Hamaker — that’s good
  • A somewhat complicated nomination/voting process — that’s less good
  • Sixth-place finishes in both Best Protagonist and Best Antagonist for xkcd despite the fact that pretty much none of the characters has a name? Really?
  • Much like some earlier iterations of the Webcartoonists Choice Awards, there seems to be a domination by one or two comics, and a somewhat narrow field to the winners — neither good nor bad, but possibly reflective of too few people involved

  We’ll see if there’s a 2009 WCRCA or not, and in all these awards deals, probably the only one you really need to pay attention to is “Best New Comic”. In any event, Fleen congratulates all the winners and their parents, who worked so hard to make the costumes.

I’m gettin’ old … the fall clean-up chores didn’t used to leave me this sore. Perhaps some news from the world of webcomics will cheer me. Let’s start with a new twist on the Original Strip Merchandise Model from Chris Baldwin:

Over the past couple of years I have received many emails from people who wished to purchase a strip, but found it was sold before they got to it. I am now offering to re-draw ANY strip for $80. And worth every penny.

There’s an interesting tension here between desirability and scarcity — common wisdom is that part of the appeal of original strips is that there’s only one of them out there. On the other hand, I’m really kicking myself for not acting quickly enough to buy the April 14, 2007 and October 13, 2008 strips. On the other other hand, I’ve been saying for years that Baldwin criminally underprices his originals, and will be intrigued to see if the hand-drawn do-overs — which are twice the price of the $40 originals — do well for him. Plus there’s this:

Not only will I make sure that any strip ordered before November 1st will be drawn and mailed by December 1st, but also the funds raised will be going directly into the Little Dee book#3 fund, which should be to the printer around year-end, and hopefully to you by February or March. [emphasis mine]

So that’s all good. I will also vouch personally for the worth every penny comment above; Baldwin’s one of the few creators that does full inking and lettering on Bristol, so the originals look absolutely stunning. And if any other creators take up this approach, I can think of at least one other strip I desperately need.

In other news:

• Ian Jones-Quartey’s fondly regarded in webcomics circles for the now-abandoned RPG World, and in I like awesome things circles and his work on Los Bros. Venturos — remember the hilarious bit with “the nozzle”? He directed that. But what I want to point out today is that the latest installment of his ongoing music/animation/improv experiment nockFORCE is a 32 track mixtape that you can listen to and enjoy — so make with the downloading of Siege at Death Mountain.
• Happy Birthday to John Allison; in lieu of cards, he has a special birthday-boy request:
  

  The best birthday present you could give me is putting about the rumour on the internet that Scary Go Round is not hard to get into and a new reader’s worst nightmare. Let’s get that idea out there. I think you could read any of the stories in the last year in isolation without needing footnotes.

  Rumor started, and as an added birthday bonus, rumor sincerely believed in my heart.

• Dirk Deppey at ¡Journalista! linked to a post at the MAD blog about a freelance artist urban myth by Tom Richmond. ‘Tis very amusing and all, but I’m going to refer you especially to the final paragraph, whereby even a likely-specious story has an important lesson for us all:
  

  For me, I never sign my work when I am being provided a by-line, but I am thinking of insisiting I place my full name in each image thanks to the possible passing of the Orphan Works Act. I think that having a signature in a hard-to-miss place in each image might go a long way to preventing it being considered “orphaned”.

  I’ll admit that the OPA is looking more likely than I gave it credit for earlier this year; if it survives challenges and the back-burnering of everything not directly related to the global financialypse, this could be an important safety tip for all you campers out there.

Brooke Spangler of A Girl And Her Fed has some philosophical musings regarding gender and webcomic popularity up over at her LiveJournal, and it got me to thinking. Naturally, if you’re going to consider the gender of the creators of the most popular webcomics, you have to start from a basis of what the most popular webcomics are. Which, as with almost all questions of how webcomics work, isn’t an easy question.

Spangler chooses the latest iteration of an experiment to come up with something resembling a reliable set of numbers, which was compiled by Xaviar Xerexes and is to be found in the current issue of ComixTalk. As with prior attempts to run audience numbers, both by the X-Man and other commenters, we’re hamstrung by the basic … shall we say lacking? … level of confidence in Alexa data. Mr T tried to factor out Alexa flakiness by balancing it against numbers from Quantcast and Compete, but hasn’t done so for some time. This time, Xerexes brings in data from Project Wonderful as a reality check.

The PW data are accurate and from a sizeable pool, and are heavily slanted towards webcomics — that’s good. On the other hand, there are high-prominence sites that don’t use PW, and (per conversation with Ryan North and Phillip Karlsson) the PW counts are ad-box specific. Thus, a reasonably well-known webcomic (say, Gunnerkrigg Court) can run PW ads its own sites (and does), but not at the mirror on Graphic Smash (and doesn’t), and the traffic at the mirror won’t get counted.

Still, as a measure specifically for webcomics, it’s the most objective that’s available. Unless people want to start throwing out verifiable numbers of their own sites (and previous attempts have not yielded enough data to reach statistical significance), Xerexes’s best guess adjustments that produce this Final Version of the Most Read experiment are probably as good as we’re ever going to get.

So to get back to Spangler’s question (which is about the genders of the creators of the most popular webcomics … stay with me, son) I’m wondering if it’s the right one to ask. To paraphrase an observation that Dave Kellett and Howard Tayler have made in numerous places (and since these guys both spent significant time in the business-management world before quitting to do webcomics full time, I’m paying attention to them), the total audience size for a webcomic is probably less important than how many of those readers regard a webcomic as being one of their very favorites. Let’s call it the Top 3 Model — these are the people that are your most loyal fans, the ones that you cultivate and grow and rely on financially if the webcomic is your job.

This is a completely untestable hypothesis, but I think the superfans act as a sort of multiplier. In other words, considering the impact of the work on the audience, would somebody that eagerly devoured every update of Narbonic, The Devil’s Panties, or Octopus Pie have more (warning: extremely precise mathematical term coming up) oomph than somebody that reads Cyanide and Happiness and really likes one of the co-creators, but finds the others meh?¹ Do ten casual fans have the same impact as one reader that looks back a decade later and says, I saw new possibilities in comics because of that strip?

Spangler touches a bit on this in her consideration of gratification as an element of which webcomics are most popular, but by my reading she’s regarding this in a (for lack of a better word) mechanical (i.e.: this strip satisfies my need for entertainment) fashion, and I’m looking at it more from an emotional (i.e.: this strip has a profound lasting impact on me) standpoint.

I realize that this is starting to sound like a “mass audience vs. high quality” argument, and that’s not quite what I’m trying to express. I don’t want anybody to think that I’m arguing David Spade movie where men get hit in the crotch:art-house movie that sweeps the Oscars::Ctrl+Alt+Del:Templar, AZ (although if anybody deserves a mantle full of the webcomics equivalent of naked gold men, it’s Spike).

Nor am I trying to say webcomics by women have smaller audiences than webcomics by men, but are more likely to impact the reader in a lasting way. I think that even with reliable numbers on things like audience size, superfan scaling factor, and lasting impact on the reader’s soul as a work of art, that the best than anybody will be able to do is say, These are my favorites; I don’t know why I like all of them, but I do.

Fundamentally, I love these questions — some day, Xerexes, Spangler, and I are going to have to hash this one out over lunch, and I doubt any of us will be satisfied with the answers, but it’ll be a terrifically fun conversation. Also, since I may be found horribly mutilated afterwards, let the record show I expect that final meal to be delicious.

Speaking of these are my favorites, I emailed back and forth with Sean Conchieri over at Bomb Shelter last night — he tells me that the prelims on this year’s Webcomics Idol are nearing completion, and the Top 10 entrants should be unveiled in the next week or so. Who will make it to the finals? The weirdly compelling Hitmen for Destiny? The chronically-underreviewed Simulated Comic Product? The rigorously structured The System? The eyebrowriffic The Book of Biff? The it’s-gotten-even-better-than-last-year Shi Long Pang? There was a hell of a lot of talent on display in the previous iterations, so be sure to check it out, jump into the conversation, and vote.

_______________
¹ I chose these comics solely because the first three are all created by women, and do not crack the most popular list (although Breeden does sit in the top 20 of the PW-only list), and the last one is created by men and sits at the top of the audience list. I do not mean to imply that C&H only has casual fans or that they are less awesome that the fans of TDP, OP, or Narbonic. Although, to be fair, Shaenon Garrity’s fans on meter out as nearly 14% more rad than the statistical mean.

One of my favorite discoveries since I started writing for Fleen was Moresukine, a journal webcomic (named for the beloved notebook it was drawn in) of sheer brilliance by Dirk Schwieger. Finding himself in Tokyo as a translator for a software company, Schwieger issued a challenge — send him tasks to accomplish in Japan, and he would undertake to:

• fulfill these missions;
• in the order they were received;
• regardless of personal interest in the task;
• and draw a comic about each experience

I’ve gone back to Schwieger’s two dozen adventures (which were spaced over a period of six months or so) time and again since then, and now I have in my hands the printed version of Moresukine, which hit the stores this week after a delay of some months (Christopher Butcher noted that the copy he bought from Schwieger at SDCC suffered cropping and printing problems, and speculates that the delay in rollout was to fix these problems). It’s a marvel.

For starters, the physical form of the book is an echo of the Moleskine — a black notebook with the ubiquitous ribbon bookmark (although pasted to the inside of the back cover, not sewn into the binding as in the genuine article), which is a necessity to properly present one of the postings. Schwieger’s journal is faithfully reproduced (minus a few ink smears), complete with the irregularly-spotty blacks in the title block of each new entry — the natural variations from Schwieger’s ink-stamp masthead being pressed into paper.

Especially interesting is the production job of mission #6, Gender, which is presented out of chronological order. In order to preserve the full impact of Schwieger’s visually intricate and interconnected work, Gender was printed on a single sheet and folded over twice. With the story on the hidden inside of this micro-booklet, the outside faces form pages 2 – 4 of mission 8 (Home Story) and page 1 of mission 9 (Para Para). It’s a bit hard to explain, but when you get to Home Story and notice the pages feel thick? Lift up from the bottom and turn the sheet outward on itself, and enjoy Gender. Just be careful folding everything back together again.

Having thoroughly digested Schwieger’s stories as they were posted, I thought that the paperfolding trick would be the only real surprise to be found in the book … it was a pleasure to be proved wrong. A year and a half ago, Schwieger sent his own challenge to ten webcomics creators whose work he enjoys — meet a Japanese person in your home city and have a conversation, then document the encounter in a comic.

Over the next four months, responses came back and Schwieger included them in the back of Moresukine. Even better, I was completely unfamiliar with more than half of the respondents, as they were heavily concentrated in France and Germany. The guest comics ranged from one-pagers from James Kochalka and Ryan North to 8- and 10-page complete stories from the likes of Monsieur le Chien and Marcel Guldemond. There’s a huge variety among artistic approaches and styles in the 10 guests — more than enough to spend days trawling through archives for a new favorite.

In all, it’s a beautiful piece of work, stunningly original, and well worth your investigation. You could just read Moresukine online, but trust me — this is one work of webcomickry where the the weight of a tangible artifact only enhances the experience.

First of all, everybody knows that it’s 24 Hour Comics Day this weekend, right? And best part is, you don’t have to travel because it’s wherever you are.

• Hey, speaking of 24HCD, remember that guy that invented it? Knows bunch of stuff about [web]comics, drove around and talked about it for a while? Over the next few weeks, he’ll be surfacing in Bowling Green, OH, The Bronx, and Miami.
• This New Yorker/webcartooner thing is starting to become a bigger thing. On the heels of the Sandwich Duel comes the Cartoon Off between Farley Katz and Randall Munroe. Topics:
  1. The Internet, as envisioned by the elderly
  2. String Theory
  3. 1999
  4. Your favorite animal eating your favorite food

  Below the entries (in a somewhat wonky Flash interface — it kept truncating the bottom of the cartoons in my browser), Katz has an interview with Munroe on life, xkcd, and stuff in general. In the meantime, we at Fleen anxiously await whatever rivalries Drew Dernavich and Matthew Diffee will provoke with prominent webcomickers.

• Finally, we’re due for a new voice in the webcomics information dispersal game today. Over at The Daily Cartoonist, Alan Gardner will be running a weekly roundup of news from our corner of the medium. The first entry hasn’t launched as of this writing, but when it does, I’ll bet you’ll be able to find it here. Start hitting refresh on your browsers … now!

Oh, yeah — I update the blog every weekday. Right.

• Missed it, but Dirk Deppey caught it: DJ Coffman‘s got the latest on Platinum/WOWIO non-payments. Key bit that jumped out at me:
  

  [Platinum head] Scott Rosenberg use to say to me a lot “Perception is reality.” He showed a lot of passion for promoting Drunk Duck and letting the creators do their own thing there and not interfere with the site. But now the PERCEPTION is that he did, or somebody there did, see this place as a mine for young creators. Many roped into contracts with that mobile side, not paid … lied to, as the above email suggests. The truth though is that Platinum Studios is poorly, poorly managed. And right now, there’s just no money to be had. They’re holding on for that big deal to come through, and it just might. And that’s ALL they care about. But at what cost?

  So we at Fleen are forced to ask again: have any creators been paid by WOWIO for Q2 yet? Answers on a postcard.

• Okay, whose heart skipped a beat at the sight of photo-rendered “Dark” Esther De Groot? Look for Esther & Sarah’s ‘zine to be all fumetti-stylin’ SGR for the rest of the week.
• A philosophical musing now, prompted by an email from a reader who identifies himself only as “Andrew”, regarding a videogame that I had not heard of (I have no game appliance in my home, and confess my interest in the medium is mostly sparked by new Civ iterations):
  

  I know this is old news, but I’ve barely seen any notice in webcomicsland — Penny Arcade plugged Braid, but no one’s pointed out that the art bears the unmistakable stamp of David Hellman from A Lesson Is Learned But the Damage Is Irreversible.

  Unmistakeable stamp indeed, Andrew — the screens I’ve now gone and looked up for Braid are a welcome breath of ALILBTDII-style goodness from Hellman.

  The question occurs to me, can videogames of an episodic nature (like On The Rain-Slick etc., or BONE) be considered a branching or outgrowth or form of webcomickry? Considering that a webcomicish (and yet … more) enterprise like SBEmail is also almost a game-lite (what with all the hidden things to find), we’ve got a really blurry line.

  Looking back to last year’s Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic, the backlash against Steve Purcell was, as far as I can see, motivated more by the extraordinarily sporadic and slight updates, and not by the fact it was essentially an on-rails version of the Sam & Max game. We’ve already established a consensus that webcomics and indy (print) comics have largely merged into one entity — how much broader can the category become? Your thoughts, please.