Let’s hope that settles that. In other delayed-by-slow-ass-network happenings:

• Looking for a completely unique gift for a loved one? Want to star in a comic strip of your own? Chris Baldwin has you covered: the solicitation has gone out for stories of how your day went, to be made into a comic. You supply $100 and a script with four scenes from the day; Baldwin changes the names (to protect the innocent) and sends you the original artwork. Your day may show up in print in future, which has the potential to be a really damn interesting collection.
• If you aren’t reading Anders Loves Maria, why the hell aren’t you? This strip has been hitting on all cylinders pretty much since day one, and lately, Rene Engström’s work has been so good that it hurts to realize that I will never create anything this compulsively readable.
• Con Watch! Greg Carter wants you to know the deal with Otakon and webcomickers:
  

  Otakon next weekend has filled up the first two Artists Alley table sections with webcomickers. It’s not officially “Webcomic Island”, but it has all the appearances of one. Here’s the interactive AA map if mouse over a table, you can see who it belongs to. Check out pods A & B when you first enter the AA.

  Kudos to Otakon for the clustering of webcomics, and that interactive map is pretty cool.

• Finally, check out PC Magazine’s online edition, which has a new feature on the 10 Best Unsung Webcomics. Although I’m not sure why they call these unsung, since we’ve sung about most of ’em pretty repeatedly.

Sitting on a signal from two hotels over, so this is gonna be fast.

• Strip within a strip alert: Over at Ugly Hill, semi-frustrated artist Peter’s webcomic “SasqWatch 2813” (about chupacabras and sasquatches in a post-apocalyptic world) is running. This comic-within-a-comic model spawned an actual webcomic once, when MegaGAMERZ sprung fully-formed from the pages of Goats like unto Athena from the forehead of Zeus. Squid Bats ahoy!
• Emergency McCloud sighting: you’ve already missed yesterday’s talk at The Learning Annex, but you can catch the talk & signing at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble, and tomorrow’s talk at the Brooklyn Central Library. Both events are at 7pm.
• Launching today: F Chords by webcomickin’ machine Kris Straub (seriously, if James Brown weren’t dead, he’d be seriously challenged by Straub for Hardest Working Man Alive). Anyway, because Straub is a class operation, there’s already a small archive built up to the story of session musicians doing commercial jingles. I can think of no situation that affords more opportunities to mine humor from existential despair.
• Finally, mark your calendars for the latest Dave Kellett book launch party: you can get sketches, free booze, and bask in the glow of superhappyfuntime on Sunday at 7pm in Beverly Hills. Enjoy a book totally about the most malfunction-prone dog in America. If anybody wants to split gas with me, we can go see if Dave brings his own little weirdo to the event.

I’m in a city I don’t really like (Las Vagrus, Nevadruh), sleeping like crap, presenting at a conference that takes up a lot of my time (almost all), with wireless thoughtfully provided by the hotel/conference center at the low, low price of 500 American Dollars. This is gonna be quick, and if something’s going on in webcomicry that I don’t mention, it’s ’cause I didn’t see it. Now let’s all just lay our heads down and be quiet and before you know it we’ll be back to normal.

From McKenzee in the comments last Friday:

Perhaps you missed Miss Otter’s announcement that I will be gracing A Girl & her Fed with a guest story featuring full color art be ME and B&W art from Otter, Digger, The Dada Detective, and Feral Chicken (Joe Komenda), my NCWCCC compatriots. Drunken Greco-Australian creation myth goodness!

Leaving aside the fact that “Miss Otter” makes her sound like Philippe‘s mom, I had actually been planning to run that announcement today, because who doesn’t love Greco-Strine creation myths? Also, I understand that wombats generally think poorly of the their co-marsupialists the koalas, so that’s got the potential for fun (and violence … yay, violence).

In other news Girl Wonder is looking for contributors on an ongoing basis:

Girl-Wonder.org, as part of its mission to support and encourage women in the comics industry, permanently opens submissions to webcomic artists.

We’re looking for webcomics created by women or teams that include women, and we offer space, tech and publicity support, and a sub-forum devoted to your work on our thriving forums.

There are absolutely no restrictions on the genre, setting or sexual content of your work — we’ve hosted/are hosting Regency-style spy romance, slice-of-life autobiography, Wild West adventures and
fairy-tale fantasy wordless comics. Your comic can be an on-going tale, or a complete story, and work previously published in other venues (in part or in whole) is welcome, providing you possess the rights to re-distribute it.

Your work need not explicitly promote feminist ideology. However, we envisage that it won’t be explicitly anti-feminist or otherwise contrary to Girl-Wonder.org’s aims.

If this sounds like something you (or your team) might be interested in, please email Karen Healey, who keeps a mail account with the free service provided by Google.

Okay, so everybody who’s not Dave Sim, get to work and send in your proposals.

Once, sitting around with various Dumbrellites, I revealed that my dream was for them to be so successful that some day, they could obtain an island booth in San Diego, roll out Astro-Turf®, erect a white picket fence around the perimeter, and spend five days in rocking chairs yelling You kids stay the hell off my lawn.

Starting today, a small part of that dream is coming true. Yeppers, it’s Connecticon kickin’ off today, with more webcomickers than you can shake a stick at, including Jeff Rowland and Aaron Diaz lounging on lawn furniture at the Topatoco booth. Coming less than a week after San Diego isn’t the best timing for a con, but they sure do like webcomics (even if they did leave Brooke Spangler off their list).

For future reference, I would also accept webcomickers lounging around a car on blocks. That would be awesome.

It’s Guest Strip Season:

• Paul Taylor’s running this year’s Waspi Square Guest Week a mite early, taking some well-deserved family time the week of 11 August. Not to worry, he’s got plenty of talent lined up to keep you amused.
• Similarly, the end-of-story Dr McGuestravaganza kicks off today at Dr McNinja.
• And over at The Guest Strip Project, it’s the August Donateathon — 31 days, 31 guest strips. Who says there’s no holidays in August?

Fast stuff to fill out the week:

• Shaenon Garrity‘s writing a book on CLAMP!
• Alien Loves Predator, going the way of all cool New York neighborhoods, to be demolished to make way for Starbucks and cookie boutiques!
• Xaviar Xerexes handing out beta codes to the new version of Buzzcomix.net; email him if you want in on the beta!
• And via David Malki !‘s sharp eyes (and how ’bout that color in Wondermark today, huh?), news that Garfield Minus Garfield is getting a book deal, with the approval and cooperation of Jim Davis.

  Now let’s see if the Garfield Randomizer, Silent Garfield, or Malki !’s own Comic Strip Doctor essays on Garfield get similar attention in future instead of the syndicate C&Ds they got in the past.

Finally, I was gonna write about how Ted Rall has gone all cranky-pants again about this newfangled In-tar-net thingy, but I decided not to. I’ve become convinced that he’s purposefully stirring up controversy to drive traffic to his (oh, irony!) website. Cynical of me, no? So no more Rall until he does more than repeat the same let’s-turn-back-time arguments he’s been making about “online” and “free” since forever.

In our hands, by various nefarious means, is this insider’s view of life on the convention floor. Fleen hopes that future historians find it useful.

The account was signed =j=. Fleen thanks this anonymous witness to the carnage, and wants “j” to know that whatever fate may have befallen him or her, posterity will remember the sacrifice of all who braved maelstrom.

In other news, unstoppable reportage machine Rick Marshall has a series of photo collections up at ComicMix, along with his full writeup, and the latest webcomicker interview, with the aforementioned Toronto Man-Mountain. Enjoy!

____________________
¹ The account contained the following footnote:

If you didn’t make it to the Dumbrella session at SDCC, it’s on YouTube. If you don’t have time for the full hour, check out part 6 (featuring Scott McCloud’s question about The Magic Number, and the discussion of how the webcomic model can apply to politics) and part 7 (featuring mad rhymes and webcomicker dance moves).

In other news, webcomic raises the dead:

Last week, Edward Gorey contributed a guest strip to my webcomic, Herman the Manatee. The week before it was George Herriman! Herman has only been around for six months but it’s already attracting the attention of legendary, albeit deceased, cartoonists.

We at Fleen are glad to see Gorey and Herriman getting work again.

In other, other news, new webstrip The System is doing some interesting stuff with a highly restricted visual vocabulary — it’s done entirely in the icons that make up informational/warning signs. As a platform for pure writing, it’s half a notch below Dinosaur Comics, but weirdly enough what it really reminds me of is a Lolcat.

Those things have a syntax and grammar all their own, and so do sign icons … you can’t just slap ’em up there and have it automatically work. We at Fleen will be keeping our eye on The System and seeing how long creator “Rosscott” can keep up this very precise exercise.

But check this out — Comic-Con 2009 will be 22 (preview night) to 26 July, which gives you just under a year to put together those Hipster Batman costumes. Hop to it, people! In the meantime, enjoy the con report and photos from Wes Molebash’s all-new You’ll Have That site.

One thing starts, another stops: webcomic graphic novel La Muse wrapped up yesterday, even as Ces Marciuliano revived Medium Large. One of you, find me a link to where Marciuliano drew the “Many Expressions of Sally Forth”.

Finally, we hope to run our mini-interview with Kansas state legislature candidate Sean Tevis soon; in the meantime, refresh yourself on his exploits in today’s Wall Street Journal (and thanks to Brett Porter for the link).

By all webcomicky accounts it was the best SDCC ever (how could it be otherwise, when Starfleet commanders make the best cabaret entertainers in known space?), and we at Fleen were unable to get much in the way of floor reports due to the fact that everybody at the Nerd Prom was having too much fun to notice the outside world existed. <shakes fist>Next year, Comic-Con!</shakes fist>

• Report #1: Lore Sjöberg talks to R Stevens for Wired.
• Report #2: Wil Wheaton gets video-interviewed on the indy publishing aesthetic.

Not from San Diego:

• Tangentially associated with webcomics — The AV Club looks at autobio comics (including American Elf) for examples of creators portraying themselves in unflattering ways. Interesting stuff, even if much of it is literally masturbatory.
• Arrived in the mail: Ahoy Hoy, with my very own hand-drawn postcard (#276 in a series of 400) of Melanie (who coincidentally enough, appears in today’s installment of hi-jinks and japery). John Allison’s autograph appears directly under the words “Address to be written on this side”, leading me to wonder if anybody would actually afix postage and send it back. I sure ain’t gonna.

  Allison is rather down on the storyline that makes up two-thirds of the book (Happy End Of The World, Super Crisis Quests parts 1 & 2), but any book that includes the five-part The Captain Beefheart Story is worth its weight in gold. Or at least £10 plus S+H.

For all the hassles of commuting into the big, bad city for work, there are some things that will just make your day start off right. The heat and humidity broke yesterday, it’s perfect summer weather, the train was almost empty, and just below the windows of my building is Bryant Park. In the summer, Good Morning America hosts a series of mini-concerts, which normally means that the immediate vicinity is overrun with a crowd of people there to see pop tartlets (the Hillary Duff show two years back must’ve attracted 5000 tween girls and 200 creepy middle aged guys).

But today a small, very polite crowd sang along with Feist. And if that don’t get you hummin’ as you walk past the park into work, pretty much nothing will. Let’s see how long it lasts.

• Sighted on the con floor in San Diego — Meredith Gran’s Octobook 2. Rumors abound of a Super Stupor book, which would include the greatest boots-to-the-head that the cape genre ever got. Someday, I will own those originals. Oh yes, I will.
• Following up on the evolving Wowio/Platinum story, we at Fleen received word from a current Wowio client who wishes to remain anonymous at this time ([s]he awaits one final payout under the current contract and doesn’t wish to jeopardize it):
  

  I have a whole lot of anecdotal evidence that says creators are not happy with the new Wowio deal.

  Other than DJ Coffman, I know of several publishers, including myself, that are displeased with the new deal and are saying “no dice”. Several others have yet to decide, but aren’t happy. One guy I know faxed his in right away because he had to. Another guy I know is taking a chance and sticking with them, but he’s lost a bunch of his subcontracts.

  I hear that San Diego will produce PDF-related announcements that will be very favorable to Wowio expatriates.

Intriguing. Once again, if you’ve had dealings with Wowio and have feelings about the new contract, we at Fleen wish to hear from you.

Let’s tuck in, shall we?

• Latin Heartthrob Aaron Diaz was injured in a bicycle crash; reports indicate his nasty facial gash, a busted webcomic-containing computer, and two bitched-up drawing hands. Dresden Codak will be on hold until he has a chance to heal or install robotic replacements, whichever is cooler. Those wishing a bilingual account of the accident need only look here; dry textual version on the main DC page.
• DJ Coffman doesn’t like the new Wowio contracts (thanks to The Irresponsible Captain Tylor‘s More Responsible Brother for the heads-up). Open call to anybody who’s been asked to sign off on the new provisions, which seem to me to be full of weasel words (but having not seen the original Wowio contracts, I couldn’t say if this is a new development or not).
• Mini book corner: premiering in San Diego (but picked up at my FLCS): Girl Genius: Agatha Heterodyne and the Voice of the Castle, and Flight 5. Thirty-second reviews of both: Kazu‘s story in F5 is my favorite so far — it’s both shorter and less melancholy than his contributions in the last few iterations. GG:AHATVOTC stands alone better than the previous volume (which was a bit in media res) and has plenty of Jägermonsters (but no Jaeger–monster).
• Kris Straub has another new webcomic project on deck. We’ll have to wait until after SDCC to find out if F Chords really does star Straub MC Frontalot (as one might assume from the teaser image).
• Finally, it was announced earlier today that Applegeeks is the latest webcomics property to do book(s) through Dark Horse — release date for Volume 1 (184 pages!) is listed as June 2009, so look for Hawk & Ananth to be touring in support on next year’s con circuit.