What does it mean, to “do what you love”? Today, I found out.

It happens that, as part of my undercover assignment, I’m in San Francisco. I’ve been here for a few weeks now in stealth mode. I haven’t talked, thought, smelled, or practically even read webcomics in at least three weeks.

Why? I’m that committed to the job.

Plus, Ferocious J hates me, so all my potential local contacts are in hiding (that man rules this town).

Today, I’m staggering out of some bar and all of a sudden I understand completely what it is to live or die for your work. As I step out the door, I glance up hill and I see a tiny woman pushing a cart that is at least twice her size.

Up Hill.

Up Hill In San Francisco.

And it’s not just any cart. It’s an ART cart. She’s a sidewalk caricaturist going home after what must be a looooonnnnnng day at Fisherman’s Wharf pimping her soul for the tourists.

Why? Because she thinks it’s fun? You’ve got to be kidding me. Because she’s that committed to her job? HELL No.

She is pushing this huge, heavy piece of wooden furniture up some of the steepest and longest hills in the entire Nation so she can PAY THE RENT by making art.

And what are you doing? Sitting around at home after a long “hard” day on the job as a “Systems Administrator” in some fashionably hick town like Nashua New Hampshire, and bitching that you aren’t “using your degree”? Spewing forth idiotic whinging (and I mean that in the Australian sense) on your blog about how some asshole on the Internet doesn’t like your work?

Or are you pushing a cart TWICE your size up the worst hill of your life?

Several worthy items today, campers, so let’s dive right in.

Firstly, if you didn’t scroll down far enough yesterday, you may have missed the debut column by the scintillating Ms Tuesday Crimson. To silence the mutterings I hear in the dark corners of the internet, no, I didn’t write that. For starters, Gary Tyrrell does not refer to himself in the third person. Ms Crimson is a real-life girl, and will be bringing us all the news of webcomics boning each Thursday.

Secondly, if you did miss Ms Crimson, it’s likely because you got caught up in the conclusion of Dave Kellett’s interview on syndication. He was brutally honest about how he sees the various models working for comics artists in general, and for himself in particular. Don’t forget to send in your followup questions for Mr Kellett.

Thirdly, because it’ll piss off this guy, the new Wigu book, The Case of the Missile Crisis, is coming so soon you can practically taste it. Jeff Rowland tells us that preorders will go live with the next update to Overcompensating, so keep your eyes peeled and your fingers on the browser refresh button.

Fourthly, the collected population of Webcomicistan offers its collective explression of relief that Roast Beef is alive and well. Repeat: RB is OK. In fact, as of this writing, links to Achewood are non-responsive, no doubt due to the overwhelming press of well-wishers. But how long can this happiness last?

Mostly, Fleen would like to thank founding contributor Jeff Lowrey for his posts to date. Circumstances dictate that Jeff start running in Deep Cover mode for a while, but we hope to see him pop up from time to time and lay some prime webcomics commentary on us. Or phat beats, whichever works for you. Jeff’s posting privileges will remain in good standing as long as there is a Fleen, except in the unlikely case of a conviction. We salute you Jeff, our very own Man of Mystery.

Crowfeathers is a pretty good manga style comic. It’s a bit mythic, it’s a bit western, it’s a bit fun.

Crowfeathers also is rather less PG-13 than it claims to be. There’s a fair dose of violence in most episodes as well as rape, murder and racism.

The artwork is fairly well executed in the manga style, and the writing is pretty decent. The characters ring true and are not too exaggerated. The storyline is fairly standard for the genre – a coming of age story where great events are portented and a young pig boy may grow up to be… well, okay not quite that standard. A young crow boy grows up to be an evil bounty hunter and is punished for it, but presumably will be redeemed by the close of the saga. Likely he will also resolve being abandoned by his father and fall in love.

Hate Song. HATE SONG. Sing a SONG about Hate. Celebrate that you HATE!

Life is too short to drink cheap beer.

Move like some sort of jungle cat, silent… fast… strong!

Move yo Honkey Ass.

Get Back to the Yak, Jack.

Hop On!

Don’t be a hate monger, be a hate stylist!

I first heard about Josh Mirman because of Disposable Parts.

He wrote and drew Stubble for roughly four years, and Punks and Nerds for a little more than a year.

The last few weeks, though, he seems to have started to lose his focus a bit. Okay, more than a bit. In fact, despite some hints, it looks like he’s completely given up.

If we want to dig a little deeper into why, the evidence in his LiveJournal is pretty clear. Josh Mirman no longer wants it as bad as he did. It’s all about the money.

Or maybe he’s just gone completely crazy.

Here‘s the breaking point. Right there is where an artist loses his love. And it’s all your fault, Internet!

Matt Buchwald started drawing Fodi in the middle of 2003. The story of Fodi is a classic story of triumph over adversity, time travel, beer, and Matt’s strange obsesssion with winged women.

Before we dig in, Matt wanted to make sure that he would get to say at least one funny thing. So here’s Matt for a brief intro:

A chicken walks into a library and goes up to the front desk. She asks the librarian, “Book book book book?” The librarian leaves and comes back with four books. The chicken takes the books and sits down at a table, where she hands the books to her friend the frog. The frog looks at the books in turn and saids, “Read it, read it, read it, read it.”

Mission Accomplished, Matt! And now, our interview about Matt, Fodi, and the Beer That Saved Pittsburgh.
(more…)

Some quick news from the Dayfree Press front.

Butter Nut Squash started updating last week after a several month long hiatus.

They are also selling a 30 page book containing reprints, new material, rants, and pinups. It was supposed to be released on the 15th.. but they don’t tell you where or how to buy it. I imagine they don’t actually want to sell any copies, just have them printed up so they can roll around in them ala Scrooge McDuck. Now, some basic deduction would lead one to suspect that it’s being printed by Speak Easy Comics, and is available at comic stores you can find using Comic Shop Locator. But SpeakEasy’s website claims that BNS stuff will be “coming soon”, and Comic Shop Locator doesn’t have a way to find out which stores have BNS stuff.

Most of the artists who use our contact form to entice us to read or review their comic also include something else. They apologize for marketing their strip – and usually in the contradictory form of “sorry for the shameless self-promotion”. If you’re apologizing, you’re not shameless, sorry!

TK Longmire sent us just such a missive yesterday – and guess what? It worked. This is the lesson for the day. If you want to make money off your comic, then you need regular readers. In order to get any readers at all, you must market your strip!

TK’s comic, Tasty Human Meat starts out being about a guy and his robot roommate. Despite this fairly pedestrian setup, it gets quirky fairly quick.

And then he switches to a series called Alternate Universe Comix, which takes place after a nuclear holocaust turned everyone into sealife.

TK has given us an entire world, with melancholy, schadenfreude, office life, teen bravado, communists, and everything else.

Under the sea? Yeah. That’s where I’d like to be. Thanks for a good comic, TK.

Jin Wicked does a pretty good job of making pieces of her life amusing and interesting. Some of her jokes material is a bit overused, but all in all, she stays entertaining.

Be warned, though, she expresses her political views!

David Malki ! apparently employs a cast of thousands in the production of Wondermark.

At least, if you believe a single word of his three page missive on the Making Of Wondermark. According to this missive, no I say it’s a manifesto, David employs the following persons or groups of people:

• creative staff
• research department
• writing staff
• Creative Director
• Executive V.P.
• compositing team
• Line Cook
• auditing agency
• liners
• ballooner/balloonist
• penciller (six)
• layout artists
• Korean roughing studio
• research team
• letterer
• inkers (three)
• Distribution Chief
• freelance antiquers

Counting the timeframes given and doing some estimating of my own for the rest… it takes somewhere between three and six months to produce each Wondermark strip.

The piling on of lies in this “making of” document compound to the point of indecency and beyond to a level that is clearly illegal.
It makes my head ache so bad I wish it would explode!