Dear Mayor and Police of Boston,

Randy Milholland would like you to not be “a pack of sobbing pussies“, and also for the Mayor to not sound so much like Muttley. Thank you.

A Concerned Citizen,
The Fleenplex

PS: Never forget!

Dear People In Charge Of The Eisner Nominations,

I’m glad to see that this year’s criteria for “Best Webcomic” explicitly specifies “professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online”, which should hopefully eliminate offerings that update like six pages in a year (read down, you’ll find it).

Please give every due consideration to Ursula Vernon’s Digger because nominations means that she throws open her archives to non-subscribers, and I really want people to see how ridculously awesome her work is.

In fact, I’m going to call on Vernon, The Swedish Gabe-Lover, and The Real-Life Perky Goth to all send their URLs to jackiee (Estrada, that is), who has an account at Mindspring (dot-com, that is). Trust me, you’re producing Eisner-grade material. Include Minus and Girl Genius from last year’s list (sadly, the “long-form” requirement would seem to disqualify Phables this year), and you’ve got an unassailably strong slate of nominees.

Thank you,

Gary Tyrrell,
Editor, Fleen

Dear Readers of Goats Who Wonder About This Alfred Guy,

Yes, he really is that awesome. Twins, send your dating resumes to the Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego. He’ll get ’em.

Gary

So I thought that yesterday’s Sheldon was just an innocent lark, a minor mindgame on the part of Arthur. Then Jon Rosenberg went and ruined it all for me with his wicked reimagining. Which leads us to today, and it seems like Dave Kellett has upped the malevolence level a little in response. Thanks a lot guys — there’s one more thing I can never enjoy again.

In altogether more wholesome news, let’s see what’s up south of the border. John Campbell writes:

hi gary!

i thought you might be interested to KNOW: hourly comic day 2008 is this friday, when a bunch of people all make a journal comic every hour and then post them on the hourly comic forum. the current year’s will go here, and you can see past years here. the page that kind of explains it is here. it is a neat way to see how different people spend their day, and it makes me feel better about spending a goddam month doing it. ALSO a couple other people have kept up with me this year, making full months of hourly comics of their own. these people include: ryan peq, max key, and joel bradbury. okay that is all!

Wait, convincing others to join him in his descent into madness? Less wholesome than I initially thought.

Found a link at ¡Journalista! that may potentially be of interest to webcomickers trying to make a professional “go” of things: Hervé St-Louis looks at self-publishers in the comic game, and is of the opinion that they don’t have good business skills, and should leave business to those who know what they’re doing.

There may be parts of St-Louis’s thesis that are unique to non-web publishing, but we at Fleen are pretty firmly convinced that comics self-publishers and webcomickers are pretty much in the same niche, and we’re aware of a number of webcomickers that handle business pretty well. In fairness, St-Louis isn’t done (his article continues next week), so for now we’ll recommend it as an opportunity for webcomickers to carefully reflect on their business skillsets, and to honestly evaluate where they fall on the I can do this myself to I need help spectrum. Aduz can’t come soon enough.

In other news, mckenzee writes to inform us that many of the group of webcomickers to be found at What The Hell Con are North Carolina locals, and they’ve been meeting over robot juice on a regular basis for a while now. And when webcomickers get together, one thing is sure to result: lots of cool art (although there is a high probability that much of it will viciously attack the good character of the Brad Guigar).

ANYway, this impromptu group, the North Carolina Web Comics Coffee Clatch, have released their first anthology, now available at an internet near you thanks to Lulu (also of North Carolina). Rumor has it the book contains the efforts of both mustelids and vombatiformes so you know it’s gonna be good.

Quick, what else should go in the Declaration 2.0?

Hosting troubles are not enough to deter Meredith Gran. The transition of Smiling Innocent Lil’ Eve turning into Smiling Malevolent Lil’ Eve in today’s Octopus Pie only hints at the awesome waiting in the rest of the strip.

New Dresden Codak! With the False Climax of the Hob storyline out of the way, I feel some awesome fight scenes coming on.

The WCCAs have finished the open nominations for this year’s awards, and will be announcing the finalists on Friday. With any luck, that means that Karen’s pessimism will be misplaced.

There’s been a lengthy rundown of Marjane Satrapi profiles/interviews at ¡Journalista! … but how many of them have been in comics form? Mike “Culture Pulp” Russell leads the way.

In other news:

• Speaking of movies, wasn’t this an Achewood story last year? I bet in the movie there are no dudes that end up hella stabbed.

• Harknell and Onezumi are coordinating webcomics at Katsucon in three weeks, and will be conducting the extravaganza known as Epic Webcomic Win. Free stuff from more than a dozen webcomic guests! Entry form will be available at any webcomic guest table, with full details on the contest page.

• Missed it earlier this week: new Dr McNinja book announced; look for availability in about a month. Rumor has it the promised truly superior extra content will include free hugs from guest stars¹.
• Hey kids, remember Uncle Ghastly? Sure you do! His life hit a series of rough patches and the long-running Ghastly’s Ghastly Comic (often NSFW, in case you forgot) fell by the wayside. But he’s doing better these days, and has a new, Northesque journal comic to share with you. I’ve always believed that Uncle Ghastly was actually The Living Slackmaster, so be on the lookout for esoteric SubGenius wisdom as you follow his blogariffic adventures.

________________
¹ Not really.

But it looks like you get a double-shot of Anders Loves Maria today, which is odd because I’m quite angry at Rene Engström.

Wait, that’s a terrible topic sentence. Let’s back up to the beginning. I’ve been following Anders Love Maria ever since this gorgeous guest strip ran when Paul Southworth was slackin’ off (something about spawning, I dunno). Combine art that beautiful, that many webcomics cameos, and make fun of a Disney flick, and I am officially intrigued — but there was no URL associated with the strip.

So a name search led me to a blog, which deepened my intrigue; after all, we are talking about a woman who shares her most shameful perversions in comic form. And I still wasn’t to the webcomic.

And the webcomic is why I don’t think I like Rene Engström. It’s a romantic non-comedy, about Anders (photographer, in love with the idea of being in love, with a tabloid-fodder famous mom) and his girlfriend Maria (younger, less focused, in love with Anders but still able to get pissed at him when he’s an asshole). They have a comfortable relationship together when Anders drops a bombshell: he thinks they should have a baby. Maria recoils, an old girlfriend comes into the picture, Anders feels the tug of temptation, and Maria gets pregnant inadvertantly. It’s messy, they’re confused, but love wins out in the end. Fade to credits.

Yeah, that’s Hollywood’s version of romance; this is Sweden — we’ve only covered two days of story, and life hasn’t begun to get complicated yet. A brush with the law sends the couple to the far north, to Maria’s family, who treat Anders poorly (’cause let’s face it, he’s a pussy). Old crushes and old enemies enter, all concerned make bad decisions, and we’re reminded that nobody can hurt us as much as somebody you know loves you — but doesn’t like you very much right now.

And that’s where we are, on the cusp of 100 strips (my usual threshold for a review, but it appears that Anne has forced my hand; I shake my fist at her, thus!), with a pair of protagonists that I feel emotionally drained by. They act so utterly, confusingly, exasperatingly real, that I want to comfort them, scream at them, advise them, and kick their asses. Engström has put me through this wringer, leaving me enraged and empathetic towards her creations at the same time. The last time a character left me this deeply conflicted, he wore a red ski cap and a Speedo (for the record, that’s a very good thing to remind me of); seriously, I halfway believe that Rene Engström is really just a front for Wes Anderson. There is a precedent, after all.

One last thought — I’d emailed Engström earlier in the week that I was possibly going to hold this review to sometime past strip #100; I was waiting for a point of resolution in the story to say, Okay, here’s a good break, jump in. She pointed out that I might be waiting for a while if I was waiting for these latest emotional wounds to close — they aren’t even fully open yet.

And that right there is why I adore this strip — just like real life, there are no clear intervals in the story, there is no upswell of music at the end of the reel, there never will be a neat resolution where everybody gets to go Awwwww. There’s just more life and the choices we make, and I guess I really do like Rene Engström after all. Read Anders Loves Maria, and you’ll like her, too.

When I started my trawl this morning it looked like a light day. Then lots of stuff popped up.

• Round numbers! Octopie #100 just went live, with extra backstory goodness Everybody dance!
• Fluffmodeus?
• Promoted from the comments thread so it’s more widely seen: McKenzee points out that the same weekend as Atlanta Comics Expo, Guildford College in Greensboro, North Carolina will be hosting the totally free What The Hell Con, which will feature a whole passel o’ webcomickers, including the omnipresent Jennie Breeden, the squidalicious Leah Riley, the recently re-networked Christopher B Wright, and many more. If I remember my con schedule, WTHCon is the one where Jennie Breeden abuses college boys at the geek auction (instead of abusing kilt-wearing boys with a leaf blower). Rumor has it that a webcomickin’ lady friendly with Mustelidae lives in the area, so keep your eyes open.
• Touché, Mr Malki !, touché! And I am pleased to note that the movie also did not suck; it’s a magical day of my dreams coming true. Note to self: making last-minute suggestions to certain creators works. I resolve to only use this power for awesome.

Today brings word of a new convention of interest to webcomics afficionados, courtesy of Greg Carter:

Brought to you by the fine organizers of Dragon*Con, Atlanta Comics Expo is the south’s newest celebration of comics, illustration, gaming, costumes and Asian Pop Culture.

Come out February 8 — 10 and meet some of your favorite artists and writers including webcomic creators Gina Biggs (Red String) and Greg Carter (Abandon).

In other news:

• Six years of diseased imaginings delightful comics were celebrated by Andrew Bell (aka The Worst Most Awesomest Person In The World) yesterday. Webcomics as a whole took the opportunity to pray that before year seven is done, the correct cocktail of antipsychotics will rid us all of this menace Bell will achieve the massive financial success that he is clearly due.
• It’s been a long week, but in just a few hours, David Malki ! will release his latest (not quite) feature length film, Expendable. You know what I’m looking forward to, even more that the Justin Pierce DVD/poster artwork and the Straubulent soundtrack? The production company card.

  I mean, everybody of a certain age remembers this, right? Those few seconds meant that something seriously way cool was about to happen on your TV. Well, I want the credit that reads Wondermark Enterprises to wow the adult me in the same way that A CBS Special Presentation wowed the kid me in his footy pajamas.

  Oh, and for the movie to not suck. That’d be a bonus. But mostly the credits thing.

Let’s get started, shall we?

• J Baird (you remember him from the Create a Comic Project here, here, and here) wrote to us in search of artists:
  

  I’m working on putting together a simple teaching guide concerning kids and comics. It won’t be anything on McCloud‘s level, but it’ll give some nice tips on how to simplify certain aspects of comics that may prove useful to potential volunteers. Like Rousse-Deane‘s The Kid’s Book Project, the guide is not for profit.

  More details of what Baird’s looking for over at ComixTalk.

• Also at ComixTalk, it’s gang interview time with the lads of Blank Label.
• Redesigns ho! Starslip Crisis (now with new, shorter URL and a spoiler-laden but concise new reader’s guide) and Las Bragas del Diablo are sporting new looks this morning. In addition to the new look, Starslip creator Kris Straub has a blogposting that nicely illustrates the fact that challenges inherent to achieving the status of professional webcomicker aren’t necessarily the same as the challenges to staying there. Compelling stuff; would-be pros, ignore at your peril.
• Advice for the budding webcartoonist from the woman who causes me to live in terror and who also wrote this nippleriffic little ditty. >sigh< Is it too much to ask that I be able to go a month without fear of being murdered?

Hopefully back to normal data access next week; in the meantime, I found something interesting at Occasional Superheroine: marketing yourself and your comics.

Valerie D’Orazio writes extensively on dead-tree comics and on the surface that’s the intended audience of this piece, but she’s really talking to anybody that’s creating comicslike art independently (which is as neat a definition of the webcomics-as-job crowd that I can come up with). What should be of special interest to any independent [web]comicker are items 3, 6, 7. To wit:

3. You Are Selling YOU

It is important that you have another non-comics stream of income either coming in or immediately waiting in the wings … if you seem desperate, if that next [project] is going to be the difference between you paying your phone bill or having to use smoke signals, people are going to pick up on it.

Do a quick check on your overall image. [Y]ou should be able to present yourself well. You should be able to be interviewed well. You should speak clearly. And you should be positive about yourself and your accomplishments.

6. Network Network Network

If you want to build or increase your network base, be “cool” about it. Don’t seem like an opportunist. Opportunists are talked about behind their back and called Opportunists. You avoid this by relating to the people you wish to network with as human beings and not Editor #5 or Big-Time Writer. Be natural.

Remember the old adage, “the people you see on the way up are the people you’ll see on the way down.” Say you’re moving up the ladder and you decide to treat Assistant Editor Y like crap. Assistant Y could be the guy in charge of hiring your ass one day. He or she could be in charge of the whole editorial department, even the president of a company. This happens more times than you think. And now Assistant Editor Y, who you dissed eight years ago, tells everyone: “don’t work with X.” And you’re X! Don’t be X. Don’t even be W.

7. Reach Outside The Comic Book World

The success of comics like Perry Bible Fellowship and Y The Last Man have largely come from outside the standard comic book community. There is a whole untapped market of potential readers out there. Find other on-comic niches that might cotton to your comic and reach out to them.

Go read the whole piece — it’s brief, full of terrific ideas, and should give you plenty to chew on.