I might be the only one, but I miss the discontinued theme song to The Sound of Young America, a radio show about things that are awesome, hosted by America’s Radio Sweetheart, Jesse Thorn.

Readers with a good memory will recall that we have spoken about Mr Thorn previously on this page, and that he’s generally the best interviewer in the radio business right now. I can think of no demographic crying out for lengthy interviews with hip-hop artists less than that of public radio listeners, yet that’s exactly who Jesse provides them for — and interviews with comedians, writers, and the odd (sometimes very odd) webcomicker or two. He keeps a statistically older/whiter-than-the-median audience listening to people they don’t have a pre-existing interest in because he’s that damn good.

And now, Thorn and his general awesomporium have a new storefront provided by TopatoCo. When we spoke with Holly Post, VP of TopatoCo a while back, there was an unused bit from that interview where she mentioned (all offhand-like) that there were people that create stuff on the internet that’s not webcomickers that they might find to be a good fit. At the time, I figured she was talking about, say, Brandon Bird, but now I see that they were thinking bigger. Congratulations to all involved.

• Chris Yates has schemes, which apparently he might share some hint of tomorrow. We at Fleen have heard some reports of what could be Very Big News, and are just waiting for confirmation; will Yates, in fact, tell us about how he’s getting ready to make ***-*** ****** ******* for a major, international ****** *******? Watch his strip and this space for updates.
• Gunerkrigg Court‘s first book got really delayed as its publisher had cash-flow problems; now that those are sorted, we can look for volume 2 next month. To celebrate, creator Tom Siddell is talking with CBR about the forthcoming volume.
• For the past week or so, Joey Manley has been holding forth on how to make it in the world of webcomics, but today’s musing on the topic is the one you need to read — it’s why it’s flat-out impossible for you to achieve success in webcomickry:
  

  Have you given up yet? Good. Because if I was able to talk you out of it so easily, with one stupid blog post, then you didn’t have what it takes. Not everybody gets to make a living at webcomics, because not everybody is talented enough and determined enough to do so. And guess what? That’s just fine. You’re better off where you are. Making a living at webcomics is hard, it’s unlikely, it’s the most impossible thing you could ever decide to do for a living, and in order to stand a chance you have to want it so badly that you’re willing to push through anything, anybody, any time, push beyond human reason and common sense, and then push a little harder, even, than that, if you’re going to really commit yourself to the grueling effort that is required to succeed at webcomics (or at any art, but maybe especially webcomics).

  Hint: Don’t stop reading until you reach the end.

Hey, lookit that: Todd the Squirrel is being … well, Todd … and pissing off a classy lady-squirrel. We’re a long way from the first Achewood strip, nearly as long a way from when Todd was first introduced, and the denizens of Achewood have had many ups and downs in the meantime. It’s been a stellar eight years, where one can say without hyperbole that the worst, most perfunctory Achewood is better than most anything else being created today, and that the best achieve a kind of weird poetry. Fleen thanks Chris Onstad for taking us along on the journey.

• If I worked out the math correctly, today is both the five year anniversary of Danielle Corsetto’s Girls With Slingshots, and tomorrow will be strip #800. To celebrate, today’s installment features nightmare horrors from the deepest recesses of Hell (aka clowns). Yay? But then there’s this: half off original strip art through Sunday Friday, sorry!. Some of my favorites are already gone, dangit.
• Speaking of “dang”, news comes to us this day that come Spring (northern hemisphere) next year, Little Dee will be wrapping up after nearly five years (no blog permalink, but it’ll be there for a while):
  

  I am sad to tell you all, but I will be ending Little Dee in early spring of 2010 (exact date not yet set). I have loved drawing and writing Little Dee, and love the characters. But I feel it is time for me to try new things.

  I first started thinking about it summer of 2008. I realized that I was feeling I had told most of the tale of Little Dee and her friends, and that I have other stories outside of them to tell, more characters and worlds to create. And that I loved Dee, but if I didn’t make sure I had new paths to walk, that I would one day wake up and feel stuck and feel it a burden. I never wanted that.

  We at Fleen love Little Dee (the strip and the character), and will be sad to see both go; but if there’s a clean conclusion to her story of life in the woods with the critters, then it’s all good. Her story had a beginning, a reeeaaallll long middle, and now it will have its end. To lighten the mood, what say we start a pool about how the strip will end. Be the first to comment with a short description of how you think the strip will wrap up, like Dee talks or Dee finds her parents again and if you’re right, you win the admiration of your peers and the thanks of a grateful nation. I’m gonna take Vachel finally snaps (art direction by Quentin Tarrantino). Don’t believe me? Check out the first strip here, or the fifth one here; that boy’s a cauldron of seething rage.

  But in Dee’s place, something new will rise. We’d heard the rumor of an adorable sci-fi comedy strip with lasers, but now Baldwin has a site and progress reports up for Spacetrawler, and it looks like he’s getting script feedback/edits from a bevy of talented people, including webcomics mainstays Dylan Meconis and Mike Russell. Sign up now, avoid the rush.

• If you don’t follow them regularly, you might not know that there are a couple of media analysis places that generally get things right. Yesterday, one of them — MediaShift from PBS, focusing on digital media — turned its eyes on webcomics and the mechanics of indy-art businessin’, and spoke to some familiar names. Worth checking out.

Which means that Fashion Week is nearly upon us. Thankfully, I won’t be coming into the office most of next week, so I get to avoid the crowds that are dressed in black, reeking of too much money and other peoples’ work. True story — I once asked a cop on guard duty outside the main tent if he got that gig by being supercop or by pissing off his desk sergeant. He thought a moment before answering, “A little of both.” Here, there is no runway, there are no tastemakers that annoint the ridiculous and see how many go along with it. There’s just stuff that I think is cool, and you can either agree or not. Let’s start the show!

• Oh my stars and garters, Patched Together (who have already brought you Paul Taylor‘s Shelley and Monica figures (and will be bringing you David Willis‘s Amber figure) are now gauging interest in Ursula Vernon‘s Biting Pear of Salamanca, perhaps better known as the LOL WUT Pear. Let ’em know if you want one.
• Speaking of garters, know who has none? Julia Wertz. That’s because garters absolutely do not go with the hopelessly unstylish garment known as the hospital gown. To raise money to defray her medical bills, Wertz is having a bash in Brooklyn that promises “free booze n’ snax!” to all who attend. 282 Broadway, 8:00pm on September 18th (that’s a Friday, so no need to fake being sick at work the next day) — come for the comic reading, stay for the medical horror stories!
• Interesting experiment over at Something*Positive: every strip in the month of September (there are two so far) will take place in the same day of story-time. October first, I’m going to be re-reading all of them to figure out how the story’s world changed. Given that the little blue psychohorror is actually being — quiet? Potentially remorseful? — I’m guessing that the changes will be nothing good for at least some characters.

  By the bye, if you ever meet S*P creator Randy Milholland and provide him with enough larynx-soothing liquid refreshment, his voicing for Fluffmodeus (yes, that’s its name) is both frightening and hilarious.

• New strip alert: Like his Applegeeks cohort Ananth Panagariya, Mohammad Haque does a journal-ish comic on the side (Panagariya with co-creator Yuko Ota, and Haque with co-creator Jessica Watson). Check out The Watsons while it’s still got that new-strip smell.
• Further proof that Topatoco is a Real Boy Grown-Up Company publisher now: book signings and other events are now a semi-regular occurence in the secret lair of reclusive genius Jeff Rowland. Next Friday, Little Gamers creators Pontus Madsen and Christian Fundin (son of Farin — sorry, geek joke), will be signing their fourth book and you can come if you wanna:
  

  “We believe we have obtained the proper permits to allow Pontus and Christian into our town for a few days,” said TopatoCo president Jeffrey Rowland. “The police and fire departments have been notified, power grid secured, emergency items stocked, and everyone over the age of 65 has been vaccinated. If all necessary safety precautions are taken and all recommended action items are performed in a timely fashion, this experience should prove to be calm and orderly.”

  TopatoCo urges all attendees to bring along any sprays and/or unguents they may need for the event, as the house supply is expected to go quickly.

  6:00 to 9:00 pm, Eastworks, September 11th, 2009, and may God have mercy on your souls.

Ever since I wrote that title, webcomics things just keep popping up that match it. As the old saying goes, Things are going to change.

• Naturally, of course, that little tidbit of The Child brings us to the end of Scary Go Round (as we know it), now announced for 11 September, with the new strip (not yet known at all, but at the same address) to begin the following Monday. Be sure to ask John Allison all about the final disposition of characters and storyline, and he may post your question with an answer if it is one of the best ones. If it’s not, you can always ask him when you see him at SPX.
• It is also the end, as we know it, for Sinister Bedfellows, as creator mckenzee simultaneously scares the bejabbers out of small children and announces the start of his new project on 1 January: Bearcats of Mandhu, which he described to this page at SPX ’07 as an exploration of the recent travails of Nepal and the Nepalese royal family, depicted as furries.
• It’s the start of the Couscous Collective store, with its first original offering being something you probably want: Skin Horse, Book 1. Not convinced? Check out this argument:
  

  “Now you can live anywhere and get copies of Couscous goodies,” says Pancha Diaz, cartoonist and group webmaster. “Geography will no longer thwart us.”

  Not enough webcomickers think in terms of thwarting! Thwartage of all types must itself (ironically enough) be thwarted! I just like saying the word “thwart”! Thwart, thwart, thwart, thwart, thwart, thwart!

• Via Scott Kurtz, notice of a new endeavour at Webcomics-dot-com — the start of an ongoing series of video lessons:
  

  [W]e’re starting a brand new live stream called Webcomics.com University.

  Our hope with Webcomics University is to feature in depth lectures from comic pros, bringing you their favorite tips, tricks, techniques, and thoughts on making Webcomics.

  I’ll be starting things off with our inagural episode, this Friday at 9pm central time. The show will be broadcast over my Ustream.tv channel. Bookmark my page or watch right here at PvPonline.com or Webcomics.com Friday night.

  I have long wanted to do something similar here at Fleen in written form, but as you may have noticed in the past, I am a lazy, lazy man.

• Finally, two stories that I’m sitting on at the moment; as soon as news of them breaks you’ll get more information on them. But hints? Keep your eye on Rich Stevens’ Twitter, and those of you that get Fox Business on your cable lineups, a familiar face may be appearing there in the next day or two (subject to more important things happening, naturally). And no, it’s not me, it’s somebody you’d actually want to hear from.

So many things have happened since I spoke with you last. Let’s hit the highlights, shall we?

The Hugo Awards got awarded last night in Montreal, and two of webcomicdom’s finest were up for (I believe the first ever) award for Best Graphic Story: Phil and Kaja Foglio for Girl Genius (specifically book 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones, starting online here), and Howard Tayler for Schlock Mercenary (specifically, The Body Politic story arc, starting online here). The Foglios won, and Fleen congratulates them; unfortunately that means Tayler lost, and we at Fleen extend our sympathies along with the comfort that at least he lost to some wonderful people with terrific work.

• New England Webcomics Weekend (definitely returning to *hampton, MA in 2010) appears to have spawned a movement: the Dallas area will be home to a webcomickers gathering on Saturday, 14 November. The Dallas Webcomics Expo has a site up, but I’m not sure who’s organizing; a request for information has been sent, and all will be shared at the soonest of times.
• Have you seen this? Wonderella bobblehead on pre-order! The only thing this needs is a voice chip that says Rim me, Sasquatch and you have the perfect desktop accessory or stocking stuffer for children of all ages!¹
• Finally, Commissioner James Gordon needs your help. See, if he’s found to be the cutest dog (and look how cute he is!) in I dunno, America or the internet or whatever, his parents (Chris Hastings and Carly Monardo) will be able to defray the costs of their wedding by a considerable amount … and, I’m told, throw a hell of a party for all of you. So vote already, so he can get back to the important work of fighting crimes.

  PS: for those wondering my own dog is not in the contest, it’s because large dogs never win these things, even though Grace is the cutest dog in the world. Yes she is! Yes she is!.

_______________
¹ Do not actually give this to a child; you will scar them for life.

Did you catch this? David Morgan-Mar ((PhD, LEGO®©™^etc), educator of scientific notions and webcomicker of note, got stopped and mildly searched on his holidays in London on suspicions of terrorism for photographing one of the most-photographed landmarks in England. What’s that? You wanted proof? Here y’go, Sparky. Of course, it’s possible that officer in question wasn’t really so officious as to detain Morgan-Mar on such idiotic grounds — it’s possible that he was a time-traveller, and well aware of the hideous pun that was about to be foisted on the world, and rightly decided it was weapons-grade. For shame, fear-based society, and for shame, Dr Morgan-Mar.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s look at another kind of interesting times: I recently had the opportunity to talk with Holly Post, VP of Special Projects at TopatoCo (“the world’s largest webcomics merchandise company, and probably at least in the top 20 of the hemisphere’s best internet e-stores in general”) about the company’s recent growth, plans for the future, and whether or not they can stay weird and still deal with more serious businesses.

(more…)

Dang, don’t know where my brain is. Well, here’s some stuff for y’all:

• Sooner than expected, Little Dee book #3 has hit the store shelves; get ’em while they’re hot. Grab one of the sweet posters, too (I think I need the one of Shibuya crossing).
• Reports from last night’s Super Art Fight! are sketchy — survivors continue to trickle into aid stations, but no clear picture of the devastation‘s full scope has yet emerged.
• Told you earlier this week about the webcomics show at the Cartoon Art Museum (as curated by Andrew Farago); those of you in Tokyo will be able to get your own taste of Farago’s curatorial skills, as the CAM collaborated with Studio (freakin’) Ghibli to mount an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo on the works of famed illustrator Mary Blair:
  

  The Colors of Mary Blair is on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo from July 18 through October 4, 2009.

  Cartoon Art Museum Curator Andrew Farago and his wife, cartoonist and editor Shaenon K. Garrity, assisted Studio Ghibli with the assembly of this exhibition. The pair co-curated the Cartoon Art Museum’s 2007-08 exhibition of Blair’s work, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair, and were recruited by Studio Ghibli to act as liaisons between their curatorial team and the Mary Blair Estate.

  The travel to Japan to set up the show was chronicled by Shaenon Garrity in a three–part series at Comixology. Try not to hate Andrew & Shaenon for getting to hang around with Hayao Miyazaki (I know, the envy is overwhelming, but try anyway).

• Brigid Alverson talks to Gina Biggs on independent publishing & webcomickry. Please enjoy.

Okay, back to getting things ready for San Diego. Please forgive any erratic posting schedule that might crop up next week, and keep an eye on my Twitter; if you’re going to be there, I’ll most likely be found in a 30 meter radius of booth 1337.

‘Nother day, ‘nother book goes up for pre-order — Starslip volume 3 this time — and Topatoco scores another client. Honestly, it might be easier these days to tell you when Topatoco doesn’t pick up a prominent webcomic as a client. Understand I’m firmly of the opinion that Topatoco is one of the best thngs that a webcomics creator not determined/business skilled/time-blessed enough to run their own merch line can have in their corner, and I’m still surprised by how rapidly (yet smartly) they’ve grown.

I’m really wondering how long it will be before a boutiuqe internet-creator merchandise company becomes a legit media company with a reach and influence equivalent to, say, Dark Horse. Best guess? Five to ten years. Three years if Jeff and Holly can find somebody to keep Weedmaster P occupied. I think I’m going to have to ply them with liquor in San Diego and see what I can get them to commit to on the record.

In other news — and if I’m asked about this in the future, I will deny it all — reports now indicate that a major trove of intelligence data are nearly compiled, and should be complete in less than a week. The shadowy (perhaps fictional, perhaps they only want you to think he’s fictional) operative known as Agent Eben07 has been linked with a dossier of information dating back more than 40 years that could have lasting impact on the world’s geopolitical situation. All are encouraged to … did you hear that? Listen carefully — burn everything, and I was never here! The one-eyed dog barks at midnight! The one-eyed dog barks at mi~~

Maybe on the event itself, but the discussion rages on.

Firstly, I’ve received helpful communiques from both Xaviar Xerexes and Lore Sjöberg on the matter of case law. X-man (who, unlike myself, is a lawyer) shares that there’s plenty of case law on Fair Use and threatens his already-stretched family time with the notion of putting together a primer on the topic. Sjöberg helpfully pointed me towards Dr Suess Enterprises v Penguin Books USA, which both corrects my belief that there isn’t case law concerning third-party parody, and settled the question against such being protected by Fair Use.

But the more interesting communication came last night (well after deadline) from Kelsey Armstrong, identified as the infringing party. An excerpt you may find enlightening:

I already appologized to Scott Johnson yesterday right after I saw what happened. I had no intention to rip anyones work off … I just started making shirts and stuff for some fun. Every now and then I would find stuff on google and just post it. I googled “geek” and came up with 56 Geeks. Not bothering to check where I got it from for the owner, any copyrights, etc., I just naively took it from google and posted it….

Like I said, I apologized to Scott for this whole thing and he seemed to understand where I was coming from. I was just being stupid with the power google gave me.

Salient points: it was more from a lack of understanding than from design practices that encourage the rapid development of visuals without regard to origin (cf: “artists” who pay others to come up with designs for them, then produce the work in question for large dollar figures; figures as notable as Todd Goldman engage in this practice) that caused this situation, and Ms Armstrong realizes her mistake.

I feel really stupid for this whole thing, and … although many people seem to think of me as the biggest asshole on the planet, I hope at least you can see me differently, as I hope Scott Johnson does now that I have emailed him. And no, I wont be a repeat offender lol.

Just a thought here, take it as you will. Ms Armstrong has learned a valuable lesson, and it’s one that I think a lot of teens can stand to learn at that age: the ability to recognize when you do something dumb is a valuable life skill. Anybody that’s tossing barbs towards her might do well to remember what idiot things they did at that age (I you don’t look back to that age and realize that you did dumb stuff, you’re fooling yourself) and back off. It took some considerable courage to:

• Contact and apologize to Scott Johnson
• Resolve the situation so quickly
• Reply to my email with a sense of responsibility and desire to do the right thing

In some ways, it would have been much easier for Ms Armstrong to be a defiant jerk all around, and that would make it easy for all of us to dogpile on and hate her. As it is, let’s agree to chalk this one up to a mistake, and at least take the comfort that the example may teach others the lesson about what you can ethically and legally sell, and what you can’t. In the long view, this turned out pretty well all around.

So, it all started a bit less than 20 hours ago (as of this writing): Scott Johnson of Extralife noticed a Zazzle store (it’s kind of like CafePress, except they can also print postage stamps) was selling a mug and a mousepad (and possibly other items) that lifted the art from his 2007 print, The 56 Geeks.

Word spread rapidly, as it is wont to do on Twitter. The store in question led to minor information about the proprietor, which led to a MySpace page and eventually a store page with contact info (note that depending on your browser settings, that last page may either immediately roll over to Zazzle, or just close). A sample of that store page, to give you an idea what we’re dealing with:

Here at Poison Art, YOU are what matters. The loyal customer, the one who appreciates the genious [sic] behind the artwork. At Poison Art we are all about supplying you with some of the most random, but most attention grabbing shirts, shoes, accesories, and more. There is no real theme to our products, just COOLNESS, so that you too can be cool. We are fairly new, and still getting ourselves organized, so the products are especially random at this point in time, but please, bear with us! When we get more products out there, it will be easier to sort through and create more understandable categories of merchandise.

If you would like to navigate our zazzle site, you can go directly through that link above, or use the quick links below. Hope you enjoy =)

-Poison Art Designer- Kelsey Armstrong

Okay, so Kelsey Armstrong is not so much of a “genious”, not much of a designer, and 18/F according to MySpace. Given that teens with access to the internet aren’t always up on the latest in intellectual property ethos, I sent a quick email (address withheld; no need to abuse the girl):

I followed some links at Zazzle to get this contact address. There appears to be a remarkable similarity between a design that you are selling and a print by webcomic artist Scott Johnson of “Extralife”. Any comment?

No reply as of this writing (about 19 hours), but as of 15 hours ago, the offending designs had been removed from the Zazzle store without comment. Contacted for comment, Johnson replied:

I get so disenchanted with “the system” when stuff like this happens, but then I remember, the system is a great big chaotic freak show, and I am lucky I don’t find that sort of thing every day. :)

What is it exactly that makes people think that because they found content created by someone else online, that they really liked, they have license to use it as if it were their own and sell things based
on it? It seems completely insane to me. For example, it’s one thing to share songs online with other people, it is another thing entirely to sell CD’s, t-shirts using other people’s music.

At this time it’s unknown whether Ms Armstrong actually made any money off of Johnson’s design (and it’s probably safe to assume that the use of Johnson’s work was more from ignorance of how artists rights work than from actual malice aforethought, thus we are unlikely to see her as a repeat offender), but we can at least take some lessons away from this:

• Regardless of law, policy, or common courtesy, it will in all practical respects be up to the owners of IP to hunt down those who would appropriate from them.
• The willingness of people to back their favorite creators and take appropriators to task means that time from discovery to resolution is shrinking. The Great Todd Goldman/Dave Kelly Contretemps Of Aught-Seven took 30 days to shake out (from first report to press release that everything was settled).

  The Great Jess Fink/Hot Topic Unpleasantness of Aught-Eight took 11 days. This one took about five hours from discovery to resolution, and hopefully each time we go through this, the word leaks out a little more — take inspiration, but draw your own goddamned art if you’re going to sell it.

• We desperately need some case law to settle exactly what constitutes “Fair Use”; clearly, any reasonable reading of current US law (those of you in less freedom-loving countries are on your own, and in any event, I Am Not A Lawyer) would say that you can’t just life an image and sell it as if it’s yours. But what of transformations, or visual quoting? I’m thinking here of Jeff Rowland’s Internet design, which got a C&D from the photographer that originally captured the image now known as the ORLY owl.

  Personal opinion, Rowland’s design quoted the owl (and ceiling cat, and the general look and feel of the Ouija board), but in the service of commenting on/parodizing general internet culture, which is Fair Use. Or it’s not. There’s zero case law on third-party parody (c.f.: Penny Arcade and American Greetings) and we need it settled; unfortunately, the way to get case law is to first have a case, which means somebody gots to get sued.

In any event, this situation has resolved itself quickly enough (and about as well as could be possibly expected), so let’s call it done. Barring a repeat from Ms Armstrong, it doesn’t even require the coining of a The Great ____ of Aught-Nine to enshrine it in the annals of webcomics.

Quick addition to yesterday’s item on Xeric winners with award work online — although I didn’t find it, Alexander Danner pointed out that Tymothi Godek‘s “!” was published online in its entirety, and that the thumbnails for “!” may be found online (Blogspot and Livejournal flavors), along with a writeup of what “!” is about. Fleen regrets the omission.