Things of interest all over the damn place today. Let’s dive in, shall we?

• Merchwatch Say what you want about Rich Stevens, the guy is nimble and knows how to execute. Got an idea in his head to sell customized Sharpies (an item of almost totemic power, I believe he never has less than 14 on his person), but big deal, a Sharpie is a Sharpie. So he looked to the month (October), the proximity of the most popular holiday for adults (Halloween), and the humor stylings of his audience (willing to put up with vicious punning) and announced The Marker of The Beast — Satanic Sharpies selling for $6.66 at the stroke of midnight tonight, in hand-customized boxes. Idea-to-shipping should be for the independent creator type the equivalent of a motor vehicle’s zero-to-sixty, and right now Stevens has the time to beat.
• Grossly Compelling Speaking of understanding your audience, Andy Bell‘s got an ability to design toys that compel collectors to plunk down the bucks. Whether it’s low, medium, or high price points, something about his designs is entirely unique and couldn’t be the work of anybody else. Today he announced the new Glop In A Box collectible debuting at NYCC (and well in “serious collectors” price range at $90); it’s disturbingly organic and … bulgy. It also appears that with the Android figure breaking Bell’s long trademark of characters with butts, the Glop will continue the trend and may mark a new phase in Bell’s career. Picasso had his Blue Period, Bell may be on the verge of the Buttless Times.
• Contest Time The all-new Blank Label has been much more interactive with its fans than the old Blank Label had been in some time (maybe since the days of the Blank Label Comics Podcast). The Artist Highlights section of the BLC main page has had some nice analyses of comics creators, the forums have been revived, and there was livestreaming of 24 Hour Comic Day. To that, one may now add the Art Off — a monthly themed drawing contest for fame (you get pimped and linked on the main BLC page) and fortune (you get, uh, pimped and linked on the main BLC page). Okay, so not so much fortune, but definitely bragging rights. Hop to it.
• NEWW Alternative Those of you on the Left Coast of North America during NEWW may want to drop by the always-interesting Cartoon Art Musuem in San Francisco, as they’ll be having their seventh annual fundraiser across the bay in Emeryville at the studios of Pixar. Various packages are available, and I can’t imagine any of them disappointing.
• Not Webcomics But you knew I couldn’t let this pass: from the pages of The Atlantic, Twenty Moustaches That Changed History. My favorite is #15.

As opposed to bad ass-kittens, I suppose. Witness the dreams of a frustrated second-generation puddingcat at from Randy Milholland, and the hellish scape of Kittenpocalypse Now courtesy of Jon Rosenberg. Should you meet either of these gentlemen, we at Fleen advise you to back away slowly, avoiding sudden movements and eye contact, perhaps leaving large bottles of industrial-strength booze as an offering.

• Mike Russell over at CulturePulp has been known to livetweet performances of the Portland Opera, but he’s likely to drop something even more intriguing in the coming days. Last night, a group of perhaps 15 or 20 Portland cartooners and comickers dropped by the opera for a performance of Pagliacci and sketched the whole time (union rules preventing pictures of the cast, but drawings allowed). You can follow the evening at Russell’s twitter, or search for the hashtag #pdxoperacomics, and watch CulturePulp for a cartoon rendering of the story of the sad clown (in-progress sketches from Russell and others at Twitpic).
• When Phil “Frumph” Hofer (prime instigator of ComicPress, which he is trying to step back from, although they keep pulling him back in) decides to drop ComicPress-related news, webcomics as a whole ought to listen. So when he says that he won’t be part of ComicPress 3.0, I’d tend to believe him; but (and this is a big but) he will be part of something new.

  Enter Comic Easel. I’ll leave those of you running webcomics sites to read the details yourself, but the short version is, instead of a theme for WordPress (as ComicPress is), Comic Easel is a plug-in that will work with any theme (but can work with the ComicPress CSS, so don’t go thinking your efforts to date were wasted). Release date (subject to full documentation and FAQs) is presently scheduled for 18 December, with news to come at the (presently under construction) home site. Watch this one closely, I’d say.

• Laugh of the Day: A webcomicker (whom I will not name — there was dire legal boilerplate about not disseminating information involved) forwarded me a recent (like, two days ago) email offering to distribute books on their behalf. From WOWIO [no link]. Yes, that WOWIO [still no link].

  I guess since we’re now coming up on a full year since WOWIO [you guessed it — no link] made payments owed for Q2 of 2008, the people in charge figured that webcomicdom as a whole forgot the entire you didn’t pay us for more than 14 months thing. Still, new management (cough, Platinum, cough) and all that — maybe they deserve the benefit of the doubt, have turned over a new leaf, and are entirely different than the company that couldn’t pay what it owed.¹

• Hey, looka there — new TopatoCo store for your old pal Paul Southworth and (less of a pal really, more of a guy you met once in a bar) Bill Barnes for their nerdoffice strip Not Invented Here.

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¹ But those of us of a low and suspicious nature will harbor doubts.

My dog had a pretty serious health scare for the past ten days, but it’s resolved now in the best of all possible outcomes; I know that I’ve been a bit distracted and not doing very well here for the past ten days as a result, but it’ll be better from here on out. Thanks for your patience.

• Every week, there’s a bunch of stories on [web]comics creators — some are very good, some are merely adequate, but they fall into a predictable rhythm and you can pretty much tell where they’re going after the first paragraph or two. So let me point you to one that doesn’t follow the standard script, as the Burlington Free Press talks about James Kochalka‘s latest effort, Dragon Puncher but spends more time on Kochalka’s family and their involvement in the creative process than on the book itself. It’s a pretty nice reminder that art doesn’t come out of nothing — it’s influenced by those around the creators and their lives on a continual basis. Anyway, I liked it.
• Speaking of the creative process, Jess Fink seems to have hers … borrowed without attribution … quite a bit. So it’s with mixed emotion that I point you to her newest shirt design; on the one hand it’s absolutely gorgeous, and on the other the more people see it the greater chance one of them will be the — I dunno, eighty-third person this year? — to steal it and run to Zazzle in an attempt to cash in on Fink’s talent. Then again, this one features glow in the dark inks, and I don’t think that’s in the manufacturing repertoire of print-on-demand places yet. In any event, time to having to beat down on an art thief starts … NOW!
• To be first seen at SPX, those of you that are going: Johnny Wander‘s first book, new Everything Dies and Bringing It All Back Home by Box Brown, minis from KC Green and Meredith Gran and more! All of you guys have fun without me, ‘kay?
• It’s most of an hour long, but this series of videos on Youtube is worth a watch: it’s a thesis defense on the topic of webcomics, continuing the ongoing march of our little microgenre into the realm of academic respectability. Hopefully, this thesis found more respectable sources to cite than the last academic that looked at us and wound up talking about a hack pseudojournalist.
• Finally, I believe that there’s a birthday girl out there in webcomickia today. If you’re going to SPX, I believe that you’re obligated to offer Kate Beaton a celebratory (if belated) birthday drink from the bar. With a little cooperation, you can make this her bestest birthday ever.

Ready? Go!

• Radness Queen of the Greater Bay Area Shaenon Garrity will be part of a massive sketch-a-thon at the Schulz Museum next Saturday, 11 Sept, in honor of 60 years of Peanuts. Head up to Northern California to join in on the fun; if you can’t make it, at least enjoy her new interview over at Dimes For Nickels, where she talks about her work with William George, creator of (among other things) the greatly missed Bang Barstal.
• Whoa, it’s Dragon*Con again, and I know that there are webcomickers there, but the page they’re most likely to be listed on is kind of … no easily searchable. What I do know is that despite not being listed, Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson are in the Artist Alley in the Hyatt.

  Also, if you’re interested in perversity of the highest order without interference by authority figures, Jennie Breeden got herself a room after the police took an interest in last year’s public kilt+leafblower spectacle. Hanover ballrooms C-E [PDF] at the very early hour of 1:00am Saturday and Sunday (or a somewhat late hour Friday and Saturday, if you prefer).

• There were some interesting … I’ll call them hate–tweets … sent to Andy Bell over the course of the last wave of Android releases. For those that haven’t been able to purchase them, good news: two of the Series 01 designs (basic green and blank) are leaving behind the limited edition world for the exciting future of we’ll make as many as you people want to buy, stop with the death threats already. On top of that, a brand-new Series 02 will be joining them in wholesale quantities, starting from Q1 next year.

  While I will relish not having to obsessively hit F5 on my browser during the purchase windows beset with rapacious competitors, I am equally dismayed that there will now be an entire additional series of designs that I will be compelled to purchase in blind boxes. It’s a sickness, and Andy Bell is the one that gave it to me. Drat him and his incredible talents!

So again, short items. Probably could have worked through lunch, but when fate gives you an opportunity to eat with Rick Marshall, you gotta grab that brass ring with both hands.

• Most significantly, US Immigration & Customs Enforcement have decided that they like webcomics after all. On the one hand, Dave McElfatrick of Cyanide & Happiness has, after great headache, heartache, and random other organache, obtained permission to come to the US to work with his partners. I was able to see some of the effort that Dave’s fellow C&H creators went to in order to help McElfatrick after his earlier denial by ICE, and believe me that it was tremendous. On the other hand, Kate Beaton has likewise been admitted to the US, and has taken up residence in the teeming metropolis of Brooklyn for the next little while. Everybody feel good for Kate and Dave.
• The PuppyCow plush (as envisioned by Jamie Noguchi and described here as oogy) has hit its funding goal. The highly slightly somewhat disturbing plush collectible will now be going to production.
• Intervention hit the front page of Wired this morning, with a nicely positive piece in the Geek Dad blog; the description of Intervention as being A con that talks about web comics and how to create them. might be a bit too narrow, though. Organizers Onezumi Hartstein & James Harknell have pushed really hard to make Intervention incorporate webcomics, but also be more broadly about all kinds of creativity via the pipeline of the intertubes. Still, lotta notice for what’s still an incoming-freshman con; if the show lives up to all the expectations I’ve seen flying around, it could be mid-sized (4000 – 8000) in just a couple of years.
• All and sundry heading to PAX: safe travels, and remember that you people traditionally are the incubator for the most infectious disease vectors known to health science. If you don’t want to see stuff oozing out of you that really should remain in, wash your hands enthusiastically and often.

It appears that typically, Scenes From A Multiverse’s weekly voting pulls in about 3000 – 3100 ballots, but this week’s (as of this writing) is nearly 1000 votes below that usual response point. Is everybody too busy heading to Baltimore Comic-Con or FanExpo Canada? Or would a certain presence on the ballot (as of this writing, leading by a mere 25 votes) actually be depressing the turnout? Much as I’m flattered by the attention, I’m horrified to think what Rosenberg might think up to do to “me” if “I” wind up this week’s “winner”.

• From internet über-meme to adorable plush: the LOL WUT pear (more properly, the Biting Pear of Salamanca, as dreamt up by Digger creator Ursula Vernon) is now squishy, adorable, and up for pre-order. Delight your friends and possibly horrify small children!
• Ever since the whiteboard resignation letter hoax (discussed here), I’ve been thinking about what constitutes comics and what doesn’t. Obviously, there’s got to be words and pictures, but sometimes the balance really tips one way or the other. Is there a magic point where there’s too few words or too few pictures to count? Or is it just a matter of Without even these few {words|pictures}, the meaning of this would be irreparably changed?

  In particular, I’ve been thinking about Hyperbole And A Half, which you might call a blog with spot illustrations, or might call comics. I’m leaning towards the latter, since the pictures are definitely structured to tell the story. I don’t know a dang thing about creator Allie Brosh except for what I read here, but dang if I don’t want to read more.

I’m starting to see why great swathes of people go on holiday for the entire month of August — nothing is happening. And by “happening”, of course I mean something mind-blowingly crazy-go-nuts in the world of webcomics, where everybody just seems to have their heads down gettin’ their work done. For a hack pseudo-journalist, it’s depressingly sane … even the Great Keenspot Reorg went by without a peep. Let’s see if the mailbag has anything cool.

• Cool Thing #1: Katie Sekelsky (last mentioned in the context of the Union of Concerned Scientists cartooning contest, where voting is still live) has unveiled a clever piece of merch; designed for con-going lady creators of things and ironic dudes, the I Am My Own Booth Babe t-shirt is now available for your babydoll shirt-wearing needs.
• Cool Thing #2: Curious about how to price originals? So was Jason Dobbins (who, in the interests of full disclosure, has sworn undying loyalty to my facial hair) of Tales of the Eighth Grade Nothing, so he let the market decide. This auction was too brief to follow (hitting the Buy It Now price well before it was scheduled to end), leading to a valuable lesson: Don’t undervalue your work with a too-modest strike price. No guarantee that this would have gone higher than the BIN price, but no guarantee that it wouldn’t have either.
• Cool Thing #3: Two years, two hundred comics, really awesome, cartoony style: Bear Nuts is right at the magic point where you can jump on and get a full, satisfying story without spending all week catching up. And to think that it all started with humping, humping hippos.
• Cool Things #4 and 5: New interview with :01 Books supremo Mark Siegel on Sailor Twain, conducted by John Walsh at the site of his historical webcomic, Go Home Paddy, with which I was not previously familiar and which is quite good. Bonus!

If there were such a thing as “Followup Friday” around here, that is.

• It’s been a long slog to get all the dies just right, but everybody that can’t afford a Chris Yates original Baffler! puzzle/object d’art just got a budget alternative. Fully a year after the deal was made and nine months after it went public, Ceaco’s first three licensed Baffler! designs have been announced for release this October. Everybody that has a grandma that loves doing puzzles? Your holiday shopping just got a little easier.
• Busy guy these days, Jim Zubkavich is; finished up that ninjariffic series o’ comics from the spring, and now has a new series from Image due next month. Given Zubkavich’s history of quality work, that alone would be worth a mention, but the fact that said new series is titled SKULLKICKERS and described as sword and sassery? Icing on the proverbial cake, my friends. Grab yourself a copy and revel in the kicking.
• Following up on the American Apparel story from the start of the month, there are two words you never want to hear about one of your vendors: going concern. This is because it’s pretty much a given that those two words only ever get used following the words it is not certain that [name of business] can continue as a. It’s rare that a company that uses the Two Words O’ Death avoids either ceasing business operations and/or bankruptcy, and thanks to a financial filing yesterday, those are pretty much the only choices AA has left. As is usual in these cases, Kai Ryssdal’s got the lowdown.
• Finally, a reminder that the Dallas Webcomics Expo number 2 (Electric Boogaloo) will be this weekend, and remember that there’s that art auction to benefit sick kids, so bring cash and lots of it.

Let’s start with the fun stuff.

• Do you like free booze? Sure, we all do.¹ Good news for you, Sparky — Dave Kellett has worked his magic and (yet again) lined up a free booze sponsor for his latest book launch party. Those of you lucky enough to be in the vicinity of Beverly Hills can check out the latest Sheldon and Drive collections, and pound down completely free tequila until the very fancy people eject you from the venue, and possibly the city limits. If you’re found two days later in a tub full o’ ice missing a kidney, don’t blame Dave; tequila must be treated with respect.
• Heard on the premiere business-information program of these shores on Monday afternoon: a story on policing internet behavior and a reference to the Greater Internet uh, Jerkwad, Theory. Heard on the same program Tuesday afternoon, a belated recognition of the authors of said theory. Dunno if Mike and Jerry listen to Marketplace or not, but this is as close as you can get to an official imprimatur from the business community that They Matter.
• Speaking of commerce, Andy Bell sold literally a thousand of his Android toys at San Diego, and only via careful rationing did they last to almost lunchtime on Saturday. For those of you not lucky enough to score some, the newest resupply is due up at the Dead Zebra site in the next week or two.
• Guess what I’m getting: Dr McNinja Boy Scout patches! The Potomac Council is selling its leftovers, details of which can be found here. If you’re interested I’d email sooner rather than later, but it’s one very nice woman named Susan that’s taking care of this sudden influx of attention, so be polite and patient with her. Also, she’s trying to keep track of order requests, addresses, and payment info, which is much simpler if you reply to her emails instead of starting new ones with each exchange.

Okay, time to get serious. Go read this piece at The Comics Journal on censorship in Sweden, then come back. For those of you who are contrary and don’t feel like reading, it concerns an established, long-respected manga translator who was convicted in June on the charge of possessing child pornography, for having on his computer a few dozen scanned manga pages related to translation projects. The pictures were deemed to be “of a sexual nature” and to depict “characters under the age of 18”. Woo, pedophile off the streets, we can all sleep better at night, forces of decency triumph.

Maybe.

Nobody knows how explicit the pictures (again, not photos, not anything that actually depicts any living person, much less a child) might be because it’s illegal for them to be seen by anybody, and therefore we have only the prosecutor’s word to go on. And here’s the kicker:

In Sweden, all images – be it photos, movies, animations or drawings – depicting what one can understand to be a child (i.e. under the age of 18) in a sexual situation, are regarded as child pornography, since the legislators agreed on using the word “image” instead of “photo” in the law. The ban does not apply to text, though, only images.

This law has been active for almost a decade, but this ruling is the first one ever in Sweden where drawn images have been deemed child pornography in a court of law, and it might thus create a precedent. This could have far-reaching consequences for comics, both for artists and readers. Serious depictions of abuse, autobiographical stories of sexual debut, or simply children without clothes on, may now be classified as child pornography. [emphasis added]

We’ll neglect for the moment the fact that the age of consent in Sweden is 15, and that it’s impossible to decide if a cartoon character that’s meant to be an adult is “too young-looking”. Instead, let’s concentrate on this:

One major problem is the fact that since it is illegal to even look at images like these, the images that were the grounds for the conviction cannot be shown anywhere. This leads to a Catch-22 situation where it is virtually impossible for anyone to decide whether something is illegal or not.

Until this gets settled? You probably shouldn’t read Rene Engström‘s highly-regarded work within the geographical boundaries of Sweden, since Johan and Tina might have been underage, Little Shit might look too young, and diary comics of bathing your kids are obviously criminal in nature.

Those links don’t work, because as much as we know that none of those things described is wrong in any way, somebody out there is screaming Won’t you please think of the children? and might make things difficult for Rene and I won’t make it any easier for them to start their witch-hunt. The fact that I need to think in those terms really pisses me off.
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¹ For maximum impact, read that line in the voice of Informercial Sally Struthers.

Several interesting things in the past day or so.

• Firstly, happy stripperversary (that’s an anniversary for a strip, not an anniversary with strippers) to Jeph Jacques, seeing as how Questionable Content hit seven years yesterday. I’m sure that there’s nothing Jacques would rather have you do than look back to strip one and then comment on the art.¹
• Okay, so Jezebel has a bit of a viewpoint in its reporting of American Apparel‘s uh, colorful CEO, Dov Charney (cf: such Jezebel search tags as americanappalling). They still did some pretty solid-looking business-type reportage in their story on how AA may be facing bankruptcy, which leaves a number of t-shirt mongers with business decisions to make:

  Stock up on AA shirts against a possible interruption or discontinuation? Look for alternate vendors? Discontinue AA orders immediately and/or renegotiate billing terms, on account of bankruptcy means you might not get shirts you paid for? I won’t pretend to know what course of action might be best for anybody, but it’s absolutely time to decide what questions need asking.

• Contest! Beard and moustache cartooning contest! Hosted by Phil McAndrew of Feral Pizza!
• Darryl Cunningham has been mentioned on this page previously, in conjunction with his webcomics in support of rationality (specifically, as regards the false beliefs vaccines cause autism and homeopathy works better than placebos); we’re glad to again mention his comics work (courtesy of a link by Scott McCloud, who found it courtesy of link from The Spurge; we’re all a bit late to the comic itself, which dropped on the eve of SDCC), this time on the topic of yes, we did land on the moon, dammit.

  Just please, don’t make the mistake I did and read the comments; they start off nice and normal, then go off the rails into CrazyTowne — and not the good CrazyTowne, full of fun times and wooo, the bad CrazyTowne where you back away from everybody you meet slowly, without making eye contact.

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¹ Actually, there’s probably about 6000 things he’d rather have you do, including four or five that involve urethra weasels.