If you didn’t happen to hear it, a 7:19 long broadcast interview with Achewood’s Chris Onstad is up at the NPR website. Highlights:

• About a minute in, 13.2 million people heard Steve “Ratboy” Inskeep make an oblique reference to cell phone nuts
• Starting around the 2:30 mark, Onstad reads four panels from page 29 (also here) in the voices of Ray and Roast Beef (!)
• An 11 page excerpt is to be found on the website of the highly-respected news organization with the disclaimer:
  

  (Please note that some users might find the language of this excerpt inappropriate.)

Lots of other things today, too.

• Ace Fleen contributor Jeff Lowrey sends us photos of Baltimore Comic-Con with this missive attached:
  

  Don’t really have a bad cosplayer photo, sorry. Best I could have done was a Harley Quinn with a bad camel toe … or a male Green Lantern also with a bad camel toe.

  I think we’re all glad that Jeff spared us. Anyway, check out the Halfpixel dudes (with Jinxlets and without), Danielle Corsetto & friend, and a crowd that seemed curious, but orderly.

• Scoop: Our sources indicate that Brad Guigar (shown in the photos above in a shirt that reveals his firm alignment with “villains”) is going to be getting a bunch more exposure. Starting on Wednesday, Evil, Inc will begin appearing in The Trend, a weekly publication that is direct-mailed throughout the greater Philadelphia metroplex. That’s right — you no longer have to take on the onerous burden of going to the website or buying a copy of the (Philadelphia) Daily News to get your dose o’ Guigar — he’s coming straight to over 800,000 mailboxes.

  The Trend is a weekly publication, and will run six strips in every issue. As he does in his annual collections, Evil-boy will convert the strips to read as continuous narrative. It’ll start with “best of” strips to catch new readers up, then dovetail with the current storyline about the time that other editions of The Trend get the strip in January, meaning 1.2 million people will get exposed to Evil whether they like it or not! Bwahahahaha!

• Finally, on Saturday evening, in the midst of a field and under a dark and forboding sky, Andrew Bell — creator of creepy, disturbing material from the darkest recesses of the imagination if not the bowels of hell itself — plighted his troth. The celebration reportedly included free-flowing alcoholic beverages (aka “demon rum”), dancing (aka “the Devil’s revels”) and a “photo booth” that collected the souls of all who sat within it (Ha! You didn’t get my soul, because I already sold it to Rosenberg for a dollar!).

  The bride, obviously aware of the horrors that await her and fully complicit in Bell’s wicked ways, was radiant, even as the depravity swirled around the tastefully-appointed tables. Two young women, in defiance of God’s will, swore to remove themselves to Massachusetts with all dispatch and “totally get married” to each other. Some of the various webcomickers in attendance mysteriously disappeared, returning later with blank visages, perhaps subjected to sights that Man Was Not Meant To See. There were cupcakes, which were delicious, but which possibly also damned the eater to an eternity of torment from which even death offers no respite. At press time, all guests were believed to be accounted for, and claimed nervously that they had a lovely time.

  In all seriousness, it was the second best wedding that I’ve ever attended (I do have to place my own first), and the most fun I’ve had in ages. I cannot possibly wish Andy and Jackie anything less than the greatest happiness, and urge you all to go check out the really cool guest strips running while they relax in a tropical paradise, lost in sun, sea, fruity drinks … and each other.

A few more editorial chime-ins: Scott McCloud puts inflation-adjusted numbers into perspective, Jeff Rowland finds the real cause of the fiscal implosion, and decides to put things right. I find logic of his plan strangely compelling.

• From the artistic transitions department: started in Manga Studio, then went hand-drawn, now it’s done with a brush. Throw in a few dead-on imitations of other styles, and one is left with the conclusion that Meredith Gran is going to conquer the world one day. Honestly, it can’t happen too soon.
• Always room for one more: Robin White’s been blogging about comics and the creative process at Skitzo Man Dot Com for a bit now … there’s mention of webcomics here and there, so why do I care? Because prior to the blogging, he did a webcomic of his own for some years, and is rerunning that retired project with commentary. It’s an interesting read, and a nice example of the self-examining voice you need to have if you’re going to get better at any kind of creative endeavour. Also, I note from the About page that White is both a) Canadian and b) living in Japan, so extra points there. PS: Robin you totally have to go to the Tezuka Museum in Takarazuka. My hands and feet are totally the same size as Black Jack‘s.
• Finally, here’s a plot that makes you think Why didn’t anybody come up with this before?: reality show in space with alien critters. Last Resort is just about to hit 100 installments, so there’s enough story there to decide if you’re going to get sucked in or not, and not so much that you have to spend all day pretending to work when the boss walks by.

That’s how the kids talk today, right? All “cool” and “hep”? Anyway, I noticed that several webcomickers have been taking swipes at the current financial crises here in ‘Merica. For those of you in the rest of the world, short version: we’ll be bartering cigarettes by this time next year. In the meantime, please enjoy the comedy musings of Matt Boyd & Ian McConville, Sylvan Migdal, and Tatsuya Ishida, and don’t forget to tip your waitress.

• New webcomic discovery: Tim Smith, one of the creators of Head In The Clouds, invited me to take a gander at this newish (two months or so) offering. It’s a two-character play, a new microscene staged in each strip, and within those inherent limitations it’s doing pretty well. There’s something about this that makes me think of haiku — very brief, very minimalist in art and dialogue, very clean and expressive. Good start so far, and I’ll be interested to see if the creative spark can be maintained inside the self-imposed structure without it going stale.
• Tommie Kelly has invited me a few times to take a gander at Road Crew, which just hit 100 updates and the end of a storyline, so this is a decent time to mention it. A little expository at the beginning, but it looks like that was just Kelly setting the basis, since there’s been a better story flow since then. At the risk of being slightly cutesy, it’s the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to F Chords’ Hamlet. Don’t get too excited about the Shakespeare references (after all, being called “the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies” sounds grandiose at first, too) — I just mean to say that Road Crew is what happens just off-panel in a story about musicians. Point it out to the roadie in your life.
• Interview with Chris and Kyle Bolton over at The Pulse. I haven’t read SMASH before, but I think I’m going to have to check it out.
• One thing I really enjoyed doing last year (and sadly, don’t have the time to do this year) was be a judge for Webcomic Idol. This year’s judging panel has just been, um, empaneled, with DJ Coffman and Xaviar Xerexes returning, to be joined by newcomers Brad Guigar and indycomics superstar Jim Mahfood (I loved the stuff he did in Oni Double Feature).

  It’s just about a week or so until the call for entries, so put your applications together, and figure out how you’re going to interact with the judging panel. Best guess — DJ will channel his inner Simon, Xaviar will be Randy, and the other two will have to reveal themselves in terms of their judging styles¹.

_______________
¹Brad’s widely known as the nicest guy in webcomics on the planet, so we’ll have to see if he can bring actual critical feedback to these kids with a Cintiq and a dream of making it big. I’ve never known him to look for anything other than the best in people, so one is forced to assume that he’s totally Paula, only less batshit insane. We hope.

You now know where to find me on the evening of 7 November. But I warn you — nothing will keep me from the Achewood signing.

• This is what I get for not scrolling past the comic — I completely missed the wonderful news from Christopher Wright which is now a week old:
  

  For about a year my wife and I have been in the process of entering an adoption program. In January we went live, in the spring we were matched, and today we took our daughter home from the hospital. … [W]e now have a beautiful little girl who has made it clear that while she permitted the nurses in the hospital nursery to believe she had settled into a regular feeding and sleeping schedule, now that she is home she will tolerate nothing of the kind.

  Fleen congratulates the happy family on their good fortune, and apologizes for just figuring that the comic was not updating because you were living in a Hurricane Ike-carved ditch waiting for power to come back.

• Sorry ladies, he’s off the market. Reports indicate that Jeph Jacques has successfully gotten married; footage from our chartered paparazzi-copter indicate that no fewer than twelve college-age women have been injured in related riots. Fleen congratulates the happy couple, who are reportedly honeymooning at George Clooney’s villa in Italy.
• And finally, we note the 1000th strip/four year mark has been reached by Able and Baker. Fleen congratulates the happy creator.

Some few things that have gone by the wayside of late:

• Minimalist fumetti experiment tiny ghosts recently passed the three year mark. Fleen congratulates “the author”.
• Hell and damnation-themed Little Terrors! recently returned from hiatus. Fleen congratulates creator Jon Scrivens.
• New homicidal bears-themed webcomic Bear Nuts is looking to traumatize your childhood memory of Care Bears (although perhaps not as badly as others have done). Word is that creator Alison Acton is looking to do some promotions, so budding business of webcomics types are encouraged to hit the comments and conduct an impromptu group discussion on advertising strategies and swap success stories.
• In Australia, it’s already tomorrow, which is how Twisted Musings has hit the three year/200 strips mark when it’s still clearly Tuesday. Fleen congratulates creator Jason Frazer, and continues to bitch about freakin’ time zones.
• Finally, listening to the latest Webcomics Weekly on the iPod during the commute this morning and heard the beginnings of what could be a fascinating discussion. Kris, Brad, and Dave (answering a letter in their mailbag) talked about the importance of not giving away your work “for the exposure”. That was good, here’s the potentially brilliant part — the lads decided that what they need to do is have the Econ 101 talk on how to price your work. It’s not a topic I’ve seen out in the public sphere before, and hopefully they’ll have that for us next week.

Wedding Season: getting married this week are both Jeph Jacques and Andy Bell. Not to each other, but each to a different lady. Fleen congratulates all concerned.

Anniversary Season: today marks 10 years of the Bobbins/Scary Go Round continuity on le web. Also, the return of the dreaded earwig.

Wedding Season: Rich Stevens doesn’t alter the fundamental dynamics of his cast (hmmm, time to update that chart) all that often, but when he does, he goes big. Plus, the tagline at the bottom of today’s Diesel Sweeties will likely be the funniest thing I’ll read this week.

Sneaky, sneaky. Fake Shortpacked! update to cover the real one, so that a very important question could be asked. With such planning (and sneakiness) could the answer be in doubt? Everybody feel good for David and Maggie.

• So no Onstad interview, thanks to the whole economy crashing and burning again. Wall Street is in flames, brokers have been sighted with ties around their heads forming a primitive, Lord of the Flies-style society, but I want a voice to go with the picture, dammit. Next week sometime, still on NPR.
• Speaking of cartoon cats, there’s a new maquette of Scratch Fury, Destroyer of Worlds coming from PVP. It’s made by the same people that did the Applegeeks EVE figure, which I can tell you is one hell of a nice piece of work. Production is going to be limited to those that pre-order, so you won’t be able to pick one a’ these up at the con table next year.
• Speaking of resinous cirtters, SLÜG figures now available from Chris Yates at Reprographics. Group effort this time: Yates designed and paints them, but they were sculpted and cast by Nikki I Don’t Know If She Gets An Exclamation Or Not, But She Did Marry The Dreamcrusher Rice. Some of the SLÜGs exist in editions of as many as five, some are one-offs, and there’s only 35 made at this time.
• Conventions coming up, neither of which I can make it to, dammit. Next weekend the nerd hordes descend on Baltimore, including the only East Coast appearance of all four HTMW authors (they’re gonna make me cart that damn thing to hell and breakfast to get all four signatures, aren’t they?). As an added bonus, Nexus of All Creative Comiclike Endeavours Shaenon Garrity informs us of a contest to win tickets to the Harvey Awards, to be presented at BCC. How cool is this show? The one time I attended, I wound up sitting next to Neil Gaiman. Just saying.

  The following weekend, the just as nerdy but less cosplay-inclined hordes descend on Bethesda for SPX. I’m super-bummed about not being able to go to that one, as I hear that the ever-fascinating Kate Beaton will be venturing Down South to attend along with Emily Horne of A Softer World; Kate and Emily remain at the top of my list of creators I have yet to meet in person.

• Finally, let’s break out today’s anniversary announcement, and note that Chasing the Sunset hits the big 5-0-0 today.

Okay, time to go renew my driver’s license. Pray for Mojo.

This year’s nominations have been announced, and in the Online Comic category, we find the following:

• Achewood, Chris Onstad
• Danny Dutch, David King
• Slow Wave, Jesse Reklaw
• Thingpart, Joey Sayers
• Traced, Tracy White

My question: what could top the famed gorilla suit? The awards will be given at this year’s SPX, October 4th, in Bethesda, Maryland.

• Speaking of Achewood, the previously-referenced NPR interview has been positively identified as occurring on their flagship program, Morning Edition, tomorrow. Find a station to listen on here, or listen to the streaming audio after about 10am EDT (GMT-4).
• Estradarama updates continue in yesterday’s post; Ryan himself has taken off for a well-deserved break for a few days, but has left an auto-updating runthrough of all the guest pieces on his site. The fun starts here and continues with a new strip every hour for the next almost three days. Having upped his efforts from last year, I suspect that next year will be the Estradaramest.
• Rick Marshall Will ‘n’ Holly interviews Jennie Breeden, she of the leaf blower and panties; one of these days, I’m gonna have to just cut out the middleman and get the Rickster to just run these interviews here. This is how it’s done, folks.
• Jeff Zugale made an odd discovery lately — doubling up his strip production at Just A Bit Off so he could have a buffer against a vacation, he found that doing two strips a week was no more difficult than one. So why stop when he got back? JABO will now run on Mondays in addition to Thursdays, and who knows? If he gets to three days a week, maybe he’ll find a gift from Ryan Estrada in his email next September.
• I was going to tell you about Danielle Corsetto‘s print sale to raise money for a new printer, but she’s already sold out of the special packages ($20 = 5 prints of your choice!). What this means, of course, is that now she’ll be able to offer more prints, so start looking through her back catalog and figure out what you just can live without for the upcoming Holiday giving season.

And what do I find in my Inbox? Our very first guest strip, featuring our Masthead Guy. That’s right, it’s time for another Estradarama, which today features the following comics as of press time, in no particular order:

• Wigu, Overcompensating, Scary Go Round, Anders Loves Maria, Shortpacked!
• Wapsi Square, Girly, Dresden Codak, Sketchies, Astronaut Elementary
• Skin Horse, Aslan, 8 Bit Theatre, Joe Loves Crappy Movies, PC Weenies
• Dueling Analogs, Lifemeter, Bunny, Guest Strip Project (appropriately enough), You’ll Have That
• Templar AZ, a special bonus Wonderella, Alma Mater, Dreamland Chronicles, Bellen
• Theater Hopper, and Sam and Fuzzy (bonus strip, scroll down to read), ComixTalk (blog), Real Life, Patches
• Unshelved
  Updated to add those updating after press time, or just missed the first time around; again, no particular order: Alien Loves Predator, Angry Bee With A Gun, Silent Kimbly, Butterfly
• Cow and Buffalo, Kawaii Not, Pictures for Sad Children, Project: Rooftop, Joe and Monkey
• Ihooky, Dominic Deegan, Dorkboy, Cyanide and Happiness, Count Your Sheep
• Digital Unrest, 2P Start, VG Cats (apparently, created for last year’s Estradarama, but not run until yesterday!), Todd and Penguin, Taking Up Space
• Ninja Bunny, Horribleville, Left Handed Toons
  Updated to add: all additions past this point derived from Estrada’s hourly update (see here); everything above here discovered by Fleen and its readers
  Prometheus, Chairs For All Occasions
• Hilarity Comics, Robot Comix, We The Robots, River City Mechanical, Aki’s Comics Review (from the Lunchbox Funnies main page)
• Muffin Time, Sir Reginald (no address other than Estrada’s page), Able and Baker, extra Life’s a Bluff, extra Livin’ on Poker Road
• LOLBees

Please note that some of those may shift from their present linked addresses in the future. If last year was anything to go on, those 31 39 43 46 52 60 62 65 strips (plus two blogs, plus the empty strip, plus the comic book) are a bare fraction of what will make itself known by end of business today. But then there’s the mysterious 1/100 in the signature of all the strips. Could Estrada be attempting 100 guest strips in a single day?

And if you recall Estradarama 2007, you’ll remember that Ryan Estrada used the occasion to also launch the Cartoon Commune. This year, he announces the availability of a full comic book, written with John Baird of the Create a Comic Project, Create a Comic Project Presents: Climate Change. The 34 page book is available now through Lulu for the low, low price of $6.00 (or $0.50 for a download). Oh, and he drew a strip for the CCP, too.

Okay, you know the drill — let me know what I missed in the comments, I’ll add ’em to the bullets above in groups of five, and we’ll do it all again next year. We all know I’ve missed a zillion strips, but I can’t spend all day hunting them down.

In completely unrelated news: non-Estrada shake-it-up strip at Octopie, and a good, old-fashioned bidding war for an original strip. Neat.

Updated to add: As several people have pointed out, Ryan Estrada has called the total at 70, but discovered he only had 69, so he did an extra strip of Aki Alliance to bring it up to 70, then VG Cats ran its strip from last year, so we’re going to call it 70 + a comic book as the official total. Which means that as of this writing, we’re still about 17 sightings short — get cracking, people!

Templar, book 2. Get yours if you haven’t already.

• This is not the year for Blank Label. First their server farm got hit by a car/explosion back in June, now it appears that 5/6ths of the collective are down. As of this time, it has not been confirmed that it was Hurricane Ike that put paid to their hosting, but it appears to be a reasonable assumption. As of this writing, Shlock Mercenary and Real Life are up, Melonpool, Wapsi Square, Ugly Hill and Shortpacked are down. Alternate locations for the strips include Never mind, they’re back now. All is well, and citizens are urged to go about their normal routines.
• Webcomickers getting ripped off seems to be a recurring theme these days. The jerk(s) that robbed Ursula Vernon took more than a printer, game consoles, and tools, they took Digger from me for a week and so they must be destroyed. And now comes word that Inkdick creator Pranas Naujokaitis had a brand new iMac stolen before he even got it home. A purchase or donation to either would seem to be a useful means to shine up your karma.
• To everybody that complains that David Malki ! isn’t a real cartoonist because he doesn’t draw: he’s got your art hangin’, boy. Now kindly admit you’re wrong and apologize in a meaningful way.
• Jeff Rowland’s adventures with lower extremities continue for your amusement. Here’s hoping you beat the tetanus and/or gangrene, Jeff!
• Newish blog This Week in Webcomics talks to Gordon McAlpin of Multiplex.
• From Box Brown, news of an open-source political cartooning project:
  

  Rules: Use the characters: Democrat (Donkey) and Republican (Elephant). Discuss the 2008 Election or just politics in general. Feel free to use the template. Let the bipartisan skewering begin!

And finally, a personal note. My wife was looking at Facebook “you may know this person” suggestions last night, and half of webcomics showed up there. Considering that I don’t have a Facebook account this was somewhat surprising to me, and there’s only one rational way to respond: Stay the hell away from my wife, Ryan North.