So Lore has been messing around with his drawing. First Lore needed a representation of Lore to interact with Lore Brand Lore; his first attempt looked like Charles Addams was idly sketching a young Pope Fester, but he got better.

Now Lore‘s engaged in the venerable cartoonist exercise of messing with eyes, and has tried out a variety of them from various webcomics, and you can play the game at home — match the webcomic to the eyes, and for bonus points, assign an emotional state. And remember the lesson of Meredith Gran: assymmetical eyes are 37% funnier than their matched counterparts.

In other news — and it’s nothing to do with anything — but advertisers really need to pay attention to the demographics of webcomics readers a bit better. I can’t think of an audience likelier to be hostile to the message of Ben Stein’s evolutionists = Nazis propaganda fest than the readers of Diesel Sweeties (I assuming that the readers of DS overlap quite a bit with the readers of xkcd and Dresden Codak), and yet there’s a 300 x 250 ad there on the front page. So on behalf of Mr Stevens, thanks for throwing away your money directly into his pocket.

PS: Smock.

Webcomics are represented in the following categories:

Best Publication For Teens

Best Humor Publication

Best Digital Comic

If I had to make a guess at this early stage, I’d say that Sugarshock! is a lock for the category that best matches “webcomics”, which is odd because it was a total of what? 15 pages? and the the criteria for the category read professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online. If Planet Karen got rejected for not being “long-form” (which it did), I’m not sure how Sugarshock! (which I enjoyed, but it’s essentially a one-shot) could possibly qualify. So okay — let the bitching begin!

The Eisners will be awarded at San Diego Comic-Con in July.

A major addition to the American Elf archives just hit; let’s let James Kochalka tell us all about it:

In May 2002 I started posting my daily diary comic strip online. However, the strip actually began several years earlier than that, in October 1998. The early years were collected in book form by Top Shelf, but they were never included in the online version of American Elf … until now!

The archives at American Elf now go all the way back to October 26, 1998. The early strips are black & white, and then when I began putting them online I decided to try a 2-tone color system. However, that two-tone system very quickly expanded into a full and vibrant exploration of color. I’ve tried to use it to enhance the emotional power of the work.

But the early black & white strips have a special power of their own. Both are good, powerful in their own way. Now the readers can see the full evolution of my grand diary experiment, which is really turning into my “life’s work” it seems. The first color strip appears May 12, 2002.

The reader should note that the main American Elf archives are free, but that Kochalka has a ton of subscriber-only bonus stuffs: Bonus Elfs, and stories about Fancy Froglin. Also be sure to check out tracks by James Kochalka Superstar, and Eli Kochalka’s comic blog, Monster Attack.

Lots of stuff this Monday morning. Let’s tuck right into it.

• If you’re anything like me (and I think we should all pray that you’re not), you’ve been wondering when Owen Dunne would find the time to get back into the webcomickin’ game. Well, not only has he, but he’s hit something of a motherload first day out:
  

  It’s not often you start a webcomic on a Friday, then by Sunday have 5000 visitors, but that’s what happens when Ricky Gervais mentions your new strip in his blog.

  It’s called The Pilkington Files and it’s a bit esoteric unless you know the history of Ricky and Karl Pilkington and the Guardian Podcasts and their old XFM radio show.

  I’ve gotten more response in one day with this strip than in ten years with YDK.

• Can we stop spreading the Orphan Works FUD, please? If you’re concerned about big, bad media companies ripping off little artists via a new bill making its way through Congress, please understand that said bill doesn’t exist. Small artists getting ripped off is a real enough problem without inventing fictional iterations of the problem. Definitive debunking to be found at Radio Free Meredith.
• Interesting idea out of the NCWCCCCC for creators looking for a new revenue stream at conventions: mini-prints. You can do 4 x 6 prints at a low enough price point that they can be sold at a profit in the $5 range; make them a con exclusive, and you’ve got yourself a money-spinner at that all-important entry-level price point. Details from The Otter and The Wombat (with an especially evil suggestion from The Bedfellow that you should be sure to pay attention to).
• Reminder: The first Gunnerkrigg Court book (a 300 page hardcover) is due at the end of the month from Archaia Studio Press (known for the delightful and historical Inanna’s Tears, the delightful and not-Satanic-Porn second Devils Panties book, and the delightful, opposite-of-all-ages Artesia). Talk to your local comic shop, or pre-order at Amazon. I suspect that similar tactics will work for The Devil’s Panties (looks like April is going to be a pricey month for me).
• And finally, what would Monday be without a touch of webcomics STD? Here’s hoping that you enjoy your case of Chloomydia.

Want interviews? You got ’em!

• First up, world adventurer and Boy On A Stick And Slither creator Steven “Cloud” Cloud, talking with Rick Marshall (who released a day early this week, damn his sneaky eyes). If you haven’t come up with a sponsorship for Cloud’s brush with death, now’s the time! As an official sponsor, you can ask the lads of Best Intentions Tea & Travel to perform a service; I’m still pondering what to ask of them.
• Next up, David Malki ! talks with a large angry cat about the forthcoming Beards of our Forefathers and what it’s like to crush dreams into freshly stomped dream juice (thanks to Randy Milholland for that metaphor). Fun!
• Finally, Stephen Notley of Bob The Angry Flower (paradoxically, he’s not very angry this week) notes how a likely swipe of one of his old drawings (above) got used as the logo for a burger place in Michigan, and promptly embroiled (ha, ha!) itself in a controversy over the objectification of women. Notley was micro-interviewed (quotes are like interviews, right?) in a followup story.

  Weirdly, this is not the first time I’ve seen a cartoonist’s work swiped to serve as a business logo, having personally witnessed a series of not-at-all-disguised J Scott Campbell drawings serving as the logo dress for a building in Montreal. Curiously, there was no outcry about the art objectifying women, probably because it adorned a local peeler joint.

¡Journalista! caught it: Courtesy of Nicholson Baker and The Grauniad, the Great Webcomics Purge of Aught-Six is now, itself, notable. Cue Alanis Morrisette:

In the autumn of 2006, groups of editors went around getting rid of articles on webcomic artists – some of the most original and articulate people on the net. One openly called it the “web-comic articles purge of 2006”. A victim, Trev-Mun, author of a comic called Ragnarok Wisdom, wrote: “I got the impression that they enjoyed this kind of thing as a kid enjoys kicking down others’ sandcastles.” Rob Balder, author of a webcomic called PartiallyClips, likened the organised deleters to book burners.

Most notable (ha, ha!) to my eye was that Baker didn’t bother to define webcomics, he just referenced them and moved on; I may not be a real journalist, but I do know that you don’t reference without defining unless you’re certain that your audience has a good chance of knowing what the hell you’re talking about. Interesting.

In other news, there are now more opportunities to get stuff in return for supporting your favorite cartoonists:

1. Chris Baldwin
2. Randy Milholland

Go check ’em out, and ask if maybe they could provide permalinks for their blogs in the future. Thanks.

• 1000 strips from Jorge Cham’s PhD, which is the one webcomic I can’t read because it’s too good. Grad school almost sent me into a tower with a scoped rifle, and Cham recreates all the reasons why so very well. Okay, I read it, but it leaves me deeply conflicted, and I am not looking back at my grad school days fondly, got it? I’m not.
• Unable to find her watercolors, Rënë Ëngström uses a variety of coffees for pigments. The only question I have is, why has well-known coffee addict R Stevens never done this? He doesn’t always work in pixels, you know.
• Good comments about Threat or Menace — keep them coming and I’ll try to address all concerns in the panel.
• And finally, I’ve been told by a reader that my right to call myself a “webcomics journalist” (although I believe that “hack pseudo-journo” is the closest I’ve actually come to doing so) is in question if I don’t talk about the Choose Your Own Adventure thing going on over at Ctrl-Alt-Del these days.

  Truthfully, I can’t think of another webcomic doing the CYOA thing so formally before (but that could just be my meds), although one could plausibly argue that reader-involved webcomics could be found in the now-abandoned experiment known as [Insert Title Here]. Or, heck, the last eight-plus years of explodingdog. What would make CAD’s take interesting is if Tim Buckley’s got his whole story plotted out and shows us what the overall map looked like when it’s done … but based on his description, it’s made up as he goes along.

Okay, back to sleep.

A time for Webcomics: Threat or Menace at NYCC has been set:

There’s a dizzying array of different models for delivering comics over the Web, from Webcomics, to PDFs for a fee, to ad-supported PDFs, to PDFs as promotional tool, and behind it all is the backdrop of illegal file sharing of comics. Are comics on the Web going to be a tool to increase the popularity of paper products, an alternate distribution channel that takes sales from retailers and circulation from libraries, or a threat to legitimate channels as illegal downloads grow? Hear from legacy publishers and cutting edge pioneers on this critical issue for the near future.

Two notes:

1. Although the description above lists the session on Friday, it’s actually on Saturday at 12:00 noon, in room 1E09 (it’s correct on the PDF session grid)
2. Big props to the organizers for fixing the name. Anybody that ever read Spider-Man knows that it’s “Threat or Menace”, not “Menace or Threat”.

Okay, going back to my planned lying in bed with a fever now. If I die, avenge my blood.

It should be no surprise to any regular reader of this here blog that I’m a fantastically huge Ursula Vernon fan, so it should also be no surprise that I’m telling you all to give her a hand while simultaneously obtaining a fabulous piece of art. You really don’t want to know what the tax code for freelance artists looks like, but even with pre-payments every quarter, Vernon’s getting smacked hard come the 15th. So she’s doing a limited edition print in honor of the bill she’s got to pay, and you can pick one up for just 25 smackers plus shipping. Details at Vernon’s DeviantArt page or LiveJournal.

Okay, at this point, you should just be assuming that somewhere around Friday afternoon, Rick Marshall is putting up a new webcomics interview, generally about five minutes after my Friday post goes live. This time: Nick Gurewitch on life after hiatus. Also, it looks like the good Marshall will be joining me in haunting panels at NYCC, so come see us hopefully not act like complete doofuses.

For those keeping track, it’s been at least 37 hours since Ryan Estrada had a flash of major inspiration, so we’re due. Saturday the 12th he’s declared to be 12 Hour Comic Day at the Commune. As he put it, it’s the “quick creative kick in the nuts” that you’ve been needing.

Stephanie McMillan and Ted Rall will be hosting a multimedia extravaganza (that’s Web 2.0 speak for “slide show”) of their latest editorial cartooning work — Bluesotckings Bookstore on the 14th, and Idlewild Books on the 21st (both in New York) are the locations. As an added bonus, Fleen will pay a dollar to the first attendee to get Rall to admit he’s wrong about it being impossible that a webcomicker could ever become a millionaire. C’mon, getting one of the most opinionated people in comics to change his mind? How hard could it be? I’ve got the dollar right heeeeeeere!

Finally, Greg Carter and Gina Biggs did a panel on webcomics and business at the Atlanta Comics Expo back in February, and they’ve now got a recording that you can check out. Why are you still here? Go listen.

Lots of various news items to amuse you this weekend.

• From the ever-alert Christopher Baldwin, Stumptown has prompted Mayor Tom Potter of Portland to declare Portland Comics Month:
  

  The proclamation officially recognizes both the cultural importance and creative influence of this vibrant art form on the entire city.

  To champion and support Portland Comics Month, the Stumptown Comics Foundation has catalogued a staggering number of comics-related events in the Portland metro area for the entire month of April.

• Paul Southworth’s new-style guest week wrapped up with five entirely distinct Ugly Hill entries; look for the overflows to show up in Southworth’s fan art page.
• From the Webcomics Inspiring Big Things Department: Tiny Ghosts prompts a movement for a national peace memorial:
  

  One day while Stumbling on the Internet I came across a kind of photo blog. I found it here if you would like to check it out. The blog has two photos on a webpage which on the left picture of a Washington DC monument says “All the monuments they built were dedicated to war.” On the right on the 2nd photo of a peace sign spray painted on the side of an ordinary concrete wall it says “We had to make the monuments to peace ourselves.”

• After a few fits, starts, and attempts, Alien Loves Predator has returned to its weekly ways.
• And over at Unshelved, a question: is it product placement? Has the boundary between comic and commerce been breached? Bill Barnes responds to the controversy by explaining that it’s not an ethical violation here, then promises to be more careful about giving that impression here.

  To my eye, there wasn’t any kind of ethical lapse that went on, but kudos to Barnes & Ambaum for taking the criticism as a genuine expression of concern from faithful fans and not as an attack. It may not have been necessary, but it’s the sort of action that says the Unshelved lads know who they’re serving, and they’re willing to go out of their way to do it right. Good customer service never goes out of style.