Okay, holiday weekend comin’ up, let’s get this sucker done quickly.

• Basically I hell of need a The Great Indoor Fight t-shirt.
• Some impressive art and philosophy From Wittgenstein & Nietzsche, by David Morgan-Mar.
• Foglio auction madness! (via Randy Milholland)
• Via a Scary Go Round guest strip, the prettiest webcomic art I’ve seen in some time: Sconeborough. Something about the character models is really appealing to me.
• Speaking of guest strips, is it possible for a creator team that keeps a 3x/week update schedule to maintain their output, while also providing three full-page guest strips to high-traffic comics in the space of nine days? No.

  I can’t decide whether I feel cheated that Dr McNinja isn’t updating today, but man, that was some awesome angry broccoli yesterday. And may I say, Ryan North and Liz Greenfield should team up to provide 100% canon webcomic conclusions more often? I believe I may.

• Finally: Jesus Shark!

Thanks to everybody for trying to gin up some conflict on my behalf; you’ll never know how much it touches me to know that webcomics were willing to start a riot on my behalf.

We’ll start with a little something for our readers in the northeastern corner of the US: looks like they won’t be digging up Tom Carvel after all, and I think we all know the reason: zombies.

Megatokyo Volume 5 dropped yesterday; gotta say, it reads much better in bulk than on a per-installment basis. I’d pretty much given up reading MT except in three- to four-week chunks because I’d lose the thread of the story. Of great interest are the timeline and reader’s guide in the back of the book:

• the former puts the whole plot into perspective — from strip 1 to the present day is roughly two months of story time, and everything from June 2001 forward represents a week
• the latter includes character bios so you can remember just who the heck everyone is

Now I’m starting to wonder just how big a story Fred Gallagher intends to make out of Megatokyo; at this point, I think I’d be surprised if we’ve reached the halfway point yet.

Slow, slow, slow slow slooooow. Slow. Um, yeah.

Closest thing to actual news right now is the unfortunate word that Digger is going to a three-week filler break due to creator Ursula Vernon having some tough personal times just now (and just at a nice dramatic ponit in the story, too). Best of luck to Vernon, and we’ll be waiting when she gets back. Plus, any excuse to run pictures of Ed is cool by me.

From the mailbag:

• Alien, creator of Chasing the Sunset, has 400+ strips that (s)he would like some feedback on. That’s a bit much for me to plow through and provide constructive criticism in a timely fashion, so you’re all deputized. Pick a 10 — 20 strip block of strips and drop some comments over there.
• I like short and to the point, as when Paul Meehan wrote (verbatim, in its entirety):
  

  Check it.

  Not sure it really qualifies as a webcomic, but it’s got Nazis. Whoops, Godwined it right out of the gate.

• Oh, wait, here’s some news: Steve Napierski informs us that his Dueling Analogs (by my count, gaming webcomic #3628, out of a total 17493) is now appearing monthly in Hardcore Gamers Magazine. I’m not familiar with the magazine in question, but I don’t think it’s using the word hardcore in the sense of Intensely loyal; die-hard.

Okay, that’s it. Somebody please make somebody else cranky so that we have something for tomorrow.

Steve Troop is offering a deal: more webcomic in return for some vote-related love at the MTV Movie Awards for his Snakes On A Plane/Shatner On A Plane/puppet mashup. In other news, it’s your last chance to get a SOAP shirt from Jeff Rowland, who has declared them newly ironic.

Help Liz Greenfield win stuff for having awesome hair.

Don’t forget: xkcd is daily this week, with an actual story (but don’t worry, still plenty of math, at least today).

Karen Ellis reminds us that there’s never a bad time to say nuuuuucleeeear … WESSELS.

And finally, as it’s now been officially a month since we were threatened with a lawsuit (or, more precisely, a month since we asked exactly what was actionable in our coverage of the Dave Kelly/Todd Goldman story … that chirping of crickets you hear is all the reply we’ve gotten), we at Fleen are now forced to conclude that Goldman’s lawyer believes there never was anything defamatory in our writing.

To commemorate the occasion, we have one (1) Dear God Make Everyone Die t-shirt (size medium) up for grabs; with the AwfulMart down at the moment due to postal rate retooling, this could be your only chance to get one. Anybody that emails to the contact link up and to the right by midnight, 31 May 2007 (EST) with the word “shirt” in the subject line gets entered into the random draw.

The thing to understand about Off-Off Broadway shows, in those little theaters with about 100 seats and something new every night of the week? It’s never quite assured what you’re going to get. Could be the next great playwright (in about 20 years); could be five friends on a lark; could be fairies on a string or a naked guy slapping meat on his head.

Or it could be Gloria Calderón Kellett — wife of Sheldon creator Dave Kellett, actress, screenwriter, sketch comedienne, and all-around creative genius — leading a cast of really talented movie & TV regulars in a monologue show about love, relationships, and doing your best to get it right.

Ms Calderón Kellett’s show, Skirts & Flirts, had its New York premiere last week, running five shows in the East Village. Thirteen characters monolgoued their way through their intricately interwoven stories, featuring everybody from a sports-crazed straight guy (and closet knitter) to the best female friend a man could ever have (she’ll help you get laid) to a 22-times bridesmaid who really wishes the bride (Becky! Beckyyyyy … Becky) all the best in a boozy, funny/tragic reflection on loneliness.

Other standout characters included a personal trainer who used to be a fat guy, an entrepenuer interviewing boyfriend candidates, and a musician who totally rocks the Journey (and sometimes — Air Supply) but is having a teensy bit of heartache just now. Keep your eyes on Calderón Kellett’s website and go check out any show she’s involved in if it’s within three states of you. I hear that there may be such a show in Los Angeles in the next three or four months.

Now here’s where I’m torn — the other Kellett in the show, Dave Kellett, did a bang-up job as groom on the verge of marriage that could have come off like just a stand-up routine of my wedding was such a pain in the ass and instead became a funny-sad meditation on how the process became more important than the people. I want the world to know that he was just as strong and nuanced a performer as the professional actors in the cast.

But on the other hand, I don’t want the one person in the cast without an IMDB profile to think that this acting thing is more important than the cartooning thing. So: Dave Kellett, don’t quit your day job. Please?

So this email showed up the other day:

Alright, you probably get hit with this kind of question a lot, but I’ve got kind of a new comic and I was wondering if you had and tips/tricks/tactics for getting the word out? I’m not much on the whole promoting yourself thing.

Several possibilities, actually, and today offers some good examples of each. Up first, we have Brad Guigar, Master Of The Press Release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 18, 2007

‘PHABLES’ AWARDED BEST LOCAL COLUMN IN PHILADELPHIA AREA

Brad Guigar’s weekly comic about life in Philadelphia, Phables (www.phables.com), has been awarded Best Local Column by the Greater Philadelphia chapter of the Society of Prefessional Journalists.

“This is a really big step in broadening the acceptance of the comics as more than just ‘kids’ stuff,'” said Guigar. “Seeing ‘Phables’ honored as a newspaper column is a significant achievement for me.”

Phables tells stories about ordinary Philadelphians living their extraordinary lives. Readers often submit stories to Guigar, who then interviews them and creates a full-page comic based on the results. Sometimes Guigar tells his own stories or shares opinions about city life from a first-person perspective.

Earlier in the year, “Phables” was nominated for an Eisner Award, which is considered the highest honor in the comic-book industry. That award will be announced in July.

See how it’s done? Timely; strong prose; quote in the second graf (written in the third person); short, punchy grafs with one idea each; URL provided for quick linking in the story; easily editable by somebody (like me) anxious to fill column-inches, but wanting to feel like they actually contributed something to the final copy. Guigar’s an expert at these things (but then, he’s been in the newz biz for years), so anybody want to write their own — I strongly urge you to steal from the best. Take the text above, replace with your info, and off you go.

Second, the low-key announcement on the social networking site, which can work surprisingly well. Of course, Mer Gran has a couple of things going for her that you might not:

• She’s spent more than a third of her life webcomicking;
• The right couple hundred people already read her LJ;
• She’s got a proven track record to go on

If you don’t have those things, start with the network you do have; if your work’s good (and here good means better than what’s required to make your existing friends say it’s good just to humor you), they’ll push the word out for you. Doesn’t hurt if you did what Mer did, which was send me the first seven episodes of her new webcomic a few weeks ago as a sneak peek. Got my interest, made me feel like I’m in a secret, cool-kids club, made me want to pimp the hell out of it.

(Obligatory disclaimer: Mer’s a personal friend, and she did our masthead illustration up there.)
(Obligatory disclaimer to the disclaimer: This doesn’t negate the fact that Octopus Pie is twelve kinds of ass-kicking awesome.)

And third possibility: have a connection to a previous story; this particularly works if the new story is good news, everyone.

Not really related to the promotion, but I feel obligated to mention it anyway: make sure your project is worth promoting. Various creators have made various suggestions over the years, but several have stuck with me:

• Do the first six months without telling anybody
• After six months, if you can stand to look at your earlier work, feel free to post it (and you have a hell of a buffer)
• If you can’t, redo it the way you’d do it now
• Don’t suck
• And if you have sucked in the past, please stop sucking

‘Cause I gotta warn you, there’s a zillion crappy webcomics out there already, and if yours sucks, I ain’t gonna mention it, just as a kindness to my readers. Fortunately in this case, I dig squid. Two pieces of advice:

1. The archive is counterintuitive, and I stopped reading after about three strips
2. S-Q-U-I-D; misspelling the name of your own comic doesn’t make me hopeful

Still — squid.

Good: Holy crap, 3000 strips at Superosity? Words are not sufficient.

Bad: Behind the times on this one: via ¡Journalista! and Glenn Hauman, news that Kaja Foglio is ailing:

The bottom line is SHE WILL BE FINE … eventually, but could easily be in the hospital for several weeks.

We will do our best to continue posting Girl Genius, but as Kaja has to walk me through everything on the phone at this point, if she does have to go in for surgery or if the drugs convince her that she can only converse in Venusian, we may be out of luck.

This was Kaja’s idea, by the way, I was quite prepared to put up a “We are experiencing Technical Difficulties” banner, but she insisted we try to work through it, so I hope you appreciate it.

Nothing would make her happier than to receive a ‘get-well’ card or two. These can be sent to Studio Foglio. The kids and I will visit her every day.

For reference, the address for Studio Foglio is:

Studio Foglio, LLC
2400 NW 80th St. #129
Seattle, WA
98117-4449 USA

Good: Over at Graphic Smash and/or Broken Voice, David A J Berner informs us:

Want your own version of Shades to read while on the move? Well, thanks to those nice people at ROK Comics, now you can!

To make it more mobile-friendly BVC has pared the text down to a minimum to leave just the core story elements and all the action.

Visit the ROK Comics website and you’ll find the first few episodes of “Shades” in the Adventure Comics section.

But, if you want to try it for free first (and who doesn’t?!), visit the Freefall Comics area and you can test the system by downloading a FREE TRAILER for the mobile phone version of Shades.

Bad: Also from Graphic Smash, specifically today’s installment of Bang Barstal, The William G says:

Hey guys. This is a pretty important post here, and I hope you all can understand where I’m coming from after reading it.

Bang Barstal will be ending with the Red, White, Blue storyline. It’ll take us close to the end of the year (maybe longer) to get it all finished, so there’ll be plenty more for you to read.

And when I finish writing It’s About Girls for Sahsha, that’ll be the end of that series as well.

Let me explain: Comics are intensely time-consuming things. And while I enjoy making them, it’s coming at the cost of things that I’m finding more important as I grow older: Health, love, happiness. You need to have a balance in your life, a center, and spending a goodly amount of my weekend working on comics is making it too difficult for me to find them.

So, the comics have to go.

I won’t say that I’ll never draw again, or that there won’t be more of Bang’s bat-swinging adventures in the future. And hell, I’ll always be blogging. But as it’s been said: A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And if I’m going to find a centered, balanced life, I got to do it now before all of those opportunities I’ve been ignoring stop knocking at my door.

Big thanks to all of my friends here in the Modern Tales family, and big thanks to all of you for reading the comic over the last year and a half. You’re the best audience a guy could ever have, and I hope that by the end this story you’ll have had an enjoyable reading experience. Which, you know, is what every creator’s goal is when we pick up the pencil.

That kind of sucks. How about we end on …

Good: pandaxpress! was picked up for distribution by Image Comics:

Following in the footsteps of LIONS, TIGERS AND BEARS, LEAVE IT TO CHANCE and other graphic novels enjoyed by both children and adults comes Shadowline’s latest offering; PX! BOOK ONE: A GIRL AND HER PANDA.

This full color, 168-page landscape format graphic novel tells the story of Dahlia, a young girl who, with the help of her Giant Panda sidekick, sets off on an epic journey around the globe to rescue her missing father.

PX! BOOK ONE: A GIRL AND HER PANDA goes on sale August 1, 2007. ISBN:978-1-58240-820-0 Diamond Order Code #MAR078287

Big claim, invoking Leave It To Chance around me, ’cause I loved that book. But I also think that PX! is some damn fine work, and I don’t think that Trembley and Anderson are gonna leave me hanging on a cliffhanger for four freakin’ years. Pre-order this one, it’s gonna be good.

Before you get your hopes up about the return of a long–dormant favorite-of-the-masses webcomic, be aware of two things:

1. It’s previously-published material, not the resumption of the story.
2. The creator is on record as saying, “Every time I get an email that tells me I have to finish RPG World, I push back the date that I’m gonna bring it back by a month.”

As of this morning, Fleen estimates that RPG World will return no later than September, 2057.

I hadn’t really done more than skim the Wapsi Girl Project since it launched ’bout two months back, but something about this young lady caught my eye; can’t imagine what it might have been. A quick stop by her artblog led to her webcomic, The Monsters’ Republic of Monstairia, which is proving to be pretty damn good. Starts here, and I’m enjoying my read-through.

And finally, It’s apparently Webcomics Baby Week (what did you expect with all the webcomics boning last year?). Congrats to Chicklike Godhead Pete on the birth of baby Sarah Abrams, and to Jon Rosenberg on the birth of baby To Be Announced (maybe … we don’t have a definite report yet, but I have 6:12pm yesterday in the pool) Norah Hayden Rosenberg. And naturally, condolences to their wives for the traumatic experiencing of birthing webcomics spawn.

Okay, so on the one hand you’ve got Wondermark, by David Malki !, hitting 300 strips old today (although he also wonders if guest strips count):

Due to last year’s Guest Month it is really only the 281st regular comic by me, so maybe we will have a party around comic #319 or so.

Similarly, the venerable Megatokyo is at strip #999 right now (again, counting guest strips). We at Fleen hope that when #1000 shows up (maybe tomorrow, but the progress bar shows 0% done as of this writing), that Fred Gallagher enjoys the accomplishment. Maybe with some cake?

It seems to me that people often take significant milestones as an opportunity to reassess and recharge the ol’ creative batteries. Vacations are also good for that: lotsa of verbage from Josh Lesnick, on vacation in Mexico, about not really enjoying how a webcomics hobby became a webcomics career. Maybe?

There’s a crab, and some metaphorical crap flung at Tim Buckley and the no-talent kids of newspaper comic artists, and he says he feels like kind of a dong before thanking people who have helped him. All in all, looks pretty damn therapeutic for Lesnick, and we at Fleen hope he’s feeling better, and remind him to be careful about eating the worm.

We’ve written about John Baird and his Create A Comic Project at the New Haven Free Public Library previously, so it was a pleasure to hear from Baird that he’s got new stuff on tap, and you (yes, you) can help out:

On June 2 the Create a Comic Project (CCP) will have a Comic Making Tournament (CMT). The CMT will be at the New Haven Public Library in New Haven, CT, on June 2 from 11 AM – 2 PM. A brief summary of the tournament is here.

There are several sponsors for the event (including Yale University), but volunteers to help with judging are greatly needed. Anyone in the New England area is welcome, especially webcomic artists. Any comic creator who shows up will be dubbed a celebrity judge. The chief reward for doing this will be a massive ego boost from being treated as awesome by several dozen kids.

One idea for a concluding tournament event: all the children will issue a mock challenge to the artists for a comic making showdown, á la Iron Chef. This should prove to be a very fun time!

If you’re interested in helping, please send me an email to createacomic at NOSPAM gmail dot com. Thank you!

Man, I wish I could attend that. Given the number of New England-located webcomickers, there better be at least one that shows up in a Chairman Kaga costume. I’m looking at you, Southworth.

Scott McCloud has some last-minute changes to his speaking tour; if you live anywhere near Cheyenne, Wyoming (and I realize that out thataway, the concept of “near” is somewhat fluid), you can join in on the fun on Wednesday at the Laramie County Public Library, 7pm. Also please consider that the McCloud family minivan will be ass-haulin’ from South Dakota to Wyoming to Montana, so if you see them in your rear-view, pull over to let ’em pass.

In other news, Dinosaur Comics is about to turn 1000 strips old! But this week is Guest Week, so does that count? Maybe! Today’s strip is numbered #993, which means that sometime next week the strip odometer rolls over. In any event, today’s strip (by the dudes from Dr McNinja) is pure, distilled awesome and features bacon and a secret Achewood (which is today the source of my new favorite saying) shout-out. What more could you want?

And lastly: new SGR book. Ryan dies and Tim gets run out as mayor and Esther and The Boy get it on in a caravan in Wales and there’s Devil Bears and Rachel and Tessa and crime doin’ and justice is served via giant bazongas!