Noticed on Little Gamers this morning, a link to The LJ and an essay by Josh Lesnick on webcomics art (focusing on what Mr T identified as the most popular strips according to Alexa). This is the sort of thing that’s prone to blowing up into a poo-flinging festival, given that a) art is pretty much the definition of subjective; and b) people like what they like (even, God help us, sad eyed clowns and Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light).

It’s a subject that Lesnick is passionate about (the guy’s consciously reinvented his style in a quest to make it better), and he mostly avoids saying that particular creators are wrong in their designs, but I don’t think he’s going to change any minds and at this point, the best he can hope for is that people actually read the damn thing and try to understand his points before crapping on him. Oops, too late.

There are some thoughtful refutations of some of Lesnick’s arguments in there, but for the most part it’s breaking down as Wow, this was good or Wow, you suck, so you might want to skip the comments and just read the critique. For those falling into the latter camp, keep in mind that while it may appear to you that Lesnick’s essay was unsolicited, that doesn’t mean that the creators will find it unwelcome.

Less contentious things:

• Dave Kellettt and Kris Straub, COME ON DOWN! (scroll down for priceless pics)
• The SDCC shopping list gets larger: Wapsi Book 2
• Lost in the Minifleen shuffle: Joe Chiappetta’s Silly Daddy (maybe the great-granddaddy of journal-type comics) is turning 16.
• Nearly 300 episodes of a random-generated photo comic that I hadn’t heard of, but it reminds me (probably intentionally) of Found magazine, and that’s always a good thing.
• Matt Buchwald (full disclosure: he pays us $0.20/day for that button ad over to the right) hit 500 strips at Fodi yesterday, so congrats are due.
• And, lastly, News Free Comics. Hmmm.

It will probably surprise nobody that I started in my geekly tendencies early, and a fair amount of my current reading habits can be laid squarely at the feet of three people: Wendy & Richard Pini and Phil Foglio; heck, my manga and anime habits can probably be blamed on Wendy Pini tossing out a stray reference to Tezuka somewhere around 1986 or ’87.

And while Foglio has made a wholesale jump to the web (cf: here and here), what of the Pinis, pioneers of the self-publishing movement? From Johanna Draper Carlson:

None of this means that Elfquest is going away, at least not yet. Pini has scripted the final arc, and she promises it will be a surprise…

Pini and her husband Richard recently ended their agreement with DC Comics, which published Elfquest for the past four years. They will now be handling the Elfquest properties through their own company, Warp Graphics, and Pini said the last arc may appear as a Web comic or a print comic. [emphasis mine]

Thoroughly intriguing, particularly as I met Mr Pini at the New York Comic Con in February, when he came by the Dumbrella booth specifically to meet Rich Stevens and talk about webcomics. If they decide to go that route, they will hopefully find the same success as Foglio (with Girl Genius as a current project, and reviving the long-lost Buck Godot and What’s New? properties)and Carla Speed McNeil (with Finder).

While all three of these creators had self-published ventures, it makes me wonder if marginal (but well-beloved) comics in danger of cancellation from the big publishers might find a home online. Foglio’s proven that giving away the pages and charging for the reprint is economically viable (indeed, advantageous to a large degree over printing individual pamphlets). What about it? Any print comics you’d like to see make the leap?

Back to regular postings next week; got a couple of thinky pieces in my head that I haven’t been able to properly research. In the meantime, merch ho!

• Oh man, character/logo patches for your clothing, that’s takin’ me back. Bonus points to the first webcomicker to offer a Bedazzled jean jacket.
• Oh hell yes. Hey Dr McChris, any chance of having some on hand at MoCCA or SDCC for your adoring fans?
• Marketing 101 time: Lots of creators offer picture galleries of people wearing/using their merch: you got your rock nerds (curiously 404’ed, so here’s the Google cache), and Topatoco has a photo gallery, and Sheldon just debuted photos of people & dogs reading his books (with the added bonus of famous people).

  But you can go a bit further — Ryan North offers not a single gallery, but rather pictures of people in shirts, linked to the particular shirts in the Dinosaur Comics merchateria, and he puts up a dozen or so new photos every month of so on his front-page newsbox. Want to drive customers to your stuff? Put up pictures of sexy, sexy readers (and remember: everybody is somebody’s fetish) wearing/reading/using that stuff.

• Speaking of Topatoco (shut up, we were so!) want to win a Ouija board?
• And finally, over at The QC, Jeph Jacques is feeling old. To knock him out of this funk, I propose birthday spankings at MoCCA next weekend. Bring your friends!

These mini deals are getting longer. Weird.

• Do they let insects into 62 Achewood Court?
• The definitive response to criticisms of FOOB.
• From Shishio:
  

  In celebration of its upcoming two year anniversary, Cartridge Comics is holding a contest. The Cartridge Comics fan who demonstrates their fandom in the most creative fashion will win a number of prizes. More details here.

• Greg Carter would like you to know:
  

  Gina Biggs and Greg Carter are taking the Red String / Abandon Webcomic Tour to Charlotte, NC, this weekend June 15-17, for Heroes Con! They will be camped out at table SP-23. That’s along the back wall at the right-hand corner of Indie Island.

  Gina will have copies of Volume One of Red String, and Greg will have a mini-comic sampler of Abandon, so please stop by and visit.

• Rick Eades wonders, is “Newt and John” nothing more than a blatant ripoff of Beaver and Steve? Somebody needs to solve this question with science.
• Alert reader Nick wishes to remind you that it’s the third anniversary School Spirit, which I confess to not be familiar with. Let’s let Nick fill us in:
  

  Set in an Australian primary (elementary) school next to a very active cemetery, it is celebrating its 3rd anniversary this week. Just thought the author deserved a shout-out for such a fine accomplishment.

  Shouted, Nick. And speaking of Australia, Byrobot is, in the words of co-creator (and admitted Aussie) Nic Carey, Back in pants.

• Just in time for the McCloud trek’s Great White Tundra leg, Pat Race wishes you to know of webcomics from the from the frozen north: Alaska Robotics and Geek Fetish

And tomorrow, be sure to check back for a guest piece from one of my favorite webcomics commentators. Happy Thursday, everyone.

Good news, everybody! Digger returns tomorrow.

I’m a day late to this one: Good natured snarkery or fannish entitlement? T Campbell takes on For Better Or For Worse. Kinda mixed on this issue — on the one hand, FBOFW remains Lynn Johnston’s story to tell (or screw up) as she wishes, but it remains the critic’s perogative to take the creator to task if that story isn’t done well.

On the other hand, making those criticisms by putting words into the mouths of analogues of the creator’s family — there’s some kind of logical flaw there, but I don’t know the Latin term for it.

And on the other-other hand, I’m intensely glad that Anthony shaved the moustache, as there’s less competition for me.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel; soon I will have reliable internet during the day again. In the meantime, please enjoy the following slight amusements.

• Surprisingly touching, considering it’s a) stick figures; and b) a character that I’ve really grown to hate on a visceral level.
• Seven years without missing a day, and a buffer of nearly seven weeks built up. Must be the desert air and lack of drunken stupors that are otherwise so common in the cartooning classes.
• Speaking of drunken stupors (gotta be related somehow): ladies & gentlemen: Lieutenant Junior Grade Crunch (context here).
• And, from the mailbag:
  

  On June 12th of last year, Ben Heaton and Lewis Powell started a webcomic to answer the question “How long can you draw out a story whose plot consists, primarily, in characters refraining from purchasing groceries?”

  While the answer is not yet definitive, we can now safely say that it takes longer than a year.

  Clocking in with a momentous 157th strip on Wednesday, June 13th, Terror Island is not only the first gamepiece photocomic on the web, it is also the longest continuously updating gamepiece photocomic on the web.

  I first met those guys last year at San Diego when they came up with one of the more amusing webcomic sketch memes I’ve seen (latest example: here). Happy 157th Stripaversary.

Received from a one Mister Richard Stevens III, Esq.:

Looks like that bit I heard about Cathy being handed off was wrong, I am recanting as hard as possible.

Where, under the headline Aaack! My Mistake- Cathy is NOT Quitting one may read:

Sorry, Cathy! I blogged on LJ that I’d heard that Cathy Guisewite was giving the reins of her comic to another artist, but found out today that this is definitely not the case. She’s one of the good ones, a cartoonist who does their own work.

We at Fleen apologize to Ms Guisewite for helping our part in the misinformation, but still think that Cathy would look better with a nose.

Apparently, without realizing it, I may have scooped the world and lucked upon unreleased news concerning a superstar of the newspaper comics page.

If so, I wholeheartedly apologize for this inadvertent act of journalism, and promise not to journalise again in the future. On the other hand, I haven’t been able to confirm the story at all with the syndicate, which would put me back on the more familiar ground of unsubstantiated rumormongering.

But because I feel I owe you people at least one bit of factual reportage today, how about this: Darren J. Gendron mails to say

Dear Pirate has reached Strip No. 50.

Plasticine figures and better advice than Dear Abby’s idiot daughter? What are you waiting for?

Looks like one last two month reprieve for Little Dee‘s syndication hopes, Chris Baldwin reports:

The current situation is (and it is in writing to this effect) that I will continue running Little Dee at comics.com until the last day of July. They have requested this as further “development” time.

So Dee will be back to littledee.net on August 1st unless they make an actual offer of syndication.

I wish this gray area of what’s happening wasn’t continuing, but I am still tempted by the carrot they’re dangling.

Okay, here’s where you can help get something good onto the comics pages. It seems that (although curiously, it has not been widely reported) that Cathy Guisewite is handing off writing and/or art duties to a collaborator. From what I can tell, her strip has always metered high in the dump it category of newspaper comic strip polls.

This affords the perfect opportunity to write a polite letter to your local paper’s features editor, asking them to a) move away from a strip that’s gone zombie (that is, moved away from original creator to substitute hacks, a fate recently shared by B.C.), and suggest one that’s both all-ages friendly and amazingly good. Get writin’.

At the AV Club. Man, I love that photo where they look like Dr Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker.