Christmas present time from the world of webcomics, kiddies! Let’s check ’em out.

There were announced a scant 10 days ago, and arriving just in time for Christmas giving (to me) were the Devil’s Panties playing cards. Aside from Jennie Breeden’s humorous and charming illustrations, you have within this deck new ways to play games, since many of the cards feature a core cast of characters (cartoon Jennie, Jennie-as-angel, Jennie-as-devil, etc.). You’re playing poker and two people have a flush? Whoever has more Pirates in their hand wins, since as we all know, Pirates are the Chosen People.

Continuing their way through the webcomics ranks, Wizard magazine offers us all a present in the form of an interview with John Allison

An early present, but a present nonetheless, from the frighteningly talented (and let’s be honest — just plain frightening) Andy Bell, in the form of ZLIKS. Available in nine editions of varying limitability. Handed a box of the Ice variety by their unholy sire, I can attest to the fact that these deranged critters are a fine compliment to your mantelpiece, den, or (in my case) the top of an Amish-made hardwood bookcase, keeping watch over my library/office and intimidating the hell out of my Stupid, Stupid Rat Creature. You should totally get some, if only for the copy on the bottom of their box:

From the delightful Liz Greenfield, a stocking stuff(sucks)er in the form of a photoessay of the recent Birmingham International Comics Show, featuring erotical (nude?) dancing! Saucy.

And, in recognition that the morning after Christmas sometimes brings those longing feelings after all the buildup is over, this sad note: Chris Baldwin announced today that he will be ending Bruno in February. It’s a tough loss for webcomics, but as Baldwin writes:

Over the last couple of years I have mulled over this idea (of ending Bruno) a million times, and on June 18, 2006 I finally decided to end it. At that point I plotted out the ending, although it has morphed and extended itself several times. I didn’t announce it sooner because I couldn’t bear to admit it to you all, let alone myself (I feel physical nausea right now as I write this). I also wanted to be able to back out if I changed my mind.

But I have now written the final sequences, and despite misgivings and sadness, I have never changed my mind that it was the right decision.

In the end, my gut tells me this. I simply do not have a drive to continue creating Bruno’s world at this time. And although I know her and her world well enough to continue doing a decent job, I can no longer deny these feelings that it is time to give it a gentle closure. Bruno needed my everything, and I don’t feel I am giving it that anymore.

We at Fleen salute Baldwin for doing right by his creation, and wanting to end having done his very best work. Go read his announcement on the Bruno main page (no direct link, sorry) and then drop him a line to let him know what you think.

We’re into the last week of Narbonic, people. Got off work? There’s archives to read, sidestories and fanstuff to absorb, and MIT student Dave Barker to despise. So what the hell are you waiting for? Get cracking, people.

The latest Winteriew (that would be #4) is up! Check out as the McClouds meet the Bakers.

And Chris Onstad offers the seasonal thought that there’s no greater insult that for your haircut to be compared to a gay Mexican car. I’ve been having a disagreement this morning as to whether or not Lyle is in a true cliffhanger situation here, as I feel that he will “take it back” (as demanded by Nice Pete) and thus avoid mayhem. The contrary opinion is that Lyle’s ego and wiles will not permit this. In either case, Happy Holiday from all of us at Fleen.

Okay, the news of the webcomics world seems to have subsided for a moment, giving me the opportunity to run some reviews that have been delayed. Also, by a peculiar corinsidence, the books in question all belong to members of the Blank Label Comics collective, giving us a handy-dandy-theme for the day.

First up, Howard Tayler offers the complete run of Schlock Mercenary from August 24, 2003 to March 13, 2004 in Schlock Mercenary: The Blackness Between. It ties up the story from the previous collection, sets up story hooks for the next two years, contains more than its share of BLAM, and finishes the Sergeant Schlock backstory bonus pages (featuring space clowns — reader discretion is advised).

As with Schlock Mercenary: Under New Management, Tayler includes all his (at times, extensive) footnotes for his delightfully thought-out futuretech, and somehow continues to print on the heaviest, glossiest color stock this side of … hell, I don’t know. What’s printed on heavy, glossy color stock besides these books? The colors pop right off the page (and your grimy little fingerprints will show up forever, so wash before you read and don’t kill anybody with one of Tayler’s books, or Gary Sinise will have you hunted down by the end of the first commercial break).

Secondly, Dave Kellett delivers up The Good, The Bad, and The Pugly, featuring Sheldon strips from 2005 and 2006. As with his early tome, Pure Ducky Goodness, Kellett eschews the reprint-every-strip model favored by the plotline-intensive Tayler, and graces us with his choicest strips instead.

Does this mean that we don’t get every single strip of Sheldon at summer camp? Sure, but the important storylines — Sheldon missing his parents at Christmas (you made me tear up, Kellett!), and how Oso and Flaco came to join the family — are fully represented in all their glory. Also fully represented: General Zod, who not only features in strips, but was kind enough to pen the forward to the book (you know the drill by now: kneel).

Rounding out the book is The Ballad of Rex Chestington, which is desperately crying out for the full audio treatment. Since it apparently wasn’t practical to include one of those black flexi-records that National Geographic used to such great effect (yeah, I know: I don’t have a record player either, but I still have my flexi of U Stink But I ♥ U), I call upon Kellett to place a recording of Rex Chestington somewhere on the web for all to hear and enjoy.

Finally, we have Kristofer Straub’s A Brief History Of Webcomics, which seeks to be for webcomics what Stephen Hawking is for cosmology, but also apparently acts as a continuation of sorts to the explorations begun in T Campbell’s A History of Webcomics. I had been treating this tome with all the due respect that it deserves (one may recall that I spent nigh on a month reading and rereading Campbell’s work, carefully following his assertions and analyzing his conclusions) and felt that ABHOW was worth no less consideration, but the author has forced my hand:

Well, sir, you may consider my head to be “pulled out”, but perhaps without the time needed to fully consider the nuances of your work. Nevertheless, I will state that Straub’s ABHOW is bold, almost revisionist rethinking of what we “know” about webcomics.

His analysis of “movers” and “shakers” in the early days, his dissection of business models, his insight into the nature of collectives (Blank Label Comics: [Y]ou do exactly what every other collective did, except you issue a press release saying you were the first.), and his recognition of significant milestones in webcomics (up to September 2006, and the acquisition of Drunk Duck by Platinum Studios) are all neatly formatted and contain a minimum of spelling errors.

However, his predictions for the future of webcomics are clearly the product of a diseased mind, and bear no relation to reality. For instance, he states categorically:

Bold! Controversial! HOT! But, unfortunately, completely implausible. For example, Straub completely overlooks the fact that due to supply-chain problems, Rosenberg has yet to deliver any glow-in-the-dark products. A simple examination of shipping schedules would reveal that Rosenberg has at least until 2023 before succumbing to excess rads.

Similarly, an extrapolation of Hollywood Reporter articles clearly lead to the conclusion that Aaron Sorkin will condense into a ball of pure self-reference so dense that not even a walk-and-talk snippet can escape by mid-2009 at the latest. Burns will, naturally, be tapped to replace Sorkin on each of his four half-completed projects at this time, and will be too zonked out on psychedelic mushrooms by 2011 to do anything but bang out scripts that make reference to Wednesday White via extended baseball metaphors.

Most tellingly, Straub utterly failed to predict the launch of PvP: The Series, despite being involved in the project as co-producer and co-writer! Clearly whoever first said, “Know thyself” had Straub firmly in mind. Apart from these egregious and crippling flaws in the final chapter, ABHOW is worth your time, in that it is at least preferable to being stabbed in the face with lasers. It also contains a handful of cartoons from Straub’s minor side-project, Checkerboard Nightmare, and content from Lance Sharps and Isobel Rai Belpheger, who quite frankly are lowering themselves slightly.

My wife rolled her eyes at me when I declared the right-hand rule to be the gang sign of engineering. Well, who’s laughing now?

Something*Positive hit the half-decade mark with yesterday’s strip (both chronologically and story-wise), leading into the traditional side–stories for the next week or two. Sure, it’s always slightly annoying that the main story arc gets derailed for a bit, but the side-stories are always so funny and full of in-jokes and then maybe we get a guest week, too. Yep, all good.

Ah, screw it. Damn you to hell, Randall K. Milholland! I am hard pressed to think of a more evil cliffhanger that you might throw at us. Well done, sir.

It’s Day 2 of our Comixpedia Linkapalooza, as they release the 2006 edition of the People of Webcomics list; lotta movers, shakers, and Friends of Fleen over there, so be sure to read, digest, and commentate.

Speaking of traffic stats & business breakpoints (c.f.: last Friday’s post), an update:

I’ve gotten replies from more than a dozen creators either offering to participate or supplying information; that’s heartening, but it doesn’t get us to statistical significance. Given the wide range of experiences out there, we won’t really get any good numbers without a lot of responses, but I’m willing to allow for some wide variations in accuracy and run numbers with a modest-sized population, as long as we all acknowledge that smaller populations = less accurate results.

To that end, I’m setting 31 Jan 2007 as the deadline to decide if you want in on the survey or not. If you’re willing to participate, bug your fellow creators (it will be very helpful to get as many members of the pro- and semi-pro collectives as possible — I’m talking to you, Dumbrella, Blank Label, Dayfree, Keen*, Modern Tales family, and others too numerous to list). Email me (gary) at this website (that would be fleen dot com) to say if you want in.

If I have at least 100 respondents in the pool, I’ll send out the questions and give a week to ten days to respond. Right now, said questions are still in development, but they will include measures traffic (unique IPs per month, averaged over three months ending 2006, most likely), age of the webcomic, frequency of updates, income derived from subscription/donation/merchandise/ advertising/services, conversion rates, and anything else I can think of. Calculations will be done as quickly as possible.

All questions used will be disclosed here at Fleen, as will methods used, any assumptions that materially affect the outcome; raw data (minus identifying information) will be made available to anybody else that wants to run their own analyses. This is your chance to get a snapshot of what the business of webcomics looks like, but to get a lot you have to give a little. Think it over.

I can’t believe that anybody is taking classes from me this week what with the holidays and all and one of my students looks so much like Lupin Madblood that I swear he’s gonna pull out a molecular whatzamajigger and blast me and holy God I need for this week to be over. How’s about some webcomics news?

Over Comixpedia way, it’s the year-end roundup, 2006 iteration, featuring some clever people, respected thinkers all, valued contributors to the ongoing dialogue on [web]comics, plus some hack they let in at the last minute to fill up the roster. Enjoy, except for the comment where Colonel Joey produces the worst pun of 2006.

You may recall that a while back, there was some question about the categories for the next round of the WCCAs. Mark Mekkes, coordinator-general for the awards, has an update for us:

We have finalized the categories for 2007!

First of all, we have decided to continue to use the “genre” categories, but we are shaking things up a bit. This year those categories will remain the same, however we will be adding a nomination category that will allow voters to recommend 4th Tier categories for 2008. The most recommended category recommendations will be considered by the committee while finalizing future category lists. We’re hoping that, not only will this help us to recognize the voter’s interest in these categories, but it will make these categories more fluid and help us in recognizing and presenting current trends in Webcomics for each year rather than trying to standardize a list of genre categories that can never be all inclusive.

Also note that we don’t intend to announce the “winning” categories with the rest of the award winners. The WCCA committee will still need time to consolidate and interpret the results in order to make sure that everyone’s category interpretations are fairly represented. However we do hope that this tool will help us in finalizing that decision relatively quickly.

Of course all of this information will be available on the WCCA website.

Thanks for the info, Mark!

There’s a hilarious exchange of opinions going on over at The Daily Cartoonist over the impending launch of Diesel Sweetie [sic] on January 8. Did you know that webcomics (and particularly pixel comics) all suck? It’s true — you can read it on the internet! Of more use is the factual reporting that papers carrying Diesel Sweeties on launch day will include the Houston Chronicle, Rocky Mountain News, Seattle Times, Calgary Herald and Detroit News. Those five papers have a combined readership of about 1.5 million sets of eyeballs.

And finally, a little something from You Damn Kid creator Owen Dunne:

Don’t know if you guys would think this is noteworthy, but “the Kid” appears in the syndicated strip Soup To Nutz today, along with characters from Lynda Barry and Matt Groening.

If nothing else, it shows webcomics are noticed by the mainstream syndicated cartoonists.

It is noteworthy, and it’s good to be reminded that sometimes that notice is a positive thing; thanks for the link, and see you all tomorrow.

Playing cards! Playing cards! Playing cards! Playing cards!

Playing.

Cards.

Irregular Webcomic today features a punchline that anybody will get on first glance. But then David Morgan-Mar launches into a beautifully-explained, nigh-on elegaic explanation of Maxwell’s Laws and what they mean.

Reading along, I’m flashing back damn near twenty years to my first class in electromagnetic fields; I’m remembering how learning something so fundamental to reality for the first time is a special kind of thrill; in my head, Morgan-Mar sounds like Richard Feynman. Quite simply, this comic & commentary made my day.