If I may beg your indulgence, I’d like to do something rare and respond to a comment¹, in large part because it expresses something I’ve seen elsewhere in the past couple of days. To reduce the argument to its most basic form:

Strip Search’s first episode was boring, nothing happened.

Which I think is an unfair critique. True, over sixteen minutes there were no screaming matches, no competition, no disqualifications, and no overt drama. This is exactly what needed to happen, as we’re still in the scene-setting stage of the show. Yes, but reality shows have a well-established set of tropes that we’re all familiar with, so we can jump right into the meat in the first three minutes, right?

Well, not really. The shows that jump straight into competition are ones that have tens, dozens of seasons behind them, with a built-in audience that knows how things are going to go. But look back at those shows when were they new and trying to find that audience — you have to get people to care about the contestants before they can care about the competition, and that’s what Strip Search episode #1 did.

“But Strip Search has a built-in audience already” is the usual counterargument, but it doesn’t, not really. Robert Khoo, among other things, is an inveterate collector of data — he can tell you to two decimal places anything of significance about the statistically typical Penny Arcade reader. And one of the things that he’s alluded to over the years (and it’s borne out by how he’s led the company) is that Penny Arcade, despite outward appearances, isn’t really part of the webcomics sector of the entertainment industry. It’s part of videogames sector.

Khoo could tell you exactly what percentage of PA readers read webcomics widely, but I’m willing to be that the numbers are skewed towards those that read two or three other webcomics and only read Penny Arcade². Heck, I’m all about webcomics and I only knew three of the twelve Artists introduced in episode 1, which would give me little reason to care about 75% of the competition had the others not been introduced properly. Khoo’s also been open about hoping that people who don’t follow webcomics at all³ will hopefully find the competition intriguing.

“But why didn’t anything else happen?” is the other criticism I’m seeing. The answer to this one is even simpler: time. Having run many, many episodes of streaming video, one of the things that Khoo has hard numbers on is how long people will watch TV over the internet and those numbers are clear: fifteen minutes is pushing the outer limits of acceptable to their audience. Khoo’s been consistent in describing Strip Search as aiming for a 10-15 minute running time, which limits how much of a story you can tell without running out of time. Look at it this way: depending on whether the episodes run closer to 10 minutes or 15, that’s three or four episodes equaling the runtime of a broadcast show (once you take out commercials, you’ve got 44 – 46 minutes of content per hour).

We’re just now at the first commercial break; this is the exact time that the introductions should be wrapping up and setting up a sense of anticipation for what comes next⁴. We’re most likely going to see the show run a total of nine or so hours, broken up into approximately 36 episodes each in the vicinity of a quarter-hour. Eleven eliminations will take place across eleven competitions. Three episodes per elimination (setup — competition — judging/elimination/heartfelt goodbyes) gives us 33 epsiodes, with three left over for especially complex or story-rich bits to scatter throughout the season.

Not everything will happen in every episode, nor can it unless Khoo decides to broadcast in 45 minute chunks instead of 15 minute chunks. You aren’t watching episodes of a competition show as you’ve grown accustomed to watching them, you’ve watching segments between commercial breaks. On the one hand, that means there’s fewer commercial breaks per hour than you’d get on broadcast; on the other hand, the breaks are several days long. I’d advise viewers eager for big chunks of action to watch three or four episodes at a time and avoid the Spoilers section of the Strip Search site.

The show may ultimately turn out to be uninteresting, or the personalities of the Artists lacking⁵, or the mechanics of the challenges uncompelling (although given Khoo’s penchant for planning for every possible contingency, I’d bet against it). However, it is way too damn early to declare that Strip Search is not good. Oh, and to answer a specific point in the comment that prompted much more than I’d originally intended to write, if Erika Moen wins, that’s when you’ll see a blog-gasm.

• If there’s any justice in the world, today’s blogging by Bad Machinery creator John Allison⁶ on the state of webcomics and the stressors that may construct post-webcomics will provoke many fertile discussions. I am particularly struck the the strain of human behavior that Allison identifies that seeks to enjoy the attention that comes from sharing creations with the world, but in the manner that is least likely to actually reflect back on the creator. Read it.
• Well played, Rich Burlew, well played. Not only have you come roaring back with eight updates of Order of the Stick in the less than two weeks since we noted your big plot twist, you’ve managed to turn said twist around 180 degrees and make a big surprise into a BIGGER SUPRISINGER⁷ [uh, spoilers]. It’s true, I got ahead of myself in my earlier reading, not waiting for the eyes to turn to little Xs, but you’ve covered that base today. Oh, and the pale skintone that crept in during the strip? Bravo.

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¹ Regular readers of this page will recall my oft-stated dictum to Never read the comments, but obviously I have to keep up on the conversation on my own site. Regular readers may also recall that it’s extremely unusual for me to respond to comments, so take this for what it is — a fleeting occurrence, like sighting an endangered bird in graceful, full-song flight, and treasure it. Or at least check off the box on your Internet Opinionmonger Bingo card.

² I’ve long since come to peace with the idea that I am not Penny Arcade’s target audience, and that they will rarely produce content that’s designed to appeal to me. I’ve never played an MMORPG. I haven’t owned a game console since I was a child and we had an original Atari deck. I buy maybe one game a year, and still haven’t gotten around to Portal 2.

³ There’s a reason that Khoo’s got people involved in Strip Search talking to The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal instead of just hack webcomics pseudojournalists, and you can bet at least part of the show’s structure is designed for the people that those stories will bring in.

⁴ The alternative — jumping straight to eliminating people without getting to know them — is certainly possible, but would require a different show. Think about it for a moment: to jump directly into competition without getting to know the contestants, you’ve got no emotional involvement. Why bother getting to know contestant #7 if he’s going to be gone in the first 15 minutes, just give him the loser’s edit and bring on the screaming could work, except for the part where Khoo’s stated clearly that he didn’t staff the show with damaged people that could only bring drama, and the part where he states his clear desire to want to do right by the Artists.

⁵ Although I cannot imagine any circumstances so dire that I won’t stick around long enough to see the context in which Hurricane Erika decided to talk about butt virginity.

⁶ And goodness, are we really just weeks away from the release of Allison’s first proper Bad Machinery collection? I say “proper” because while you can have my copy of A Feral Flag Will Fly when you pry it from my cold, dead hands, I do long for a gloriously colorful presentation of The Case of the Team Spirit.

Also, I should note that March and April are going to be webcomicsarrific at Oni Press, as we will also see the next Penny Arcade collection and two (two!) collections of Double Fine Action Comics.

⁷ Shut up, it is too a word.

Weird how that worked out.

• Obviously, the big news is the premiere of Strip Search, with episode 1 gathering the dozen Artists and ending weeks of pure agony on my part. Take away the intro with Mike and Jerry that takes up 45 seconds or so at the beginning, start with the theme music and smiling Nick on a gorgeous lakeside setting — that was start of the footage that Robert Khoo showed me last month, which he cut just as the scene switched to the hotel about two minutes later. He is a cruel, cruel man.

  From my recollection, very little has changed from the rough cut — a more subdued narration is the thing that I really noticed — which makes me think that the production was more polished a month ago than I figured it would be. Naturally, questions abound in my brain at this time and spoilers ahoy if you haven’t seen it yet:

  • Were the Artists permitted to speak during the drive from hotel to house?
  • What kind of looping, circuitous route was taken to help lend a sense of distance from the real world?
  • How much of the booze on the counter was consumed by the end of the first day?
  • What does that yellow note by the front door say?
  • Can the producers confirm or deny that there were, in fact, traps in the house?¹

  There will be a no-doubt thriving discussion of the show over at the Strip Search site, and I’ll do my best to overdose you here. In the interests of full disclosure with respect to my future writings about Strip Search, I consider Erika Moen a personal friend and I am totally rooting for her, but I’m also convinced that it’s anybody’s competition to win.

• Let’s stay in the Penny Arcade milieu for a moment, as I point you towards a video from NPR’s Science Friday featuring the PA Rapper Laureate MC Frontalot. In fact, you can hear Mr Alot in the first hour of today’s broadcast of Science Friday (check for your local NPR affiliate and tune in 2:00-4:00pm EST), or via the SciFri website at your convenience after the feed has gone out.
• Hey, know where Penny Arcade is headquartered? Seattle. Know what else is happening in Seattle? EmCity kicks off in about four hours, but also David Malki ! waited until he got there before recording the latest Machine of Death card game Kickstarter video update. But there is a SCANDAL regarding this campaign that I must reveal.

  Note the background in the video, and the fact that Malki ! has apparently injured a finger on his right had which he has covered with with an adhesive bandage. Note the state of beard grooming and the shirt he’s wearing as well:
  

  Now in that video he finally tells us about the mysterious Kickstarter stretch goal known as FATE BLITZ, which turns out to be a series of videos that were recorded with Kris Straub prior to the Kickstarter launching in anticipation of various outcomes — raising $100, raising $200, sneaking through to meet the goal with less than a day left, etc. You can watch the first Fate Blitz video here, which was recorded in Los Angeles last Fall.

  But! Note the background, the injured finger, the shirt, and the state of beard grooming!
  
  They are identical to the Seattle video. There is, sadly, only one conclusion to this remarkable visual match between videos made yesterday in Seattle and months ago in LA, and that is David Malki ! is lying to you. The “Seattle” video was clearly recorded months ago and the entire Kickstarter campaign since has been an elaborate Potemkin village constructed for show. In fact, no stretch goals have been met, no prototypes have been produced, and David Malki ! is not in Seattle but rather absconding towards the Mexican border with Kris Straub and all their ill-gotten Kickstarter gains in bags stuffed full of money. The “David Malki !” or “Kris Straub” that you may encounter this weekend at the EmCity show are imposters, duplicates to throw you off the scent; should you meet them at the show, be sure to tell them you’re onto their little game and they won’t get away with it².

• After all that deception and chicanery, you’ll no doubt want to cleanse your mental palette. Allow me to point you towards an extended Achewood test clip, featuring Chris Onstad in the role of Roast Beef. The comments³ seem to consistently contain complaints that the characters don’t sound right, with the general exception that Onstad’s voicing of Beef is pretty okay.

  Of course the voices don’t sound like they do in your head; they don’t sound like they do in my head either, but since Onstad was involved in the production, it’s pretty clear that they sound like the voices as he imagined them, and that’s pretty much as close to definitively correct as you can get. I can’t wait until we get a clip with Todd voiced and people complain that he doesn’t sound like they think a tweaking, multiply-dead squirrel should sound.

  Actually, no, I can completely wait for that. What I can’t wait for is to see Achewood get picked up in an Adult Swim-like presentation, 11 minute episodes, with the season climax being a hour-long spectacular adaptation of The Great Outdoor Fight. I will commit to buying that sumbitch at whatever inflated price Onstad wants, right now. In the meantime, I am obsessively running a non-stop loop of Ray exlaiming, Kiss my ass, bitch! I’ll be at Duane’s! with an occasional interruption of You wanna go on a little mini-vacation to Paradise? Come look in my toilet, dude. just for variety.

• Finally, not quite video, but close enough: check out the latest Octopus Pie if you haven’t already. Either Hanna’s upping the octane in her snacks or something weird is going on; at this point, I wouldn’t rule out either possibility.

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¹ My theory is that at some point near the end of production, Mike and Jerry will tell the Artists that The Trap was their feelings for each other. Group hug, awwww.

² Please don’t actually do that.

³ Never read the comments, especially not at YouTube.

I ain’t Elisabeth Kübler-Ross but I do know something about the stages of grief, such as when Achewood (the once-unstoppable behemoth of absurdist-realist philosophizing) sputters to a near-halt¹. As noted previously, Chris Onstad is not my bitch and however he may find joy in producing aspects of Achewood that I may then consume, it’s all good. I get to share that particular creation that he lets loose on the world whether it’s once a day or twice a year, and however much I may miss it, I cannot complain too much about not getting free entertainment on a my desired schedule rather than that which Onstad can accommodate given the shape of his life.

So it is with a mixture of excitement and don’t-get-too-excited-yet that I noted his first Achewood-related bloggance in more than a year:

Hi. I’m back. I have some good news for you. It’s been a long time coming. A lot has changed since I fell off the face of the earth.

First and foremost: I’ve been working with a team of artists, engineers, and producers to bring Achewood to life. To give it the voices, richness, and opportunities it never had as a comic strip.

I’m flying to Los Angeles today to begin a week of network pitch meetings. If things go well, we’ll find a home for our show. Please cross your fingers for us, send us your good energy. And please, share this clip with your world. I’m very proud of what we’ve done.

There are many other things I want to share with you. About Achewood, about this, about all the loose ends, and about my plans for it going forward. This is the tip and the bulk of the iceberg, but there is much more. It’s been a very busy couple years, full of life-size tragedies, manifold germinations of happiness, and surprising rebirths—just like Achewood.

The pitch meetings mentioned are to explore the possibility of an Achewood-related animated series? special? film? project of some sort, the teaser of which makes me smile. Because I’m totally in the tank for Achewood, I’ve been parsing through those 19 seconds of sound and motion² for any clues they might offer³. Because I’m a realist, I know that even properties with a constituency within an entertainment company can be optioned, paid for, and spend years or decades in development without ever coming to fruition. At this time, possibilities exist — which is more than was true last week.

• Poorcraft 2, on the topic of traveling on the cheap, is well in production and on Saturday Poorcraft bookrunner Spike dropped some news on it. While P2 will see Diana Nock returning for art duties, Spike herself will be stepping back from writing duties as Ryan Estrada — webcomics own Marco Polo — handles the script. Or handled, as the book is well into the gettin’ drawed stage, meaning that Estrada’s work is largely done. Can’t wait to see how Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here turns out.
• Updating our EmCity seating information, news comes this morning that a fairly substantial chunk of Artists Alley island F will be given over to Benign Kingdom. The official exhibitor’s list mentions B9 occupying seat F-16, which is also listed as the home of Johnny Wander. However, word is that B9 will actually occupy seats F12-F16, of which three seats are listed as occupied, and two not listed, which tells me that Grand Vizier George is probably planning to have people rotate into the space seats throughout the show, as well as giving the usual occupants a little more breathing room than is normally found in Artists Alley.
• Given that various Strip Search parties have said that the show will be launching this month, and that the Strip Search site lists the show as running Tuesdays and Fridays, and there’s only one of those weekdays left in the month, Im’a keep a browser window refreshing tomorrow. If nothing else, I’ve been very impressed with the Artist interviews that have run, and how well the Strip Search producers (possibly Khoo) are at stirring up shit in such a blatant fashion. If there’s a reunion show, we may see murder yet.

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¹ To wit: five strips in all of 2011, twelve in the first six months of 2012, and zero since.

² As opposed to Sound and Motion.

³ Such as the 0:11 mark, where it appears that Teodor has been retired in favor of Roast Beef as Ray tests his Whiskey á la Mood sampler. It also appears that Ray is the centerpiece of this teaser, which makes me wonder if he still sounds the same as when Onstad voiced him.

I realize that I’ve been looking at Kickstarter wrongly with respect to a fairly fundamental question: When does it reach steady state? When does it happen that the high-profile projects slow down, hit a nice, predictable rate, and my budget for supporting such things stops getting busted? Answer: It doesn’t.

Case in point: the promised Kickstarter campaign for the the Machine of Death game hit yesterday afternoon, achieved its US$23,000 goal in about twelve hours, and is plugging away for another month. The sheer creativity that this game will demand of its players¹ (not to mention the track records of the principals) virtually guarantees the that stretch goals (and there will be many, many stretch goals) are likewise sticky and attractive. I’m guessing somewhere between US$150-200K by the time it’s all done.

And yet, the most intriguing part has little to do with the game itself. About two thirds of the way down the project page is a paragraph that I can only call a soft launch announcement for what could be the most exciting Kickstarter-related thing of 2013:

I’ll also be working with TopatoCo’s new subsidiary, Make That Thing, which is a dedicated fulfillment agency specifically for campaigns like this. TopatoCo has a warehouse full of people who do nothing but receive pallets and ship packages all day long for over fifty of the internet’s top artists (including me, Kris, and Ryan). So they and I will be working together to ensure that all the products and rewards from this campaign will be produced and shipped to you as quickly and efficiently as possible. [emphasis original]

One of the perennial complaints about Kickstarter campaigns (and by no means is this limited to the [web]comics sphere) is the sometimes very long time it takes to fulfill pledge rewards, even once the project in question has been actually produced. A very successful project can overwhelm a creator with shipping and fulfillment for literally months, and now TopatoCo are stepping into that niche.

Nothing is known outside the walls of either current or future TopatoCo World Headquarters about Make That Thing, so I’ll be sitting down next weekend with TopatoCo VP of Asskicking Holly Rowland to ask her about it. TopatoCo has been extraordinarily careful about picking clients and not growing their business past the point that they can handle the work, but if Make That Thing is truly a subsidiary, with its own systems, procedures, and staff, and if they decide to make their services available to Kickstarter projects outside of the TopatoCo stable? Game changer. Now we know why they needed that whole damn building for themselves² — they’re on their way to become the Amazon of one-off projects.

And that was going to be all I wrote until the four jolly lads at Cyanide and Happiness took the only logical step after turning down TV money for a C&H show last month — they launched their Kickstarter about ten hours ago and are already past 25% of their base goal of US$250,000. I’m very curious how much money will be necessary to achieve their top stretch goal (it’s presently masked), which is:

The C&H guys will 4-way joust to the death

Presumably, the last survivor will get to keep the money. No bets on this one, I can think up completely plausible reasons why each of the four would be the winner of that particular deathmatch. I hope they stream it.

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¹ Machine of Death: The Game of Creative Assasination is going to reward those who are quick with their wits and able to jump from idea to idea with ease. The description of the project is going to act as a filter for those who will not be temperamentally inclined to excel at or enjoy this game, as it is full of dancing language, leaping from place to place in a dizzying fashion. In other words, I have to plunk down money on this sumbitch.

² And if they do become a fulfillment house for major Kickstarter projects, they’ll need to start looking for another, larger building pretty damn soon. Maybe just head back to Eastworks and take over the whole thing?

Oh my goodness, so many things today.

• The final word on the place of webcomics in the larger comics world was offered by TopatoCo VP of Asskicking Holly Rowland:
  

  TopatoCo is between Oni and Dark Horse at ECCC. If there’s anyone still talking about the legitimacy of webcomics, I will pants them.

  Please, somebody, call her bluff. I’m begging you. Everybody else, have video cameras ready.

• Today marks ten years of Emily Horne and Joey Comeau making A Softer World; ten years and 931 instances of breathtakingly beautiful photos and profoundly arresting captions. In all of webcomickry, I can’t think of another example that simultaneously pulls in two so very different directions and expresses two so very different voices so very, very well.
• Once upon a time there was a simple acknowledgment of fact: any collection of webcomickers, impromptu or organized, was incomplete without at least one Ryan in the immediate vicinity. While Ryans Estrada and North have been publicly very busy of late¹, Ryan Sias of Silent Kimbly fame pulled back a bit, did some children’s books and storyboarding, and wasn’t so much with the webcomicking.

  Until today, that is, when Sias announced the return of the no longer silent Kimbly with new weekly adventures. One quick note: you get to The Kimbly Chronicles by using the address http://www.kimblychronicales.com/, with an extra “a” in the middle there. Just bookmark it and you’ll be fine.

• The countdown to Strip Search kicked into a quicker tempo yesterday with the launch of StripSearch.tv. Obviously no episodes yet, but you can meet the Artists, learn about the show, and puzzle your way through some rather odd numbers associated with the production. I don’t know what the whole pineapples thing is about², but I’m intensely curious. Hit the RSS feed and you won’t miss any Tuesday/Friday episodes when they start later this month.

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¹ Respectively involved in global trekking, single-person animation, and Korean comic translating (Estrada), and totally math comic book writing, Kickstarter record breaking choose your own Shakespeare adventure creating, and beloved movie novelization close reading (North).

² My own fault, I suppose. When Robert Khoo asked if I had any more questions, I specifically did not ask if any edible bromeliads featured prominently in the show. Mea culpa.

Strip Search appears to be on the verge of going live, having graduated from a parking page to a test pattern. I’m not a betting man¹, but I’d wager that we’ll see the site live in the next day or two. Then it’s just a matter of how long Robert Khoo feels like teasing us before the first episodes start streaming.

• Webcomic? Check. Crossovers? Check. Print collection? Check. Original print series? Check. Card game? Check. TV show? Check. What’s left of Malachai and Ethan Nicolle to conquer? Judging from the photos tweeted by MTV² Geek, the answer would be toys. Weirdly, searching for “Axe Cop” at the website of Mezco Toys brings up a couple of Thundercats figures, so I guess they’re really early in the preview cycle for now. There’s a reference to Axe Cop in Mezco’s exhibitor profile for next week’s New York Toy Fair so I’d say wait for the summer’s big shows to see these generally available.
• To paraphrase James³ and Marque, Being broke sucks, and now Jerzy Drozd is the latest creative type to try to make it suck less. Tomorrow will see the Comics Are Great! show will do an on-air Google+ hangout, with special guests Laurianne Uy and Poorcraft scribe C Spike Trotman on the topic of smart frugality. If you can’t make the Hangout, tomorrow at 12:30pm EST (GMT-5), it’ll be up at the Comics Are Great! YouTube channel sooner rather than later. It’s a live event, so warm up your questions on how to make do with less for fun and profit.
• Surprisingly, nobody is in the running for a free copy of Johnny Wander volume 3, as per the contest announced last Friday. It’s not even in the store yet, people! You can only get this is you were in the Kickstarter! Free book, people!

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¹ It’s that whole “pretty good at math” thing.

² Who’re still on my list for the shameful way they treated Rick Marshall Willenholly, so you best watch yourself, Viacom!

³ History’s greatest villain.

Never doubt this: Robert Khoo knows how to build anticipation; with approximately three minutes of rough cut of Strip Search episode #1, I had a feel for the show, and the all-important contestants (or “The Artists”, as Strip Search dubs them) meeting each other scene (bright and early at 7:00am on a recent December morning in Seattle) about to start, Khoo stopped the playback of the video.

That’s all I can show you he said, his tone expressing deep regret while his facial expression showed that if he’d gotten my attention, he wasn’t really regretful at all¹.

Khoo invited me to meet with him and Penny Arcade designer (and Strip Search producer²) Erika Sadsad over the weekend to talk about the show; the screening was a surprise to me, and despite the fact that it was incomplete (graphics were all placeholders, the voiceover is still to be finalized), I was struck by how slick it looked. I’ve seen first episodes of reality programs that broadcast on actual TV channels that didn’t look as polished as the start of Strip Search did. So how much can you learn in three minutes?

• The twelve contestants got their smiling pose intros, singly and later in a group (with giant cutout standups of their self-drawn avatars)
• The house they were put up in is frikkin’ gorgeous
• At least one challenge might relate to being a webcomicker only tangentially, as there was about a half-second of footage at a go-cart track³
• As previously noted, there are tropes that show up in reality show after reality show because they work; watching Mike Krahulik solemnly intone, Yours is not the strip we’re searching for made it official: this is a real show, not playing at a show.

Quick aside: Sadsad noted that there had been some support for the much less serious Abandon strip! as the elimination catchphrase, but it was rejected as being too flip. Seeing what The Artists put on the line (both giving of their time and revealing themselves without knowing how they would be ultimately portrayed), it was decided that the production would have to treat them more respectfully than that. Khoo echoed this, noting especially how Krahulik hit a particular point where his respect for The Artists became a major influence on his participation. The dynamic between The Artists and The Creators (that would be Krahulik and Jerry Holkins) shifted from showrunners/showrunnees to something more peer-oriented; as Sadsad put it, That was when Strip Search went from playing house to being a house.

The nature of how people will be portrayed was a major theme of our conversation; as Khoo put it, The Artists have become very publicly friendly and respectful towards each other, but he noted that they haven’t seen the footage that’s being cut down for the episodes. Khoo stressed again the desire to not try to stretch The Artists into roles or create perceptions that weren’t true (and plenty of reality competitions have clearly tried to do exactly that; with creative editing, anybody can be made to look like a sociopath), that there wasn’t a team of writers trying to pigeonhole anybody into the tried-and-true roles of The Bitch, The Arrogant Dick, or The Antisocial Spoiler.

That’s an important distinction, given that “reality TV” has a reputation for constructing personal interactions and storylines out of whole cloth. Granted, some of these stories may be fictional (but boy do they have the ring of truth), but it’s absolutely true that the Writers Guild of America considers most reality TV work to count as constructing a story. Khoo stressed that the approach taken by Strip Search was at the documentary end of the spectrum that ran from Tell what happened to Get a bunch of footage and make shit up⁴. Nobody tried to adopt a villain role, so there wasn’t a push to create one in the production. Khoo also stated that while there will be no way to tell the entire story of what happened in the mansion, there was a natural narrative that emerged during filming.

Let’s expand on that thought a moment — there will be no way to tell the entire story because Sadsad reported there being a total of 62 days worth of footage, which will need to be cut down into approximately 36 episodes of about 15 minutes each. Nine hours total (which is actually on the order of what a season of a reality show would run) out of nearly 1500 means that all of the DVD extras in the world won’t capture the entirety of what happened. Still, Khoo opined that the entire process was Easier than PAX since once PAX starts, it has to stay in motion; Strip Search’s longer production timeframe allowed for changes to be made to make things adapt.

Asked about what kind of changes they would make to a (as yet, theoretical) second season, Khoo and Sadsad mentioned putting the various challenges closer to the mansion and building in break days in the production, as the filming was one continuous block. That was actually a telling detail because they hadn’t been willing to say how long production took in December; but combined with an earlier statement that challenges each resulted in one elimination, that there were no “no-elimination” challenges, that gives a lower duration of about two weeks production, assuming one challenge per day. A careful investigator might look at the twitter- and blogfeeds of the twelve Artists for the month of December, looking for when they stopped posting and taking that as corroboration⁵.

Other information of note:

• Consistent with his last interview with Fleen, Khoo would not say that there is or is not a winner picked for Strip Search at this time. He did ask that everybody keep in mind that given the winner will have a year in residence at Penny Arcade, so production of Strip Search could be considered to go for quite some time under any definition.
• “The Puck Situation” was avoided in the sense that Nobody put their hand in the peanut butter. Khoo spent months of due diligence, digging up entire electronic lives on The Artists⁶, but that it wasn’t really possible to know who they were until they’d arrived and were interacting in person.
• The challenges were designed to produce a winner with the ability to make a successful career of webcomics (and it was repeatedly stated that any of the twelve could have plausibly won the competition; there were no sacrificial Artists), but asked if the process had also been successful in choosing somebody that the Penny Arcade family could get along with for a year, Khoo stressed the responsibility that PA had towards the winner. We will do them right. People put their necks out there and trusted us; we didn’t tell them shit. They didn’t know what the show would be like or how we would make them look. For taking that risk, Khoo is determined that the reward is as good as he can make it.
• Strip Search will have a dedicated site, in large part constructed to eliminate what Sadsad finds annoying in the sites of other reality shows. There will be polls, bios, extra material (like the art created in each episode and a showcase for the Artists), but it will also be possible to visit without getting spoiled on the front page as to who won or lost a challenge. The material will be presented by episode, will a separate section for those who have seen it. The launch should be in the next week or so, at StripSearch.tv (it’s currently showing a placeholder).
• Strip Search will run twice a week, approximately 18 weeks, which I speculated means a three episodes per challenge structure: one to set up the challenge, one to show the work, one for judging and elimination. Add in some interview cutaways and reactions, that gives an even dozen challenges in 36 eps, neatly mirroring the Artist count. As expected, Khoo refused to confirm or deny this speculation, so I guess we’ll all have to watch to find out for sure.

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¹ This is somewhat of a recurring theme when talking to Khoo; if you ever have the opportunity to interview him and you ask a question that is slightly leading and he replies … Sure. Why don’t we say ‘yes’?, please note that he has not actually answered in the affirmative. He is asking for reasons to not confirm whatever you are asking, and he is enjoying that bit of obfuscation immensely.

² Asked what “producer” meant, Sadsad noted that she had been logging events in the house, helping with the logistics of filming, and Put about 2000 miles on my truck ferrying The Artists to and fro. It was a series of 16 – 20 hour days for however long the production was going on in Seattle, a time frame that neither she nor Khoo would divulge.

I should also note that self-described Principal Beep Boop Engineer at Penny Arcade Kenneth Kuan was also present for what must have been a mind-numbingly boring hour and a half, as he hadn’t worked on Strip Search and professed a strong dislike for reality programming in general. Thanks for putting up with me, Kenneth.

³ Khoo also made a throwaway reference to pitching The Artists off a bungee tower, but I don’t think he was being serious.

⁴ Kuan had expressed that a considerable amount of his antipathy towards reality shows stemmed from a feeling that the shows
he had seen in the past forced an identity onto people rather than portraying them as they actually are.

⁵ The data-mining is left as an exercise for the reader, but should you start digging, consider this: Khoo was willing to discuss one item that he had previously decline to answer directly, namely that eliminated Artists were kept in town until production was done. The second house was dubbed The Afterlife, and when it was suggested that this residence was stocked with booze and hookers of various genders, Khoo found the notion amusing but did not directly deny it.

⁶ One should note that two of them — Lexxy Douglass and Erika Moen — have had prior professional interactions with Penny Arcade.

Happy Friday afternoon, everybody. Here’s what’s giving me hope today.

• Indpendent Creator Meets Corporation 1: Jonathan Coulton noticed that the makers of Glee decided to appropriate his arrangement (including a unique melody and lyric swaps) — and possibly the audio itself — of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Baby Got Back. Coulton, being a classy guy, got a license to release his cover, but the Glee producers haven’t contacted him or sought permission.

  A few hours later, the hive mind that is the internet had confirmed that this was indeed produced by the Glee people (as evidenced by an official release in advance of the broadcast through at least the Swedish version of iTunes), and it appears that Glee/FOX are presently depublishing while saying nothing. At this point, I suppose thing to do is wait to see if the song actually shows up when the series next airs, but I find it encouraging that a major entertainment property would have to backpedal so quickly. Not as encouraging as if they didn’t pull this shit in the first place, but baby steps.

• Indpendent Creator Meets Corporation 2: And when those corporations are good enough to not pull that shit in the first place, to actually come to creators and treat them to offers, I find it encouraging when creators don’t sell themselves short. Case in point: the slightly bizarre (but terribly nice) lads behind Cyanide & Happiness have again turned down Hollywood money because it would mean giving up ownership of their work.

  Kris Wilson, Dave McElfatrick, Rob DenBleyker, and Matt Melvin aren’t the only creators that I know to have made that decision — I know of creators who have been offered some fairly large checks if only they would be willing to sell their creations outright. Maybe they would be hired to write or draw for this thing they created, maybe not. Certainly, a one-time check with multiple zeros on it is enticing, but creators are getting too smart to agree to deals where they don’t own what they thought up. Good for them.

• As noted in Wilson’s forum posting, the C&H crew will be doing their show on their own, raising money through Kickstarter, which has been fertile ground for creators with talent and a habit of making good on their promises. Case in point: a day after launch, the Spring 2013 B9 collection is already past its first stretch goal and well on its way crushing the remaining stretches. I find that encouraging because this is the first B9 collection not to be centered on creators with serialized webcomics, and I note that it’s the first to be categorized not as Comics, but as an Art Book.

  In seeking support from people trawling the Kicktarter categories, that means maybe having to win over a new audience, one that doesn’t know the B9 brand to the same degree; then again, Kickstarter knows that B9 is worth looking at, having made the Spring 2013 collection a Staff Pick at launch. Come to think of it, George never said that being “part of the Kingdom” required that you do comics; if this imprint eventually reaches out to other niches of publishing, I won’t be surprised in the least.

• And sometimes you’re just encouraged because people want to help other people and are willing to put their talents and money towards that end. See also: Howard Tayler contributing art and spirit-raising towards a campaign to help science fiction writer Jay Lake kick cancer square in the ass. As a side note, one of the people depicted in Tayler’s artwork is famed genre writer Patrick Rothfuss, whose work on behalf of Heifer International (with the assistance of many webcomickers) has been noted in the past. Not content to merely organize an enormous undertaking, Rothfuss has decided to put some more skin in the game:
  

  This year we’re trying out the stretch goal thing, and one of our big ones happens when we hit [US]$400,000.

  Specifically, if we hit 400,000 dollars before January 21st at midnight, I’ll donate [US]$100,000 to Heifer, bringing our yearly total to over half a million.

  If not, I will keep that money and do something stupid with it. I swear I will blow it on catgirls, methadone, and multiple pairs of the same kind of shoes.

  And that’s before he commissioned three gold rings engraved with his name, which permit the bearer to redeem for any favor they want from him. You do my faith in humanity good, Mr Rothfuss, and as of this writing the 2012 Worldbuilders campaign is sitting at US$368,609.42, so you’d better warm up your checkbook¹.

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¹ Sorry about the methadone and catgirls.

Wherein I follow up on things that have already happened.

• 1106 days ago, regarding the previous day’s (somewhat abrupt) conversion of Webcomics Dot Com to a paysite, I wrote:
  

  I can see the argument that WDC takes [Brad] Guigar as long to produce on a daily basis as any of his strips, but with no recompense other than perhaps driving a few people to his strips (although I doubt many who frequented WDC didn’t already read his comics). That effort deserves remuneration, and Guigar has set what he thinks is a fair price.

  I just don’t think that many people are going to pay it.

  Guigar’s betting that the distinction between entertainment and information is sufficient that people will pony up a couple bucks a month for access (side note to those attempting such things in the future: “ten cents a day” sounds much less than “thirty bucks a year”).

  Unfortunately, with the exception of very few prominent brands, with high-quality content, pitching to niche audiences (we’re talking Wall Street Journal grade, here), this hasn’t proved to be the case on the internet so far — people pretty much equate “content” and “free”.

  Guigar’s got a brand, quality content, and a niche audience, but I don’t think this is going to work any more than when Murdoch attempts to monetize his entire media portfolio (and/or get fees from Google) this year.

  It’s looking back on pronouncements like that one that I wish this blog had a memory hole into which I could stuff particularly wrong things. Even by the next day it was becoming apparent that Guigar was onto something and his gamble was more likely than not to pay off. He’s kept actual numbers pretty close to his chest for the past three years, but it’s safe to say that the WDC paywall implementation was more successful than even he anticipated, and has remained so to the present day. After seeing him make another unexpected play in the spring with his monthly downloads, and having spoken to him extensively for years now (both on the record and off), I have come to the inescapable conclusion that One Should Not Doubt Brad.

• That didn’t take long. A mere five weeks after DC Comics announced that Jim Zub would be taking over as writer on Birds of Prey, it appears that said announcement lacked the crucial “no take backs” clause:
  

  I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on things happening here so there was no confusion when the DC April 2013 solicitations went public.

  DC has decided to go in a different direction with Birds of Prey and it’s been decided that I won’t be the writer on board the series after all.

  Two thoughts: One, Zub remains the consummate professional; while disappointed, he knows that it’s just how things go sometimes¹; he even took the time to thank the people at DC that had been working with him on BoP. Two, sudden, public reversals do not give me confidence in any company; Zub was one of two creators replaced on DC books before any issues hit the stands, and there was the situation where Gail Simone was unexpectedly taken off Batgirl and reinstated two weeks later. I’ve worked for corporations where the decision-making process is marked by public careening back-and-forth, and it’s never a sign of a thought-out strategy or capable management².

  I can’t say if Zub is better off or not as a result of this change (surely, being away from an institutionally chaotic environment is good, but the loss of the pay/prestige is bad). Fortunately, this writing gig was not the only thing he had going for 2013 and this will free up time to work on his own projects, where he is the only person that can fire him³.

• Let’s end on a happy note. Calling back to her work on Marceline and the Scream Queens #3, Meredith Gran shared something awesome with you today. In the hallowed tradition of Adventure Time, Gran wrote songs in the MatSQ series (especially appropriate for the story of a band), and found herself needing to write a diss track for Marceline to sing.

  Who does disses better than professional rappers? Nobody! And who is housemates with the the world’s 579th greatest rapper, MC Frontalot? Gran! Front brought the braggadocio, Gran altered the rap to the structure of a Scream Queens song for print, but there was still the demo track of Frontalot channeling Marceline sitting on a computer, hidden from the world.

  Until today. Ladies and gentlemen, I can only hope that this means more comics will have accompanying soundtracks from Mr Alot or other geek-inflected acts.

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¹ And for their part, DC’s Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Director are on the record that this outcome was only business and they always liked Zub.

² Another danger sign: an unwillingness to speak plainly or admit to mistakes. In the same piece that announced Zub was out, the EiC (Bob Harras) and ED (Bobbie Chase) were asked directly if Gail Simone’s reinstatement was a result of fan uproar. The verbatim response:

Harras: What we had was Ray [Fawkes] coming on for two months to help out, schedule-wise. We’re very happy Gail is back; she’s on the book moving forward, so to me, that was a moment in time where we were just looking for Gail’s next plot to come in and we’re moving forward.

Which is a pretty impressive non-answer to the question that was actually asked.

³ I hope Zub has taken the time to negotiate a good kill fee in his agreement to work for himself.

Let’s recognize some achievements today, yes? Are achievements still a thing, or do the kids have a new word for them? Cheevs? Cheevos? Cheev-a-rama-lama-ding-dongs? Peoples is doing things, and we should notice.

• The Academy Award nominations hit this morning, and I should like to mention that among the Best Animated Feature nods is one for ParaNorman (a terrific film, by the way), whose production company is well-integrated into the webcomics world, what with people like Vera Brosgol and Graham Annable working there and webcomickers being given super-cool artifacts from the making of the film.¹
• Speaking of awards season, we’ve mentioned in the recent past that nominations are open for the Hugo Awards and the NCS Awards; now it’s time for the Eisners to collect worthy nominees. The relevant section is not too different from past years:
  

  The best digital comic category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2012. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to Eisner Awards administrator Jackie Estrada: jackie@comic-con.org.

• Noted yesterday: webcartoonist/roboticist/popularizer of science Jorge Cham is talking about What We Don’t Know and the gaps in our scientific knowledge² via the auspices of TEDx³. One advantage to being a cartoonist when you hit the speaker’s stage — when it’s time to project something on the big board for everybody to see, comics are more interesting that slides full of text. Go watch The Science Gap: Jorge Cham at TEDxUCLA and then ask yourself: what don’t we know?
• Almost missed: John Kovalic has been creating Dork Tower strips since about forever, initially as a monthly comic in a now-defunct gaming magazine, and then several times a week. I’ll admit it dropped off my radar a while ago, but I’m glad to say I noticed something yesterday: as of 1 January, 2013, Dork Tower has been around a phenomenal sixteen years, with no signs of stopping.
• Similarly, I had fallen away from regular reading of Tom Brazelton’s Theater Hopper (largely because I’m not into movies enough to be the core audience, and partly because do you know how many comics I read in a day already?), but I did manage to notice that Brazelton wrapped the nearly-ten year old strip on 31 December 2012.

  Since then, he’s launched a Kickstarter to produce the last seven years of TH as e-books, as well as converting the first three years, which were dead-tree printed. A Kickstarter which just ticked over the (very modest) goal yesterday with nearly a month still to go, as it turns out. If you want to get ten e-books with nearly a decade’s worth of comics, such can be yours for as little as US$35, which is really a great bargain when you think of it — 35 bucks for about 3500 days, or a penny a day. You’ve got a change jar somewhere — crack it open.

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¹ I should note that one of those receiving a animation maquette was Ryan North, who at the time was living but has since exploded and thus is possibly a zombie himself now. If you got one of these gifts from Laika, take care that you don’t explode also.

² Where “our” knowledge refers to both the scientific community and that of society at large.

³ Contrary to rumor, TEDx is not A little-known cousin of Malcolm X, although he has spent his career organizing a series of multidisciplinary symposia by any means necessary.