Disclaimer: In addition to rocking today’s New York Daily News, Meredith Gran designed the Fleen masthead.

Okay, now this is clever — with his ad manager in the midst of a move and space for a tall banner on his front page, Randy Milholland has been expanding his Something Positive story depth by going back yet another generation. So that’s mainline S*P in the modern day, Midnight Macabre in the time of their parents, and now the grandparents get their say (along with the original Davan) in 1937.

And this isn’t just a case of do it in black and white and it’s automatically old-timey; Milholland’s set dressing, costumes, and overall tone all do a great job of conveying the rural south in the days of the Great Depression. It’s great stuff, even if the vertical layout makes it entirely unsuitable for top-of-blogpost honors.

Following up an earlier story, Chris MacNeil reported an encouraging upsurge in readership after our mention of Rooby Moon last week. So encouraging, in fact, that he’s decided to go weekly with his full-page artwork. Let’s repeat the important bits there so you don’t miss ’em:

• Gorgeous full-page art
• Weekly

Won’t you repay his kindness by becoming a regular reader?

Speaking of gorgeous full-page art (alas, one-shot): Gene Ha indulges his love for Scary Go Round. There is so much right with that image that I don’t know where to start.

And finally — your friend and mine, Scott McCloud, continues to pile up the awards for Making Comics; this time, it’s the Quills Award, which is a collaboration between NBC and Reed Business Information (publisher of Variety, Publishers Weekly, about 80 other magazines, and through their Reed Exhibitions arm, producers of New York Comic Con and BookExpo America).

Anyway, it’s described as an industry-qualified “consumers choice” awards program, which I think means that actual book industry types decide the categories and nominees, and we all vote on it. Making Comics won in the category of Graphic Novel (scroll down here to see the competition), and is now eligible for Book of the Year, which you can help him achieve by voting here.

Xaviar Xerexes at Comixpedia ComixTalk has, as was previously planned, shifted management of the comics encyclopedia known as Comixpedia to Josh Roberts of OnlineComics.net and ComicSpace.com. To avoid confusion, the X-Man’s discussion site is now going by its new name.

Round numbers: Unshelved #2000 is available for your viewing pleasure. Let the hurrahs commence!

Dammit, Jennie, cease being an idea factory (although this one is brilliant — Devil’s Panties-brand hand sanitizer for con season).

Recently found: Krishna Sadasivam‘s semi-journal comic, Uncubed. He brings you through the troubles and travails of his first 35 years pretty quickly, from simple things like his name (having grown up in the early center of Indian migration to the US and having lots of New Jersey-born classmates from kindergarten on named Sunit, Posha, and Devendra, I feel K-Dog’s frustration), to the more recent events like spawning yet another webcomic kid in 2007 … seriously, people it’s been done. Don’t make me declare a moratorium. Although stylistically, I really dig the Darwyn Cooke-esque character model Krishna’s using for his wife; they say that pregnant women glow and it really comes through here.

And finally: Free Achewood tats in Portland for the month of September! So after you drop by Stumptown, you still have time to get the trip immortalized with an image of Emeril someplace embarassing.

Dave Kellett is apparently threatening promising a new direction for Sheldon: all-Disraeli, all the time. I, for one, welcome our new 19th Century Prime Minister. Wooe!

So Agnes is like Peanuts, and Prickly City is like Calvin and Hobbes in this guy’s Weltanschauung, but Diesel Sweeties is crap? Oooo-kay.

Let’s cleanse our paletes after that unpleasantness, shall we? Chris MacNeil wrote to tell me about his more than 10-years-in-the-making strip, Rooby Moon, which has been archive-ported to the internet, and has new strips being drawn. Check out the newest strip (#134, for those of you playing at home): it’s gloriously full-page, like Krazy Kat mixed with Little Nemo.

Actually, the full page strips are a new thing for MacNeil, but I’m really loving all those panels. It’s like Rudolph Dirks-era Katzenjammer Kids (avoid the modern version as if your sanity depends on it). Anyway, MacNeil is creating these strips the size of a full newspaper broadsheet — pen and ink on 19″ x 24″ Bristol board! — before photographing and coloring digitally.

If the revolution ever occurs and we ditch the teeny-weeny EyeStrain-O-Vision™ that plagues modern newspaper comics, I want Rooby Moon in my paper. The only downside is that size means that Rooby Moon updates only sporadically; if you visit MacNeil’s site and encourage him (maybe pick up a copy of his regular-size strips), maybe we’ll get it more frequently.

Quick things:

• Mailed by several people: yes, yes, I get it — moustaches.
• Also via several people (but credit Lem as first, most appreciating the importance, and having an awesome comic): Amazon has decided to take on Lulu in a no-holds-barred stab at print-on-demand supremacy. It could give webcomics creators access to Amazon’s store, but it’ll cost you. I haven’t had time to go through the terms and conditions with a fine-tooth comb, so right now let’s just call this there’s a new player in the game and we’ll figure out the implications as we go along.
• Wizard. Brian Warmoth. Kit Roebuck of Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life. Interview.
• See, it’s Gravity’s Rainbow, and it’s gonna fall on his head, so it’s all about gravity! Shut up, I thought it was hilarious.

Slow news days, so time for the mailbag and linky goodness. Please enjoy.

• As noted elsewhere, the MoCCA website has been updated to include more details of the forthcoming webomics exhibit (including a more comprehensive list of show participants). God willin’ and the creek don’t rise, Fleen will be reporting from the gala opening next Thursday.
• For those of you following the Machine of Death project (first reported here, updated here), dream-crushers Bennardo, North, and Malki ! wish you to know:
  

  Due to our strict anti-spam policy, you will not get any future emails from us unless you specifically opt-in to our dedicated mailing list. You can either sign up for the new list right this second (which we highly encourage!) or subscribe to our RSS feed. Both will get you the latest machineofdeath.net updates sent to you automatically.

  Unless you subscribe to the mailing list or the feed, you will not receive any further notifications and updates from us. So please do! Because we’d hate for the book to come out and you to forget to check the site and miss it.

• In answer to the question that shows up regularly in our mailbox, “How do I get my new webcomic noticed?”, let me point you to a clever means to do so:
  

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
  CONTACT: Evan Nichols
  Email: pr-minion@AskDrEldritch.com

  WEBCOMIC ARTIST POSTS 300TH COMIC WITHOUT EVER BEING INTERVIEWED

  PORTLAND, ORE. – September 3, 2007. Portland photo-comic artist Evan Nichols has posted 300 episodes of Ask Dr. Eldritch without ever being interviewed about his work. Despite launching the comic on Labor Day weekend in 2005, its creator has yet to answer questions from a reporter, blogger or webcomics commentator. “When I started, I asked myself if the world needed yet another webcomic about an ex-vampire-killer turned advice columnist who lives in a spooky Pacific Northwest mansion with a troll in the basement, and the answer was a resounding ‘Yes,’� Nichols could have told a journalist, if he’d been asked.

  This streak was almost broken in May of 2006, when the commentary site Fleen.com mentioned “Ask Dr. Eldritch.� “My webcomic is a spin-off from my weekly humorous advice column of the same name, which addresses the problems faced by evil villains, superheroes, mythical creatures and ordinary people stuck in extraordinary circumstances,� Nichols might have replied to an inquiry, but none happened at the time.

  Additional details, such as the comic’s 100% on-time posting record, consistent #1 ranking on PhotoWebComics.com and presentation of an award in the 2007 Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards, have also gone completely unexplored.

  # # #

  If you’d like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Evan Nichols, please email to pr-minion@AskDrEldritch.com.

  That’s the trifecta right there: originality, some snark, and a properly-formatted press release all in one, which caught my attention and made me want to learn more. Unfortunately, lightning never strikes twice so you don’t bother trying this trick yourself … you’ll have to come up with your own means of fostering attention. Look for Fleen’s in-depth interview with Evan Nichols no later than December, 2012.

• All kinds of wrong (today’s Digger; permanent link requires Graphic Smash subscription).
• And finally, what happens when you combine joblessness, a habit of reading Wigu, a rock band, and fumetti set to music (warning: sound)? The Boneless Children Foundation, a multi-media extravaganza courtesy of David Sophia. In practice, it works exactly as I described it, so if those ideas appeal to you, give ‘er a look/listen.

In case you hadn’t noticed, David Willis is counting down to the 10 year mark of Roomies!-slash-It’s Walky!-slash-Joyce and Walky!-slash-Shortpacked!. The big day will be, oh, in a week or so; drop some congrats to a guy who uses more exclamations than that Wondermark guy.

Okay, it’s not Satanic porn, just the Black & Decker kind: leafblower + kilts.

DC Comics publisher/president Paul Levitz in a multipart interview from late July in San Diego; this is the part about online comics.

While we’re waiting for the Zudacontracts to show, here’s the key argument in favor of it from the guy who’s ultimately responsible for its success or failure:

At the end of the day, what you’re supposed to do as a publisher is create an opportunity for creative people to reach an audience and make a living in the process, and to earn your pay doing that by how you physically create the product for people, how you market the product, distribute it, connect it. Webcomics enable some people to bypass that all, and do it all themselves because they want to do it themselves and that’s a wonderful thing, but it’s also a hard thing.

Translation: “Webcomics hard.”

Analysis: Duh. Any creative endeavour that produces something worthwhile is hard; if a creator cares to put less than 100% into achieving a vision, I’m probably less than 100% interested in whatever gets produced. Please note that I’m not saying Only individual expressions of art are valid and if you lack the talent to handle the business and marketing ends of your art and you live a miserably poor life as a result, too bad.

But I am saying that the more — let’s call them agendas — come into play from people who aren’t the possessor of the creative vision but retain an ownership stake, the greater the — let’s call it dilutive — effect it will have on the creation.

Thinking back to my conversation with Robert Khoo at SDCC on the topic of collectives, I’m becoming more convinced that there’s a market for — let’s call it a turnkey webcomics management solution — Khoo-like people to handle the business aspects of a webcomic or collective, allowing the creator(s) to focus on creating, but not acting as a traditional publisher. It would be a revolutionary shift in the publishing model, but hell — isn’t revolutionary what the internet is supposed to do best?

New Little Dee book! Woo hoo!

Time to clear the mailbag — first of all, appologies to Mitch Clem for missing a time-sensitive piece of news. Make him feel better by checking out his webcomic, if you don’t regularly.

Next up, Wes Molebash of You’ll Have That fame is dippin’ a toe into the wearable merch pool.

Alert reader Dave Martin wanted us to know that Mike Witmer of 44 Union Avenue (also on GoComics) has started a new webcomic called Pinkerton. Dave tells us So far it’s a lot of fun… which is good enough for me. I love things that are fun.

[Quick note for any that clicked the GoComics links above — you’re likely to see a large banner for For Better Or For Worse, and should be aware that today is the start of the End Times for FOOB (with bonus points to Comics Curmudgeon fill-in Uncle Lumpy for the term Fööberdämmerung).]

Speaking of the Comics Curmudgeon (an entirely worthwhile daily read), somebody using that name (but not Josh Fruhlinger, the real Comics Curmudgeon) wrote the following:

Here’s some topics: How about Dinosaur comics [sic] sucking ridiculously lately? Is it just me or has it turned into nothing more than glorified chat transcripts? I mean if I see a dinosaur saying “dude” one more time I think I might… I think I might die.

And I love Ryan North, and I know he’s done a lot for the community. I also love Dino comics. But sometimes, when your old dog gets sick, you have to put it to rest, you know? I think Dino comics [sic] has probably reached that point.

Also, what’s with Ben Shur and iamarocketbuilder.com lately? Has there been any mention of that here? I really like what he’s done. I hope he continues. He’s kind of right, too. I mean— has Ryan North kept Dinosaur Comics on longer than he should’ve because it’s his bread and butter? Probably!

Dear Mr Not Really The Comics Curmudgeon: As tempting it is to say It’s just you, there is no correct answer to that question. Every strip is a matter of taste, and any collection of fans will disagree about the ups and downs of a particular strip (hell, even The Great Outdoor Fight has detractors). For myself, I don’t see a decline in the quality of Dinosaur Comics, and as awesome as that I Am A Rocket Builder page is, I don’t see that it’s directed solely at Ryan North.

Finally, for those not listening to the new Webcomics Weekly podcast (with ScottKrisDaveandBrad), it’s damn good. If you make a comic, listen especially for the Tips and Tricks section that has so far been kicking in about 30 — 35 minutes into the show. The discussion about hand-lettering vs. computer fonts was worth the price of admission by itself.

Happy 400th stripperversary to Bryan Paul Johnson’s Teaching Baby Paranoia, which in today’s round-number-intensive installment features mermaid boobies. Woo!

Mike Rouse-Deane of Webcomics In Print has expanded into webcomics review & commentary in print, with the launch of Webcomics Anonymous. If this whole, We like webcomics and we’re gonna write about ’em field gets any more crowded, I might be able to retire on the vast sums that Fleen has earned me. I’m gonna be eatin’ the generic cat food!

And speaking of webcomics in print, I’ve been seeing quite a few of such at my friendly local comic shop; along with Guigar’s how-to manuals of evil and Satanic porn and other detritus of the intarwubs, there’s a shiny new print collection of the first Panda Express story.

PX! Book 1: A Girl And Her Panda features a total of four chapters plus bonus material; publisher Image has gone all-out, providing a nice, heavy, glossy paper, allowing for the gorgeous, subtle colors (I love that radioactive glow) of A Girl And Her Panda to really pop on the page.

Now you could read the 100+ pages of PX!B1:AGAHP online, but this is a book that deserves to be picked up and paged through, to really wallow in and enjoy particularly when you consider the following, posted by co-creator “Art Monkey” (aka Manny Trembley) the day before the the book hit shops:

… It’s all excuses but if I whittle away the debris and garbage to reveal my dark heart I’d have to say I’m tired of making PX! right now. I should’ve taken a break and worked on a different project after book one. But I wanted to stay the course with PX! (we have four total books planned and we’re only one and half books done with the mega story) But I feel like I’m forcing PX! And that’s a crappy feeling. The art feels forced and I’m less and less happy with my own production of the book.

I’m trying to force myself to finish Book two before I wipe my slate clean and draw something completely different. And frankly it’s not fun to force it. … The question I have for you guys is would you run screaming to the hills if we took a break and produced a totally different book for the site. A “PX! presents…” kinda thing.

You know what might make Mr Monkey (and his partner, “Grammar Cowboy”, aka Eric Anderson) feel better? If you bought the book. It’s lighthearted, all-ages fun, it’s got a goat who’s a jerk, and more radioisotope-powered panda than you can shake a stick at. Success for this book means that other creators maybe get the nod from publishers willing to pick up printing costs, and those who self-publish are more likely to get space in the Diamond catalog. Official corporate suits with MBAs think there’s a market for webcomics on the shelves, or DC wouldn’t have launched Zuda with an explicit eye towards reprint volumes.

It’ll be at least year before any of Zudabooks hit the stores, but in the meantime, your best-loved webcomics can be there if a couple of gatekeepers get convinced, and the way to do that is with the potential for revenue. That’s a lot of benefit for $17 now; pack lunches next week instead of hittin’ the cafeteria, and you’ll be thanking me while you’re enjoying PX!B1:AGAHP.