Wow. Lots of stuff on a dreary Monday. Let’s hop to it, shall we?

• Moving beyond “GRRRRRAAAAHHH!”: the Little Dee press conference. If any of those strips feature questions I asked Baldwin, I’m gonna have to buy the damn things. Thanks for destroying my budget, The Internet’s Chris Baldwin!
• Speaking of strip-buying, classic 2001-era Wapsi Square strips are up for auction; Paul Taylor says that when that year’s gone, he’s moving on to 2002. Check out the current art up for grabs at the main Wapsi page and keep in mind: for every strip that you don’t bid on, you are personally taking food out of Taylor’s infant son’s mouth you heartless monster.
• Did I ever tell the story about how my sister interviewed for a job on the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile™? She didn’t get it, but considering one of the darker moments in Wienermobile™ history, maybe that’s for the best. I love the little guy up in the cabin, screaming in panic.
• Webcomics-related wacky event alert go! Marty Day writes to inform us of a Kaiju Tribute art show/music event on August 24th at the Ottobar in Baltimore. That leaves you just four days to finish up your giant rubber lizard costume and prepare to stomp Tokyo! Webcomics related people showcasing their work include Nick “Ghostfreehood” Borkowicz Jamie Noguchi, Onezumi, Chris Impink, and Ross Nover.
• Nothing says “August” like thoughts of organizing the coming year (that would be 2008, sparky) — luckily for you, Gabe Strine has recently announced Another Year of This Crap, the 2008 Brinkerhoff calendar. Get yours before it’s too late!
• As long as we’re speaking of rabbits, Lem would like you to know that:
  

  … recently I have been hired/conscripted to work on a story-based comic for a story (prose, not comic) compilation book called The Maker’s Mark — Remnants by Freak Ash Books.

  It has Robots. In the Wild West. And stuff.

  The comic is updating weekly, only 9 pages long; the idea, is the prologue comic runs, the book comes out and they link together. Then artists and writers would come in and add additional material on the website which links back into the book again.

• And finally: Rule 34 raises its ugly head yet again. Please be sure to unplug the power before submitting.

That Chris Baldwin interview we promised you is coming soon; in the meantime, check out his Wizard interview with Brian Warmoth. Subliminal note to cartoonists: draw me a moth, ready for war.

The Applegeeks guys had a run on their Eve figures. Guess this means I won’t be getting one just yet. Any chance of a reorder, guys?

The Machine of Death project has finalized its author lineup. As a general rule, you can’t go wrong with Alexander Danner, Shaenon Garrity, Randall Munroe, and not me. To quote David Malki ! on my submission:

After careful review of the nearly 700 entries, we’ve determined that “Smothered by Bunnies”, while funny, ultimately isn’t right for the book. We’re very grateful for your interest, and we’ll continue to keep you informed as the project progresses!

Despite this atrocious lapse of judgement, I believe that the Machine of Death collection will be worth reading, and urge all and sundry to both a) read; and b) enjoy.

Final note for today: flying to San Diego tomorrow, so if there’s a question you’ve been dying to ask your favorite webcomicky types, email it to me. That would be “gary” at a domain that suspiciously shares the name of this here blog.

Lots happened over the weekend, which I can only attribute to Canada Day. A belated happy national holiday to our friends from the north, and when they conquer the world in a bloody reign of terror and tyrrany, we hope that they will remember our friendly nature towards them and their webcomics. In the meantime, it’s a Fleen Quick Quiz™! How many Canadian webcomics can you name? We’ll spot you Canadaman.

In south of the border news:

• IRS regs meet webcartooning as Dorothy Gambrell illustrates the complete Schedule C Principal Business or Professional Activity Codes Table.
• Loremaster Lore, with some intriguing thoughts on how successful we should hope for webcomics creators to be (hint: fair-middlin’).
• Are the readers of Stuff Sucks also concerned about music? Liz Greenfield with a new piece of tunes-related merch.
• Which led to a journal comic of which I was not previously aware. Reminds me of Dirk Schweiger’s Moleskine journal in art style, with the same sort of “watch my life, learn about me” vibe you find at Planet Karen. Ladies & gentlemen: Adam Cadwell presents The Everyday.
• Meanwhile, Dave Kellet on breaking free of self-imposed artistic boundaries, Scott McCloud on the end being nearly in sight, and another creator quittin’ the day job: Danielle Corsetto may or may not have to file as category 711510 (Independent artists, writers, & performers) on Schedule C at some point in the future.

Noticed on Little Gamers this morning, a link to The LJ and an essay by Josh Lesnick on webcomics art (focusing on what Mr T identified as the most popular strips according to Alexa). This is the sort of thing that’s prone to blowing up into a poo-flinging festival, given that a) art is pretty much the definition of subjective; and b) people like what they like (even, God help us, sad eyed clowns and Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light).

It’s a subject that Lesnick is passionate about (the guy’s consciously reinvented his style in a quest to make it better), and he mostly avoids saying that particular creators are wrong in their designs, but I don’t think he’s going to change any minds and at this point, the best he can hope for is that people actually read the damn thing and try to understand his points before crapping on him. Oops, too late.

There are some thoughtful refutations of some of Lesnick’s arguments in there, but for the most part it’s breaking down as Wow, this was good or Wow, you suck, so you might want to skip the comments and just read the critique. For those falling into the latter camp, keep in mind that while it may appear to you that Lesnick’s essay was unsolicited, that doesn’t mean that the creators will find it unwelcome.

Less contentious things:

• Dave Kellettt and Kris Straub, COME ON DOWN! (scroll down for priceless pics)
• The SDCC shopping list gets larger: Wapsi Book 2
• Lost in the Minifleen shuffle: Joe Chiappetta’s Silly Daddy (maybe the great-granddaddy of journal-type comics) is turning 16.
• Nearly 300 episodes of a random-generated photo comic that I hadn’t heard of, but it reminds me (probably intentionally) of Found magazine, and that’s always a good thing.
• Matt Buchwald (full disclosure: he pays us $0.20/day for that button ad over to the right) hit 500 strips at Fodi yesterday, so congrats are due.
• And, lastly, News Free Comics. Hmmm.

Back to regular postings next week; got a couple of thinky pieces in my head that I haven’t been able to properly research. In the meantime, merch ho!

• Oh man, character/logo patches for your clothing, that’s takin’ me back. Bonus points to the first webcomicker to offer a Bedazzled jean jacket.
• Oh hell yes. Hey Dr McChris, any chance of having some on hand at MoCCA or SDCC for your adoring fans?
• Marketing 101 time: Lots of creators offer picture galleries of people wearing/using their merch: you got your rock nerds (curiously 404’ed, so here’s the Google cache), and Topatoco has a photo gallery, and Sheldon just debuted photos of people & dogs reading his books (with the added bonus of famous people).

  But you can go a bit further — Ryan North offers not a single gallery, but rather pictures of people in shirts, linked to the particular shirts in the Dinosaur Comics merchateria, and he puts up a dozen or so new photos every month of so on his front-page newsbox. Want to drive customers to your stuff? Put up pictures of sexy, sexy readers (and remember: everybody is somebody’s fetish) wearing/reading/using that stuff.

• Speaking of Topatoco (shut up, we were so!) want to win a Ouija board?
• And finally, over at The QC, Jeph Jacques is feeling old. To knock him out of this funk, I propose birthday spankings at MoCCA next weekend. Bring your friends!

Steve Troop is offering a deal: more webcomic in return for some vote-related love at the MTV Movie Awards for his Snakes On A Plane/Shatner On A Plane/puppet mashup. In other news, it’s your last chance to get a SOAP shirt from Jeff Rowland, who has declared them newly ironic.

Help Liz Greenfield win stuff for having awesome hair.

Don’t forget: xkcd is daily this week, with an actual story (but don’t worry, still plenty of math, at least today).

Karen Ellis reminds us that there’s never a bad time to say nuuuuucleeeear … WESSELS.

And finally, as it’s now been officially a month since we were threatened with a lawsuit (or, more precisely, a month since we asked exactly what was actionable in our coverage of the Dave Kelly/Todd Goldman story … that chirping of crickets you hear is all the reply we’ve gotten), we at Fleen are now forced to conclude that Goldman’s lawyer believes there never was anything defamatory in our writing.

To commemorate the occasion, we have one (1) Dear God Make Everyone Die t-shirt (size medium) up for grabs; with the AwfulMart down at the moment due to postal rate retooling, this could be your only chance to get one. Anybody that emails to the contact link up and to the right by midnight, 31 May 2007 (EST) with the word “shirt” in the subject line gets entered into the random draw.

Good: Holy crap, 3000 strips at Superosity? Words are not sufficient.

Bad: Behind the times on this one: via ¡Journalista! and Glenn Hauman, news that Kaja Foglio is ailing:

The bottom line is SHE WILL BE FINE … eventually, but could easily be in the hospital for several weeks.

We will do our best to continue posting Girl Genius, but as Kaja has to walk me through everything on the phone at this point, if she does have to go in for surgery or if the drugs convince her that she can only converse in Venusian, we may be out of luck.

This was Kaja’s idea, by the way, I was quite prepared to put up a “We are experiencing Technical Difficulties” banner, but she insisted we try to work through it, so I hope you appreciate it.

Nothing would make her happier than to receive a ‘get-well’ card or two. These can be sent to Studio Foglio. The kids and I will visit her every day.

For reference, the address for Studio Foglio is:

Studio Foglio, LLC
2400 NW 80th St. #129
Seattle, WA
98117-4449 USA

Good: Over at Graphic Smash and/or Broken Voice, David A J Berner informs us:

Want your own version of Shades to read while on the move? Well, thanks to those nice people at ROK Comics, now you can!

To make it more mobile-friendly BVC has pared the text down to a minimum to leave just the core story elements and all the action.

Visit the ROK Comics website and you’ll find the first few episodes of “Shades” in the Adventure Comics section.

But, if you want to try it for free first (and who doesn’t?!), visit the Freefall Comics area and you can test the system by downloading a FREE TRAILER for the mobile phone version of Shades.

Bad: Also from Graphic Smash, specifically today’s installment of Bang Barstal, The William G says:

Hey guys. This is a pretty important post here, and I hope you all can understand where I’m coming from after reading it.

Bang Barstal will be ending with the Red, White, Blue storyline. It’ll take us close to the end of the year (maybe longer) to get it all finished, so there’ll be plenty more for you to read.

And when I finish writing It’s About Girls for Sahsha, that’ll be the end of that series as well.

Let me explain: Comics are intensely time-consuming things. And while I enjoy making them, it’s coming at the cost of things that I’m finding more important as I grow older: Health, love, happiness. You need to have a balance in your life, a center, and spending a goodly amount of my weekend working on comics is making it too difficult for me to find them.

So, the comics have to go.

I won’t say that I’ll never draw again, or that there won’t be more of Bang’s bat-swinging adventures in the future. And hell, I’ll always be blogging. But as it’s been said: A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And if I’m going to find a centered, balanced life, I got to do it now before all of those opportunities I’ve been ignoring stop knocking at my door.

Big thanks to all of my friends here in the Modern Tales family, and big thanks to all of you for reading the comic over the last year and a half. You’re the best audience a guy could ever have, and I hope that by the end this story you’ll have had an enjoyable reading experience. Which, you know, is what every creator’s goal is when we pick up the pencil.

That kind of sucks. How about we end on …

Good: pandaxpress! was picked up for distribution by Image Comics:

Following in the footsteps of LIONS, TIGERS AND BEARS, LEAVE IT TO CHANCE and other graphic novels enjoyed by both children and adults comes Shadowline’s latest offering; PX! BOOK ONE: A GIRL AND HER PANDA.

This full color, 168-page landscape format graphic novel tells the story of Dahlia, a young girl who, with the help of her Giant Panda sidekick, sets off on an epic journey around the globe to rescue her missing father.

PX! BOOK ONE: A GIRL AND HER PANDA goes on sale August 1, 2007. ISBN:978-1-58240-820-0 Diamond Order Code #MAR078287

Big claim, invoking Leave It To Chance around me, ’cause I loved that book. But I also think that PX! is some damn fine work, and I don’t think that Trembley and Anderson are gonna leave me hanging on a cliffhanger for four freakin’ years. Pre-order this one, it’s gonna be good.

We’ve written about John Baird and his Create A Comic Project at the New Haven Free Public Library previously, so it was a pleasure to hear from Baird that he’s got new stuff on tap, and you (yes, you) can help out:

On June 2 the Create a Comic Project (CCP) will have a Comic Making Tournament (CMT). The CMT will be at the New Haven Public Library in New Haven, CT, on June 2 from 11 AM – 2 PM. A brief summary of the tournament is here.

There are several sponsors for the event (including Yale University), but volunteers to help with judging are greatly needed. Anyone in the New England area is welcome, especially webcomic artists. Any comic creator who shows up will be dubbed a celebrity judge. The chief reward for doing this will be a massive ego boost from being treated as awesome by several dozen kids.

One idea for a concluding tournament event: all the children will issue a mock challenge to the artists for a comic making showdown, á la Iron Chef. This should prove to be a very fun time!

If you’re interested in helping, please send me an email to createacomic at NOSPAM gmail dot com. Thank you!

Man, I wish I could attend that. Given the number of New England-located webcomickers, there better be at least one that shows up in a Chairman Kaga costume. I’m looking at you, Southworth.

Scott McCloud has some last-minute changes to his speaking tour; if you live anywhere near Cheyenne, Wyoming (and I realize that out thataway, the concept of “near” is somewhat fluid), you can join in on the fun on Wednesday at the Laramie County Public Library, 7pm. Also please consider that the McCloud family minivan will be ass-haulin’ from South Dakota to Wyoming to Montana, so if you see them in your rear-view, pull over to let ’em pass.

In other news, Dinosaur Comics is about to turn 1000 strips old! But this week is Guest Week, so does that count? Maybe! Today’s strip is numbered #993, which means that sometime next week the strip odometer rolls over. In any event, today’s strip (by the dudes from Dr McNinja) is pure, distilled awesome and features bacon and a secret Achewood (which is today the source of my new favorite saying) shout-out. What more could you want?

And lastly: new SGR book. Ryan dies and Tim gets run out as mayor and Esther and The Boy get it on in a caravan in Wales and there’s Devil Bears and Rachel and Tessa and crime doin’ and justice is served via giant bazongas!

Noticed some good news at !Journalista! this morning: this year’s Xeric Grants have been announced, and we’ve got some webcomics winnners. Given that the Xerics are for self-published dead-tree comics, the focus isn’t on comics that were designed for (and released on) the web, but here we have Tyler Page‘s Nothing Better Vol. 1, taken from the webcomic of the same name.

And even more interestingly, (via Heidi MacDonald), we have Kevin Colden’s Fishtown:

The press release notes that Colden “serialized his comic book online just before receiving the acceptance letter from Xeric. The feedback has been great! So, he’s decided to continue posting and decline the grant money — not an easy decision — but he’s still a Xeric winner!â€?

I’m not aware of any previous grantees turning down money, so do Colden a favor and go check out his work. And while you’re at it, check out Nothing Better and buy Page’s book, ’cause it’s good stuff.

And as long as we’re talking about good news and good stuff, we at Fleen would be remiss if we didn’t mention Paul Southworth’s good news:

My wife is 20 weeks pregnant as of today (halfway there, about 5 months), and everything is going well. So every purchase you make from me will go to a good cause; the feeding and clothing of a new little person this coming September. I’ll keep you posted!

Check out the sonogram of the little critter; I like this child, my sibling in moustachery, already. As Southworth noted, having replicants ’round the house is expensive, so please note that you still have until Friday to purchase his Medieval Friday, at which point it will be gone forever.

Fear not, there is a secret new design that will go on sale to replace it, and Fleen contracted stalker paparazzi to obtain an exclusive photo. The new shirt design was allegedly seen partying in an LA club with an unnamed starlet, and rumor has it that not all parties were wearing under-wears. Click here for the exclusive first look. Or, if you don’t like shirts, just buy some of his originals, unless you’re an evil bastard who hates babies that have enough food and clothing and shelter. Jerk.

News!

• Updating the status of Little Dee, Chris Baldwin informed us yesterday:
  

  Not much to update really. Little Dee will remain at comics.com until at least June 4th. Everything else remains the same. :)

  Upside: Little Dee remains on comics.com and gets eyeballs from that channel. Downside: The status of the strip vis-a-vis permanent syndication remains up in the air. Hopefully, UM will give Baldwin a definitive answer soon (and more hopefully, it will involve large sums of money spent to promote the strip, resulting in it being placed in 2000 papers by the end of the year and earning Baldwin some well deserved huge canvas sacks of cash money, complete with little dollar signs on the outside).

• Randall Munroe has a gift for visualizations; following up the rather topological-formalist map of the internet, today he adds a rather Middle Earthy map of online communities (at this scale, Fleen is approximately 0.000327 pixels on your screen). Want to read all the small labels? Pre-order here.
• Anne Gibson would very much like you to know that Online Comics Day is May 5th (that would be Saturday), which is the same day as Free Comics Book Day:
  

  The site has a rich tradition, and we invite you to participate on our new site in our new format.

  Past incarnations have essentially been a hub where comic creators all created Online Comics Day comics that linked to the hub, and the hub in turn linked back to randomly-cut lists of the sites. The main goal of having a comic hub site was simply to say, “Hey, look! People are writing comics! And they’re posting them on the internet!”

  Having listened to much of the feedback from last year’s event, we decided to try something *very* different this year. We decided to make the site this year about more than just a hub site. That functionality’s still there, but we also created some stubs — stories that invite you, the comic reader/writer/author/artist/fan, to tell us about how you currently support online comics, and about upcoming events where you will be spreading the word to readers and non-readers alike.

  Please come join us in celebrating online comics on May 5th. Registration is now open and we’re looking forward to seeing you.

Mailbag!

• One of the better pieces of shameless self-promotion we’ve received lately:
  

  Dear Sir, Madame, Potential Customer, Potential Advertiser, Web-Comics Professional, Close-Personal-Friend:

  You have been carefully and meticulously selected to receive a sneak peek at The Boids, a hilarious and well-drawn web comic by Larry Merrill (him of Toyzville and Dog Each Day) and Steve Campbell (me of Turn Signals on a Land Raider and Every Nine Minutes) that is set to launch on 7 May, 2007.

  We have contacted you because we have met, IM’d, e-mailed, or otherwise contacted you at some time in the past and we feel like we have a deep, personal connection to whoever you are. Or, if you are in a position of some note within the web comics community, and people who read web comics might be listening to you, and we thought you might want to have a look so that you can tell the masses of your readers to also read The Boids. We will, in turn, be linking to whatever project you have going, and driving huge waves of web traffic to your site from The Boids.

  Link exchanges don’t normally entice me to action, but the Larry & Steve Show sent me a sampler of their new strip, and I gotta say, I liked it. Good joke pacing.

• Aaron Johnson writes about his webcomic, What The Duck, getting some attention in the regular (albeit special-interest) media:
  

  Jack Howard, of Popular Photography Magazine, has written one of the more comprehensive articles about What the Duck to date. Check it out on the PopPhoto.com site.

• Darren Gendron wonders:
  

  How do you launch a new webcomic? Well, the first thing you need to do is get some nice tunes.

  The Expert’s Guide on How to Kill Things That Go Bump in the Night got together with the Season of Nightmares, a Seattle-based Rockabilly band, to make their album, Monster Mash into the Fifth Dimension the official soundtrack.

  Here’s the result of these two monster-loving creations.

• Want tools? Check out this press release:
  

  Harknell, the webmaster of the Onezumi.com webcomic site, has just launched his new website, AWSOM.org, which is devoted to making it easier for Artists and Webcomic creators to get their art online.

  The focus is on news, tutorials, and custom WordPress plugins that make it simpler for non-technical people to set up and maintain their own website. The emphasis is placed on the needs of Artists, but anyone who wants to get a website up and running can benefit from the information presented.

  If you have been having problems getting a website set up, or you know anyone who is, please send them over so they can start on their journey to becoming Internet Famous.

Internet Famous. I like that. See you all tomorrow.