At the back of the first Penny Arcade book (long since passed into the realm of legend) is this bit of dialogue:

Guess we know who won that disagreement. For lo, these many years, I’ve clutched my copy of the Year One book, wondering when, oh when, Gabe and Tycho would be able to once again publish their stuff. And at last my local comic shop got my copy in (they’re pretty much sold out), so Fleen can now bring you a review of Attack of the Bacon Robots!

First impressions: the vertical trim on AOTBR! is much more convenient for reading than the horizontal Year One. It’s got more than twice as many strips, is cheaper by about $20, and presumably Dark Horse are kind enough to actually give Gabe and Tycho money, instead of attempting to screw them sideways in the ass like their insanely Michael Jackson emulating first publisher did. The colors are vibrant and the printing quality is noticeably higher, with 7 year old strips coming in crisp and sharp instead of washed out and fuzzy. Tycho’s intro is a hoot, as is that of comics-page fellow geek traveller Bill Amend. But what struck me most was the afterword.

You don’t read afterwords? Read this one. It’s somewhat ambitiously titled The Webcomic Manifesto, and goddamned if it isn’t the finest piece of writing Tycho’s done since the famous Carrot Cake Soup. It’s wrong to try to excerpt it, because every part of the argument he puts forth in the manifesto is strong and compelling and part of a whole; we’re going to anyway, because it’s hard to find the book right now, and more people should read this:

Typically when people discuss the “ramifications” of Webcomics (capital W, proper noun) … the dialogue tends to focus on how digital distribution of comics alters the power dynamic between creators and publishers.

I guess so.

The most startling change we’ve seen hasn’t been betwen creators and publishers, it’s between creators and readers.
…
Most of the people considered “big movers” in Webcomics are considered so not because they have substantially contributed work to the medium — indeed, they might not even produce a regularly updated comic. No, they are thought of with reverence because in each case they laud some new barrier between people who read comics and people who write them. The barriers they’re so proud of take a number of forms, but Byzantine pay mechanisms and subscription-locked archives are two of the more celebrated anchors.

If you are using systems like these, I need to ask you why you don’t trust your readers.

What are you afraid they’re going to do with your comics? Read them?
…
When you’re ready to stop treating readers like thieves, come check out this Web they’ve got going. I hear it’s going to be big.

There’s a window of safety glass that separates the adherents of different business models in webcomics; roughly speaking, they’re divided into those who think that Understanding Comics was the better book, or Reinventing Comics was (Me? I’m the guy who kinda liked The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln). It gets breached every once in a while, slammed open so that angry exchanges can fly back and forth, then closed again and calm returns once more to the land. That crunching sound you just heard? That was the firebomb that Tycho just chucked through the window. Now go buy a copy of the reprinting and see if you agree with his argument or not. But for the love of all that is good and holy, base your opinion on the full argument, not the excerpt above. And no burning my consulate.

“At the crossroads of the academic and the asinine” is how Bryant Paul Johnson describes his webcomic, Teaching Baby Paranoia (Modern Tales subscription required for most of the archives, but a few free examples are to be found). Once a week, he takes us on a trip into the hinterlands of bizarre phenomena, secret history, and all-around weirdness. It’s copiously documented with footnotes, historical references, and citations to original sources.

Don’t believe a word of them.

Oh, sure, the stories he tells (like today’s intersection of antiauthoritarian philosophizing and supple human leather) sound just weird enough to be true. But mark my words, Johnson is making it all up. Also, you cannot, in fact, spell asshole with A, C, G, and T. He’s lying to you.

Except when he’s not. And that’s what’s so cool about Teaching Baby Paranoia: the storytelling skill that convinces your brain 100% that some improbable oddity just might be true, and mixed with the knowledge that the items so implausible, so easily disproved, dammit, end up being on the true side of things.

Maybe. Damn.

So, PC Weenies has been around forever; the archives start in late October 1998, which puts it roughly in the same vintage as Penny Arcade or PvP. In internet terms, that is geological-scale deep time. It’s a single-panel gag strip (without navigation buttons on the main page, but you’ll find them in the archives), with a focus on general computer/technical nerdery. We’re not here to talk about that.

See the panel on the main page over to the right? The one from the top of this post? Clicking on the blonde takes you here, which is our topic right now. PC Weenies, like many strips, offers its loyal readers the opportunity to throw the cartoonist a couple bucks. Unlike many strips, part of what your couple bucks can buy is an appearance in the strip. You get to consult with creator Krishna Sadasivam on your appearance and theme; when the strip runs, you get a hardcopy of the character design.

This opens up all kinds of interesting questions, though: How much to draw you as being much more attractive than you actually are? Or for fawning text that describes your vast intelligence, incredible athletic ability, and/or monumental sexual prowess? Can you contract for an unflattering protrayal of somebody you don’t like? If your character becomes popular enough for repeat appearances or sells merch, can Sadasivam keep all the dough?

Please note that I don’t have a problem with any of these things … I just wish that PC Weenies listed a proper schedule of charges. I don’t need the fame and fortune promised, but I do want to humiliate my enemies. I just need to budget my vengeance, that’s all.

One of the questions that comes up around here is, “How do you decide what webcomics to talk about?” Jeff’s mentioned the idea of following links until you hit something interesting, and there’s also the contact form that creators use to let us know what they’re up to. And sometimes, people make an open call for comment. And by god, that’s when Fleen responds.

Up next: The Mulberry Gallows Project. On first glance, it’s pretty primitive, but there might actually be something worth discussing below the surface. The creator, Adam Marien, identifies TMGP as his first attempt at a comic, and it shows. Where it shows isn’t so much the art (there are plenty of established comics out there with visuals that are no better), but the unevenness. Case in point: the seventh strip has a bleak humor that wouldn’t necessarily be out of place in Dinosaur Comics or A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible. A better execution and it could even be brilliant. But just two strips later, you get something that’s totally pedestrian.

For every bit of self-referential surrealism, you have an example of pure, distilled ordinaryness. Or, more optimistically, every bit of ordinary is balanced by well, I’m not sure, but there’s potential there. Marien needs lots of practice. He needs to find some consistency. But with enough of both, someday TMGP could erupt as the mutant love-child of Twisp and Catsby, megaGAMERZ 3133T, Ed The Sock, and ergot.

And I mean that in the best possible way.

As you may know, one of the strips that we here at Fleen like a lot is Alien Loves Predator. There’s a full explanation of its awesomeness elsewhere on the site, which you may wish to peruse.

Back? Good. Bernie Hou is running a guest week over at ALP, and it’s developing nicely. Yesterday’s strip (by David Malki) was visually similar enough to Hou’s fumetti that you might not realize it’s somebody else’s work. Today’s strip (from Zach Weiner) is drawn rather than photographed, and does a particularly good job of reproducing Abe’s speech patterns. Who knows who will provide tomorrow’s strip? It’s a mystery known only to the artist, Hou, and you, if you check back tomorrow.

Review time, kids! The webcomics library is growing by leaps and bounds, and over the next week or two, more items should be in our hot little hands. Up today: the reprint of Looks, Brains, and Everything, Scary Go Round book 1.

LBE (as the cool kids call it) contains what has become known as the Zombie Shelley storyline (which actually starts here, but damn I love that photo); since for many people, Shelley is the favorite character (and probably the soul of the strip, but I’m starting to take a real shine to Dark Esther), doing a story like this so early in the strip’s run (it comprises online chapters 2, 3, and 4) was an ambitious move on Allison’s part.

The art is even more gorgeous on the printed page than on the screen, and remarkably consistent with Allison’s current output (amazing considering that the youngest of these pages are three years old, and this is from the very beginning of Allison’s use of Illustrator); you would expect to see a ramping-up of quality or shift in style, but it’s always been as good as it is now. Allison has done a bit of tweaking in the story (he expresses particular discomfort with this page in the end-of-book material; the replacement page is much more melancholy); other additional pages also flow so smoothly that you’ll be hard pressed to find them without doing a page-by-page comparison against the online archives. On the necessity of these half-dozen additions, Allison sums up his feelings nicely in the Introduction:

Most artists I know view their old work with a mixture of horror, embarrassment and remove.

Like a teenaged diary rediscovered, it reveals the flaws and quirks you’ve spent the intervening years trying with all your might to hammer out. Those flaws are so gross and caricatured to our own eyes that we can’t see what people enjoyed about the stuff in the first place.

So I was pleasantly surprised upon revisiting this work to be reminded of a few of it’s charms…. While I can’t say thta I didn’t secretly want to re-draw every panel, the pages that follow seem good enough to let stand. These were the stories that helped me make comics my job.

Allison is being far too modest. The story and art are as full of charm as anything ever done in webcomics, dancing along your brain’s pleasure center like a zesty ranch dressing dances on your tongue.

Special note must also be made of the amazing job that Allison does in dealing with the business end of comics as a job: from the day that he asked if there was support for this book to the day he announced its availability was less than a month. One order via PayPal was processed the same day, and arrived across an ocean (and through the Great Northeastern Blizzard of Aught-Six) in one week. That’s a lot of logistics and follow-up to expect from one person working solo, and producing a comic five times a week. Given the disastrous implosion of Vault Distribution not so long ago, it’s good to remind ourselves what top-notch service in webcomics merch looks like.

In conclusion: LBE deserves an OBE. Yes, it’s generally understood that honors recipients are people and not objects, but Her Majesty will cope. She always does.

Ordering info is imminent. You NEED to buy this.

Continuing from yesterday, what’s needed in the current argument over religion and cartoons is a positive example. It should be possible for one who is observant in a faith to make fun of that faith, its adherants, and its traditions. To poke humor at one’s self and fellow faithful (especially one’s ex). To be able to admit that faith is a slippery thing and that you can try hard and still come up short of doctrinal perfection. To explain, if necessary, what makes such things funny. Heck, to play with stereotypes, too.

Welcome to ShaBot 6000. It’s a two-character play, essentially, featuring:

… a pious Jew who purchases a robot to work as Shabbos Goy for his household. The inquisitive robot, ShaBot, decides that he is Jewish, and is therefore unable to fulfill his duties as servant. ShaBot spends his days asking questions about Judaism, trying to find logic in a religion that sometimes DOES NOT COMPUTE.

That’s courtesy of creator Ben Baruch, who no doubt would like all the ladies on JDate to know that he’s very attractive.

Surely he’s not the only person who can do this. There have to be others devout in their beliefs, that can show the world that they’re willing to laugh at themselves. On the off chance that you (yes, you personally) were considering rioting to get me to not disrespect your religion? It’s a hell of a lot simpler for all concerned if you put that energy into jokes. I’m never going to understand the full details and implications of any religion, Orthodox Jewish or otherwise (but there’s a nice story about growing up Orthodox here — scroll down to the 3rd story); it will always be alien to me. But if you can laugh at yourself, we can meet halfway. So start looking through the Hadith, Bhagavad-gita, Lotus Sutra, Tao Te Ching, Confessions of Saint Augustine, Book of Mormon, or Book of the SubGenius for material, pick up a pen, and do some toons.

Then we can all get together and make fun of Scientologists.

So, blasphemy and idolatry are hitting the webcomicsosphere pretty hard. Lots of issues here. Could be a consulate or two gets burned, when there’s good and bad guys everywhere and the up yours attitude comes out (not that the up yours attitude isn’t warranted under certain circumstances).

Case in point, from eviscerati:

Alex has five cartoons in all, and has made them available via links on a page that you must deliberately click to view (with warnings for those comics that depict Mohammed, to minimize any offense given to Shi’a Moslems). The one posted here is my favorite of the lot.

Except some sources claim that Shi’a Muslims are less categorically strict about the depiction-of-Mohammed thing. Unless they’re not. I’ve got free-speech cred out the wazoo and I’ve casually studied Islam for a dozen years, but I’m still having a problem getting a handle on this. Are the guys out rioting the Muslim equivalent of Fred Phelps (no link; go look up the nutjob on your own time)? I think what’s needed in this discussion is maybe a different perspective. Check back tomorrow; could be interesting.

It has previously been that these pages have written about Kean Soo’s journal comic, exitmusic; there was a brief mention there of his current project, Jellaby. At that time Jellaby was on hiatus, but it’s been back for a couple weeks now. It’s high time we talked about it. Jellaby is giving Little Dee a run for its money as the most Calvin and Hobbes-esque webcomic; where Chris Baldwin tends to work with short storylines of a week or two interspersed with gag-a-day strips, Kean Soo has one big story in Jellaby: the story of a sweet feisty little girl and her monster.

Portia, the girl, is kind of isolated — half by being extremely bright, and half by circumstance. One night she finds weird dreams besetting her, and outside the window is … well, we’re not sure, but I’d say it’s a lost monster child. And lost children mean you gotta do what’s right, even when things get dangerous. Or worse: when Mom could find out that your new monster is very, very hungry. Funny thing about those lost kids you find: they learn lessons, like how bullies need to be dealt with. That’s Jason, by the way, getting hassled by the big kids; he and Portia don’t seem to like each other too much at the moment, but there are some really nifty short stories that imply at some point, Jason gets to be friends with Portia and Jellaby.

And when you’ve made your way through the archives (there’s not much, what are you waiting for?), check out the Jellaby art. Some of it’s from enormously talented artists and friends, but I think the best is Soo’s “Homage” line. He’s imagined Jellaby and Portia into well known bits of comics and animation, with surprisingly good results. There’s a book version, too, which has the single coolest feature in the history of indy/small-press comics: you can cut a Totoro-inspired image out and paste it back into other pages to make a pop-up book. It takes about two minutes and it looks great. So what are you waiting for? Get cracking on the archives, watch how a lonely girl and lost monster help each other grow up. It’s heartwarming. It’s beautifully drawn. It’s stunningly original. It’s just plain fun.