Quick notes before heading over to the convention center; please bear with us if updates are late and/or irregular for the next few days.

• Turns out it’s not a one-shot; Ray is doing a series of columns for an Aussie newspaper. Love the tagline: Ray Smuckles is a California-based cartoon cat.
• From my mailbox and alert reader Peter Tarkulich:
  

  Remember the early 90s cartoon Reboot? Well, there’s a project called Reboot Revival that I receive messages from ocassionally, and I got this one today. Note the line about a “Web-based comic” coming soon.

  The story Peter referenced says the show will be made into a trio of feature-length films, by Rainmaker Films:

  To do this, Rainmaker has entered into a strategic alliance with Zeros 2 Heroes, a Web site set to launch Monday (July 23) to provide a social network for comic book fans.

  Five undiscovered writers chosen by Rainmaker were selected to work with the animation studio’s production teams to prepare a pitch for the new ReBoot story line. These will be posted on the Zeros 2 Heroes site Thursday (July 26), the opening day of San Diego Comic-Con International. Those who visit the site will be able to work with each production team to help refine the ideas for “ReBoot” and later vote and select a favorite pitch. The brainstorming environment is what the site calls “Think Ups.”

  A Web-based comic, based on the selected story, will be published this year. Production on the features will commence at that time.

  Seems that a) webcomics and b) competitions resulting in c) movies is this year’s showbiz meme, much like “Earth getting hit by a big-ass asteroid” or “travelling to Mars” in past years.

• Forget What’s the collective noun for webcomickers?; if you drop by the Dumbrella booth, ask to see their anti-mind control ray tinfoil hats.
• Big round group o’ guest comics today. Let’s see, Willis is busy filling in for Jacques, so Maggie Weinder is filling in for Willis. Meanwhile, Ryan Sias is running best of strips while filling in for Scott Kurtz, Lars Brown is filling in for Meredith Gran and rumors have it that Randall Munroe is filling in for himself.

That’s it for now. Drop by the Dumbrella booth (1337) in the center of Webcomicstan and say howdy, or check out one of the many fine panels coming regarding webcomics.

Editor’s note: As noted previously, Little Dee will shortly be leaving comics.com, has restored its full archives, and will be simulcasting at Modern Tales. Fleen spoke with Little Dee creator Chris Baldwin about these turns of events.

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That Chris Baldwin interview we promised you is coming soon; in the meantime, check out his Wizard interview with Brian Warmoth. Subliminal note to cartoonists: draw me a moth, ready for war.

The Applegeeks guys had a run on their Eve figures. Guess this means I won’t be getting one just yet. Any chance of a reorder, guys?

The Machine of Death project has finalized its author lineup. As a general rule, you can’t go wrong with Alexander Danner, Shaenon Garrity, Randall Munroe, and not me. To quote David Malki ! on my submission:

After careful review of the nearly 700 entries, we’ve determined that “Smothered by Bunnies”, while funny, ultimately isn’t right for the book. We’re very grateful for your interest, and we’ll continue to keep you informed as the project progresses!

Despite this atrocious lapse of judgement, I believe that the Machine of Death collection will be worth reading, and urge all and sundry to both a) read; and b) enjoy.

Final note for today: flying to San Diego tomorrow, so if there’s a question you’ve been dying to ask your favorite webcomicky types, email it to me. That would be “gary” at a domain that suspiciously shares the name of this here blog.

Aaaahh! Raptors!

So, there’s a new general-purpose cultural blog-type thing out there called The Bygone Bureau, which I am suddenly interested in for two reasons. The first being clearly explicated on their About page:

Our mascot is the squid.

They got squid. They have a blog category that claims to be devoted to squid, but it isn’t really. Despite being filthy, filthy liars on the topic of squid, they have something else to recommend them, namely an interview with Nicholas Gurewitch:

The Perry Bible Fellowship is one of the most popular and refreshing comics published online. The Bureau’s Kevin Nguyen and Nick Gurewitch, the series’ writer and illustrator, discuss Garfield, Tagged, and Hillary Clinton.

It’s brief, and there’s no squid, but it’s also Gurewitch and therefore worth reading. Have a good weekend, peoples.

Some quick miscellaneous items, then a webcomic from the How have I missed this until now? file.

• From Zach Miller, instructions on violating the laws of time and space:
  

  The year three Joe and Monkey collection is now on sale. That’s right! It’s on sale BEFORE the JaM year is even over. If you order now you may receive the book in time to see what happens before it happens!

• From Chris van Gompel, the best week of the year:
  

  Totally to toot my own horn, Shark Week has returned to Hockey Zombie. Celebrate accordingly.

• From some math guy in Colorado, a bold prediction about the Dumbrella panel at SDCC. By this time next week we’ll know if he was right, but in the meantime I’m keeping quiet on the prediction in case it turns out to be off-base so he doesn’t get laughed at too much.
• Cameo sightings in what I believe to be the 100th strip at Weregeek.
• From Josh Lesnick, the end of a hiatus and the return of your will to live.

And from a whole bunch of mentions in the last week or so, a webcomic that’s been flying beneath my radar somehow: Lucid TV, which appears to be the latest strip to find and exploit a niche. Much like Unshelved is by librarians/for librarians, Overcompensating is by reclusive billionaires/for reclusive billionaires, and Goats is by crazed transdimensional New York Jews/for crazed transdimensional New York Jews, Lucid TV may not be created by doctors, but it’s surely for them.

Jim Belushi Memorial is a hospital like any other, with a number of Indian doctors, insane vending machines, chestbursters, you know, the things that make up modern doctorin’. The art is a nice clean mix of Dr McNinja and The PBF, except for when it’s a photocomic. As a bonus for those of you at the University of Connecticut, the strip appears five times a week in the pages of The Daily Campus.

Just about uniquely in webcomics, the Apocrypha section of the archive shows very early strips, along with lessons learned which are so important I’m posting them here verbatim:

These were made in the Spring of 2006, directly after we decided that we wanted to make a comic strip, but about 5 months prior to deciding that we wanted to put effort into making it.

There are a multitude of lessons to be learned from these strips. Sharpies and comics do not mix. Make a template in photoshop if you are too dumb to operate a ruler properly. Use a font that has decent apostrophes. Don’t use rollerball pens. Don’t use 8.5 x 11 computer paper. Don’t attempt hockey jokes. Don’t draw your word balloons by hand if you can’t properly eyeball the amount of space needed for text. Learn how to operate a brush before you use it for a strip. Make sure you know what a sonogram looks like before you draw one. Uneven crosshatching does not appeal to the eye. Learn how to use levels in photoshop before posting comics.

And most importantly, make sure that on average, your strips take more than 10 minutes to draw.

If that’s what you’re going for, that is.

To conclude, Lucid TV is funny because it’s true, and you should read it every chance you get.

Eustace!?

Understand that I’m a great fan of Japanese TV. I’m old enough to have seen the first dubbed run of Speed Racer in the US. I learned about Japanese ghosts and demons from barely-subtitled broadcasts of Gegege no Kitaro. Long before the Food Network had heard of it, I was watching untranslated Ryori no Tetsujin every Saturday night.

And nothing, I repeat, nothing has held me in wordless thrall as much as this one cracktastic game show I saw where two poor guys were held in a warehouse without sleep for something like 56 hours until they could win a competition whose rules were never explained and constantly changing. They were variously:

• threatened by a dozen fundoshi-clad men screaming and carrying a phallic mikoshi on their shoulders — a mikoshi that was shooting sparks
• held in a bathtub and pelted with boiling-hot noodles from a ramen vendor’s cart
• forced to ride public buses around Tokyo while dressed in ill-fitting clothing appropriate to an 8 year old (while a screaming middle-aged mother-type repeatedly slapped them for talking back)
• serenaded with the the theme to Space Cruiser Yamato (by the original vocalist, no less!) until tears of memory welled up in their eyes

Forget sumo, porn vending machines, random English on clothing, and the Great Buddha at Nara — this show was destined to be Japan’s cultural legacy to untold generations of the future.

Until now.

Bernie Hou (of Alien Loves Predator and The Burgg fame) reports that his identify-the-movie site was recently featured at length on Japanese TV. So watch in wonder as the in-studio panel on Webtama (including the obligatory token white guy) play guess-the-movie for a prize of delicious dumplings. Oh, yes.

Following up on yesterday, Chris Baldwin has graciously agreed to let us know what’s up with Little Dee‘s move to Modern Tales. Look for that at the start of next week.

In other news:

• We’ll have to see how it shapes up in the long haul, but bonus points to Emmett Coakley for the name of his new webcomic: Insert Life Here. Actually, “new” is a bit of a misnomer, as Coakley actually started the strip about two years ago, but has kept things quiet until the strip got stronger before opening himself up to the scrutiny of all and sundry.
• And reaching the one year point today, the previously-mentioned What The Duck continues as the go-to strip for the photographically-inclined and/or waterfowl fanciers. It’s like the Unshelved guys keep telling us: the niches are ripe for entertaining.
• From Krishna Sadasivam, a recent interview at South Asian interest website Tiffinbox (warning: extremely slow load times), and from Zach Weiner, a mysterious new journal comic.

No official announcement yet (at least, not one that I can find), but as I clicked the link at Modern Tales for today’s updates, I found an interesting button leading to an interesting graphic.

Given that Chris Baldwin had previously listed 1 August as the date for comics.com to either provide a syndication contract or cut him loose, it appears that they’ve chosen the (shortsighted, incredibly stupid) latter option. It’s been obvious for a long time that comics.com has (inexplicably) had no idea what to do with Little Dee … I mean seriously, listing the strip under “Slice of Life”?

Chris Baldwin has been contacted for his comments on this change; Fleen will hopefully be bringing you that interview in the near future.

In yesterday’s email, the following missive arrived from Rosscott:

So I know that SDCC is a big deal, but where has the love been for Connecticon? This weekend, a large number of web comic artists are gathering in Connecticut, having a whole bunch of panels, and generally going to rock out. There’s an all-Erfworld panel. There is even a Webcomic Challenge, where comic artists are pitted against each other in lots of crazy categories like DDR, Halo, and Magic: The Gathering.

Am I an organizer? No, an attendee. Still, the fact remains it is a pretty big web comics convention that deserves a little attention.

You’re absolutely right, Rosscott. CTcon does tend to get lost in the shuffle, coming so close to the Nerd Prom and all, so let’s try to make up for the oversight and throw a little love their way. If you find yourself able to make it to Hartford this weekend (alas, I’m on EMT duty), you’ll be able to meet & enjoy the work of Brooke Spangler, Jeph Jacques, Jennie Breeden, Randy Milholland, Mohammad Haque & Ananth Panagariya, Scott Ramsoomair, Brian Clevenger, Michael Terracciano, Rob Balder & Jamie Noguchi, Chris Hastings, and about a billion other webcomics creators.

In other news, Shaenon Garrity, Narbonic creator and batshit insane manga lover — important note: Shaenon loves manga that are batshit insane; she is not herself a batshit insane person who loves manga — has put on her Modern Tales editrix hat to issue an open call for submissions.

It’s sad about Inanna’s Tears ending (although awesome that it will soon be printed in a handsome volume), and I never would have found Irregular Webcomic! without that link on MT. But open slots for new talent? Always a good thing; those submitting to Ms Garrity are advised to pile on the batshit insanity for maximum consideration.