Know what? You don’t care about my situation, so let’s point you toward things you might want to buy.

• First up, in line with last week’s predictions, Sin Titulo has wrapped and will be available in a handsome hardcover collected edition from Dark Horse next year.
• Nextly, three short adventures from John Allison, including the recently-concluded THAT, are now available for your obtaining. Plenty of Shelly Winters for those fans of the ginger ninja, and even the story of Dark Esther¹ at university.
• For those of you that want to exhibit at TCAF in the springtime, uh, the deadline for applications passed over the weekend. But don’t get too discouraged, as the new MoCCA, merged into the Society of Illustrators earlier this year, returns with the MoCCA Festival in April, with the application here [PDF].
• If there’s one thing that We at Fleen can be counted on appreciating, it’s comics-related furniture; if you want a sturdy piece of wood to help with the creating of comics rather than the storage of them, Dave Kellett has something fancy to show you.
• Want to make Jon Rosenberg’s daughter hate you? She’s got about a thousand of the cutest bunnies ever hanging around for hug times, and now you can get your own if you want to take a bunny away from an adorable child. You monster.

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¹ My favorite.

Now that Apple isn’t making everybody sit in front of their computers and hit compulsively refresh their browsers every ten seconds, maybe we can talk about some webcomics things?

• Yesterday saw the debut of a very impressive Big Round Number:
  

  It only took 8 1/2 years, but I’ve finally created 2000 puzzles!! http://www.flickr.com/photos/30135689@N05/7980598350/

  Let’s do the math to properly indicate just how busy Chris Yates has been: eight and a half years and 2000 Baffler!s comes to 1.55 Baffler!s per day, and while some of them are pretty simple, that doesn’t preclude monsters like ol’ 2K here, with its more than 550 pieces spread out across nine fields and eight layers.

  In that time Yates was also making ghosts and POOP signs¹ and SLÜGs and t-shirts and prints and the designs for mass-market Baffler!s and the iPad Baffler! app and a few zillion Baffler! commissions not to mention a whole mess of terribly excited photocomics.

  For those interested in seeing exactly how damn much art one can cram into 3105 days, there’s a photo archive for your perusal. If you should see Mr Yates this weekend at SPX, tell him I said hi, be sure to smile for any photos you end up in, and ask him when the hell he sleeps.

• Know who else is gonna be at SPX? Well, a whole damn lot of people, but for the moment I’m thinking about Becky and Frank, who will but a week later make their way back LA-wards for a book launch at the world-famous Secret Headquarters. Tiny Kitten Teeth’s print version has been a long time a-bornin’ but now it’s here and it’s going to be gorgeous and you can get in on the fun of the launch at 3817 W Sunset Blvd (also known as Historic Route 66) in Los Angeles at 7:00pm on Friday, 21 September. Books, prints, fun times, and sophisticated adult beverages will be present in copious amounts.
• Speaking of book launches, (in this case, literally so), I believe it is a matter of public record that this page is fully in the tank as far as Sailor Twain goes, as it is beautiful, and melancholy, and atmospheric in a way that few comics manage. It’s still a few weeks before the very handsome and substantial print collection drops, which makes this the perfect time to note that there will be a special to-do to mark the launch of the book.

  Even more exciting, this celebration will be taking the form of a sunset sailing trip aboard the Clearwater, a replica of the mighty Hudson River sloops of the 18th and 19th centuries. A sloop that was dreamt up, built, and launched by the legendary Pete Seeger² to act as a literal platform to remind people of the need for clean waters in general, and the Hudson River in particular.

  The Sailor Twain Sail departs from the 79th Street Boat Basin in Manhattan at 5:30pm on Friday, 5 October.

• New site, tangentially related to webcomics in that David “It’s!” Willis did the logo, and also because it’s the brainchild of webcomics friend Josh “The Comics Curmudgeon” Fruhlinger. Hail to the Slash [Not Safe For Anything] is devoted to … well, let’s just quote Josh on this one:
  

  2012 has been one of the most homoerotic presidential elections since JFK completely discombobulated DIck Nixon with his sexual charisma live on television. This site is a repository of the same-sex presidential fan fiction our nation needs right now.

  Also:

  [I]n the days leading up to the 2008 U.S. presidential election, this civility broke down as a number of nasty political fights broke out. In attempt to stave off further unpleasantness, I demanded that my readers funnel their political passions into Taft/Roosevelt slash fiction, because it was the only thing I could think of off the top of my head.

  This worked better than I could have ever imagined, both in terms of stopping arguments and in producing legitimate masterpieces of Taft/Roosevelt erotica. I always had in mind that, come 2012, I would return to the idea. This site is that return.

  In case you still have some shred of innocence in your soul and are casually wondering if Mr Fruhlinger could really put together something truly depraved and soul-searing, consider this description of the very first entry at HttS:

  Heart and Soul (Cheney/Bush/Cloned Cheney/Crown Prince Abdullah; WARNING: EXTREME HORROR)

  Cloned Cheney. I’m warning you, there isn’t enough bleach in the world to get that image out of your brain. So tread carefully and if y’all will excuse me, I’ll be over here with the jumbo bottle of bleach and the cleansing fire.

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¹ It will remain one of my life’s most cherished memories will be the time I watched Lynn Freakin’ Johnston try to convince a complete stranger to buy a POOP sign. The only thing needed to make that day perfect would have been for that stranger to be wearing some form of “Roadside” clothing.

² One of America’s great social consciences, a musician of incredible importance (largely responsible for the preservation of folk music and the modern development of the banjo), hell-raising for all the right reasons still in this, his 93rd year.

For those of you outside the eastern seaboard of the United States, I-95 is a roadway with one purpose: to break people and their will to live. Some 450km of it lie between me and home.¹ Fun! Let’s keep this brief.

• On t-shirtery and the design thereof, received wisdom shared with you by the very generous John Allison.
• On achieving 867% of funding the goal for Trial of the Clone, and soliciting input for the next Zach Weinersmith-penned interactive story, which comes down to the eternal question: Good or Evil?
• On the possibility that Aaron Diaz² just volunteered Danielle Corsetto, Anthony Clark, and Emmy Cicierega to publicly engage in The Hammer Dance, less than US$11000 need be raised over the course of ten more days. If they do this, you can be sure that Diaz’s parachute pants will be tweed and tailored to perfection by Duchess of Portland.
• On those last two Kickstarters, note the relative generosity of updates: 20 days, 8 updates for a project that’s still fundraising, and 17 updates over one month (with progress-o-meter graphs!) for one that’s wrapped up, but not yet delivered the goods. These are good practices — frequently let everybody know what is happening with their money. It is incumbent on fundraisers to keep that line of communication open once things close, and there are those that do exactly that and they are to be commended.

  Others … not so much. Eighteen updates from launch to goal? Good. Ten weeks after goal before breaking radio silence? Not so good, Fat Cat Gameworks; nobody expected that you’d have product to ship the next day, but they need to hear that you aren’t just sitting around trying to figure out what to do next. If nothing else, figure out loud.

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¹ That sound you just heard was Ms K. Brooke “Otter” Spangler, warming up to sing my funeral dirge, because she knows what kind of Destroyer Bitch-Goddess I-95 is … she knows and would rather see me dead than suffer its embrace.

² The Latin Art-Throb.

Let’s finish out the week with some simple information transfers, shall we?

• For those that missed the opportunity that pick up Red Robot Murder Dolls USB drives during the Diesel Sweeties Kickstarter¹, and neglected to attend SDCC and pick on up there, Rich Stevens has you covered. There are 3300+ pages of comics on these babies, making them possibly the largest e-book in history.
• Some of you may know that, in addition to the tremendous success that Zach Weinersmith is having with his Kickstarter for a reader-driven adventure, but did you know that there are other readers-choice type books in the works? It’s true! One of them is by Ryan North², and he has been kind enough to give me an advance peek.

  He hasn’t publicly discussed most of the details of the book, so you don’t get a title, plot, or any particulars, but I will tell you the following:

  • Possible scores range from -1 out of 1000 points to 3400 megapoints to 50 billion decapoints
  • Your chosen identity will shift at points in the book, including one branch where your choices reflect upon the character so horribly that you aren’t allowed to be thon any more
  • If you choose particularly poorly, you will be dubbed a TURBOCHUMP
  • Unless I miss my guess, this is the first CYOA-type book where you can become the author Ryan North³ himself

  You guys, it is hell of rad.

• Know who else is working on the interactive fiction beat? Chris Hastings, but that’s not what I want to bring him up today. Instead, I want to point out that Hastings has, I believe, achieved a webcomics first, in that he has had a species named after his creation. Ladies and gentlemen, the Dr McNinja bacteriophage.

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¹ For those running Kickstarts, please note that as of today, Mr Stevens has posted a total of 37 updates to his project. This is how you do it.

² Giant among men, and Nexus of All [Web]comics Realities North of the Canadian Border.

³ Should you choose to become Ryan, you do not share in his giantness or nexality, except in the context of the book. Sorry.

As we hurtle headlong into next week’s San Diego Comic Con, now is as good a time as any to remind you that postings next week will be on their own schedule. Cool? Cool.

• Previously noted, the hands-down best publisher of graphic novels, :01 Books will be at SDCC, but now it’s time for me to share with you some of who and what they’re bringing (many thanks to Gina Gagliano at :01 for passing along the info, as well as numerous advanced copies throughout the year).

  To start, I realize that some of you may object to that “best publisher” claim that I made, so check out the Eisner nominees from :01 this year: Nursery Rhyme Comics (Best Publication for Early Readers and Best Anthology), Zita the Space Girl (Best Publication for Kids), Anya’s Ghost and Level Up (Best Publication for Young Adults), and Zahra’s Paradise (Best Graphic Album — Reprint). Bascially, a :01 publication has a one in three shot of being recognized by the most prestigious awards in comics.

  Second, check out who will be visiting the booth: Jorge Agurre and Rafael Rosado, Vera Brosgol, Zack Giallongo, JT Petty, Thien Pham, Nate Powell (also an SDCC Guest of Honor), Dave Roman, and Jen Wang. They’ll all be signing at least a couple of times during the show, so drop by the booth for the schedule. Also check out the program guide for the many :01 creators and staff that will be talking about various topics near and dear to their heart; if nothing else, try to catch up with Colleen AF Venable to tell her how awesome her book designs¹ are. Among those book designs: the just-received, not-yet-released Sailor Twain, which I can’t wait to get my hands on (October, can you come quickly enough?).

• Know what you won’t be able to pick up at SDCC? The Schlock Mercenary boardgame. When my evil twin told me that his game guys wanted to send me a review copy, he didn’t mention it was going to be the single largest item ever delivered to The Fleenplex for review. This thing is heavy, on account of it’s stuffed full of thick cardstock pieces, in a box that is far more solid than anybody used to American boardgames would ever consider necessary. Those of you that like Euro-style games, it probably feels right at home.

  So yeah, all those pieces (which, by the way, are double-sided) — gonna be a while before I get the chance to punch ’em all out but when I do, I can tell that the good folks at Living Worlds Games love me and want me to be happy, because one of the items in the box was a little bundle of sealable bags to sort those pieces into. Just saying, I had to make a trip to the supermarket for Zip-Locs when I bought Settlers of Catan.

  My only complaint being (and this is preliminary, as I haven’t punched out all those double-sided pieces yet), the designers put in such necessary play-pieces as banana peels and cursing, but didn’t manage duct tape or an ominous hummmmmm? Priorities, man! On the other hand, the entire purpose of the game is to be recklessly violent and make a bunch of attorney drones go Pop! Mostly; the rules (which I have had time to read through) feature different styles of gameplay, from kill people and break things to retrieve the macguffin without dying. With all the characters, tools, objectives, floor layouts, and game styles, it’s going to have a hell of a lot of replay value.

  Schlock Mercenary: Capital Offensive is up for pre-order at Game Salute, or you can get it from Howard Tayler at GenCon Indy (mid-August) or ChiCon 7/WorldCon70 (end of August), and eventually at his store.

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¹ You could also note that she’s got the Best Tattoo Ever, but if you lead with that it could come off creepy.

For those of you that weren’t up around 3:00am EDT (GMT-4), it appears that webcomics has a couple of anniversaries to mention today. Let’s give some props for longevity, shall we?

• First up, the only man that my moustache fears, Darren J “Dern” Gendron:
  

  Huh. Today is my sixth anniversary of making webcomics.

  To be slightly more specific, this is Gendron’s anniversary, not the anniversary of any single particular webcomic:

  My first comic was Dear Pirate, which was like Dear Abby, but instead people got advice from a pirate.

  Current Dernprojects may be found at the Dernwerks, plus the Monster Alphabet project (previously noted here for the achievement of hitting 5000% of goal on Kickstarter). Dear Pirate appears to exist solely in one plasticine-rich update and nowhere else.

• And a bit more approximately on the anniversary date, Aaron Diaz¹:
  

  I started Dresden Codak 7 years ago and all I got was this t-shirt (and a career and prestige and personal fufillment).

  Although, technically, we’re a few months overdue on the congratulations:

  I actually technically started in March, but my first comic in the current Archives is June.

  Even if the date is somewhat approximate, Diaz still gets included purely for the joy and optimism by which he regards his webcomickry, even when in the depths of Sleep-Deprivation Work Madness, which I believe he refers to as “The Gauntlet”.

• As long as we’re handing out the congrats, we ought to note that David “Damn You,” Willis concluded his latest Kickstarter (for the first Dumbing of Age reprint) last night at just shy of 300% of goal, or some US$30,000 (just under US$45/backer on average, exploiting the previously-identified sweet spot). It’s become routine for creators with established audiences to routinely pick up tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of supporters. I think it’s time to go back and run those numbers again, see what the normalized distributions look like.

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¹ The Latin Art-Throb.

Paragon of agility Rich Stevens is going to be a business school teaching case someday, what with his ability to turn on a dime¹ and execute his mad plans quickly; Small, fast, ruthless … all Edge as Mr Gibson put it. Yesterday, about this time, he put up a microsale [link probably dead by the time you read this] in honor of his tenth anniversary of Quitting The Day Job:

The one thing I don’t know about Diesel Sweeties is the day I posted the first comic. It was some time in early 2000, twelve years ago.

The one thing I’ll never forget about Diesel Sweeties is the first week it was my full-time job. That was ten years ago this week.

This is the longest, most stable-yet-rollercoastery job I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve screwed up plenty, but never enough to have to give it up. It’s all thanks to you folks out there reading and buying stuff. I’ve been sorting comics by year for my 3,000+ strip ebook project and it made me wonder … do I have a shirt in the store from every year this had been my job? Actually, kind of yes.

******

Because this is how my brain processes things, I’m doing a DecaSale. Ten shirts are on sale for $12.10 each for 24 hours. They represent a little tangible reminder of every year from 2002-2011. A few will be weeded out during this sale to make room for 2012.

This sale starts NOW, 3pm Eastern AKA Easthampton, MA time and runs for 24 hours. [emphasis original]

I think if you were to do a comprehensive trawl of my archives (and I would never recommend that to anybody), you’d find certain names cropping up with regularity: Gran, Kellett, Khoo, Vernon, Beaton, because they’re consistently out there doing new stuff, consistently interesting to me. But probably the person that gets the most mention would be Rich², because nobody in webcomics is out there trying as many things, experimenting, pushing himself, looking for The Next Way Of Doing Things, and The Way After That, and The Way After The Way After That. He is in constant, almost Brownian motion, trying, succeeding, failing, learning, and having the goddamn time of his life as he does so. He just might be who I want to be when I don’t grow up.

So good on yer, Richard Stevens the Third — it’s been a great decade for you, and I can’t imagine the next ten years will be less {fun | frustrating | exciting | meaningful | other value-laden words here} [choose all that apply]. As for everybody that missed the DecaSale, there won’t be another of those for ten years, or until Stevens has some other excuse to do something similar that pops into his head like unto a bolt from the blue. Week from Tuesday, I’m guessing.

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¹ Before any of you make with the sexual innuendo, just … don’t.

² Actually, it’s probably Scott Kurtz³, now that I think of it, and for mostly the same reasons as Rich.

³ And Guigar.

Know something? You’ve gotten like 3500 words out of me since Sunday and I’m tired. Let’s keep this one brief for all of our sakes.

• Seen online:
  

  last starslip drawn on may 30, 2012, 5:53pm, at abbot’s habit, venice, ca

  We won’t see if for some weeks, of course, but I can’t help feeling both a little happy and sad for Kris Straub. It’s been seven years, three titles (if memory serves) and one big ol’ reboot since Starslip (as she is now) started; saying goodbye to your creation can’t be easy, but wrapping up the story on your terms, tying up all the loose ends … that’s got to feel great. Thanks very much to Mr Straub for letting us take the ride along with him.

• Seen in person: the Square reader has been a badge of office for people that are making your purchase options broader and easier at conventions. Waiting to get approved and receive that dongle in the mail has been a ritual for more than one webcomicker. So what does it say about ubiquity that I saw one hanging on the pegs at Staples for ten bucks yesterday?

One of the rules I adhere to in life is, when Robert Khoo scribbles a note that says Hey Gary, we’re going to go gamble, want to come?, the only appropriate answer is Yes. Particularly when the note comes during a session that is….

Okay, I want to be extra-fair here, because everybody at the NCS I’ve met has been been terrific. Tom Richmond, the president, has put on a great show, and Jerry Van Amerongen¹ has put together a great slate of presenters and presentations. That being said, when soliciting presentations and/or presenters, it’s possible to have content described in a way that makes it sound better than it actually will be; usually it’s a matter of content and tone clashing with the audience.

Had it been a matter of me being the wrong audience because I’m not a cartoonist, I would have stayed out of respect for the speaker, but when it’s a case of somebody so very off the rails that you hope everybody else in the room is as uncomfortable as you are, because it means they aren’t being suckered in²? When Robert nodded in the direction of the door, getting away from the room just made sense.

Which was great, because after finding a table with open chairs together, and Robert declared open interview time. I double-checked with them some of the details on the new Paint The Line game (availability at San Diego: check), and admired the new First Party polo that Mike Krahulik was wearing (it’s moved onto the “definite purchase” list for San Diego, and may I say again that the First Party upgrade program was a customer-care stroke of genius?). Then we got down to the really good stuff: Lookouts.

You may have noted the news last year that Lookouts is being made into a tabletop RPG/board game. You may have seen art teasers from Mike earlier in the week. What you probably didn’t know is that Cryptozoic Entertainment, developers of the game, will also be publishing an ongoing Lookouts comic book, the first two issues of which are already completed. Mike’s very happy with the work done on the interiors, and the cover image he showed me (the teaser is just a small portion of it) looks gorgeous.

The plan is for electronic distribution, but I really hope that a print edition can be made at some point — although Penny Arcade and its projects have always been designed for adults, they’ve had plenty of creations that reach down the age spectrum: Cardboard Tube Samurai³ could easily overlap with the younger readers of, oh I don’t know, Usagi Yojimbo. Lookouts and The New Kid can be enjoyed by an even younger audience — if you’re comfortable with your kid reading BONE, these two stories are no problem (which pulls us down to seven or eight years old). Kids don’t have enough comics that they can call their own, and Lookouts would slot in nicely next to Adventure Time in the local comic stores. Just sayin’.

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¹ Who did a cartoon back when I was in high school that has stuck with me — it involved a doberman throwing himself out a second-story window after realizing the family had named him “Binky”. I told him how funny that strip was to me and I think it pleased him that somebody remembered it for goin’ on 30 years.

² I’m being oblique here in details because the topic of the talk was getting free publicity for yourself, and the tone was just so … infomercial that I decided I didn’t want to reward the speaker with the name-check he repeatedly made clear he desperately craves. Also, upon leaving the room, I made sure that I had not accidentally signed up for a time-share in a condo. Seriously, bragging about getting on the local news by exploiting a tenuous connection to Elizabeth Taylor on the day of her death in order to promote your animation business? That is not something that non-horrible people do.

³ And my goodness, has it really been three years since a CTS adventure?

How about an open question: which webcomic should be the next one to get Munchkinified now that Penny Arcade is getting the Steve Jackson treatment? The most obvious candidates are already incorporated: Axe Cop is a full game and Skullkickers is a fifteen card supplement (as is Penny Arcade). Me, I’m holding out for the Moustache Fighting League supplement¹.

Naturally, one wonders exactly how long it will be before gamers bash together some rules to cross-breed the PA Munchkin set with the existing PA card games-slash-expansion, or the forthcoming Paint The Line game². I’m guessing somewhere between twelve and eighteen hours.

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¹ Holy dog, are those strips really more than seven years old?

² In lieu of the audio tracks by Kris Straub for Paint The Line 2 (which appear to no longer exist), please accept this unboxing video of the Paint The Line card game.