Longtime friend Brett “g” Porter just pointed me to the saddest [webcomics] story in the world at Gawker, of all places:

You know how you guys told me to check out Achewood? Well, I did and got my boyfriend totally hooked on it. For Christmas I ordered a signed strip for him. This one.

Right after I ordered it, I found out he has been sleeping with some 23-year-old whore waitress at his restaurant (he just got promoted from sous chef to head chef and it clearly went to both their heads).

I can’t return it because it is signed. I don’t want to give it to him anyway because he is a lying sack of shit and I want him and that skank to die.

Please help me find someone who wants this?

As of right now, the print is up for auction at eBay, has no bids, with an initial asking price of $10 and $6 shipping. As the Gawker story points out, there is something distinctly Achewoodian about this tale, and anybody with an interest in the human condition is urged to make a bid on this very historic piece.

A few announcements for you, some a little late. Enjoy ’em anyways.

• Brinkerhoff, featuring the least fluffy bunnies since Matt Groening’s Life In Hell, recently celebrated strip #501 with a quad-size extravaganza.
• Where do you stand on the Writers Guild strike? Brian Carroll of Instant Classic is doing a series on it at his other webcomic, Genrezvous Point, which starts here.
• Speaking of the strike, I understand it means that Dave Kellett‘s wife is now hanging around the house more. You know what might cheer her up, between long stints on the picket line hurling abuse (and hopefully rotten produce) at plutocrats? Helping Dave pack and ship merchandise that’s presently cluttering his garage.

  By the time you read this, he should be updating his store with the new Sheldon book and the Greatest Bumper Sticker In The World (not to be confused with the Greatest Answering Machine Message In The World).

• And in the “Safe Travels” department, Fleen wishes a fond farewell to Bang Barstal, who has found purpose and peace of a sort, both of which no longer involve him hitting things with a baseball bat. A little Mage, a little Mojo Nixon, a little road novel, a little philosophizin’, and a whole lotta hitting things until they explode finished up today at Graphic Smash, with a final epilogue due on Thursday. May the road rise to meet ya, Bang, and yer whiskey always be smooth.

I wonder if my enemies can top this parade of moustachey tributes/abuse. I doubt it. Thanks for the giggles, compadres.

In actual news today:

• The very popular (with me, anyway) Baby/Toddler/Kid Status box at Achewood appears to have reached its final update today:
  

  Today, she departs bittersweet. She waves to you, in her trendy clog shoes with the aftermarket Tinkerbell pin. She wears her Alice in Wonderland costume, but then chooses to be naked while scrubbing the popsicle mold in the kitchen sink. She asks for a piece of chocolate as big as herself, pretends her bed is a big red airplane, and wisely says that if we fill the bathtub up more deeply tomorrow, we might get a whirlpool when it drains.

  I’m going to miss those sometimes bizarre, haiku-like missives from Rancho Onstado. Perhaps sensing our need, you may now purchase the collected archive of Current Baby Status from Achewood Industries.

• You’ll Have That‘s Wes Molebash sends along his photos from last weekend’s Mid-Ohio Con; sadly, it appears the bounty will go unclaimed.
• Creators and creatrixes! Want to make WordPress your bitch? Tyler Martin is too polite a guy to put it like that, but that’s what you’ll be doing if you grab the newest version of his ComicPress theme:
  

  ComicPress continues to help Webcomic creators create their websites and publish their comics with WordPress. Versions of ComicPress 2.1 are now seen at such Webcomic sites as the recently-redesigned PvP, the recently-Fleened We The Robots, the recently-determined to kick your ass until you explode Freak Angels, and the recently-getting a lot of attention Octopus Pie.

  So if you’re running a webcomic via WordPress, you basically need this tool in your toolbox, unless you think you’re cooler than Warren Ellis or Meredith Gran. And nobody’s cooler than Meredith Gran.

• Finally, rumo[u]r has it that Michael Lalonde is considering making Orneryboy his full-time job; although such a jump requires a great deal of planning and thought, we at Fleen would like to give Lalonde our strongest encouragement in whatever path he may take.

I missed out on the limited-edition (1 of 1) Hob prints, I ain’t missing out on the We Rogues of Wool poster. Speaking of Little Dee, do I detect an interesting pronoun choice in today’s strip?

Those of you down North Carolina way that enjoy things that are great, please check out the Charlotte Observer‘s free weekly supplement, Eye. It’s now running Boy on a Stick and Slither (in color), along with other webcomics-and-print dual-use weapons as Diesel Sweeties and Secret Asian Man.

Weirdly, BoaSaS used to run in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which would indicate that it’s slowly making its way north from Florida (creator Steven Cloud’s point of origin), past Georgia, and now the Carolinas. Presumably, like other southern invaders, BoaSaS will continue to spread and dominate its environment due to a lack of natural predators. Best to just accept it, and welcome your new webcomics master now.

See, the American dollar has been slip-sliding to historic lows against other major currencies. While this does not affect my life directly in any major way, it is starting to affect some of my webcomics merch-puchasing. Drat it all, some of what I like is imported.

Case in point: I loves me some Liz Greenfield autobio comics, and news that she’s got a print mini of them up for preorder made me happy. But given the current exchange rates, the €8.95 (with shipping) that she needs to charge to keep the spectre of starvation from the door comes to more than US$13; toss in the very cool calendar also up for pre-order, and you’re looking at a cool US$40. Yeah, imported items always cost more and the shipping rates are very fair compared to actual trans-Atlantic costs, but at some point it’s going to cut seriously into Greenfield’s business. And unlike the assumptions made in macroeconomic theory, I can’t just find an equivalent domestic supplier of the goods, since there’s only one Liz Greenberg Greenfield [dammit, I apparently had a bowl of Stupid Flakes for breakfast this morning; we at Fleen apologize to Ms Cusack].

Taking a slightly different tack is John Allison, who’s placed his merch business Stateside, leading to the ironic situation that I can buy one of his shirts postpaid for £11 (US$23; pretty fair for an American Apparel shirt with a quality print job) while a fellow Brit would pay £14 (US$29.50). Good for me, and Allison gets more sales out of it than if he shipped from Blighty, but it may not actually help in all cases:

There’s also a strong possibility that in the future I may have to switch to doing the comic in black and white — purely in service of the print editions. Colour printing is getting more and more expensive and the weak dollar means that while some of the sting is taken out of it for me, I’m selling fewer books (and all other items) to the USA, where the greatest percentage of my readers are. I don’t like the idea of this move very much and if I can avoid it, I will. I certainly don’t want to punish my many loyal readers, who like me, enjoy all colours.

Disaster! Particularly when Allison’s decision to draw at a larger size means we’re now getting lips in full detail on our sassy heroines. So this one goes out to any creator with a merch line and an international readership — what kind of shift in purchasing patterns have you seen, and any ideas how to combat it? Barring the ability to do merch-on-demand locally in all major locales of the world, I’m stumped.

Things noted today:

• If you are unfamiliar with Norton I, Emperor of the United States, may I suggest you browse through Neil Gaiman’s excellent Three Septembers and a January?
• Might be sold out by the time you read this — Ugly Hill merch to stave off the starvation of a child. Buy a sketch while you’re there.
• Speaking of merch, John Campbell (coinhabitant with Ryan Estrada of the Mexican [web]comics commune) is dipping his toe into those waters; this follows up a recently-wrapped three-week story and a 24 hour comic which has left him tired. Preordering his shirts so he has the money for caffeine and to keep cartooning would be a nice thing for you to do.

And we promised you naked yesterday, so please note that webcomics charity project coordinator extraordinaire Michael Rouse-Deane announces this year’s Tastefully Done calendar:

Last year Tastefully Done showed the world what it would be like if their favourite webcomic characters bared all in aid of Cancer Research. This year the tables have turned and webcomic artists have bared all in aid of Cancer Research.

With the talents of Corey Marie Parkhill at the helm with the cover and along with Whitney Robinson, Jon Scrivens, Kristofer Straub, Ryan Estrada, Fred Grisolm, James Turner, the crew from Digital Strips, Ben Stirling, Meghan Murphy, Chris Thomas and James Walker, Jared von Hindman, and Jodie Azhar baring all for a great cause.

Webcomic artists at their finest, with their clothes off, is hopefully gonna be an utterly delightful success like last year. For the price of $15 and through the www.lulu.com website, Tastefully Done warns you to bare witness to the outstanding artwork that can only be contained in one calendar, we give you Tastefully Done 2008! (emphasis mine)

I think I have to get two — one for getting autographs, and one to seal hermetically until the day that Kris Straub runs for high political office.

Hey, Ugly Hill is back. Why yes, we did mention this yesterday, but every one of you not reading Ugly Hill is taking food directly from the mouth of Paul Southworth’s infant son, you heartless jerks. Click over there now. Read the archives, too.

Speaking of guys with young sons, there’s BLC-mate Paul Taylor who has a new limited-run print up in his store. Buy it or heartless jerk, etc. And no infant sons, but check out the scene on my toy shelf now that Ananth & Hawk got the reorders in. It’s like that Zlik wants to watch Eve kick Diablo‘s ass as soon as he sets foot out of his little house.

Back to SPX — there are webcomickers with plans. Schemes, even. Shall we examine some?

• Aaron Diaz tells us that his Hob storyline in Dresden Codak will be wrapping up around year’s end, and then he’s getting to work on a Dresden Codak book. But Gary, I hear you cry, with the large layouts and detailed visuals, how will he manage to reproduce all that sweet art in a book? Two words for you my friend:

  Coffee.
  Table.

  Diaz is planning on an oversize trim, and that immediately propels this book to the top of the Pre-emptive Must-Buy List for 2008 (tied for second: Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet, Kean Soo’s Jellaby, and Scott McCloud’s ZOT! omnibus). Diaz said he hoped to have the book out in time for APE, but I see this morning that the Spurge has confirmed that APE will be shifting from its traditional April date to November. Hey Aaron I still want your book in the Spring okay thanks.

• Singular-named mckenzee is going to be very, very busy. By this time next year, look for him to have no fewer than four separate projects going:
  1. Sinister Bedfellows will continue
  2. He’s recruiting artists for Bearcats of Mandu — an exploration of the recent travails of Nepal and the Nepalese royal family, depicted as furries
  3. He’s busy absorbing the lessons of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way to produce The Adventures of Maintenance Man — in a city where all the capes live in the same apartment building, why shouldn’t the super to the supers be based on Warren Ellis?
  4. Plus a series of one-offs like the achingly beautiful C∂ulhuvi∂a, which he hopes to print into hand-made books. Depending on the cost, these could be printed on Japanese seaweed paper, with hand-sewn bindings. The Pre-emptive Must-Buy List for 2008 is about to get another addition.
• Bernie Hou has plans, oh so many plans. Awesome plans ready to bust open the whole Web 2.0 deal and kick that number to to 3.0, maybe 3.2. But as some of them are still in development, we’ll have to tell you about them later, but here’s a hint — there exists a mathematical possibility of an Alien Loves Predator book.
• He told me at the show, but I didn’t realize how close the time frame was. Jinxlets are nigh. And there’s this whole season coming up when stockings need to be stuffed.

More tomorrow, and photos maybe.

Stumptown is this weekend, and it features a metric squatload of all your very favorite webcomics people, plus Dreamcrusher Prime. Go see!

Also, consider this conundrum:

• The Evil Dead is cool.
• Guitar Hero is cool.
• Chris Hastings is cool.

But combining those three things on a t-shirt? Not “cool”.

CRACK-TACULAR is the word you’re loooking for. This one’s going to escape “webcomics” and cross over into the general population. I hope the postal workers in Easthampton, MA are ready for the rush.

Now I have to buy a shirt that I cannot in good conscience ever wear, because that spider-ridden bastard my good friend Jeff Rowland is using it to raise money for a good cause dear to my heart. Then again I suppose it’s my own fault; if I didn’t want Jeff Rowland to make fun of me, I should never have ventured onto the Internet. If you’re reading this, that same fate will befall you one day.

I know that I’m seriously going to regret saying this, but if you’ve ever remarked upon my facial hair, you are morally obligated to buy this shirt.

Dammit.

I’ve always loved the annual MoCCA art show, in large part because it’s a webcomic-friendly environment. And the parent museum of the show is getting in on the act, as next month sees the opening of Infinite Canvas: Art of Webcomics at the MoCCA galleries in SoHo; the show will run from 15 September 2007 to 15 January 2008. Here’s what Jennifer Babcock, show curator, has to say:

Basically I wanted to show the diversity that web comics allow in terms of its creators and audience. I will also be addressing how technology and the digital medium affect production, format, and marketing.

It’s a small show, but I think it will be great. It’s also going to be up in conjunction with our New York Artists Showcase, which will be displaying the works of Act-i-vate, a web comics collective.

There’s also hopefully going to be an online section of the exhibit, which will be hosted on MoCCA’s web site.

Ms Babcock also told me that she’s managed to get art from an impressive lineup of creators; as of press time, that included Penny Arcade, Mom’s Cancer, Questionable Content, PhD, Achewood, Goats, and with any luck, Scott McCloud‘s print out copy of My Obsession with Chess, which measures about 20 ft x 4 ft (aaaand cue Eric Burns).

Sounds like it’s going to be a great show; Fleen will be sure to cover it and bring you the full rundown once it opens. If you’re in New York City anytime in the five month run, check it out and let us know what you think.

Confidential to KS: Eyes open, unless they’re made of plastic.