Who would have thought it would finally come at the hands of a mild-mannered strip about mild-mannered librarians, created in part by a real-life mild-mannered librarian? Gonna be somebody’s ass gets whooped on this one. And as we all know, when webcomics creators fight, it gets ugly.

In other news:

Several mentions in the webcomicsosphere for the past twelve hours or so about Michael Bay. Yes, that Michael Bay. Specifically, news about the newest project that he’s signed onto:

The film will reportedly center on an academic researcher who discovers that multiple versions of Earth co-exist in different dimensions, but all are threatened by an apocalypse to occur in 2012 prophesied by the ancient Mayans. By opening a portal into a parallel universe, he makes contact with his double to stop the prophecy from being fulfilled.

The film is currently looking for a screenwriter.

Here’s a suggestion: how about Jon Rosenberg? Sounds an awful lot like the storyline that’s been running in Goats for most of the past two years.

Apparently, a forthcoming novel by Whitley Strieber, 2012: The War For Souls, is the basis for the Bay production; given that Strieber’s book isn’t due to be published until September, it’s impossible to say whether or not ideas got (let us euphemize) farmed from Rosenberg. After all, Mayans are hot right now, right? On the other hand, this isn’t a new experience for Rosenberg, whose long-running strip has featured a genius goldfish and sexually-deviant gray aliens living among ordinary Americans (which, let’s face it, is a pretty particular combination of themes right there).

Attempts to reach Rosenberg for comment were unsuccessful. We at Fleen can only speculate whether he is:

• flattered that his ideas are good enough for people to make money off of them
• pissed off that it’s not him making the money
• horrified that it’s Michael Bay who’s making the money, or
• ready to sue for 1.6 billion dollars

Personally, we at Fleen are hoping for that last one, because it would be awesome, like a flaming train running into a bus full of nuns, kittens, puppies, and orphan children, and then they all blow up in slow motion. Hey — somebody get me Michael Bay on the phone, I got an idea for him.

Editor’s note: Easter Eggy goodness over at Girl Genius today, and since it tosses a little love to The Devil’s Panties, I figured we at Fleen should do the same. Panties wrangler Jennie Breeden was kind enough to do an interview with us in the wake of the New York Comic Con last month, and it’s well past time that it ran.

For those of you who may not recall, at San Diego last year Breeden announced that she’d given notice at her day job and was making [web]comics full time. Six months in, how’s she doing?

(more…)

So posting will probably be late today. Apologies in advance.

PS: Don’t forget The Thing in sunny springtime London where they don’t have major snowstorms.

Boy on a Stick and Slither creator Steven Cloud is getting some page space over at Comics.com, the web arm of United Features Syndicate. It looks like BOASAS will be joining the syndicate in some capacity, on account of it says, “coming soon!” and everything.

Except, Cloud informs Fleen, he hasn’t signed anything yet.

To clarify things, Cloud and UFS have been in discussion for a web-only syndication deal (the sort of thing we’ve seen before), but no final agreement has yet been reached.

It’s a shame that Cloud wasn’t able to announce any (potential) agreement in his own way, and Fleen hopes that he is able to come to terms that are amenable to his interests without undue pressure. Fleen also hope that Cloud gets to dope slap a syndicate suit for jumping the gun on the announcement. More on the deal (and slapping) as it develops.

Presently, Dr Leon Sumbitches redirects to the main article on Achewood. But for how long?

Actual content later today.

So it’s not going to be Dick & Fart, LLC after all. Dang. But the offices of the new Scott & Kris show promise to have the highest Aviator density this side NASA in the Apollo days.

Fashion eyewear aside,this venture brings to mind some curious possibilities about how webcomickry collectives (and business relationships) overlap and intersect in various ways: Starslip Crisis is part of Halfpixel, and also part of Blank Label Comics, but the rest of Halfpixel is not part of Blank Label; neither is PvP, but PvP: The Series is (in conjunction with Blind Ferret Entertainment) and also, presumably, part of Toon Hound Studios (but not Toonhound Studios); Toon Hound (but not Toonhound) has a relationship with Image; plus it (that would be Halfpixel again) has a store, which may or may not sell the products of any/all of the above.

From a corporate standpoint there’s a chance that if Kurtz and/or Straub gets hit by a bus, the lawyers are going to be teasing apart the interests for the next decade. So let’s just call it a way for a couple of friends to be able to work together; given all that the two accomplish already, picking themselves up and going to a separate place to work (rather than working from their respective homes) has the potential to explode their productivity. Either way, Fleen offers a hearty welcome to the new Halfpixel.

Speaking of The Onion, “Ordway” writes wanting to know what’s up with the editorial cartoon that’s been running in that hallowed paper for the past six months or so. It’s garnered much consternation, although I would have thought that it was obviously a parody of a bad editorial cartoon. All the cliches are there, from clumsy “jokes” to marginal art to the fetish for labelling everything. I mean seriously — labelling a pair of underwear as “underwear”? It’s a spoof, people. Although I must confess, if I open the paper and don’t see a crying Statue of Liberty, my day is a little sadder.

And you know whose work appears in The Onion? David Malki !. It’s old news by now but if you hadn’t heard, Lynn Johnston isn’t retiring after all. Instead, she’ll turn FBOFW into a permanent clip show, which is a terminally depressing thought. Johnston’s real reason for bowing out:

I could not sustain a gag a day strip (daily). Because if you’re doing the kind of work that is gag-a-day, eventually you’re going to have to work with writers. One brain cannot come up with a gag a day.

As Malki ! wrote in response to Johnston’s difficulty thinking up one joke per day: I’m sure she didn’t MEAN to insult hundreds of comics writers she’s never heard of (not to mention plenty of her syndicated colleagues), but I think she kinda did. More than that, she’s keeping new creators from having a shot at the 2000+ papers she runs in now, which is an additional kick in the teeth to hundreds more writers she’s never heard of.

Finally, I can’t tell you how many times I wish I had balls this big.

Conratulations today to Owen Dunne on 10 years of The Kid, Jethro, The Poz, and the rest of the You Damn Kid cast. Having gone through much of the archives this morning in honor of the occasion, I can only hope for Dunne’s sake that the strip isn’t too autobiographical.

Turning from the sepia-toned Sixties to the near future under a bruise-colored sky, check out what Hawk & Ananth have been working on. There is something distinctly Shirowesque about that bundle of cables in the back — I like it. No definite plans to go to production yet, but if enough people stand up and say they’ll buy one, it could happen. And hey, I like webcomics toys, so count me in.

This page has previously spoken of standards in webcomics presentation, with prior discussion revolving around things like search text and portability of websites between service providers.

Today, Colonel Joey kickstarts the discussion by bringing the CBR “standard” (I’m not sure it’s used widely enough to lose the quotes) to the Modern Tales family of websites, at least for long-form works. From the Talk About Comics posting:

Today I’m happy to announce that the Modern Tales family of websites (Modern Tales, GirlAMatic, serializer and Graphic Smash) is the first major webcomics network to embrace the downloadable CBR format for full-length, high-resolution digital comic books.

… Unlike traditional webcomic strips, Comic Book Reader files are complete issues of “comic booksâ€? or even full-length “graphic novelsâ€? in digital form, released all at once, downloaded onto the fan’s hard drive and consumed at his/her leisure, with crisp graphics and immediate page-loading.

Like MP3 files, CBR’s first gained prominence in the file-sharing world. Apparently there are a lot of comic book fans out there who enjoy scanning their collections (or even the comics they just bought this week) and sharing them with their friends. I don’t necessarily approve of this activity, but I have a lot of respect for the way that P2P and filesharing systems often stand at the forefront of innovation when it comes to media formats and user-friendly ways of doing things.

I’m trying to figure out if the “file sharing’s bad, but it makes good tech” stand is ethically defensible or not, but I suspect I’ll be going back and forth on it for a while. There’s more in the post regarding what’s available in the CBR format and how to read it. So what do you say? Are you willing to read long-form works on the screen, or does this have the same theoretical-if-not-practical appeal as electronic books?

Lots going on in webcomics that addresses the ideas of “collectives”. First off, you have a thinky piece by Gilead Pellaeon over at Comixpedia about what makes a collective. There’s been a range of opinion about his conclusions, both in the comments (scroll down), and in a group interview with Blank Label Comics (or at least 7/9ths of Blank Label). The lads hold forth on what their group identity means, plans for the future, and how they feel about each other (hint: look for Kris Straub and Howard Tayler to get in a knife fight soon)

The print edition of Wizard is an unreadable morass of comic fanboy stereotypes, but they’re doing some interesting interviews on their website. Case in point: at the recent New York Comic Con they spoke with Steven Cloud and Jon Rosenberg of Dumbrella; it’s an interesting contrast of philosophy reading about how Dumbrellists seem themselves as a group, versus how Blankers do.

Nor is collective behavior always predicated on ongoing relationships; sometimes all you need is a one-off, sorta-collaboration to make a gag work. By way of example, take one part xkcd, which is published under a Creative Commons license. Add one part Help Desk, and bingo: a derivative work (fancy legalese for ‘mash up’) that’s funnier than it has any rights to be.

It works with complete strangers as well: as Ryan North tells us in the newsbox for March 8 (read it quick, because it’ll scroll away in a few days), one of his cartoons inspired somebody named Dr McMuffin to compose an opera. There’s sheet music there, but Dr McMuffin’s contribution is not merely compositional; the good doctor has added some defining characteristics to our favorite dinos — namely, the fact that T-Rex is a tenor (and Dromiceiomimus a soprano, Utahraptor an alto and raccoons a chorus; I wonder what the tiny woman is?).

Lastly, we at Fleen wish to announce that we are enlarging our community a bit. Anne Thalheimer has jumped on the Guest Columnist program with brio, and since she keeps writing stuff that sparks conversation, we’re just making it official. Welcome aboard, Anne.

Update: And in other collectives/network news, Little Gamers announced late yesterday that they’re now part of the National Lampoon Humor Network, along with such luminaries as White Ninja and Superman Is A Dick.