So there really is a post today; look for Great Outdoor Fight rhapsodizing tomorrow. Also, WordPress updates have left us without images at the top of new posts (and may I say, the alt-text for those graphics has been disappearing at random for the last few versions? Yes, I think I may) — working on it, etc. Real shame, actually, I had a good one lined up.

• Hey, anybody listened to the latest Webcomics Weekly? Postal services vendor Endicia is sponsoring the podcast (it looks like for four weeks), and they’re offering up a special deal for webcomickers. Head over to www.endicia.com/webcomics for a deal on postage services & supplies that’s better than (near as I can tell) any current Endicia user got when first signing up. It almost makes me want to run out and get a bunch of stuff that needs mailing.

  On a more serious note, this is an interesting instance of targeted sponsorship, and I’m not sure we’ve quite seen its like previously. Anybody got any examples of similar partnerships between webcomics undertakings and the vendors that want to sell to them?

• First eyes, then color, now names? Approaching 500 strips, A Girl And Her Fed [Named Pat] continues to evolve. Oh god, please don’t let the threats go from eyes to … I dunno, all-beef patties.
• Kiltmania is set to erupt at Dragon*Con this weekend, courtesy of menace to all that is holy Jennie Breeden. Be-kilted guys, be sure to sign her release if you want to end up immortalized like the 54 gentlemen in the new kilts & leaf blower playing card deck. Now I know it’s short notice, and will require the coordination of at least two webcomickers, a t-shirt printer, and an express delivery service, but please, please, please have at least one of those kilt guys be wearing this t-shirt.
• Funny. For now.

It appears that my concerns have been addressed satisfactorily, which sets a slightly dangerous precedent (I must resolve to use my powers only for good, and never for awesome). Confused? Check out the official portrait: Carly’s gonna punch you in the face with her happiness! Everybody feel good for Chris and Carly!

• In fact, it was only the news this morning of Chris & Carly’s engagement that displaced that which — on any other day — would be the most exciting webcomics news of the day. Two words for you, Sparky:

  Wonderella.

  Book.

  Pre-order by the first of September for bonus savings, and to get it signed by creator Justin Pierce!

• Uh-oh! Wacky hijinks brewing at Waspsi Square. This is pretty much how every bedroom farce ever kicks into high gear, with the running, and the doors slamming, and the hitting, and the funny for the audience as people struggle to explain themselves. But in a bedroom farce, there aren’t usually super-powered entities doing the running, slamming, and hitting. This could be either very funny or very, very tragic.
• Anarchist librarian wear coming soon. Get one for the book-slinger in your life.
• Interview with Danielle Corsetto, including a rundown on the GWS drinks contest. I’ve only met Ms Corsetto when she was sober (at least, I think she was), so it’s hard to imagine how much goofier and funnier she could be when “in her cups”, as the cool kids say. Since it’s hard to imagine, I’m publicly calling for video proof. Somebody go get on that.

First of all, congratulations to Tyler Page, a regular exhibitor at MoCCA, who skipped for a very good reason — his wife Cori gave birth the day before the show. We at Fleen wish the family all the best and hope to see the little one at all future MoCCAs.

From the Books Department:

• Ryan North reports he’s working on the next Dinosaur Comics book; instead of the ‘best of’ approach he took in YWFIMOOM, this one will be the full run of strips from 2006. There will be a secret naming convention to Dinosaur Comics books from here on out, which you may try to unravel by purchasing all future volumes. Look for it to be released sometime next year.
• Cat Garza looked very happy behind a dwindling pile of the Secrets and Lies anthology he edited. He had every right to be considering the large number of contributors and tight production schedule (he only solicited for contributions a week after last Fall’s SPX). Cat’s a sterling gentleman, and I was pleased to make his acquaintance.
• David Malki ! saw great success from the debut of Beards of Our Forefathers, and is presently working on volume 2 of Dispatches From Wondermark Manor for release next month in San Diego. Look for Malki ! to shift his merchandise operations to Topatoco in the near term, leading to exciting stuff-bundle opportunities.
• Also debuting at MoCCA was Chris Yates‘s Set it to Awesome, which is an astoundingly heavy book, what with the glossy full-color photos on every page. To this reporter’s eye, it outsold everything on the show floor except for POOP signs.
• Meredith Gran sold out of pretty much everything she brought, and is preparing for San Diego by sending the second Octopus Pie book to press in the next week. After that, we at Fleen hear plans of animations from Ms Gran.
• Also sold out: Spike went home without a single copy of Templar, AZ Book 1 left, and took plenty of pre-orders for the forthcoming Book 2. I pre-ordered mine back when there was snow on the ground — it’s got Reagan on the cover!
• Hope Larson does the coolest book customization ever — buy a copy of her thoroughly charming Chiggers, and she’ll take off the dust cover and paint directly onto the pigment-thirsty hard cover.
• Kean Soo‘s Jellaby sketchbook is incredibly cute, yet Soo himself is a right-hand-rule-throwin’ badass. After the Jellaby story finishes in next year’s graphic novel, look for a third volume of short stories.

Not books:

• Andy Bell‘s latest toy, The Giver, should be on a boat from far shores about now, making availability at San Diego a possibility (I suppose it depends on if Customs wants to be cooperative or not).
• Rosemary Mosco is thoroughly delightful, selling me her very last paleontology-themed alphabet print; we spoke widely over sophisticated adult-type beverages about things that are extinct and the people that study them.

Webcomickers seen at the show, in addition to the above, included Jon Rosenberg, Rich Stevens, Jeff Rowland, Sam Brown, Jeph Jacques, Chris Hastings, Alexander Danner, Dave Roman, Raina Telgemeier (who reports the with her last Babysitters Club book about to be released, she is looking forward to receiving hate mail from people upset about her treatment of the X-Men instead of her treatment of Kristy, Stacie, et. al.), Randall Munroe, Ryan Sias, Dirk Tiede, Shaenon Garrity, Danielle Corsetto, Bryan Lee O’Malley, and MoCCA curator-extraordinaire Jen Babcock.

Overheard in casual conversation:

Kean Soo, on Ryan North — I have dirt on the Man-Mountain.
Ryan North, in sad confirmation — I have made some bad decisions.

Photos tomorrow.

Hey kiddies, just back from my time away (piece of advice: anniversary trips rule), and I see that you’ve been up to lots in my absence. I don’t mind, on account of all the time I had playing dress-up for fancy dinners in my robot socks, drinking beers with one-time NPR personalities, and having a Holy crap, aren’t you Andrew Farago and Shaenon Garrity? moment on the subway (on Free Comic Book Day no less). Also: wine and cheese.

And it’s not just me celebrating marriage (15 years, thank you) — matrimony appears to be in the air in webcomicdom, what with Beef narrowly averting a wedding- (and life-) destroying mistake, and some nuptials over at PvP. Scott Kurtz has been showcasing some terrific art, and it now appears that the whole wedding storyline is a case of I told you that story so I could tell you this one. Major shakeup coming it seems, mixed in with a very amusing Winnie Ther Pooh reference. Pretty damn good work, Kurtz — let’s see what you’ve got for the next ten years.

And in completely unrelated news: shirt ninjas.

It should be no surprise to any regular reader of this here blog that I’m a fantastically huge Ursula Vernon fan, so it should also be no surprise that I’m telling you all to give her a hand while simultaneously obtaining a fabulous piece of art. You really don’t want to know what the tax code for freelance artists looks like, but even with pre-payments every quarter, Vernon’s getting smacked hard come the 15th. So she’s doing a limited edition print in honor of the bill she’s got to pay, and you can pick one up for just 25 smackers plus shipping. Details at Vernon’s DeviantArt page or LiveJournal.

Okay, at this point, you should just be assuming that somewhere around Friday afternoon, Rick Marshall is putting up a new webcomics interview, generally about five minutes after my Friday post goes live. This time: Nick Gurewitch on life after hiatus. Also, it looks like the good Marshall will be joining me in haunting panels at NYCC, so come see us hopefully not act like complete doofuses.

For those keeping track, it’s been at least 37 hours since Ryan Estrada had a flash of major inspiration, so we’re due. Saturday the 12th he’s declared to be 12 Hour Comic Day at the Commune. As he put it, it’s the “quick creative kick in the nuts” that you’ve been needing.

Stephanie McMillan and Ted Rall will be hosting a multimedia extravaganza (that’s Web 2.0 speak for “slide show”) of their latest editorial cartooning work — Bluesotckings Bookstore on the 14th, and Idlewild Books on the 21st (both in New York) are the locations. As an added bonus, Fleen will pay a dollar to the first attendee to get Rall to admit he’s wrong about it being impossible that a webcomicker could ever become a millionaire. C’mon, getting one of the most opinionated people in comics to change his mind? How hard could it be? I’ve got the dollar right heeeeeeere!

Finally, Greg Carter and Gina Biggs did a panel on webcomics and business at the Atlanta Comics Expo back in February, and they’ve now got a recording that you can check out. Why are you still here? Go listen.

About the first thing I heard this morning is that Sir Arthur C. Clarke had died, and frankly I don’t feel much like writing today. Nope, no link for Clarke — if you don’t already know who he was, you really shouldn’t be reading this blog in the first place.

But as I don’t want to leave you with nothing worthwhile to look at today, I’d like to thank Michael Rouse-Deane (for sending more teaser clips of The Guest Comic Project), Kris Straub and the US Postal Service (for the timely delivery of my Jinxlet), and all the contributors to the comments thread of yesterday’s post, for a really thoughtful and valuable discussion.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go calculate a few geostationary positions. It seems appropriate somehow.

Good news, everybody! There’s a happy resolution to the Jess Fink/Hot Topic saga; from the LiveJournal of El Finkensteino:

I FINALLY got an email from Hot Topic.

The person who wrote me back was the lady who originally bought the shirts from the rip off artist/designer “NewBreedGirl” she had some very nice, apologetic words to say and she told me Hot Topic would like to make amends by removing the shirt from their website, and no longer selling it in their stores.

She said:

“I would like to first and foremost, appologize for this situation. It is very important to us to support artists and their ventures and it just makes my stomach turn when something like this happens. We in NO way would have written this artwork if we had known it was someone else’s design. We work with many vendors that sell us “generic” artwork and we put our faith in those vendors to not sell us stolen or immulated artwork.”

On top of this she offered that they would like to buy some of my designs.

I don’t know if I will in fact do the designs for Hot Topic or not yet, but all I really wanted in the first place was for the shirt to not be sold and so I think I am satisfied with how this all turned out, and that I didn’t have to take it to court.

…

MAINLY I just have to say that my frosty fart-filled heart has been warmed by the response from people about it and I don’t think it would have worked out at all if I didn’t have you guys on my side.

Well done, internet! Now, one more thing for you to do. Remember the phone number I posted a while back for the Hot Topic buyers? Here’s where the second part of corporate customer satisfaction ninjitsu comes in: if you called the number before — and even if you didn’t — I want you to call Hot Topic again and thank them. We complained, they did the right thing, and that should be acknowledged.

Believe me, corporations hear honest appreciations so rarely, this positive reinforcement will be as important — maybe more so — for keeping them from buying suspect designs in the future as all the complaining was. So one more call and you can rest … and y’all done good.

The question naturally arises, what would be an acceptable resolution to the Jess Fink/Hot Topic situation? As I see it, some of the remedies proposed last year in the Shmorky/Goldman don’t quite apply (given that Hot Topic aren’t selling $5000 versions of lifted artwork, but rather a whole mess o’ t-shirts). Here’s what I came up with as model solutions — feel free to comment.

1. Hot Topic enter into good-faith negotiations with Jess Fink and Threadless to determine an equitable compensation for the theft of the design; this should not be based on the number of shirts they sell, but the number that HT has stocked into their inventory.
2. Hot Topic should feel free to seek compensation from the vendor whose designer felt the need to lift so blatantly.
3. Hot Topic should let us know what they’re going to do to help prevent situations like this recurring regularly, as they have been.

Now, Hot Topic are of course a very large corporation that need not necessarily pay attention to what some artist somewhere is saying; then again, Todd Goldman was widely reputed to be a $90 million/year shirtmonger, and yet attention and behavior changes were forced in that case.

If you wanted to let Hot Topic know your feelings on this matter (and missed the alt text in yesterday’s post), note that Hot Topic has a contact page, complete with email, 800 number, and live chat with customer service reps. A polite inquiry along the lines of, Can you tell me how Hot Topic will be dealing fairly with artist Jess Fink, whose stolen work you are presently selling? that shows up in the call logs a hundred times or so could have a damn near immediate effect. Go make me proud.

Work has me crawling under tables doing physical inventory of computer assets; my back and my skull are tired.

• If you haven’t seen the new Topatoco store, the bells and whistles are pretty much in place now. Of note: discounts apply to purchases (for example, three t-shirts), even from different creators that hail from different studios. While you’ve been able to get, say, a Dumbrella Val-u-Pak o’ Shirts at a convention, now you could do so with wearables from, say, Dinosaur Comics (Dayfree Press), Dresden Codak (of Koala Wallop), and Three Panel Soul (of nobody in particular). Remember all my blatherings about Aduz? With this common storefront service, Jeff Rowland has taken the first step towards that bright and shiny future. Now, who’s gonna step up and do the same on the manufacturing end?
• Okay, so everybody knows that Alexa rankings lie somewhere between “fanciful” and “science fiction”, right? Which is why I didn’t spend too many mental cycles on Mr T‘s surveys of webcomics traffic rankings based on Alexa and similar services. Unreliable data in = unreliable conclusions out. But he’s done something that may actually wrest some value from that morass of non-metrics.

  Namely, he’s pulled data from Alexa and Compete for his latest crack at analysis, but he’s also going to be retaining numbers from survey to survey instead of treating them as discrete events. The numbers in a particular survey may be utter crap, but the trendlines from month to month may actually be useful. If each survey has approximately the same bias in the data, the differentials may be somewhat reliable.

  A’course, that’s a hell of an if, but time will tell. In six months, if we see the lines yo-yoing back and forth like a drunken clown, we’ll be able to abandon the entire exercise until the technology improves. If not, getting some of the sites in question to agree to disclose their traffic may help to refine the model to the point that it can actually tell us something. For the moment though, please look upon the numbers as requiring significant amounts of salt.

Who wants stuff today? Stuff is awesome.

• Speaking of “awesome”, did you see the winners of the Wonder Woman costume redesign contest at Project Rooftop? That’s got webcomics all over it, since PR is the baby of Dean Trippe, who does the terrific Butterfly (as seen at Lunchbox Funnies), and one of the second-place prizes went to Carly Monardo, who’s been known to do the odd shirt design, coloring job or guest strip at Dr McNinja.
• Speaking of Lunchbox Funnies, Wally & Osborne has been on hiatus for a while. Let’s let W&O creator Tyler Martin tell it:
  

  I decided to stoop to the lowness of that creep Paul Southworth and ask for some help in letting people know my comic would be returning after taking a baby (and moving) hiatus.

  Unlike Paul who only took a couple weeks, I took 3 and a half months, because I am a better father! :D

  Fightin’ words! Guess the only way to settle this is for everybody reading now to check out both Wally & Osborne, and Ugly Hill, so that both creators can afford to travel to a neutral site and settle this thing with honor in the steel cage o’ death.

• Still speaking of Lunchbox Funnies, you know who else is over there? Dave Roman. Know who he hangs out with a lot? Raina Telgemeier. (I mean, seriously a lot, with like smoochin’ and everything!) Know what ¡Journalista! is reporting today? That Dave and Raina will be doing an original English language series for Del Rey in manga style, starring the X-Men.
• Still, still speaking of Lunchbox Funnies, Rian Sias is dipping a toe into the wearables category of merch, with the most adorable hat to grace the planet since Andy Runton sold out of the Owly hats.
• And finally, to his resume of misery as the Dreamcrusher, David Malki ! can now add “Strikebreaker”. What is ostensibly an ad for the latest Wondermark calendar (100 piece limited edition, each page hand-screened, with a brass display stand) turns out to actually be an excuse to break the Cute Internet Animals Embargo in support of the WGA. For shame, Mr Malki !, for shame.