The thing you have to understand about Howard Tayler is, he’s basically the same guy as me. Okay, he’s got a passle o’ kids and I’ve got a dog; he’s a Latter-Day Saint and I’m a nonthiestic humanist (that’s me in the crosshairs); he bears a startling resemblance to Tycho and I don’t. But we were born a few months apart, we’ve been married to our respective wives about the same length of time, we’ve both worked extensively in tech, we both drive New Beetles, and I suspect that we have a similar love of pie — and if that’s not enough to make us brothers under the skin, then I don’t know what is.

And it’s obvious that we both really like the concept of DVD extras, as his first collection of strips, Schlock Mercenary Under New Management, is chock-full of the print equivalent of commentary tracks, mini documentaries, and deleted scenes. Tayler’s pretty well known for these commentaries within the bounds of the daily strip — you’ll learn about the logic behind his various sci-fi constructs and doo-dads, and get an occasional lesson in practical geology if you aren’t careful (you may also discover that in the future, he’s taking literal pot-shots at your place of residence).

Following on the DVD analogy, the book is the equivalent of a reference-quality disc, with heavy glossy paper (seriously, this is the heaviest stock I’ve ever seen in a webcomics book … there is some serious heft here), deep colors, rich blacks, with an occasional transfer artifact somewhat distracting from the overall presentation (that is, somebody needs to clean the printing web a bit better as there were some ink smears around the margins, but thankfully not on the main images). If there were a soundtrack to the book, it would have those reassuring little sci-fi spaceship background noises interspersed with some BLAM and ommminous hummmmm in 5.1 surround.

Storywise, SMUNM goes from March 9 to August 23, 2003, covering four arcs of a year-plus long story (which we are promised will continue in the next book); you could just read it online, but the book has a distinct advantage in that it’s easier to navigate. The latest website redesign eliminated the drop-down box that allowed a browser to jump to particular story points; Tayler has mentioned his unhappiness with this particular feature loss, so hopefully we’ll see the capability back soon.

In the meantime, SMUNM is exactly what you want from lighthearted SF — no big heavy morals or using the far-flung future to address pressing issues of our day, just a bunch of weird people wandering the galaxy and blowing up other weird people. Can’t ask for more than that, and with pre-orders done, it goes back on sale today.

Regular readers of this page know a few things about me: I like webcomics, setting off the occasional potentially-explosive discussion, and beer. I also have a low opinion of comics syndicates and how they treat a) their artists; and b) their audiences. And yet, there is room to discuss the syndicates and their contributions to an art form we all love, in a mostly-mature fashion.

Enter Chris Baldwin of the incomparably wonderful Little Dee, who on Monday announced a move in the direction of syndication; Baldwin was kind enough to talk to us about his reasons for doing so, his hopes, and whether or not he thinks he can take Dave Kellett in a no-holds-barred-fight. Okay, I made that last part up. Sorta.

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So the fine men and women of the United States Postal Service finally got me my copy of Howard Tayler’s first Schlock Mercenary book today (postmarked the 15th, I swear they were faster when they sponsored Lance), so look for a review in the coming days. Also, if rumors are to be believed, the long-awaited and completely non-controversial The History of Webcomics may be dropping in the next day or so; that one will probably take a bit longer. And today, it’s City Limits, the latest webcomics-artists-anthology, this one edited by George Rohac and Katy Ullman.

Like its predecessors, Flight and Disposable Parts, there’s a theme to this collection, although perhaps a bit less abstract than stuff flies or robots. CL focuses on a fictional city made up in a room full of creators at last year’s Otakon (many of whom may be seen here), which leaves a bit of room for crossovers — a bit of background gag in one story becomes a foreground plot point in another. This is a nice touch, and it would be nice to see if these little nods become a regular feature of creator anthologies.

Like all anthologies, it’s going to be somewhat uneven in tone and style, and no two people are going to agree on what the best parts are. You got horror (funny from Mookie Terraciano, creepy from Dan Kim), dumb action movie fun (in three parts from Brian Caroll and two from Ryan Estrada), science fiction (from Bob Gandy and Haque/Panagariya), and so forth. There’s probably something here to your taste and something that makes you go meh.

One thing though, and all future anthology editors should take note: not all the work reproduces equally well in the B&W printed medium. Justin Eger’s moody, somber story is well served by Rickey Winrick’s art in Reunion which probably looks great on a screen or color repro, but here the shading is muddled a bit around the edges. Similar issues and a distracting pixelation affect the splash pages of Bob Gandy’s contribution, No Moving Parts. By contrast, Mohammed Haque does his usual magic in Disconnect — the man knows how to get the thinnest lines and subtlest shading differences to display clear and sharp.

And if you clicked on those links above, you probably can’t see the flaws that I mentioned — maybe it’s an artifact of paper, maybe it’s to do with the source materials not having a high enough resolution, maybe it’s just that somebody produced a pre-press master on a day with an “R” in it — but it seems a shame that the image quality isn’t uniform throughout. No idea how to fix that, but there’s lots of people that read this that have prepared work for press; perhaps they could enlighten us.

Those of you who make a habit of checking your favorites even on (US) national holidays perhaps noticed this bit of news from Chris Baldwin:

I will tell you though, in brief, the news I hinted at last week. Soon Little Dee will be moving to comics.com. I have entered a web-site agreement with United Feature Syndicate in this regard. This does not mean I’m syndicated, but it is the next step in that potential. They’ve been kind and generous to me, and I am excited at this development.

Regular readers of Fleen will recall our previous conversations with Dave Kellett, and his dealings with United Features Syndicate‘s web-only syndication model.

Fleen will be continuing the discussion on [semi-]syndication, as Baldwin has graciously agreed to an interview on this very topic; watch for it shortly. In the meantime, since we all know that nothing brings eyeballs like controversy, let us all hope that Messers Baldwin and Kellett violently disagree about everything, giving Fleen the opportunity to sponsor the first San Diego Comic-Con Steel Cage Deathmatch (with the winner taking on Bil Keane, who will in all likelihood hand the youngster his ass).

Okay, so I was wondering if earlier in the week I could work in this somehow, since it’s not a webcomic and therefore outside our remit. Prickly City by Scott Stantis is (like the excreble Mallard Fillmore) a lame attempt at rescuing the funny pages from the “liberal mainstream media”. “Why is this not funny and merely shrill and shrieky?” is a question for another day; today, let’s revel in the irony that the joke is a direct lift from a Doonesbury (that paragon of liberality) strip from 1975 (no image available, so this is from memory):

Zonker: So how’d you get the name “Macarthur”, anyway?
Macarthur: Simple. I was a war baby, born in 1942.
M: Actually, I almost got named “Hirohito”, but luckily my parents held off naming me until after the Battle of Midway.
M: As you know, the Japs really got stomped there, lost four carriers! After that, all the Samoan families started naming kids after the general.
Z: At least “Macarthur” is a nice name.
M: Tell that to my sister Doug.

Okay, we’ll be kind and call it an “homage”, set to the tune of Lobachevsky. But what the hell to make of Steve (or possibly Scott — that name is part of the domain) Dial? What we have is an entire website that’s devoted to redrawing (and sometimes not very much) Overcompensating strips and presenting it as original work. I really like the bit at the bottom of each page:

DIALnation and all it’s characters are a trademark of Steve Dial all rights reserved.

Oh, wait, my bad, there’s also a ripoff of the first Something Positive strip, so it’s not exclusively a Jeff Rowland fatal attraction. If you’re interested in seeing a really poorly done monument to plagiarism, do a Google search. No link here, this is some scary, stalker-level shit.

I once implored you to keep an eye on Jeff Rowland and protect him from Rupert Murdoch’s goons, but this strikes me as much, much more dangerous. Anybody that knows this guy is invited to tell him to knock it the hell off.

The summer convention season kicks into gear this weekend with the Applegeeks guys heading up to Anime Boston; if you drop by, say ‘hi’ and remember not to take home any stray catgirls. The fun continues in a few weeks at the MoCCA Art Festival (Jun 10 – 11, Puck Building in New York), where historically you find a heavy contingent from webcomics. Ever felt like stalking a Dayfreer or Bald Lemur?

Looking a bit further into the summer, Brian Wilson from Hookie Dookie Panic informs us that at Connecticon, the webcomics will be representin’ large:

I think your readers would be interested to know about our uber webcomic panel. We are the largest webcomic convention in the east coast, and all of our guests climb up on stage for two hours for the single largest webcomic panel in the world. For more information, the connecticon website features some writeups on a few of the guests that will be attending, and can be found [here].

He’s the director of main events at Connecticon, so he’d know. And within two weeks, you’re looking at the Nerd Prom, which has frequently offered quality webcomics artists and panels (although the programmers are probably still reeling from last year’s space dildos). Fleen (in the person of me) will be at MoCCA and San Diego, so keep an eye out for news, interviews, and reviews.

This page has written before on the topic of webcomic advertising. You got your tightly targetted ads whereby producers looking to meet up with a certain demographic craft campaigns with loving detail. You got creators who will offer up their own characters — within limits — for your message (or possibly even themed strips to carry that message). In a form of sorta-advertising, you can do product placement in the form of your own self. And then there’s Google’s various programs, including the rotation that you see on many webcomics.

These work by selecting keywords from text that appears on the page, serving up ads that are (presumably) of interest to the page’s audience. Sometimes, this means that ads contrary to your message sneak through … Scott Kurtz has written several times about how Google ads for gold farmers have snuck through, even though he’s opposed to them and their ilk.

But forget all that. I just want to know what combination of words on this page resulted in this ad showing up this morning. If nothing else, it’s given me an idea for how to choose new writers for Fleen in the future.

In case you’d forgotten, at the end of last year, Colonel Joey decided to shift around the business model of the Modern Tales family of sites; part of those changes involved opening up the sites to both subscription-only and free titles, and bringing Eric Burns in as the editor of Modern Tales. It’s been a long while coming, but Mr T notes in his blog that changes are finally afoot at Graphic Smash.

So there’s new titles up at GS, and one presumes that a similar overhaul is imminent at MT (the roster of regularly-updating titles has gotten decidedly thin of late; hopefully Burns will be able to beef it back up quickly). Among the GS titles sure to gather attention is Bang Barstal by webcomics, um, personality WilliamG. If you follow webcomics, chances are you have an opinion on Mr G. and his opinions and means of expressing them (and chances are, nothing written here is going to alter your opinions). His comics work, however, has generally flown under the radar, so this may be the first opportunity for many to to judge his storytelling, art, and writing, rather than his forum persona.

On a related note, Fleen will be selling Nomex bodysuits for a modest fee if any wish to lay in a bit of flameproofing before venturing into such territory.

Blank Label Comics turns one year old today! Fleen congratulates the six hardy pioneers who left the comfort and safety of Keenspot to strike out on their own. Perhaps uniquely, BLC didn’t evolve over time via accretion — the individuals in the collective set out to build a group of ‘tooners that would have skills that complemented each other. Thus, Straubian web-design benefitted from Guigarian media savvy, and so forth.

The initial group of Kristofer Straub, Brad Guigar, David Willis, Paul Southworth, Steve Troop, and Paul Taylor was soon joined by Greg Dean, Howard Tayler, and Dave Kellett. Individually, they are mighty webcomickers; together, they are nigh-unbeatable, just like Voltron. In the year past, there have been 23 podcasts (complete with theme song — more things in life need theme songs), a charity event, a half-dozen books (and Straub just announced a new one today), and giggles o’ plenty. Oh sure, the fast life of webcomics — the groupies, the fast cars, the drugs — could still overcome these starry-eyed idealists. All it takes is one Yoko and they could become the Spinal Tap of the internet funnies in the blink of an eye … and that would be awesome. But today, we salute them, and wish them much success.

Until, y’know, the Yoko thing.

So here’s me on the road for work during a week when not one, but two different webcomicky books should be arriving at my home, just crying out for review. Woe is me. I suppose if I can’t read the new books, I can at least point you towards Stripped Books, where Gordon “Multiplex” McAlpin pays homage to The Book in a series of nonfictional documentary projects.

When something book-related occurs in the greater Chicago area, McAlpin does a multi-page comic about it — a reading, a release party, a speech, all are fair game for McAlpin’s recounting of the event. Most amazingly, McAlpin adjusts his own artistic style to match that of the author or book in question. Thus, Jon and Lane go to Barnes & Noble! looks like The Stinky Cheese Man, Perseopolis 2.1: The Story of a Signing looks like Marjane Satrapi’s award-winning autobiographical works, and Stephen Mitchell on Gilgamesh looks (to me, anyway) like the very naturalistic art of Eric Shanower’s Age of Bronze comics (okay, Greece and Troy, not Uruk, but close enough).

Stripped Books is on hiatus at the moment so that McAlpin can concentrate on Multiplex, but he promises it will be back — in any event, he’d pretty much have to wait for something bookish to happen before he could draw it, wouldn’t he? So if you’re an author in the Chicago area, do something so he can document it for us! In the meantime, check out the past events; there’s some good stuff there, and it’s well worth an afternoon surreptitiously browsing at “work”.