It’s just like squirrels; if you see one, there’s probably others lurking around.

• Congratulations to Darren J Gendron, creator of many webcomics and webcomics-adjacent projects, who reports this morning:
  

  As of 6:32 a.m., we have the arrival of one Montgomery Ironwill Gendron, weighing 6 pounds, 15 ounces. Mommy and Monty are doing fine.

  Those clicking on the link will find that this time that photo is of a cleaned-up and suitable for the Amiden Great-Aunt baby, so that’s good. Also, if Young Master Gendron’s middle name actually is Ironwill, that is totally badass¹; considering that Monty’s big brother is named Franklin Powers Gendron, there’s an excellent chance of badassery.

  Also, Jesse Thorn² tweeted a little while ago:

  Oscar Thorn was born this morning at 3:45. He and @TheresaThorn are healthy and beautiful and amazing.

  Considering that the Thorns are west coasters, that would be about fifteen minutes after Ironwill entered the world. One is forced to conclude two things:

  1. Man, Jesse really didn’t want to get a dog.
  2. These babies are coming closer and closer together; the (last we saw) tremendously preggers Rene Engström has probably had five babies as a result of all this prompting.
• Know who’s had a lot of overlap with Jesse and Theresa Thorn, particularly vis-à-vis multiple iterations of MaxFunCon? David Malki !. Despite being busier than twelve ordinary humans trying to determine the optimal delivery method of the Machine of Death game, he also ends up with ideas that must be dealt with immediately.

  Let’s be clear, that beard-related idea occurred yesterday; the shirt is available for order today. And for the process nerds among you, Malki ! has shared a very nice writeup of how the design was constructed, possibly as an excuse to talk about a favorite (free) design tool.

• How do you know you’ve arrived? Make a ridiculously implausible comic, then hours later have the premise confirmed by the frighteningly smart and capable people you’re spoofing. Mr Weinersmith, I believe that Stockholm is on the line with news of your Nobel.

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¹ Not to mention unlikely to be duplicated once he ends up in class with all the Jadens and Jaydens and Jaedons.

² He doesn’t do a webcomic, but the Maximum Fun empire is a client of Mr I Am Made of Poison, and he has followed the independent creator give it away/monetize the back end model for years, so he counts.

Pretty much good news across the board today, in fact.

• Word comes from New England today, that Paul Southworth (late of Ugly Hill, currently of Not Invented Here) is part of a special event that one might choose to remember every 24th of October for the forseeable future:
  

  ITS A GIRL! Eloise Karin Southworth is 8lbs 5oz and everyone is doing great! http://instagram.com/p/f2l3CNp3tM/

  Those clicking on the link should be aware that it features an alive human child moments after its emergence into the world, and not looking like the angelic baby with the beatifically-reposed mother that might feature in the birth announcement you send to your maiden great-aunt. There’s vernix¹, and a full-throated protest at being dragged into a noisy, bright, cold world, and it looks like a lot of wriggling and pinking-up and you know what? She’s gorgeous. Congrats to Eloise, her two big brothers, mom and dad, and sincere hopes that every day just gets better for them all.²

• One of the things that Chris Hastings mentioned as an upcoming project during his NYCC panel was a Dr McNinja-themed card game. It was all designed, he had a prototype at home, and everybody that came to visit got to play it and nobody said it was less than lots of fun. The Kickstarter would be starting in the near future.

  In this case, “near future” meant yesterday, and it (that is to say, Dr McNinja’s Legendary Showdown) is already funded. What I found most interesting about DMLS (I’m afraid that it simply demands boldfacing) is the first stretch goal of the campaign, which is not based on a dollar figure, but on backer involvement.

  In case you can’t read that image up top, it says:

  2,500 Facebook shares or #LegendaryShowdown tweets
  NEW CHARACTER CARD

  I don’t recall at the moment another campaign tying content to the breadth of discussion of the project in question; it’s a damn clever idea, since that many tweets and shares puts the game in front of more potential backers. I’ll be watching this one very carefully. If I could make one suggestion to the project runners at Killer Robot Games³, maybe they want to also count Kicktraq shares? Just spitballing here.

• Not new, per se, but still good news — per the comments on yesterday’s post, Sinfest is having website issues, but Tatsuya Ishida is posting updates on the forums (yesterday, today). Hopefully the main page will sort itself out soon, but in the meantime, there’s still comics and that’s all right.

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¹ Look it up.

² Although if Southworth is good at his job as father, today will mark the last time his daughter is naked on the internet.

³ Couldn’t find a website for them, on account of the words “killer robot” spawn a lot of matches in Google.

Some things go exactly as you expect; anybody could have told you when PAXEast registrations went live today, the tickets site (and the hotels site, for that matter) were gonna get hammered like the Obamacare site on launch day. Seems to have sorted itself out, in the sense that much of the registration and hotel inventory are now spoken for. Have fun in Boston, y’all.

• One thing that’s been pretty much constant for a really long damn time is that every morning, there will be a new update at Sinfest. Love it or hate it (or, given that it’s about five different strips in one, love parts and hate other parts), Tatsuya Ishida’s strip is something you can practically set your watch by — checking the archive, the last break in the daily schedule I can find was the several weeks long gap between 14 June and 10 July of 2006. More than 2600 days in an unbroken streak followed until today.

  Not that Ishida (who is quiet and not well-known in webcomics circles) owes us an update or anything — it’s just that when a long-established pattern suddenly changes, it sure as hell catches your eye. Fleen hopes that all is well with Ishida and thanks him for all of the free comics to date, and appreciates him in advance for any that he creates in the future.

• More than seven years of an update streak is a pretty big number, and here’s another: 1,254,120, which readers may recall as the number of United Sates Dollars raised by Rich Burlew in his record-shattering Kickstarter campaign last year¹. I’m bringing Burlew and his campaign up because he emailed me regarding The Lando Effect (as described by Rich Stevens yesterday) and declaring it the reason that said Kickstart became such a huge success:
  

  I just wanted to point out that the Lando Effect that you mentioned in yesterday’s column is exactly what powered my Kickstarter project. The initial pitch included a bonus digital story about the history of a secondary character, and also allowed three backers to buy additional stories about any character they chose that would then be distributed to all backers. As the drive went on, I added more side stories with each goal hit … So, yeah, it absolutely does work, as long as your audience is invested in the series as a whole and the chosen character is compelling enough in their main story appearances to pique interest.

  In case you didn’t have a reason to believe Stevens, Burlew has given you one-point-two million more reasons, and also ascribes to the “side story” model the success of his print collections that pre-date the Kickstart. Just don’t ignore his last line, which we’ll repeat here with a little emphasis added:

  So, yeah, it absolutely does work, as long as your audience is invested in the series as a whole and the chosen character is compelling enough in their main story appearances to pique interest.

  Also, try not to have near-career-ending injuries at any time; if you find yourself on the cusp of having a near-career-ending injury, just imagine Burlew standing a meter or so in front of you, sadly but firmly shaking his head and silently mouthing the word No.

• Finally, it’s Wednesday, and that means it’s Charles Christopher day², and for those of you that have always wondered Hey, Karl Kerschl lives in Montréal, when will we be able to read Charles Christopher in French?, the answer is Real damn soon now, Sparky:
  

  The first volume of The Abominable Charles Christopher has been translated for the French market by my pals at Studio Lounak! It’s their first publication and it’s a beautiful hardcover volume with a spot-gloss on the lettering.

  It’s available through a number of retailers and you can buy it now from werehouse.ca, which also stocks my other books, as well as books by Becky Cloonan, Andy Belanger and Cameron Stewart.

  This is the first of many such volumes, and hopefully more translations!

  Given how non-culturally-specific TACC is, I’m not surprised at all to see that Kerschl’s pushing for translations — there’s a world of people who would read these gorgeous, heartfelt comics in other languages, and I hope that they spread the word far and wide in their respective linguistic communities. My French is extremely spotty³ so I think I’ll give this one a miss, even though it comes with an exclusive bookplate that looks pretty gorgeous.

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¹ Which resulted in a creative-production and fulfillment job that would send most rational people into a fetal ball o’ panic, and give rise to serious thoughts of taking the money and fleeing to a country without an extradition treaty. Burlew continues to make progress (hampered as he was not only by the scope and scale, but also by a near-career-ending injury 13 months ago) and has set the standard for communicating progress made on the many aspects of fulfillment via his brilliantly-designed Workometer.

² Also weekly computer maintenance day, but maybe that’s just me?

³ When traveling, I count myself lucky if I can use the local language to get a train ticket, a hotel room, and a beer. I’ve managed that so far in Czech, French, Dutch, and Japanese, but I only “studied” one of those for four years in high school. Oh, and when I speak French, I have a tendency to drift into other languages, including on one particularly embarrassing occasion outside of Antwerp, tlhIngan Hol.

Today’s about value for your discretionary spending dollar.

• The webcomicsosphere chatter fairly exploded over the weekend with praise for a very short comic (18 pages, including covers, afterword, and 14 nearly-wordless pages) by longtime creator Dean Trippe. Something Terrible is about something terrible that happened to Trippe, how it affected him, and (not to put too fine a point on it) how he was saved by his son and Batman.

  It’s a devastatingly honest work, a very public piece that says This happened to me, it became a part of me, but it’s not who I am. For 99 cents, you can download Something Terrible from Sellfy, and when you’re done reading it, you’re going to be in the mood to support Trippe’s comic-making, so maybe donate a bit more via his own webcomic’s page — or better yet, grab a print of his previously-released print, You’ll Be Safe Here.

• Now while I wouldn’t go back and not read Something Terrible, I have a feeling that (like me) you might be in the mood for a shift of tone. How about we trade adult-and-serious for adult-and-hilarious? Fleen fave K Brooke “Otter” Spangler has many fine wares in her Internet Shoppery but we’re on a budget so we’re heading to Amazon instead for her PDF-only pulp novel, The Russians Came Knocking, starring her technologically-augmented Federal agent slash manwhore, Josh Glassman. Obligatory disclaimer, Otter’s a good friend of mine, and she just might have put in the bit about the squirrels after my run-ins with the brush-tailed little bastards, and for that I will love her forever. That’s another 99 cents, so we’re just under two bucks in our buying trip.
• Having made it throgh TRCK¹, your laugh muscles may be warmed up enough for a pro-level workout, and the sexiest man in webcomics² is going to provide it. Brad Guigar has recorded his infamous laugh as a ringtone for your phone. Three ringtones, in fact, including the laugh courtesy of the infamous episode #76 of Webcomics Weekly when a troublemaking Skype locked into a loop of Guigar’s laugh-chuckle³ and nearly killed Kris Straub and Scott Kurtz. It’s US$2.99 for the three ringtones, meaning that we’re at a grand total of US$4.97 and you’ve got three shiny pennies to buy candy with.

  Or, alternately, you could go make your own money via memefication, with bonus points for ensuring that the webcomic creator gets none of it.

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¹ And one must remember that around Josh, the verb knocking takes on a particular meaning, as in knocking boots or knocking shop.

² I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Mrs Guigar is a lucky, lucky woman.

³ The madness starts around 7:45.

On occasion, I get people asking me how you put together a press release. For those still wondering, this is how you put together a press release:

September 10, 2013 (Portland, OR) – Shocking fans, battery wholesalers, and his many cats, pioneering web cartoonist R. Stevens disappeared last Monday from the art-deco mineshaft he famously confined himself to since starting the world’s most popular webcomic DIESEL SWEETIES in 2000.

Through the blinding electronic din, those steadfast and lucky few were met by an image of their new pixilated messiah, cradling a cat in each arm and beckoning them forth.

Usenets across the globe reported seeing a similar image, followed by a mysterious message: “Awesome. I AM ALL. RS3.”

The reaction from the public was remorseful and swift. Coffee stocks plummeted, cats gathered from around the world at Stevens’ favorite donut shop to hold a round-the-clock vigil, and many of the world’s record store owners simply set their shops ablaze and moved back in with their parents.

Vice President Joe Biden attempted to soothe a grieving planet Monday night, but was overtaken by his emotions, saying “I’m gonna need a few weeks, you guys. This is really messed up. I know it’s silly, but in my heart of hearts, I really hope this is some kind of bizarre stunt. I just don’t know what I’m gonna do without Indie Rock Pete.”

“All we can do now, is hope that Stevens uses his infinite power to remake this turd of a planet in his own image, ya know?” Biden continued. “More donuts and cats. Stuff like that. I don’t know, man. That sounds pretty awesome to me. We could all use a little more DIESEL SWEETIES in our lives as far as I’m concerned.” [boldface original]

Honestly, just go read the whole thing, it’s great; bonus points for the Onionesque version of Biden.

• In other news, we have more information on the mysterious, Ryan North/Shelli Paroline/Braden Lamb produced, original comic book coming from BOOM! Studios. Well, original in that it came out of North’s brainmeats, but much like the central hook of the Machine of Death anthology, it’s taken from an old musing by one Mr T-Rex. Namely, what happens if the fabled Midas Touch was weaponized.

  BOOM! seems to be giving all the good scoops to Chris Sims over at Comics Alliance on this one, so you’d best head over there for the details. When you get back, I’m considering running a contest: which other of T-Rex’s random musings from the past 2400+ comics will be made into an awesome comic/book/opera/radioplay/whatever next?

• Going to SPX this weekend? Sara McHenry has a post that is chock-full of good advice for exhibitors, a significant part of which is also good for attendees. She even has thoughts on what to do with the many bits of comics ephemera that you will inevitably collect but may not consider long-term keepers; key takeaway: don’t feel guilty.
• Two weeks ago, Angela Melick¹ suffered a break of the wrist of her drawing hand. I just wanted you to see how she’s managing with her allegedly “off” hand. Naturally, Kory Bing’s coloring job [Editor’s note: see here] is a big help, but Jam deserves a nod for how much she’s improved her non-dominant art skills so quickly.
• In case you missed it last night:
  

  Goal: $9,500. Amount pledged: $141,085. Holy crap.

  Holy crap, indeed. Jeph Jacques has become the most overfunded (that is, exceeding goal by the greatest percentage) musical campaign-haver in Kickstarter history with Permanence, and thanks to the stretch goals will have KC Green following him around with a videocamera to make a documentary of the recording of the album. One can only hope that the footage gets … exotic.

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¹ My sibling in engineering: Iron Ring 4 Lyfe, yo.

There are things afoot, mostly tangential to webcomics qua webcomics, but possibly of interest to people that read this page on a regular basis. A page which, I have been recently informed, shares a name with a number of other things also called Fleen.

Looking at primacy, it appears that the McSweeney’s reference dates to early 2001, the sci-fi epic to 2008, and the tessellation tool to earlier this year. While this page in its current form began in December 2005, the name was chosen merely because fleen.com was still owned by Jon Rosenberg, it being used for the Fairly Large Electronic Entertainment Network as far back as 1999 as a portal for some webcomics creators that you may have heard of. Given those dates, it appears that this is the true scion of the Famous Original¹ Fleen and you should accept no substitutes.

• Tangential To Webcomics (Performance Division): The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco remains a friend to comics of all sorts including webcomics, not least because curator Andrew Farago does webcomics himself. Farago and his fellow staffers are responsible for one of the busier events calendars in the Bay Area, with lots of skilled and well-regarded creators dropping by to say hi. As part of their regular Third Thursday late-night hours, CAM will be hosting the preview night of The Videogame Monologues prior to performances in San Francisco and New York.

  The following week, as part of an ongoing exhibition, CAM will host a reception for the graphic novel adaptation of The Thrilling Adventure Hour. TVM kicks off at 5:00pm on Thursday, 18 September, with a suggested donation of US$5. TAH’s fancy reception is a ticketed event (with prices starting at US$75, mostly tax-deductible), taking place Saturday, 21 September at 7:00pm, with snacks and drinks provided.

• Tangential To Webcomics (Booze Division): September in New York City is where you want to be if you like combining comics and sophisticated adult-type beverages. The Society of Illustrators has long known how to do a reception/happy hour right, and they’ll host one on Wednesday, 25 September at 5:00pm as part of their currently-running exhibition of Peter Kuper’s work in their dedicated MoCCA Galllery.

  Also, Kristen Siebecker (inaugural showrunner of the MoCCA Festival) continues her wine-demystification classes, with two special ladies-only workout-and-wine events next Wednesday, 11 September at 6:30pm and 7:15pm at Uplift Studios in Manhattan. Exercising off the alcohol before you drink it is the definition of guilt-free, right? For those that prefer to not moderate their sins, her regular class will be on Wednesday, 2 October at the West Elm Market in Brooklyn. This class will examine the classic pairing of wine and cheese and starts at 6:30pm.Each of Siebecker’s sessions costs US$45, but you can get a 10% discount on the wine-and-cheese class if you use the code EMAIL10.

• Tangential To Webcomics (Instrumental Metal Division): Jeph Jacques made goal on his Deathmøle album Kickstarter in mere hours about three weeks ago; since then his crowdfunding total has been on a steady upward crawl and it crossed the US$100,000 mark about an hour ago. The Fleen Funding Model says to use the predicted total from Kicktraq at the 24-36 hour mark as a base figure, and it’s highly likely that the final total will fall somewhere between one-sixth and one-third that value.

  For Jacques, that base figure was US$400,000, giving an expected total in the range of US$67K to US$134K. Permanence is solidly in that range already, and it’s just a matter of how high the usual last-few-days frenzy³ carries him; it’s pretty unusual for a webcomic-related project to fall below the 3.0 ratio², but if anybody can do it, it’s Jacques’s fans.

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¹ See also: Famous Original Ray’s.

² Remember, lower ratios are good.em

³ Stretch goals will help, as Jacques has already drawn light porn, and now has to produce a 20 page comic for backers. One smart stretch goal in the US$120K slot and he’ll have money thrown at him from now until the campaign end next Tuesday.

Back in April, Chris Yates (this blog’s favorite Tintin¹ with a scrollsaw) celebrated nine years making Baffler!s, for a total of 2222 of the handmade wooden mental torture devices, making an average of just under 250 Baffler!s per year, or about one puzzle every day and a half. You’d naturally be curious what Mr Yates was up to in the time since.

How about producing puzzles at more than twice the usual rate, despite having weeks lost to conventions and travel?

Yesterday saw the release of Baffler!s #2499 through #2511, making 289 more puzzles in less than five months. Okay, granted, some are pretty similar and pretty simple², but some of those puzzles are fiendishly clever and complex, more than making up for the simpler ones.

Best of all, Yates was so heads-down in work mode that he didn’t realize that a Big Round Number was coming up, meaning that #2500 was not one of his usual insane anniversary pieces, but rather something pretty appropriate for a guy that runs in comics circles.

That’s a lot of damn puzzles, and no sign of a slowdown in sight. Here’s hoping that Mr Yates keeps all his fingers and that his puzzlecutting imagination continues without pause for as long as he finds this mode of creative expression to be remunerative and to his liking.

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¹ Tintin himself makes an appearance in #2499.

² Bonus points to Yates for titling these Baffler!s — and four others — with a reference to Warhol.

I first met Matt Lubchansky at NYCC a couple years ago via the kind introduction of one Jon Rosenberg¹ and have followed the various comics that he produces since. Much as I like the laugh-chuckles of Please Listen To Me, I find that his collaborations are even better and he’s got a doozy of a collaboration with Mallory Ortberg today. I wasn’t familiar with The Toast, where said collaboration is running today, so thanks to Hey Pais’s Sara McHenry for the pointer.

With that buildup concluded, please go check out Tips For Improving Street Harassment because it’s really smart, really funny, and makes you wistfully sigh If only.

• To be honest, I don’t check in on Lubchansky as often as I should; something about the number of hours in the day. Likewise, I also don’t check in on the many, many comics projects of John Troutman as often as I should, but this time I think we can attribute it to the sheer amount of output, given that he’s working at least two and a half comics presently and (if I have my sums correct) has done at least a half dozen others in the past.

  That and a half comic would be Lit Brick, which updates “whenever”; it’s out of this comic about literature that Troutman has spun a story of Carol, twin sister of Jesus². Or rather, is looking to spin that story, provided it gets Kickstarted; as mentioned in part one of our Tavis Maiden interview, pre-funding webcomics is becoming a thing, although you’d be hard pressed to find a creator with a longer track record than Troutman.

• Speaking of Kickstarts, it appears to be doll season in the crowdfunding corners of comicdom. On the cute and cuddly side, you’ve got Jennie Breeden looking to plushify her Devil Girl alter-ego. Right now she’s funded plus a bit with most of a month to go but if the campaign hits a 200% funding level, it will unlock a matching Angel Girl plush; this means that you can act out your own crises of conscience with little Jennies acting as your personal shoulder devil/angel.
• On the holy crap is that gorgeous side, longtime creator Jill Thompson is looking to translate her Scary Godmother character (star of comics, books, and the occasional animated special) into a fully-articulated fashion doll. You know how sometimes things that are clearly toys have labels that state This is totally not a toy it’s an adult collectible not intended for kids because it is soooo adult really because it’s got small parts that could cause choking?

  Yeah, this isn’t that, this damn well is an exemplar of dollmakers craft, the sort that requires US$40,000 steel molds, custom textiles, custom accessory fabrication, and suchlike. But whoo boy, is it pretty. It’s an ambitious project, one that will require US$150,000 to come to fruition; about a third of the way through the funding period, it’s about 35% funded, so that’s good so far. It’s definitely not a general-audience, impulse-click kind of thing, so signal-boosting is probably not going to make a huge difference.

  But one thing might: check out Thompson’s profile on Kickstarter; unlike a lot of people who come to crowdfunding for the first time when they are looking for cash Thompson backed fifty projects before launching her first. Anybody wondering is she was high-balling her project requirements or trying for an easy payday, her history of backing creative projects in others would suggest otherwise.

• I can’t finish this post without some connection to Jim Zub³, so let me cast your memory back to last month when Mr Zub was kind enough to talk to me about current and future projects and in particular how he called out his Skullkickers collaborator Edwin Huang for some praise. Huang’s work has been getting widely noticed and he’s getting to be in demand, so what better time to put out an art book focusing on his style and character designs?

  The Rogues Gallery is up at Kickstarter and the fact that it’s cleared goal means that it’s functionally up for pre-order at this point; going higher on the total funds will mean improvements like more guest artists and fancy gloss on the cover, so if you like Huang’s work, now’s the time to make the book better. And seriously, 100+ page full-color hardcover art book for as little as US$25? Bargain of the year.

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¹ Who, as a reminder, owns my soul and keeps it in his wallet. Not my first choice of soul repository, not when there are nice temperature- and humidity-controlled boxes for valuables available, maybe resting on a nice mantelpiece, but I guess that’s the lesson here. You sells your soul for a dollar, you takes your chances that it’ll get sat and/or farted on daily.

² Yep, that Jesus; this particular comic chosen because What’s up, Lamb of Hosts? will never not be hilarious to me.

³ I, uh, may have signed a document to that effect.

I love it when creative types are creative in more than one way, and I mean that as sincerely as I’ve ever meant anything in my life. Case in point: Andy Bell has more creatures, critters, robots, and things in his head than he can reasonably contain, and within the room I presently occupy, I see them in the form of vinyl toys, paintings, stickers and printed books. Were I to move to the kitchen and open the freezer, I’d see them in the form of ice cubes; somewhere upstairs is a zipper pull shaped like meat, and there are also sculptures and plushes and things that I don’t own. Specialization is for insects.

• But, Gary, I hear you cry, that’s one webcomicker type that works in multiple interesting ways. Who else? Glad you asked me, Sparky; how about Jeph Jacques, one of the proverbial¹ giants of webcomics, has launched a project close to his heart: a Kickstarter to record his next Deathmøle album in an actual studio, leading to CDs and possibly vinyl.

  The Permanence campaign cleared goal in an entirely predictable 2.5 hours, no surprise there — until you consider that it launched in the dead of night when not so many people were paying attention, and that 2.5 hour mark was at approximately 2:15am. In the twelve hours since, the project has closed in on spitting distance of US$25,000 and is well on track for six digits of total given that there’s still 29 and a half days to go. Heck, even if metal’s not your thing, check it out just for the names of the backer tiers, and keep an eye out for stretch goals once Jacques has a chance to think them up.

• Okay, that’s two. What else you got? How about voice acting, a topic that is near and dear to my heart? I trust that you have all seen Natasha Allegri’s complete Bee and PuppyCat, yes? And you noticed Wallace, right? And you noticed that Wallace was voiced by Frank “Becky and Frank” Gibson, right? This makes our Frank the sixth (and possibly best) Frank Gibson at IMDB, officially qualifies him for a Bacon Number of 3 (via Tom Kenny), and makes him entertainment industry royalty. Yay, Frank.
• These examples are somewhat obvious, Gary; can’t you come up with something that stretches the idea a little? Straight to the breaking point, if you like. Look, merch design is a part of the webcomickin’ game, and thus the push of Penny Arcade into the world of cloisonné pins is just another bit of merch. Except what they’re making isn’t just merch, it’s a social ecosystem with rules, artistic and business partners, and a touch of fanaticism for good measure:
  

  If you have pins from a previous show (Boston or Australia) you should bring them [to PAX Prime] to trade or just to show off. I saw a guy in Australia holding a cardboard sign on the last day that said “Will trade dignity for PAX East pins!” If you do have some pins from another show to trade I can promise you they will be like gold at Prime.

  Like a lot of social ecosystems, I’m not sure that I want to get in on this one — I have enough completist tendencies that the “Gotta catch ’em all” impulse would likely become dangerous to my sanity, my wallet, or both. However, I will state here and now that anybody cared to set me up with a Robert Khoo and/or Brian Sunter, that would be awesome. No particular reason, nope. Definitely not a secret shrine in my basement, no way. Honest.

• Finally, if you want to get a good idea of what kind of multi-modal² creativity exists/mutates/is possible in webcomicking and beyond, the annual symposium³ to such ideas will be kicking off in the DC Beltway ‘burbs the weekend after next. Intervention is back for its fourth iteration, having hit that self-sustaining point far quicker than is usual for the smaller-scale, single-hotel type shows.

  The guests and programming are eclectic, the participants range from audience to enthusiasts to major pros, and the cross-pollination of creative energies are going to be considerable. For those looking to step into other areas of creative expression, it ought to be of considerable interest.

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¹ Literal as well. How large is Jeph Jacques? In that photo at the top of the page, the Cintiq in the foreground is the new 57 inch prototype.

² Oof, what a horrible word. Sorry for that.

³ In the original sense of the word: drinking party.

Although the best rule one can follow on the internet is Never Read The Comments, I find it for somewhat obvious reasons useful to go through those at this site. The post from Tuesday of this week attracted some comments that caught my eye, not only for their length, but for the mention of something that’s been on my mind a fair bit. Responding to my commentary on his latest Kickstarter, the probable cover identity that self-identifies as Eben Burgoon discussed his logic for resubmitting an initially-unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign; here’s the important part:

I really fundamentally looked over the Kickstarter last time and rethought my plan of attack. The main thing –- hire Lauren as the artist and do so with my own pocket money so that my goal was far more reachable. She’s an incredible talent, deserves to be paid for her hard work, and if I am going to ask the internet for money to help see this work to it’s end –- I sure as hell better pony up too.

The Lauren referred to would be Lauren Monardo, a colleague via the Brainfood Comics project, and creator of several comics that aren’t really accessible on the web right now¹. Monardo’s credentials (which are excellent) aren’t the point here — the important part is the bit about deserves to be paid for her hard work and I sure as hell better pony up too.

Burgoon’s regard for his artist made me happy, particularly because I’ve spent entirely too much time reading Ryan Estrada’s For Exposure twitterfeed and watching his dramatic re-creations of people that don’t think artists should be paid. Hopefully (although in truth, I hold out very little hope for this), the bozos who have provided Estrada with so much material will look at Burgoon’s example and realize that their pathological short-sightedness is not the only way to approach making comics.

• Speaking of art having value, there are times when you can get away with not paying a creative collaborator — when said collaborator finds value in something other than up-front cash², or volunteers to work for free, or is dead and the work is out of copyright. That last one doesn’t come up too much, but may do in the not-too-distant future.

  Evan Dahm (whose work you should be familiar with, seeing as he’s put a few thousand pages of it out there for you to enjoy for free) has of late been noodling around with images inspired by The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; that would be the original Wizard, the novel by L Frank Baum, adapted a few million times³ since it was first published in the dawning days of the twentieth century.

  Many people have taken their artistic whacks at the Oz milieu since W W Denslow’s original illustrations, notably the work being done presently by Skottie Young for the Baum novel adaptations being published by Marvel. Dahm isn’t talking about doing a sketchbook though, or an adaptation; he’s thinking bigger:

  My name is Evan Dahm and I would like to illustrate and publish an edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was published in 1900 and is now in the public domain. I like it a lot and I think I can illustrate it in a way that works with the story and has a visual character that’s distinct from other interpretations.

  I can’t recall anything like this happening previously. There was an edition of Huckleberry Finn with racist language softened a few years back (which prompted an emulation with the n-word replaced with robot), and there have been some pretty beautiful comics editions of classic works (Kipling seems to be a favorite there), but I can’t recall somebody producing a new edition of a prose work to do their own spin on illustrations.

  And what illustrations! Dahm’s new Baum-sketchbook Tumblsite is full of promise as he starts what will likely be a lengthy project; he’s set ground rules for himself that guarantee that it’ll be years before The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum with illustrations by Evan Dahm sees print. However long the wait, I’m ready to grab a copy.

• Also speaking of art having value, here’s an emergency commission announcement from Dean Trippe. whose MacBook had a crisis and requires replacement as soon as possible. If you like Trippe’s meld of clean line and capes, he’s declared an impromptu convention complete with bargain pricing for superheroic inked drawings. DeanCon lasts through the weekend, so get your requests in now while you can.

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¹ The Slightly Askew Adventures of Inspector Ham & Eggs leads to a dead page, the Brainfood Comics page has a bunch of unreadable symbol placeholders and a Call of Duty 2 ad, and may be somebody squatting on Monardo’s former domain.

² Possibly an ownership stake.

³ Sadly, a Google search for “wizard of oz” puts Baum’s novel (the first of 14 in the Oz series) sixth behind various references to the 1939 film, although some of those are because one of three surviving Munchkin actors died at the age of 89.