Seems like our earlier discussions re: Shelly from Wapsi Square and Ivan from Oglaf were premature. Shelly: not dead, 80,000 year old sphinx. Ivan: not dead, some kind of magical sleep. As usual, leave it to Wonderella and/or Jeffrey Rowland to cut through the crap and figure out — no Rapture, nobody dead.

• Not that there won’t be anybody dead. Judging from the Twitterings of a one Mister Ryan Sohmer, starting here-ish and moving forward, it certainly seems like he’s mad enough to cut some sumbitches. TL;DR version: Sohmer’s relating the story of a meeting with Canada’s Teletoon network, wherein Sohmer was privy to the pitch for something called The Dating Guy that became, after the meeting, a wholesale appropriation of Sohmer’s character designs (on casual inspection, it is rather similar to Sohmer’s own Least I Could Do).

  I am inferring (and have no specific knowledge one way or the other) that said meeting considered the possibility of a LICD tv show to be developed in conjunction with Teletoon. If Sohmer’s contentions are correct, I’d be mad, too.

  The thing is, I don’t know that TDG’s original pitch looked like, I wasn’t in on any of the meetings, and I haven’t compared the TDG online content with LICD (nor am I familiar enough with LICD to draw conclusions without a deep re-reading … it’s just not my thing, you know?).

  But I do know Ryan Sohmer somewhat, and he’s a canny businessman (cheerfully mercenary is how I once described him), smart enough not to make baseless accusations against (what I presume is) a fair-sized Canadian media corporation, on account of whatever country you’re in, fair-sized media corporations really hate getting called on bad behavior and tend to retaliate.

  He’s also ambitious enough not to let a screwing distract him from his larger goals, and if LICD on the air is one of those, a few hours of public scheming (with the equally not-going-to-let-a-screwjob-go-by-quietly Randy Milholland) has resulted in the possibility of a Kickstarter campaign to accomplish (nearly on his own) what previously might have required a fair-sized Canadian media corporation¹. We shall see soon enough.

• Also not dead: the independent creator model of business, Snuggie-comparisons notwithstanding. Jonathan Coulton has his say on the Planet Money podcast that concluded he was a fluke:
  

  The thing that I think most got in the way of what could have been a much more interesting discussion was some confusion about what a business model is. “Writing a song that gets discovered on Slashdot” is not a business model, any more than “putting sleeves on a blanket” is a business model. It is a thing that happened to me, that part is true, but it’s not really much of a strategy. I make songs that are good and then I sell them (and concert tickets, and Tshirts) to the people who want them – that’s my business model, and it’s patently obvious that it’s replicable because I stole it from every other recording artist in the world.

  Here are some things I do differently from some other artists: I own all my music 100%, which means I have complete control over how I sell it (or not). I can give it away, I can bundle it on a USB key or in a zip file, I can allow people to make and post music videos, and I don’t have to deal with lawyers or labels to do any of that. I also get all the profits.

  I am extremely public about my creative process, hopes and fears, victories and failures. I communicate directly with fans as often as I can without letting it become my full-time job.

  I have never spent any money on marketing and rely completely on blogs, podcasts and social networks to spread the word.

  My business model is designed especially for me, by me, and it constantly changes and evolves. Nobody, not even me, should try to do exactly what I’ve done, because there are parts of it that won’t make sense for who you are or what you’re interested in.

  Creators of any stripe may want to keep this line in their heads, substituting their own means of expression in for “music” as appropriate:

  Know only this: to do this you need to work extremely hard, make music that is great, and find people to buy it from you. The end.

  And having listed off other creators that work off a direct-interactions-with-fans model:

  I obviously don’t know the details of everyone’s business, but I’m guessing that we have this one thing in common: we’ve all decided that it’s fine with us if we reach fewer people as long as we reach them more directly.

  I truly believe that the sooner we all acknowledge the internet is not actually killing art, the sooner we can get back to making things that are awesome.

  Good thoughts all the way through, and well worth your attention. Go. Read. Absorb. Adopt. Evolve. Prevail.

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¹ Either that or Milholland porn. The mind reels.

A couple of the things I wanted to point you to today may make little or no sense to those of you reading from outside the United States. As some of you may know, I spend a lot of my free time as an Emergency Medical Technician-Basic, riding with my town’s volunteer Emergency Medical Services. We’re entirely supported by community donations and grants and don’t charge for our services (but economic realities and falling levels of support will likely cause us to change that policy, and soon).

On numerous occasions, I’ve dealt with patients that found themselves behind the curve on their ability to afford care. In some cases, they were prescribed medication for conditions but weren’t taking them; in other cases, they were skipping appointments with doctors; once or twice they didn’t even want to call us because they didn’t know we wouldn’t send them a bill. In each of these cases, the anxiety was caused by the prospect of paying hundreds to thousands of dollars to deal with an immediate situation. In each of these cases, after dropping the patient at the local Emergency Department, I spent an hour muttering under my breath about how a decent level of healthcare is a goddamn human right.

But it can get so much worse.

Today I have to share not one, but two stories of [web-]comics related efforts to help people with the bills they’ve incurred because of this bitched-up system of healthcare delivery that we live with because taking care of people is apparently an unforgivable sin against capitalism. Two people made the mistake of getting cancer and not immediately rolling over to die, and as a result are tens of thousands of dollars in debt (side note for those of you following the global economic situation: in the US, people that lose their houses due to default — two-thirds of them trace the cause to medical expenditures). So give ’em a good read and do what you can, okay?

• From the Cancer Sucks department, Howard Tayler (my evil twin) is putting the printer proof for his latest book on the auction block, with the proceeds going to the medical bills of his friend Jake Black, who is US$25,000 in the hole from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. There’s five days to go in the auction as of this writing, and it’s clear that there’s still plenty of room for the bids to go higher. Tayler’s also got three pieces of original art up for auction in the same timeframe, which you should also check out.
• And in the Cancer Sucks Redux department, there’s the story of comics colorist Moose Baumann; I’ll be honest, I’m not familiar with his work at all, but that doesn’t matter when you learn of the particular circumstances in this case:
  

  A few years back my wife had breast cancer. She had chemo and a partial mastectomy, and we thought things were good. A year later we found out that it had spread, and she went in for more chemo and surgery. Several months prior she had lost her job and her insurance, and because of her “prior condition” she no one else would insure her. So we’ve been working on paying off the full cost of her medical bills for the past two years, just north of $90 grand.

  Right now work is scarce and money is super tight, and on June 1st it looks like we may lose our home because of all of this. I’m trying to sell some prints of my work online to make some quick cash, and hopefully keep my home. I’m reluctant to ask for help, it’s embarrassing, but I’m at the end of my rope. [empahsis added]

  The prints in question are $20 a pop; if you read comics, there’s probably something over there you’ll like. On a typical day, a few thousand people read this site as I blather on about things that — whatever objective importance they may possess — catch my fancy. I’m asking you, please, look over Baumann’s offerings and if something catches your eye, help his family out. Thanks.

• Let’s end on a up note if we can, hey? I got an email yesterday that I wanted to mention. We at Fleen have, from time to time, had the occasion to share with you stories of webcomic scrapers, and our opinion that a lot of grief could be avoided if only the developers of webcomics collector apps/pages would let the creators know of their intent and ask permission to include them. Here’s the important part of the missive in question:
  

  I’d like to include a link to Fleen in an iPad app I’m working on. It’s a webcomic reading tool, and to give the users a complete experience we’re including a list of good blogs that they can read to find new & quality webcomics.

  It is just a link, so asking about it might come off as not being worth the bother. But I’m trying to make an app that really respects the comic artists as well: all the comics are shown as on the webpage, it uses the same browsing software on the iPad as anything else, so it doesn’t strip ads or insert ads or generally mess around with the comics. Only comic artists that agree to be featured will be in our featured comics listing. We’re also working on some ways to encourage support, like a link in the menu that goes right to the store or donation pages for the comics.

  This is how you do it, people. Kudos to developer Steven Masuch for taking the high road, and when his app is generally available, would somebody with an Apple fondleslab¹ like to review it for us? We at Fleen don’t have one.

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¹ The term fondleslab was coined by the brilliantly snarky hacks at El Reg. Much respect.

We’re a couple of weeks into submissions for Machine of Death 2 (Electric Deathaloo), and the news of just how many stories have been submitted is pretty amazing. From David Malki !’s twitterfeed:

So far we have received 103 submissions, for a total word count of approx. 317,000. (That is about the length of The Fountainhead)

We are at 1.5 Crime and Punishments, 2 Grapes of Wraths, and 0.6 Wars and Peace.

About 1.3 Ulysseux and 1.5 Mobies Dick

So, quite a lot for Messers Malki !, Bennardo, and North to sort through. Since my submission for the original MoD was rejected (along with about 96% of all submissions, if my back of the envelope figures are good, so no hard feelings to Mr North, Mr Bennardo and Mr Dreamcrusher), I hadn’t really thought of any MoD stories I’d like to tell, but to be honest — the new submissions announcement caused one to pop into my head.

Here’s the thing, though — I’ve got a germ of an idea, maybe even a unique idea in the MoDiverse, but I don’t think that I can develop it to the point where it would be very good. As we at Fleen have discussed in the past, the notion that ideas are scarce is at best a distraction — execution is all that matters.

Thus, I’m giving this one away — I have no idea if it’s as unique as it could be, I have no idea if anybody out there can develop it to the point that it’s good enough for inclusion, and I sincerely apologize to Messers Bennardo, North, and Malki ! if they get flooded with poorly-executed submissions taken from this seed. Details below the cut, and no complaining if it turns out nobody but me wants to read a story built around this idea.

• Seen ‘tother day on American Elf: James Kochalka expands his (literal) multimedia conquest to filmdom, and will possibly be viewable on your TV:
  

  I performed in a really cool animated (rotoscoped and other techniques) indy sci-fi romance, called MARS. The movie has never seen wide release, but they’re currently in negotiations with Netflix to make the movie available on their service. So, please add MARS to your netflix queue! This will help make our dream of getting the movie on Netflix come true.

  I’d be curious to see MARS, if only to find out if rotoKochalka gets elf ears at some point.

• Big round numbers alert: Michael Terracciano hits 2500 updates of Dominic Deegan: O_____ for Hire¹. One may also note that by an accident of timing, the day after tomorrow will also be the ninth anniversary of Dominic Deegan; long time, lotta strips.

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¹ I work for a company that makes various solutions for data — storage, analysis, and general info-bothering — and make it a personal policy to never spell out or pronounce The O Word because I dislike their products. No reflection on Terracciano’s work is meant or implied.

(more…)

There’s a lot of hoo-ha about how the world is Definitely Going To End On Saturday, No Really, We Mean It This Time. Since I predominantly work in New York City, I’ve been a target of people who firmly believe this and want to desperately save my soul before the big unraveling hits this weekend. But, as webcomics has shown us, every day can be considered the end of the world, with or without any degree of religious involvement.

Either those comics will smugly amuse you come Sunday (when the world doesn’t end), or they’ll be among your last happy thoughts in a short and hellish existence before the end of all things (when the world does). Either way, you win by reading them now. Oh, and if you do end up being bodily assumed into heaven? Don’t worry, you still have time to pre-book your pet care.

• Assuming that it’s not wasted effort to make future plans, may we point out the launch part for Dave Roman‘s Astronaut Academy ([A] delight to read from start to finish — Fleen Book Corner) will be on 11 June at Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn? Given the kids-friendly (but by no means kids-exclusive) nature of AA, the fun starts early at 3:00pm, and goes until 10:00pm. There will be comics-making workshops for the kids, snacks, and general party times with one of the nicest guys to ever make comics.
• As long as you’re making plans that will take past the weekend to come to fruition, can I mention one that will probably mark you as a better person, and therefore less likely to end up in an eternity of torment? ‘Bout a year ago, I pointed you to a webcomics charity run by Elena “Yamino” Barbarich of Sister Claire fame (and, like seemingly half of the young guns of webcomickry, she was a fellow student with my niece Colleen at SCAD).

  Oftentimes, these efforts are one-offs, meant to help alleviate the pain of a specific event, but Ms Y has kept it as an ongoing effort, with more creators joining in and a permanent focus on Kiva as the beneficiary. And speaking of Kiva, as of this writing Team Webcomics has made an even 4000 loans totally more than US$162,000 since its inception in Feburary of 2009, putting the group in 57th place out of more than 18,000 groups in terms of total money lent. Well done, people.

• Finally, if you’re looking for something that will probably have no effect whatsoever on your being a good person or not, but which will likely amuse the heck out of you, may I suggest the TCAF 2011 Machine of Death Draw & Guess spectacular, now in amazingly life-like video? Why, yes, I believe that I may.

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¹ “A branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind.”
² “Theology dealing with salvation especially as effected by Jesus Christ.”

Not really webcomics, but since I’m on the PR list of a widely-connected guy named Chase Wang¹, I get lots of info on PC technology, games, and pop culture events. One of Chase’s recurring clients has been the upcoming AM2 (animation, manga, music) convention the first week of July. The latest announcement from which reads:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AM2 ANNOUNCES THE TOKYOPOP LIQUIDATION SALE

Yeah. With so many creators of Tokyopop’s OEL line left — abandoned is the only word I can come up with — I’m sure it’s a great comfort to them to know that somebody’s makin’ money off of an everything-must-go fire sale, but it surely ain’t those that wrote and drew the comics.

• Following up from Friday — yep, looks like Shelley’s really dead. Crap. And will the others even know of her passing? Speaking of deaths, requiscat in pace, Ivan [that particular link mostly SFW]. He’s been the centerpiece of Oglaf [which is usually the polar opposite of SFW] since the first page, even if he didn’t get a name for a good long time. And he’s really been the buttmonkey of the strip, frustrated and abused at nearly every turn, and now he’s gone.

Man, this has been a grim day, hasn’t it? Hows about some hopeful notes, each of which will require the collective efforts of numerous people working towards a common goal?

• On the one hand, you’ve got an idea for a massively-parallel comic via Twitter from Stewart Moore (link via Scott McCloud), an idea that will likely produce many marginal branchings, but also a handful that are really brilliant.
• On the other hand, there’s a Kickstart going to bring more Scott [Kurtz] & Kris [Straub] to your computers with plenty of laugh-chuckles along the way; it’s a big-budget item but with nearly 1/3 of the fundraising goal achieved since the project launched earlier today, it’s pretty good odds that you may see more of these guys in the future. Seriously — get Straub and Kurtz good and on (which may or may not be synonymous with three beers in ’em), and there’s probably not two funnier people on the planet. Can’t wait to see how this turns out.

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¹ Really.

Yeah, it’s a bit overcast, but it’s also appropriate given that Scott McCloud and Steven “Cloudy” Cloud¹ are making waves today.

• On the one hand, you’ve got process video (which I always find fascinating, despite the fact that I don’t draw, much less with technical tools) from McCloud. Not only process video from a guy who went purely digital a long damn time ago (eight or nine years by my estimate/recollection), but weirdly enough, his first process video ever. Specifically, it’s all about the McCloudian method of lettering (including balloons, tails, and suchlike) using Illustrator, in two parts (part one; part two), each a shade over ten minutes in length. Anybody that does digital production undoubtedly has worked out personal methods for this sort of thing, but seeing another’s technique can’t be a bad thing, especially if that technique’s been practiced and refined over the better part of a decade.
• On the other hand, you’ve got Cloudy’s return to Boy on a Stick and Slither; there were nearly 1200 little digressions into the deeply philosophical end of the webcomics topics pool, followed by adventure travel and other priorities for a good long while now. But the BoaS and S are back at their very own Tumblr and traversing a bunch of mental reality shifts for your workaday amusement. Any day with these two arguing the minutiae (and occasionally the maxutiae) of life is a good one, and apparently that makes for two good days, as the infinitely malleable arguers made a stealth appearance back in October that we all missed.

That’s it for today — it’s my anniversary and I’m gettin’ out of here early for some special celebratin’, if you know what I mean²
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¹ Smock, Smock, Smock, Smock, Smock, Smock.

² Pizza and TV. What?

Also: severe weather outlook day in the greater New York City demographical region. Yeesh.

• Okay, I don’t draw at all, and even I found the promo video for TCAF to be cool beyond all measure. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a beautiful discussion of drawing tools from a double handful of Canadian cartoonists, with a simultaneously jaunty and haunting score behind it. Everybody involved with this (and other aspects of arranging/presenting TCAF): you are wonderful. Everybody going to TCAF next weekend: I hate you, because I have to go to the dentist instead. That “everybody going” bit, by the bye, includes a significant slice of webcomicsdom, making my hatred not a real thing. You should totally go, and I’ll wish you well as my jaw cramps up.
• Speaking of video, (Dr) Jorge Cham hit us up with another of his occasional forays into academic filmmaking, but instead of a trip report (as with his New Mexico State University videos), today’s features audio from a pair of theoretical physicists talking about dark matter, their impromptu lecture given translation and interpretation by Cham’s drawings being interactively animated on-screen¹.

  It’s remarkably informative; I had a pretty good grounding in physics from my nerd school days and still had trouble wrapping my head around the (admittedly new, evolving, and still somewhat self-contradictory) ideas of dark matter, but I have a much clearer understanding now. I’ll go so far as to say that this is the greatest bit of webcomics physics education since (Dr) David Morgan-Mar derived Maxwell’s equations in a non-scary fashion; that bit had formulas and symbols and so might appeal to a bit more than today’s more intuitive piece, but they’re both wonderful. Hats off to Cham, guest lecturers Daniel Whiteson and Jonathan Feng, and to Morgan-Mar on general principles.

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¹ If you found any of the animated info went by too quickly to read or absorb, Cham has thoughtfully provided all twelve of the pages from the short here.

Man, I love it when creators send me the logical next part of the story. Makes my life easier. One may recall (if one wishes) my discussion of Michael Jonathan, his minicomic Quail: The Song of the Blackbird EP, and the plan to get music produced to accompany said minicomic. Did I say plan? I meant totally completed project, as the music to accompany Quail is now complete and available to all and sundry. Jonathan has this to say about the tunes:

The album that syncs with this comic (and my new Quail comic “Rope”) released today! You can listen to the entire album for free at the bandcamp site and download track 2 “Breath of Searing Gecko” for free as well.

The bandcamp site is http://gambelcovey.bandcamp.com/ — Gambel Covey is my band that worked on this, made up of actor/comedian Chris Yule and illustrator/girlfriend Nan Lawson.

I worked super hard on it and I’m EXTREMELY proud of how it turned out.

And well Jonathan might be; he provided a download of the full song package to me and I’ve given the tunes a good listen, which range from pretty damn credible bluegrass (Song of Blackbird) to almost Pomplamooseian, verging-on-preciouscore folk (the aforementioned Breath of Searing Gecko). Can I also say that it’s awesome that when you download your songs and/or comic and/or prints, the button on the screen says Gimme? Like the music, it’s just so unapologetic in its enthusiasm. GREAT FUN WOULD LISTEN AGAIN.

• Also on the followup front, DJ Coffman weighed in on the Drunk Duck situation via Fleen’s patented ActionCOMMENTS™ ‘tother day, and in case you didn’t see it, it was pretty useful stuff:
  

  I got a lot of emails last week about this, primarily because I encouraged a lot of creators starting out to use DrunkDuck back when I was cheerleader. For the people having problems I rewrote my “How To Host Your Own Webcomic” article and posted it here.

  Although every situation is unique and you can’t just follow a checklist and expect it to work in all circumstances, Coffman’s put together a pretty damn comprehensive guide that will get you about 97% of the way to hosting comics on your own, from buying your domain to changing DNS to setting up WordPress and plugins. In contravention of Tyrrell’s First Law of the Internet, the comments at Coffman’s guide are useful and informative, so give ’em a read.

• Not followup, but as long as we’re talking infrastructure, let me mention Karmacritic. It’s a new tool for creators to get feedback on their work, but much like some commenting systems (especially those derived from the Slashdot model), it implements a karma mechanism to try to weed out the unthinking and promote the helpful. From creator Marco Leon:
  

  I created a site where creators can submit their work and get feedback. That’s been done before, oh, only a hundred times? But the twist here it this: this community doesn’t vote on the submissions themselves; instead we vote on the feedback given to those submissions. If you give useful feedback, you get karma points. And submissions are sorted in the front page by karma points. You see? In other words: any creator who invests some time helping other creators with useful comments or advice, will get rewarded with more prominence for his own work.

  If that sounds complex, the whole thing is explained with pics over here. Karmacritic is not for profit; I’m paying for the bandwidth out of my own pocket, and I just hope it helps people. Sometimes all we need is a few words, and we go from there for miles.

  I’ll confess that I didn’t get Leon’s explanation at first, but the pictures cleared up my misconceptions in short order. If you’re just starting out and haven’t developed a network of trusted peers to give you feedback, Karmacritic can quite possibly give you that first set of critiques that kicks you in the direction of developing your skills. Maybe? It’s a mechanism to receive feedback, but all critiques ultimately are useful or not depending on what the receiver is willing to hear and act on.

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What? No footnotes? I must be slipping.

Press embargo over! Jon Rosenberg and his lovely wife Amy had twin boys yesterday. ‘Twas a tough pregnancy (you can glean details from Rosenberg’s twitterfeed of the last few months) that featured a whole lotta medical care. New babies, big sister Norah, and a pair of sleep-deprived parents all reportedly doing well.

Surprisingly, the American medical insurance industry has yet to finalize the specifications for the Webcomics Creator’s Gold Plated Insurance Plan¹, so if you’d like to help Alec “Guinness” and Benjamin “Kenobi” Rosenberg (aka Team Babies) avoid a lifetime of debt indenture, maybe a purchase from Rosenberg’s Dry Goods Emporium might be in order?

• Missed it yesterday: the ladies of Pizza Island got a two-page spread in New York magazine (referenced here), and it’s now available for your online enjoyment. As a reminder, they’ll be at the MoCCA Fest this weekend, with a passel of other webcomics types. I hope all the good stuff lasts until Sunday, when I can make it to the show. If nothing else, I think I need to get my copy of Machine of Death autographed by as many contributors as I can.
• Time to drop some science. Received earlier today:
  

  My name is Mia [Wiesner] and I am a graduate student at the University of Applied Sciences in Leipzig. As part of my dissertation on digital comic books in the US, I am conducting an online survey until May. Would it be possible to post the link [to the survey] on Fleen?

  Done and done. Ms Wiesner’s survey is on the expectations and opinions held by readers about digital comics (granted, “digital comics” is a term which is a bit nebulous, and every respondent is likely to have a slightly different interpretation, but I don’t think it will skew the results appreciably). Ms Wiesner’s offered to share the results of her survey with us, which will only be worth the electrons it takes to email if there’s enough data to achieve statistical significance.

  Translation: take five minutes out of your day and fill out the survey; the more responses, the more we can trust the dataset. For my part, I was pleased to have a place to offer up the fact that I’m annoyed by excessive “media” involvement in comics (motion, sound, interaction, etc), almost as much as I am by DRM issues. I imagine you have your own pet peeves about the format, so go forth and provide data.

• Received a while back, kept getting bumped: in what appears to be one giant leap for webcomickind, a copy of Krishna Sadasivam’s PC Weenies collection, Rebootus Maximus, has been carried to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Said peak being, of course, the highest elevation above sea level in Africa, leaving Sadasivam only six more mountains (including some really hazardous climber-killers) to become the first webcomicker to not merely have books carried to all seven continents (I think maybe Ryan North probably won that one), but carried to the peaks. Anybody going up one of the other six summits? I think I know a guy that might send you a book.

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¹ Premium: $50/month, covers absolutely everything, no benefit limits or co-pays, and patients receive soothing foot massages from disgraced former Blue Cross executives.

So Scott Kurtz has been making his feelings known of late. There was the Webcomics Weekly where he spoke about Chris Onstad’s step back, and while I think I got his point, he pissed some people off in how he made it. There was his announcement about giving up on the NCS, and a related discussion behind the paywall at Webcomics Dot Com, ditto. And just concluded, a live recording of Webcomics Weekly (to be posted in the near future, no doubt) where he recounted the history of his NCS interactions and Brad Guigar and Dave Kellett had what can only be called a come-to-Jesus discussion with him.

Whew.

So let’s talk about Kurtz. I’ve always liked him, but damn if I could say that I really understood him (although I’m getting ahead of myself), and he could charitably be called polarizing. For a considerable amount of time, I felt he was just important because of the obvious influence he brought as an early and enduring success, but maybe more notable as his own worst enemy.

What I’ve come to realize is that Kurtz isn’t about (and never has been) about picking fights or starting shit; he’s completely passionate for what he does, has such a responsibility to do more/better/more again/even better, and is almost completely blindered by the intensity of that feeling to the extent that things fall into (as the livecast put it) a binary worldview (and on occasion, I’ve been on the receiving end of that worldview). That’s not the real revelation that I had earlier this week, though.

The revelation is that Scott Kurtz is one of the most important people not just in webcomics, but in cartooning in general. For all the unrest and disquiet that seem to coalesce about him, he is someone (or perhaps, like a force of nature, something) that the [web]cartooning community needs. Bear with me.

Almost everybody you will ever meet lives their life from the perspective of If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; it’s neat, it’s logical, it makes sense. The best professor I ever had back in nerd school taught me If it ain’t broke, break that sumbitch and make it better; yeah, he actually did raise his voice when he said it. That impulse to break things that are perfectly cromulent, the creator/destroyer duality? The stresses and challenges it brings against the ecosystem of [web]cartooning are a big part of what forces it to evolve. It’s all but guaranteed to make such a stressor un- (or under-) appreciated and it scares people, but it’s goddamn vital if cartooning is going to adapt. A steadily changing environment can be deadly (just ask the slowly boiling frog), but a sudden shock to the equilibrium causes a reaction that allows a fighting chance to survive.

Here’s something else that you have to give Kurtz credit for, regardless of how else you might perceive him: he’s acutely aware of his flaws and doesn’t try to deny them. That made today’s discussion of his approach to people and challenges a tough listen at times, as the experience flirted with being an intervention playing out in real time, before a live audience (and a larger one once the podcast gets posted to the world). Being willing to stand up to that kind of scrutiny in public from your friends — and Kellett and Guigar surely count as among the very best friends one can have, the ones that can tell you honestly when you’ve fucked up¹ — and reflect on it without flinching has earned Scott Kurtz a considerable amount of my respect.

That example of self-reflection is also forcing me to reconsider my firmly held opinions on the topic of Ted Rall, so it’s definitely a two-edged sword. But being forced to look at the prejudgements that I hold (while unpleasant) can only be a useful thing in the long run. So if you care to do so, join me in that reassessment and reconsider uncharitable opinions that you might hold. Back to non-navelgazing tomorrow, I promise.

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¹ Another fairly major change in my thinking over the past year or so comes from realizing the value to be found in fucking up. If you’re in an environment that won’t tolerate mistakes no matter what, you’re careful to the point of stasis. Being allowed to screw up big time because you risked and overreached? That’s the opportunity to grow. Just don’t make it a continual thing.