Editor’s note: T Campbell was offered the opportunity to respond to Fleen’s recent review of what was identified as The History of Webcomics — while this was the original title of the book, Campbell has pointed out that the actual title at time of publication was A History of Webcomics; Fleen regrets the error.

Campbell’s response to the review, received over the weekend, appears in full below.

Campbell Responds To Fleen!Drama!

Tyrrell handles his critical role as gingerly as a thermonuclear bomb with a busted timer, as if trying to be forthright and fair enough to compensate for the bad behavior of all the book’s other critics.

Relax, Gary. You took time to read the damn thing all the way through and worked off the actual text. You didn’t rely on lies, hearsay, illogical assumptions or character assassination. Just as importantly, you didn’t decide to like it because I seemed a decent sort, or because you’d read my other work, or because you thought I meant well. That already punts you into the top 2% of the bell curve.

Not that there’s not room for improvements on Tyrrell’s improvements. My biggest problem’s one that I didn’t expect to have: he doesn’t hit hard enough.
(more…)

Big things in store for Penny Arcade, apparently; we should know more after the reveal this weekend at PAX. In the meantime, Jerry Holkins wasn’t kidding when he said:

You may be wondering what happened to the lever that regulates the amount of fan-service that flows into a given strip. This lever has been tugged free of the housing. You can only pull it in the open air now, and it does nothing to staunch the flow. Before this thing is over, you motherfuckers will need scuba gear.

Boy, he’s not kidding. The fan service couldn’t be any more thick if there were tentacles. In just one strip today, you’ve got Frank, Charles, Anne, Jim, the Tycho Zombie, and a Cinnabon; if not for the fact that the CTS and Twisp & Catsby occupy their own realities, you’d see them in there too.

This is pandering distilled to its finest essence, and I mean that in a complementary way; after the promised epilogue, look for PA to revert to Gabe being raped by hobos.

Today is the the day that The Boy becomes The Man. Everybody feel good for Esther, having realized her dream of three years. Everybody feel bad for Erin, who will not have her loads of brainy, ginger babies. And everybody be nice to the next Cocker Spaniel you see, because the poor stupid dears deserve our pity.

Dear God in heaven, I thought that the Spongmonkeys were the most disturbing thing I’d ever see on the internets.

Then Jon “deliberate shitter” Rosenberg introduced an insane broccoli-man in Goats today. As it turns out, Brock (for that is the name of the aforementioned IB-M) is actually the creation of a one Mister R Stevens III, Esq., who is usually less batshit insane in his creations.

Persons of a weak constitution are urged not to click on the above links, and to avoid all future contact with broccoli, just to be safe.

‘Bout six months back or so, we told you about Owen Dunne’s retooling of You Damn Kid to contain four separate projects: the aforementioned (and optioned) YDK, backup strip The Beevnicks, secondary backup strip Nippleshine Manor, and emergency redundant tertiary backup strip My New Mommy.

Nippleshine wrapped a few months later, and after a bit of a delay, the epilogue of My New Mommy went live ‘tother day. Much like the earlier Nippleshine, Mommy made a pretty sudden exit, story-wise, and — given the generally raucous approach that Dunne brings to his strips — both ended on an oddly melancholy note. We at Fleen hope that Dunne is well, and if he’s looking a little blue, somebody please give him a hug.

From the Department of Corrections: Per Campbell’s response, this post has been edited to reflect the correct title of the book; Fleen regrets the error.

Editor’s note: Hoo boy, could this one devolve quickly. I’ve spent a month now very carefully reading and re-reading, very carefully making and cross-checking notes, very carefully writing what you’re about to read. As we discuss the book, please bear in mind that we’re not going to argue opinion on this one; whether or not Campbell is correct is for others to fight over. We will be looking at only whether or not Campbell has effectively made and advanced his points.

The redoubtable T Campbell began The A History of Webcomics as a series of articles over at Comixpedia, later expanding it into a book via Antarctic Press. This book is for me: I’ve been into webcomics since nearly the beginning, I have a lengthy “regular reading” list, I know a lot of the people who make ’em, and I know their history.

And it still turns out that this book really only comes together if you live in Campbell’s brain. Allow me to explain.
(more…)

After having what was probably intended as a joke land with a thud in this Comixpedia thread, DJ Coffman (who ironically drew the picture you see right up there) got into a sizeable flame-fight. We’ve seen this sort of thing before (and I’m not speaking solely in reference to Coffman here): pissed off people breed ever-higher levels of off-pissedness, which in this case Coffman felt compelled to continue in Lea Hernandez’s blog after the Comixpedia thread got locked. Coffman reports that the target of his original comment, Girlamatic editor Lisa Jonte, followed up with contact to Coffman’s to-be-publisher, Platinum Studios, bringing a real-world component to the Internet Drama. Just life in the modern age, right?

Maybe. Over at his site, Coffman has written a fairly lengthy apology for his behavior earlier in the week. It’s somewhat qualified in places (especially in the first paragraph, where Coffman says that he respects some [emphasis original] of the people in this little contretemps), but on the whole I think it reads as sincere, and hopefully he’s reached out to both Lisa Jonte and Lea Hernandez to personally express his remorse for (let’s be honest here) being a gigantic ass. With any luck, Coffman will think a bit more before hitting the “submit” button next time, which might even become habit for all of us who write things for public consumption.

As long as we’re wishing, I’d like a pony and a plastic rocket. But seriously, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a mea culpa from a flamewar instigator, and while Drama helps to fill the column-inches, we at Fleen welcome this tenuous return to civility.

Saw a link recently on Jennie Breeden’s site, leading me to a new-ish comic called A Girl And Her Fed. Interesting premise — the Girl (no name given) is a target of surveillance by the Fed (likewise) for being a bit noise-ity. The Fed’s a decent kind of guy, though, and he and the Girl decide that they probably have more in common with each other than with their respective colleagues (his) and lack-of-friends (hers).

Add to the fact that the Girl’s hallucination of Ben Franklin (an old recurring acid flashback, or something else?) is also visible to the Fed, and the Fed’s in-head mind-control chip interface (which looks like Dubya) crashes when around Ben, allowing the Fed to keep his thoughts private … oh, did I forget to mention the Pocket President™? Yeah, it seems most of the federal agents who had them implanted have wound up eating their guns, and the Girl and the Fed decide to get to the bottom of what may be a fairly nasty conspiracy. Also, very, very drunk.

The art is ultra-simplistic, by choice of creator (a lady by the name of Otter); with few distinguishing characteristics, or even names, the Girl and the Fed could be stand-ins for anybody. Fortunately, the writing is clever enough to keep the reader’s interest while getting used to it. And I wonder if there’s a reason that Pocket President™ Bush is the only character with visible eyes? The various Feds naturally all have dark glasses, Ben has his spectacles, and everybody else (even the dogs) has eyebrows without eyes. It’s curiously effective at providing facial expressions.

All in all, a strip with some interesting story potential (Otter is particularly not making the Fed, or even the government he works for, a black-and-white villian … he’s a decent guy doing a job he doesn’t particularly like). It’s worth keeping an eye on, if only because the Girl and the Fed desperately need all the eyes they can get.

Little Dee fans (and goodness, should that be synonymous with ‘breathing humans’?), the long wait is nearly over! As you will recall, Chris Baldwin (comicster extraordinaire) went semi-syndicated a while back, and we’ve been dealing with reruns to get new readers up to speed.

But that all ends soon. So very, very soon. So count down the days with me until next Monday, and let’s see what Baldwin has cooked up in his time away from us.

This page has previously written about Randall Munroe’s xkcd, a strip that knows the truth about computational linguistics (and the filthy reprobates who compute linguistically). Munroe, a robot-wrangler for NASA Langley Research Center, is clearly a very smart guy (although I can tell you from personal expericence that you don’t have to be a rocket scientist, to be a rocket scientist), and this week he’s turning his amazing percept-o-tron powers on webcomics.

Munroe has distilled some webcomics down to their essential oils, and it in doing so produced some brilliantly funny parodies. Check out his semi-loving tribute to Achewood, which features personalities and dialogue stretched to within 0.0004% of the Theoretical Onstad Limit; right down to the mouse-over text, it’s simply perfect. Today it’s Megatokyo in Munroe’s sights, with an emphasis on Fred Gallagher’s public persona (and perhaps a minor tribute to the stick-figure mafioso Dom). There’s a fine line between tender affection and savage kicking, and this strip straddles it neatly.

Not sure what other strips will get the xkcd treatment for the rest of the week (Do SGR!), but I have a feeling it’s going to be a real treat regardless. And be sure to tell your grandkids about this week, because I think it’s going to be remembered as when Randall Munroe hit the Webcomics Big Leagues.