Been listening to the radio (WNYC, New York’s major public radio station), and it occurred to me that a couple of the pieces I’ve heard might be of interest to the Fleen audience.

On the one hand, a discussion about the works of Tove Jansson, with her niece and primary English translator. On the other, still going on (as this is being drafted) on the crowd-funding model for artistic endeavours, including the thoughts of an IP lawyer; this one is skewed more to the musical end of things, but a primary focus is Kickstarter, so still of interest to at least some of you. The art of informative conversation is not dead.

• Also of great interest is a one-sided conversation (and that’s not meant pejoratively — it’s a single voice, going in one direction, but meant to be a collaborative statement, at least in my reading) from Chris Onstad, on the topic of the sporadic nature of Achewood of late. It starts on the need to not repeat and the need to recharge, but I found the most telling part in the middle:
  

  One thing that’s always made me a bit sad is how Internet presentation seems to devalue content. So much art, writing, and news is suddenly available to us that each piece seems nearly a throwaway, lost in the gullet of our now-insatiable appetite for information. Here in the future, everyone is famous for 15kb. Fifteen reTweets. Fifteen LOLs. Should I work fifteen hours on something that will take fifteen seconds to read? The answer is yes, of course, because I love what I do, but after nearly a decade one wonders if one couldn’t do more for people with that time. Create greater and lengthier entertainment. I’d like to focus more on prose; despite the heavy foot I seem to have planted in the comics world, perhaps I can balance both by shifting the weight a bit. Some might count themselves kings of infinite space when bounded in the nutshell of six panels, but personally I’m finding it a bit cramped.

  So there’s our answer — Onstad, like anybody who creates, is entitled to work at his own pace, to his own standards, and following his own muse. We who consume his work so readily — for free! — can bitch all we like, but it won’t make the RSS feed go ping! any quicker. And let’s be honest, we will bitch, but I hope that the vast majority of us do so because we wish more, in whatever form we can get.

  The act of creation is fraught with infinitely more toil and exposure than the curation that we who comment will ever expend, and when we are freely given those creations, our primary reaction should be a sense of gratitude first and foremost. We can surely debate the quality and form of the work, but we should not take it for granted.

  I will always keep a feed open for Achewood, and hope that Onstad finds the form he wants to work in with ease. And also that he gets his store back up, as I wish to provide him money in exchange for goods (cough Achewood Cookbook II, cough)¹.

• Finally, I want to acknowledge all of the terrific conversation that was had yesterday, as side-effect of the most light-hearted and fun wedding I’ve ever attended (and I include my own in that assessment). When I grow up, I want to be Chris Hastings and/or Carly Monardo — either one, they’re both stellar people who deserve all the happiness that they bring each other, and I was honored to witness their day of joy.

  For those wishing to get a peek at what it was like, it was all over yesterday’s twitterfeeds for a significant slice of webcomickers. And future brides, take a tip from Carly — nothing keeps you on your feet for a long day of processing, dancing, visiting, receiving, and fun like a pair of Chucks.

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¹ When you’ve got the time, it’s cool; Chris Onstad is not my bitch.

The rumor and innuendo swirling about was damn near impenetrable. Suddenly, a mysterious message appeared in my inbox, promising shadowy secrets in webcomics, and for once it didn’t come from Eben Burgoon. Who could the beardy figure in that photograph be? The possibilities are endless, although the filename — prof_smith — offered tantalizing possibilities, but nothing concrete. Then I just read the email and it was all obvious:

[W]e’re making a PHD movie! — Jorge

Yeah, probably shoulda just read the damn thing first ‘stead-a getting all worked up. Jorge Cham (for it was he that sent the not-very-mysterious email) tells us that it’s not yet decided how/when/where the movie rolls out, but if they went to the trouble to find a guy that’s such a dead ringer for Professor Smith, I’m guessing that the project is planned well enough to see completion on time, under budget, and without any hint of procrastination. Jorge would never procrastinate. Besides, if you look closely enough at the picture, there are playback controls, so I’m betting a significant chunk of the film is “in the can”, as they say in Hollywood (or Hollllywood as Bullwinkle tells us is correct, with “three or four Ls”).

Now, the only question is if Cham plays the (thus-far nameless) POV character in the movie.

In other news:

• New books have been announced by Rich Burlew and Paul Taylor. They would be, respectively, the special-to-Dragon-magazine monthly strips that ran outside of regular Order of the Stick continuity, and the post we-kicked-the-calendar-machine’s-ass strips from Wapsi Squre. For good measure, Burlew will be donating $1 per copy of Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tales bought or pre-ordered this month to the Japanese Red Cross for earthquake and tsunami relief.
• Per The Beat, the nominations for the Stumptown Awards have been announced, to be held on 16-17 April in conjunction with the Stumptown Comics Festival in Portland “Stumptown” Oregon¹.

  What I found refreshing is that that Stumptown Award jury, in contrast to pretty much every other comics-related awards program — has essentially drawn no distinction between webcomics and not-webcomics. Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder: Voice (cf: here) looks to be the most-honored work, and it’s a web-to-print creation. But look at the multiple nominations for Emily Carroll’s His Face All Red, which is purely a webcomic.

  Carroll’s not up for Best Artist That Doesn’t Use Paper or Best Colorist That Works In Pixels, she’s up for Best Artist and Best Colorist, period. Heck, Ben Costa’s nomination for Best Colorist nod is listed as for Pang: The Wandering Shaolin Monk, but is that for the book or the webcomic? It doesn’t matter, and the Stumptown Awards are the first to really erase that distinction. Bravo.

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¹ Stumptown, Stumptown, Stumptown, smock!

Bigbooté.

• Because I work in New York, I was able to obtain a copy of this article on paper, and will forthwith be framing that sumbitch and keeping hard by Fleen’s Action News Desk. Clearly, I have approached all of my hack webcomics pseudojournalism completely wrong, and in future this bastion of reportage will be my model. I will no longer ask webcomickers about their work, their inspirations, or how they hope to inspire or interact with their readers. From now on, the emphasis is on how much they love the gossip¹.

  Readers of this page may recall that Dave Kellett (that would be the creator of Sheldon and Drive, not Dave Kellett, Osteopath) was invited back in October to give a talk at Ohio State University’s triennial Festival of Cartoon Art, and did so in response to a talk that Bill Watterson had given at the same conference 21 years earlier. It’s taken a while, but Kellett’s talk is now available on the Youtubes in five parts. The most important thing established: Kellett’s crush is Watterson, given that he returned repeatedly to a photo of Watterson at the drawing desk, turning the projector of the auditorium into his own public crush wall. Adorable!

  In other news, Scott C has produced visual documentation (and it is now mine, sitting on my desk in my home) of notroious partiers Mister Banzai and Mister New Jersey gossiping with and mutually crushing on a pair of Red Lectroids; clearly one is John Whorfin, but who could the other canoodler be? Not John Bigbooté, since he has no glasses. Our inside sources say it may be John O’Conner, John Gomez, John Yaya, John Littlejohn, or even — gasp — John Smallberries.

  Okay, I can’t actually keep up the tone any longer — it makes my brain hurt. It’s a bit difficult to put the info from the website, but I believe every member of Pizza Island is going to be a featured guest at the MoCCA Fest in four weeks, Dave Kellett’s talk was erudite and funny, and Scott C rules. That is all.

• It’s been a long, long time since we first laid eyes on Nate Simpson’s comics work; back then it was apparently (judging by file names) called Waldo then, and now it’s known as Nonplayer. The writing’s a bit tighter, the art as gorgeous as it ever was, and it’ll be hitting the comic shops next month. Check ‘er out.
• Got a tweet yesterday (from J Baird, of the Create a Comic Project), reproduced here in its entirety:
  

  @fleenguy Here’s a news item: Lulu has released its API. You can publish to your own site with them solely as a backend. It’s free! #luluapi

  It took a bit of digging from there, since the main Lulu site didn’t have mention of this that I could find, but here’s what I know so far (via the Lulu Developer Portal):

  The Lulu Publication API allows individuals and publishers to use the Lulu backend to publish print-on-demand and electronic books programatically. Upload and publish books in any format (paperback, hardcover, eBook), get free ISBNs (or assign your own), sell on Lulu.com, Apple’s iBookstore, and other leading retail channels.

  Interesting. There’s quite a lot of technical documentation, but as I don’t have a developer’s account (nor have need of one), I suspect that there are subtleties that I’m as yet unaware of. Fingers crossed that we get a good FAQ-style summary of the API’s features, but it looks like e-books can be done perhaps more simply than they were before this release. Not everybody wants to go to the trouble of producing their own in various formats, naturally, but right now I don’t have enough info to tell you more than interesting. Maybe very interesting?

• Speaking of interesting, may I refer you to a link? Why yes, I believe I may. Your guess is as good as mine, but 26 April at 10:00pm EDT is when I’m going to try very hard to be near a computer.

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¹ Jesus Tapdancing Christ.

Long-time readers of this page may recall the name of Olaf Moriarty Solstrand, which ranks as possibly the best name to come up on this page — it’s just impossibly badass. In fact, if Solstrand and fellow Norwegian Øyvind Thorsby were to create a metal band, they would be halfway to success just on the basis of their names alone. But Solstrand has more to contribute than just a great name; you may recall his 100 Ideas in 100 Days initiative, his master’s thesis on the social dimensions of webcomics [Norwegian text], or his scripting of Disney’s Donald Duck comics. Today, he’s come back to us with data from an experiment on usability:

As part of the progress of coding a webcomic portal (not available anywhere in English yet), I decided to do some cheap usability testing on a couple of existing webcomic portals to figure out what conventions exist and how people use these websites. So I went to UserTesting.com (excellent website, by the way) and set up a user test where I asked the participants to go to DrunkDuck.com and ComicGenesis.com — which I assume are the two really big amateur webcomic portals out there — and do a couple of simple tasks (the most important one, “find a comic that looks interesting”).

Solstrand’s results are narrow (three testers took him up on the challenge, but consistent: three testers that don’t read webcomics at all found Drunk Duck easy to search and navigate, and Comic Genesis difficult. Certainly, a more directed task would be helpful (for example, how accurate are the filter categories on Drunk Duck?), but more in-depth investigation isn’t necessarily Solstrand’s priority (after all, they aren’t his websites). The videos make for must-see viewing (if you’re in charge of user experience for either of those portals), or at least an interesting curiosity (if you’re anybody else). As always, we at Fleen thank Solstrand for his research.

In other news, there are a number of talented creators that are looking for reader involvement of financial natures. Let’s run ’em down, shall we?

• By now, everybody in the world (and their dog) has undoubtedly heard about Evan Dahm‘s Kickstarter campaign to fund the second printing of Rice Boy. Not only is Rice Boy Dahm’s signature work, it’s one of the best graphic novels of the past decade; furthermore, if we help Dahm replace the rapidly-dwindling stocks, it will undoubtedly mean he’s got the financial wherewithal to keep with his comic making, just as Vattu has reached a critical point.

  Heck, while you’re at it, make sure to pick up the recently-released Order of Tales, book 3 while you’re at it (I’ll be getting mine at MoCCA or whichever show Dahm does next, as I like purchasing in person from him).

• Also on the world+dog list: praise for Daniel Lieske‘s Wormworld Saga, which you may recall debuted on Christmas Day and instantly captivated all who read it. Lieske dropped me an email with news of his own plans:
  

  You reported about the Wormworld Saga in the past so you might be inclined to help spread the news about the big leap I’m currently making by collecting funds for the creation of a Wormworld Saga App. I’m really trying to tackle this thing the independent way. It’s exciting times!

  Exciting times, indeed. Let me quote from the two most important bits of Lieske’s Kickstarter pitch:

  It took me the whole year 2010 to create the first chapter of the Wormworld Saga. I’m working on the project in the evenings besides my day job as a computer games artist. I time-tracked every single minute that went into the creation of the first chapter and I know for sure that I would be able to create 4 chapters a year if I could quit my job and work full time on the graphic novel.

  and

  The app is NOT meant to replace the free online version of the Wormworld Saga graphic novel. I firmly believe in “freeconomics” and the Wormworld Saga app is designed to be a premium content for true fans of the project.

  So go visit and decide if you can help or not; Lieske’s work is beautiful, and the prospect of four chapters a year (chapter 1 is 36 screenfulls, and each screenfull is about a page) would mean a hell of a lot of good comics get made.

• Lastly, no Kickstarter this time, just an appeal to help clear out some existing stock so that new stuff can be made. Chris Yates makes photocomics and the finest wooden jigsaw puzzles on the planet. Today, word came that the scrollsaw that he uses to make those puzzles gave up the ghost and will have to be replaced. We’ll make this simple: no scrollsaw, no new Bafflers!

  I can speak personally to the quality of Yates’s work (having commissioned three Bafflers, and been blown away each time), so if you think that him (and his able assistant, Dan, a stellar fellow in his own right) being idle is a criminal waste of talent, browse through his store and see if you like anything there. Every purchase brings us closer to the day his mind-bending flights of fancy can be made solid once more.

Okay, so Em-City. Lotta webcomics folks heading out that way, including some that I almost certainly missed, so let me know about any obvious omissions, yeah? Most of those folks have been helpfully putting up maps to show where to find ’em, and they all have something in common: a tendency for the arrows to point towards the lower-left corner of the booth space.

For the sake of convenience, because it’s got the most names pre-written on it, I refer you to the TopatoCo map [PDF] and add that most every other webcomics person of interest not written on the map is within a brief walking radius of the smiling Topato in booth 202. We’ll use that as our navigational starting point, because it’s right by the entrance.

• Put your back against the wall and stare directly at the TopatoCo booth, then let your gaze wander leftward and across the aisle. All four Halfpixel üdes are at booth 102, adjacent to the Sam Logan/Jeph Jacques Argument Annex in booth 203; special guest Mary Cagle joins said Düdes. Nestled in the bosom these two booths is the Red Bull Top Fuel Fun Machine (booth 104), with the exception of Ms TMI Tuesday, who can be found oversharing at booth 207 with the Weregeek.
• Not sure where 207 is? No problem. First of all, look at the TopatoCo aisle opposite the wall of the convention center. On the other side of it, you’ll see The Library Guys and Mister Mumbly Eyebrows at booth 206, and behind them you’ll find The Historian & The Hurricane in booth 208, as well as Angela Melick and Joel Watson (I, uh, ran out of nicknames) in booth 307.
• Having visited the Melick/Waston Axis of Awesome (Nickname! Still got it!), do a 180 and you’ll see the Blank Labellers in booth 210; merely rotate leftwards again and walk forwards until you see all the Steampunk cosplayers, and you’re in Foglio country (not to be confused with bat country), booth 110. Rotate again until you once more face the mighty Unshelved/Biff booth and the once-mysterious 207 will be directly in your sightline. Alternately, you can stand alongside the gaslamp mafia and walk towards the back of the hall two aisles, and you’ll be at the Webcomic Bucket Brigade, booth 116.
• Since you’re hugging the left wall and all, this might be a good time to visit Artist Alley, where you can find multiple Bobs — both Angry Flower (E-14) and White (L-06) varieties — along with Let’s Be Friends Again (A-11), various members of Comics Bakery (G-10), my sporting bet nemesis (G-14), and the Chancellor of Iron Crotch University (I-07).
• Finally, you’ll have to brave the far side of the hall to visit Alaska Robotics, off in booth 906, the veritable hinterland. It’s okay, they’re from America’s Frontier, they can survive on their own just fine. We should also note that Scott Kurtz wants you to remember that Saturday is Classoline Alley Day at ECCC, when all and sundry are invited to nudge their wardrobes up a notch or two. If you’re not sure what constitutes “classy”, quietly observe Latin Art-throb Aaron Diaz back at the TopatoCo booth, but please — no sudden motion; he startles easily.

Now that we’re all caught up, let’s move on to fresh territory, shall we? Actually, let’s revisit recently-covered territory; in comments on this site, one may observe a pair of missives that are worth your attention.

• In reference to the difficulties of getting the Erfworld books delivered, Darren Gendron helpfully notes that any business with China around the Lunar New Year is a dicey proposition. File that one away for next year, those seeking overseas printing.
• In reference to the wanton destruction of his sites, Friend o’ Fleen Lore Sjöberg (link still dead, but it’ll be back someday) thinks out loud about a madcap new idea he’s having. From his Tumblr, the possibilities of new forms of electronic media enjoyment:
  

  I want you to be able to treat my digital creations — pictures, words, music, video, whatever — the same way you do mp3 files. I want you to be able to download them as files, mail them to your friends, stick them on the portable or stationary device of your choice and enjoy them how you want.

  I want you to be able to read them online if you have a net connection, but I want you to be able to pack them up and carry them along with you in case you don’t. Maybe you want a simple, no-frills reader on your smartphone, and maybe you want a pretty custom skin for reading them on your home computer, and maybe you want random Lore cartoons to come up on your screensaver.

  I think in a decade or so this sort of thing will be much more common. Websites and PDF files will still exist, but encapulated data with rich metadata that can be sorted and rendered according to the needs of the reader will be the standard for any sort of serious data stream.

  I’ve done a little poking around, and I’ve found something that I think will work for now. It will render in at least 75% of current browsers in operation, and more like 99% of browsers that don’t have my name in them. It will be reader-friendly, generous with metadata, and extremely portable. I hope you’ll have fun reading it, and I hope other people will join in the fun as well.

  I’m just going to dive in and see if I can make something neat. With a little luck and a little free time, you’ll see the first steps in a few days.

  Call me crazy, but that right there is what you call a Manifesto, with a capital Man! I am going to be really intrigued to see what Lore (who is a very clever guy) can do along these lines, and even more intrigued to see if, in that promised decade, we’re all casually using LEM (Lore’s Encapsulated Media) as the default content format.

That picture doesn’t relate to webcomics in any way, but it nicely illustrates a really interesting idea that Kris Straub had on the nature of time and the many-worlds hypothesis, and I think it looks neat.

• Via the tweetfeed of Matt Boyd comes news of a new project:
  

  TRAILS OF TARNATION is a twelve-part serial western following the exploits of Derek and Jeff, two cowboys on the run from the corrupt Sheriff Maynard Lumbar. The series is produced and filmed in Rochester, NY by Nicholas Gurewitch, Derek Walborn, and Jeff Stanin.

  You may recognize the name of Nicholas Gurewitch, creator of The Perry Bible Fellowship; together with Walborn and Stanin, Gurewitch forms Voltron works under the aegis of New Picture Agencies (who are also responsible for earlier projects, like the BBC-commissioned short films that Gurewitch talked about at SDCC ’10).

  You can see Trails of Tarnation episode 1 at its own site (maybe — it was having problems rendering the embedded player in my browser) or at Vimeo, where you can see other NPA productions (check out some of the Elite Fleet or Sometimes This Happens shorts, which are animated by Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones-Quartey!) (by mentioning Ian, I have now pushed back the return of RPG World by another month; current estimates place resumption in October of 2037).

• We’re getting on towards con season, and I wanted to put out a piece of advice for anybody that will by travelling — don’t pack your laptop (or your phone, your meds, your camera, your passport, anything you can’t stand to lose) in your checked bags. Recent weeks have seen two different webcomickers report the loss of laptops from their luggage (coincidentally or not, they both flew USAir) — as we all know, you’re not allowed to lock the bags, which makes anything portable and valuable easy pickins for those of bad intent.

  The airlines have basically no obligation towards you in these circumstances (being of a low and suspicious nature, I made it my habit to read all the legal disclaimers on ticket jackets, back when there were ticket jackets) — anything you can’t prove was in the luggage at the time you hand it to them they don’t have to compensate you for. Quick quiz time — guess how much any airline is going to go out of its way to believe that you had something other than completely ordinary-grade clothing and toiletries in your suitcase. Valuables go in the carry-on, and if somebody requires you to check a bag of valuables, insist on taking a photo inventory that they acknowledge in writing before giving it to the baggage handlers.

It’s true. But much as I respect Mr Spiner’s work I am talking here about facts and figures and (especially) numbers. Specifically, the very intriguing set of data released by David Malki ! over at the Machine of Death blog (hands up those of you that think it should be called “Blog of Death”) regarding MoD and e-book channels.

As you may recall, the editors of MoD (Modditors?) had always planned to release the collection under a Creative Commons license, including as a free PDF, and they did so remarkably soon after the print edition was released. Such free distribution has not hurt the book’s sales (which are in a fourth printing, bringing the total number of physical copies by my estimate to somewhere north of 25,000); indeed, people were asking as the PDF released (for free) if they could voluntarily pay money for it. In addition to the basic single- and double-page spread PDFs, MoD has been available in a variety of e-book formats from a variety of vendors, including (as of yesterday) Apple’s iBooks.

But which is the best channel? I don’t have a book to release electronically, and I probably won’t have one in the forseeable future, so the question is entirely academic, but dang if it isn’t an interesting one. Malki ! et. al. had been told by e-book publishers and distributors (seriously, why do you need a distributor, which is a business model designed to move physical items from place to place, for e-books?) that these be treacherous waters:

“We reach thousands of ebook sales partners,” they said. “Even if you do a Kindle version yourself, that’s only one of thousands of sales channels.”

“Are there really thousands of ebook sales channels?” we responded. “Why have we never heard of any but about five?”

Ultimately, we decided that while there might be thousands of ebook sales channels, we only cared about a couple of them, and we could manage a couple of them on our own. We ended negotiations with ebook companies, released our PDF, and looked into selling ebooks of our own in the few sales channels that make up the majority of the market. [emphasis original]

But that still left the question of which channel is the best, and with numbers widely varying from different sources (and different points in time — Apple is a relatively recent addition to the game), any numbers are useful. And those numbers (for the month of January) show a clear winner:

• Kindle sales accounted for 84.5% of all ebook sales in January
• Nook sales accounted for 10.4% of all ebook sales in January
• The remaining 5% were mainly ePub sales through our site, although a few iBooks sales are recorded there too (the iBooks version only went live at the very end of January). [emphasis original]

The practical upshot being, if you’re going to release an e-book, the Kindle would seem to be your first priority. Hopefully, more numbers will be forthcoming in future months.

In other news, it appears that webcartoonist For Science! Darryl Cunningham (cf: here, here, here, and here) tweets that his work has garnered the attentions of NPR, which will be interviewing him. As he is British, Mr Cunningham may not have recognized the name of Linda Wertheimer, but as she does mostly fill-in hosting duties on NPR’s major general news programs, it’s likely to be on a fairly high-profile program. I’m betting Weekend All Things Considered. Countdown to Mr Cunningham being vilified by Fox News starts … now.

Coupla things happened yesterday, after I’d done my story-collecting for the day. My pardon if you’ve seen either of these stories already, but they’re worth mentioning again.

• It’s not every day that webcomickers decide to go full time, and even less common when they take the opportunity to branch out into other media at the same time. But Curt Franklin and Chris Haley of Let’s Be Friends Again have done just that. With respect to the first, yesterday they announced that comics will be their full-time gig, having been working at laying the groundwork for more than two years.

  To throw a multimedia spanner in the works, LBFA will be a three-person endeavor, as Franklin and Haley are joining forces with rappeur nerdique Eugene Ahn, aka Adam War Rock. Mr Rock, of course, has plenty of connections to webcomickry, having released songs in honor of webcomics¹ as diverse as Nedroid, Johnny Wander, and earlier today, Dresden Codak.

  Weirdly for one who spends so much time on webcomics, I first became aware of Rock because of his tribute to/adaptation of the theme song for The Sound of Young America; then again, TSOYA and the rest of the Maximum Fun empire have their merchandise distributed by TopatoCo, so it all comes full circle.

• You know what else rarely makes the transition to sustained support? Museums. Even the most established have to be creative about funding their collections and exhibitions, but I think that the Cartoon Art Museum may have just set a new standard. In conjunction with the just-launched Berke Breathed exhibit, CAM are looking to fund the print run of exhibition catalog via Kickstarter. With one day down and 29 to go, From Bloom County to Mars: The Art of Berkeley Breathed is, as of this writing, a little more than a third of the way towards its $3000 goal.

  Among the first wave of webcomickers, Breathed’s Bloom County stands as one of the Holy Trinity of Cited Inspirations (along with Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes, and Gary Larson’s The Far Side); I can see a lot of old Breathed fans (not to mention those just learning about his work for the first time via the IDW reprint collection) wanting to get their hands on this.

  Adding to the webcomics appeal, the catalog will contain contributions from Bill Amend and Keith Knight, who may work with syndicates, but “get it” when the discussion turns to webcomics. There’s even a lengthy interview with Breathed by Nexus of All Webcomics Realities (non-Canadian division) Shaenon Garrity; okay, so she’s married to CAM curator Andrew Farago, but Garrity does a hell of a job at interviewing, and so does Breathed when you give him the right person or situation to bounce off of.

  As a bonus, being funded directly by the purchasers means a balanced look at Breathed’s entire career. Disney are getting ready to release a movie based on Breathed’s Mars Needs Moms and I’m sure they could have found three grand in the couch cushions to fund this project, but how much of the catalog would then have have to focus on one not-yet-released movie?

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¹ Said songs may be found at the following locations; this list is not meant to be comprehensive, it was just what I recalled off the top of my head.

• Dresden Codak — I Will Do Science To It (kHill Remix)
• Johnny Wander — Call Me Johnny Wander
• Nedroid — Best Friends! (Nedroid!)
• The Sound of Young America — The Sound

Almost more than one can keep up with today. Let’s dive in, shall we?

• From Tony Piro‘s twitterfeed, news that Calamities of Nature is one of the twelve finalists in the Washington Post’s “Riffy” Awards, webcomics division. One might note that two of the nominees, xkcd and Jesus & Mo are in the running for the overall Best Comic (Any Medium) award.
• Speaking of the Riffies, one might also note that one of the nominees is The Oatmeal, the status of which as “comic” or not formed a great deal of the discussion on the latest Webcomics Weekly. Yet another of the nominees (Scott Kurtz for PvP) has Opinions on this, and outs himself as a curmudgeon in both the podcast and yet another comment thread at The Daily Cartoonist. Even more remarkably, Kurtz and his nemesis, Ted Rall, find themselves in agreement towards the end of said comment thread! In other news, the end of the world has been moved forward from 2012 to next Thursday.
• Book alert — the first Girl Genius novelization (first reported about six months back), Agatha H[eterodyne]. and the Airship City has been in release since the first, but 12 January (which by amazing coincidence is Professora Kaja Foglio‘s birthday) is Girl Genius Day. If you intend to buy the book but haven’t yet, make your purchase that day and make a bit of a splash, hey? After all, there is precedent.
• How does Warren Ellis do it? Today marks the 120th 6-page update of FreakAngels, which makes it the last update to be a part of the fifth reprint collection (each of which consists of 24 updates of 6 pages), which is due for release on 8 February — a mere 32 days from today. That’s called not letting your audiences have to wait to give you money. Granted, Internet Jesus has the advantages of an established name and no backlog of stories to work down, but damn. That’s some organization right there.
• Darryl Cunningham, who did such a wonderful comic about Andrew Wakefield (whose falsified vaccine “research” almost certainly caused children to die of preventable diseases) back in May was well ahead of the curve — the British Medical Journal are reporting on Wakefield’s actions (they mince no words, calling it fraudulent) this week, and Wakefield is finally getting the attention he deserves. Too late for some of those kids, of course, and no matter how thoroughly he’s discredited he will still have those that believe him uncritically (no links, not giving them any traffic), but it’s good to know that investigative cartooning has a valued place. How valued? Cunningham tweeted that the BMJ wants to reprint his cartoon in the student version of their journal. Well done, Mr Cunningham.
• Family News — via webcomics überfan Michael Kinyon (seriously, I read five or six dozen webcomics regularly; he reads several times that), the news that the irregular postings and hiatuses over at Digital Pimp Online are done. Creator Kevin Gleason’s son, Alexander, has had multiple health issues and surgeries in his short life, and now he’s healthy. Congratulations to the entire Gleason family. Oh, and congrats as well to Greg and Liz Dean, who are expecting their first child. If Real Life is a bit sporadic over the next decade and a half, I hope you’ll understand.
• Finally, late-breaking news that Kate Beaton has been invited to Yale University for the purpose of a Master’s Tea Q&A with the The Yale Record. The fun kicks off at 4pm on Monday the 24th, at the Pierson Master’s House, 231 Park St on the campus of Yale.

The end of the year’s always dead time for webcomics, what with people wanting to enjoy holidays and eat pie and all, but a few things happened while we were all away. A bunch of us got buried under a metric crapload of snow (66 cm ’round these parts), I got severely behind on news, and by the time I came up for air, I just said “Screw it” with respect to writing any kind of year-end retrospective. But we’re back now, and ready to get back to the absolute finest in webcomics pseudo-journalism.

• From the Holy Crap He Did It Desk, word that Ryan North Estrada (edit to add: Dammit! Stop invading my subconscious, Ryan North!) finished his one month animated feature (animation portion) on Wednesday the 29th, and dropped straight into the post-production portion of the work (working through New Year’s Eve). The plan had been to finishing the rendering & compositing over the weekend and release today, but it didn’t quite all come together:
  

  There are still a handful of scenes to composite, but there’s no way we can get them done, uploaded, downloaded, edited, rendered and posted in time.

  But screw that — for all intents and purposes, Ryan Estrada made a feature-length animated film in one damn month, and shortly we’ll all be able to see the fruits of his labors. We at Fleen know that we are echoing all of you out there in Fleenland when we say Well done, Ryan.

• From the Hooray, I’ve Been Waiting For This Desk, Minus pre-order? Minus pre-order! One of the most justly-acclaimed webcomics of the past five years is finally coming to print form. Let’s let Ryan Armand give you the details:
  

  Hi! It is two and a half years late but I was finally able to manage something decent so suddenly there is a minus book available. It’s 141 pages, 9×12 inches in size, weighs almost two pounds and has a new story plus a couple of extra comics included somewhere in the middle. Will be taking preorders through January and should be able to ship the books out by the middle of February. It costs $40 before shipping in the US and a little more for outside the country to make up for extra shipping costs. A sketch will be included with all pre-orders and… I guess that’s it?

  Pick up GREAT Volume One while you’re at it.

• From the Not A Ryan, But Still Really Talented Desk, I (like a number of you) discovered The Wormworld Saga last week (it went up on Christmas Day), and hoo boy is it good. Long story short — Daniel Lieske is a German digital artist, and he’s launched an online graphic novel (first chapter now available) about a boy named Jonas, a secret room, and a summer break adventure that’s just about to be much, much more than he expects.

  If it starts a bit slowly, it’s only because Lieske has really excelled in conveying what life is like for a 10 – 12 year old — all boredom and adults and droning and waiting until you can start the fun you’ve been looking forward to all year. We’re just at the beginning of Wormworld; imagine Dorothy or Alice looking back at their childhoods and relating what happened on that fateful day with the rabbit hole or the tornado, but didn’t quite get as far as the fantastical.

  At this point, it’s an open question whether it’s Jonas or the reader with the greater sense of anticipation to see what happens next. Just be assured that a) the characters have got me hooked, hard; and b) the art is gorgeous. Go read it, and settle yourself in for what looks to be a a long, complex, deeply satisfying story to reveal itself over the coming months and years. The Wormworld Saga merits my highest possible recommendation, and just set the land-speed record for getting added to the blogroll over there to the right.