So let’s get this particular iteration of the Interpocalypse kickin’.

• Seems like a lot of comics are finding their way to mobile devices these days — Howard Tayler, in his recent Fleen interview, talked about an iPhone app for his stuff; I’m getting hit with regular press releases about somebody named “Tyrese” who’s created a comic about an asskicking vigilante who takes no guff (man, where do these original concepts come from) that resembles his creator to a startling degree and is now releasing it via iTunes as a — gahhh — motion comic (insert Clutch Cargo joke here). You got your LOLBOTS, you got your Clickwheel, and now it appears you will have your Erf:

  Erfworld: The Battle for Gobwin Knob is soon coming to mobiles in a partnership with Robot Comics.

  Originally published online under the Creative Commons license, Erfworld is today one of the most popular and heavily trafficked webcomic sites, supported by its own wiki consisting of 5000+ fan-created articles about the Erfworld universe, including a complete single panel annotated archive of the comic that would make a Grant Morrison fan proud.

  Awesome — now I know why the text-only “summer updates” are still going.

  I kid, I kid … the storytelling and world-building that goes on in the “novelization” of Erworld is really quite good. But I want to see the pictures again, dammit.

  Things that made me ask questions — is this the first let’s-get-comics-on-handhelds development group that’s developing for less-widespread devices like Android phones, Nintendo DSi, and Kindle? And is the first development of a complete story (140+ pages) originally formatted for full-screen viewing, to get redone for widely-varying but mostly small screens? At least, that’s what I’m taking from the Robot Comics self-description, ’cause if all they do is shrink down the pages, that’s gotta be one unsatisfying reading experience. As they say, we shall be watching their career with great interest.

• Know what rocks? Anders Loves Maria is back from hiatus (which included a pretty nasty flulike bug colonizing creator Rene Engström). Know what sucks? It’s almost over:
  

  I’m back at work now and ready to give you my full attention, hopefully uninterrupted until the story’s conclusion, some 30 pages or so into the future.

  Okay, let me rephrase that — I am thrilled that Engström is telling the story she wanted to tell, with a definite beginning, middle, and end (and enough flashbacks to spin the heads of the LOST writing staff). I’m not happy that this means that sometime, probably by the end of the year, that I will not have more ALM to look forward to. To have them go on forever, like a soap opera that long outlives its original characters, would be terrible. But to not have Engström’s comics is possibly worse. Here’s hoping that she already knows what the next project will be once ALM wraps (diary comics! diary comics!) and will be ready to launch quickly because Daddy needs his medicine.

• Know what the awesomest part of the recent Dinosaur Comics site redesign is? Blogposts are now tied to comic updates, so I can permalink things like the title of Ryan North’s upcoming ACM address to the folks that made HAL:
  

  So hey what are you doing October 16th-18th 2009? If you’re like me you’re coming to the (free!) ACM Reflections | Projections conference in Urbana, IL! I’m giving a talk! In fact, I’ve got the last talk of the day, entitled “GUYS, LOOKS LIKE IT’S WACKY TIME”, in all caps, just like that. Will it truly be wacky time? Yes, absolutely. You should come!

  Please somebody video this so we can all see what WACKY TIME WITH RYAN looks like. I bet it looks like a kiddie TV show on twenty-eight hours of no sleep!

I’m fine, but let’s say that a near miss happened today to someone I know and it’s got me in a mood; if the news about the x0,000 phished Hotmail, etc. accounts weren’t enough to make you reevaluate your approaches to password discipline (mine verges on clinical paranoia), then hey — awesome. You’re the soft target, not me. With that bit of entirely callous disregard for the well-being of my fellow netdwellers out of the way, let’s get some quick news items in.

• Speaking of bad people, Ryan Estrada has launched a new daily webcomic about them; okay, his are more the “costumed bad guys” and less “disaffected programmers working for various ethnic mafias”, but you get the idea. Chillin’ Like Villains launched with a full 24-page story in the archives, and after a one-day chapter splash, kicks in with fresh adventures today. Reached for comment about the new competition in the supervillain-themed webcomics sphere, Brad Guigar bellowed, Fools! I will vanquish every one of you puny mortals and lay all your works to waste! After pausing for breath, Guigar continued, Moohahahahahaha! and fiddled with what appeared to be some kind of nullifier, or possibly a mind-control beam.
• Speaking of insane rantings, Jeff Rowland would have you believe that he is prone to such outbursts; in fact, he is a pretty savvy businessman who’s managed to negotiate his way to a modest (if possibly accidental) empire of internet merchandisery, which he talks about at Comic Alliance:
  

  It’s still the friggin’ wild west out here; if you can get 20,000 people to read your comic about a dog that huffs paint, there is a way to make a living from that.

  Much like our own interview with TopatoCo VP Holly Post, Rowland talks about webcomics giving you slack for being weird, TopatoCo’s growth curve, and their unique corporate culture:

  I got David Malki [!] running promotions and propaganda and that dude is an idea dude to the marrow. Most days I just spin him around on this big board and decide what to do from what thing his feet point at.

  People, I have stood in TopatoCo HQ, and I am fully prepared to believe that Rowland is telling the truth. If you want to make good business decisions, your course is clear — obtain your own David Malki ! and revolve him until gravity tells you what to do.

• Speaking of interviews, Zudaboss Ron Perazza had one with David Gallaher a couple days back at CBR; full disclosure: Gallaher is the creator of High Moon, which was one of the first Zudawinners. The interview is full of interesting stuff, and whatever your views on Zuda, the Zudacontests (I’m decidedly meh on them), the Zudainterface (hell meh), these are some talented guys and it’s worth your time to listen to them. Besides, I can’t be the only person who swooned upon learning that Gallaher has written a graphic novel of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar!.

  What do you mean, you never heard of YT,JD!? It was an awesome radio drama about a fabulous freelance insurance investigator … a freelance insurance investigator with an action-packed expense account! Look, if you live in or around Washington DC, WAMU does this multi-hour block of old radio programs on Sunday nights, and YT, JD! is often in the rotation. It’s cracktastic.

For those looking for the Howard Tayler interview that was promised yesterday, it’s coming. In the meantime, consider the following, please.

• Speaking of Tayler, changes o’ plenty over at Blank Label’s homepage in the past few weeks. Over roughly the past ten-twelve days, we saw several comics failing to update daily; Paul Southworth’s Ugly Hill leaving the strip lineup and list of comics at the top of the page but not the “Brady Bunch” thumbnail set; the same for Paul Taylor’s Waspi Square; the addition of a link for new member Dave Reddick’s Legend of Bill but pointing to a not-yet active placeholder on the page; and today, the return of Steve Troop (who, by the way, is one of the creators interviewed in that new Calvin and Hobbes sorta-bio)’s Melonpool.

  We at Fleen are have not yet determined if these are programming issues or membership shakeups, but one might reasonably assume the latter: Southworth, at least, has launched his new strip wil Bill Barnes, which would complicate the act of keeping the strip at BLC because BLC is a different kind of collective; to the best of my knowledge, it’s the only one out there that merges the revenues of its members.

  Other high-profile collectives like Halfpixel or Dumbrella are really just a common brand name (aka A bunch of lowlife emo-candyraver drug-addled web-cartoonists I’m loosely associated with. We have a sort of mutual non-aggression pact.) without intermixed finances from things like ads. We may be seeing BLC transforming itself from a corporatized collective (CoCo?) to just the regular kind. Or it could be bugs in the code — I have not received definitive information from anybody in a position to know, and I imagine we’ll all find out what the deal is soon enough anyway. Lesson to take away: webcomics journalism is hard.

  Also, if you’re going to have a collective, think about your lineup changes carefully and always compare them against the most important yardstick of all — Will this make Gary change his morning browsing habits? If so, it’s a bad change because Gary is a creature of habit and his brain takes a while to wake up.

• 24 Hour Comic Day is coming up this weekend! So far, Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub seem to be setting up a Dallas branch of the effort, with KC Green coming into town to join in on the fun. My guess is that all three of their twitterfeeds are going to hilarious once the sleep deprivation sets in. Who else is planning on tempting the gods of caffeine and madness?
• New Yorkers and those who love them: the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, as part of their regular Thursday-night event series, will have a panel discussion tomorrow evening on The Comics Press, including friend o’ webcomics Heidi MacDonald, along with Aaron McQuade & Evie Nagy and Douglas Wolk. 7:00pm at the museum, $5 general admission, free for members.
• Also starting tomorrow (and running through the weekend), the Marbella International Film Festival (that would be Spain) will include in its screening schedule a short based on Doug Wilson’s webcomic, K-9 Lives. In honor of the screening, I’ve been trawling Wilson’s archive (only about 100 updates) of wordless comics. The navigation’s a bit of a pain (driven by drop-down list, be forewarned), but the wordless story of a dog with a cat attached to its buttocks is more entertaining than anything describable by that story hook has a right to be.

It rolls off the tongue at least as well as the its-almost-here Estrada Day (although not, I grant you, as well as Estradarama or The Estradaganza).

• Anyhoo, Gordon McAlpin (my sporting bet nemesis) dropped some multimedia goodness on the Tubes end of last week — if books can have trailers, why not webcomics? And, since I mentioned books, I would be remiss in not mentioning that Gordo’s got the first Multiplex book in the works and available for your support:
  

  The first of the five Chapter eBooks that will be collected into the Multiplex: Book 1 print book has long been available, but a second is pretty late, because of how much new material it has and how little time I have to work on it.

  Enter: Kickstarter and the Multiplex: Book 1 Club of Awesome. By pledging any amount over $1 to join the Multiplex: Book 1 Club of Awesome, pledgers will help me take some time off from my (wonderful, but time-consuming!) day job in order to complete the print book — and, more importantly, pay for the print run of the book itself.

  These are not donations, though — absolutely not! In exchange for your pledges, you’ll receive AWESOME! REWARDS!

  My funding goal is $7,500. Pledges will be taken until December 11th — a.k.a. the moment of truth. If the funding goal is met or surpassed, I get the money (after a two-week or so processing time), less credit card fees, and I can get down to business. If the funding goal is not reached, nobody gets charged — I don’t get anything. (If I only get $3000 in pledges, I wouldn’t be able to afford a print run.)

  Multiplex is the first webcomic attempting to fund a project through Kickstarter, so hopefully this will get some traction in the webcomic world. (Several musicians and filmmakers have successfully funded larger projects already.)

  To sum: it’s like giving to PBS or NPR, and there’s books, t-shirts, and other swag that’s frankly much cooler than a tote bag (although to be fair, much worse at carrying your groceries home from the market). Details at the Kickstarter page linked above.

• Speaking of multiple forms of media, Mike Russell‘s got the latest of his interview-into-webcomics deals up, this one about Steve Lieber’s experiences getting the graphic novel Whiteout (illustrated by Lieber, written by Greg Rucka) made into the just-released movie and what it’s like to see the process finally finished:
  

  … It’s almost impossible not to let yourself think, “Now I’m a big deal.” But you wake up and you’re still the same [redacted] — and the only difference is that there’s a movie out there that people think you adapted into a comic.

  It’s part of the deal … they’re gonna buy me half a house, I’m going to have to eat some [redacted], you know?

  So that you understand the effort that Russell goes to, these thirteen panels were condensed down from a full hour and a half of conversation, which you may read at your leisure. Me, I’m going to trust that Russell got the good parts from that talk into his comic and content myself with that.

So if you read yesterday’s comments, Gordon McAlpin is unconvinced of my reading of the Amazon Super Duper Strip Cartooner Dealie™ (not its actual name). He and I have had an entirely pleasant back-and-forth today (and there’s no snark there — one of the things I like about my commenters is they’re typically civil and grown-up when there are disagreements) and nailed down both a) my offer of a bet; and b) McAlpin’s desire for more quantification.

We have agreed to the following:

1. If, within 3 years of the development period being done and print syndication starting (which could be up to 2 years after being declared winner), the contest winner has picked up at least 500 papers Gordon wins.
2. If, the contest winner walks away from the syndication contract, is dropped by the syndicate, or under any other circumstances goes independent as a webcomic using the same strip from the contest, and achieves any significant audience on-line, Gordon wins.
3. If the strip isn’t picked up for print syndication by somebody at the end of the development period (doesn’t have to be Universal), or fails to hit 500 papers in three years of print syndication, I win.
4. The winner may, at his discretion, take a picture of himself waving the money in a triumphant pose, to be posted on the front page of Fleen.
5. The stakes are one dollar American cash money.
6. Both parties will appear as identical elephants.

• Whoops, sorry, couldn’t help myself, what with Achewood rocking so hard these days and all. For those that need a quick catch-up on the current storyline (which I’m provisionally calling The Lash of Thanatos), may I recommend that you peruse the return to webcomics blogging by Eric Burns-White; this is a man who uses language as he loves it — in great quantities, and with meandering grace. We do not always see eye-to-eye on events within webcomicdom, he and I, but I am able to map his viewpoints to mine with acceptable accuracy, and am glad to see that he concurs that the latest happenings in and around Alberquist Hall are indeed Something Special.
• Everybody catch The Guigster on TV yesterday? If not, there’s video for you to enjoy of some basic cable people not getting it, and applying the wrong questions (or at least not listening to the answers) about webcomicdom. But man, does Brad look natural on camera, or what? I guess he’s now our official Telegenic Spokesguy.
• Speaking of the media, yesterday’s overlong posting means I didn’t get a chance to mention this before it happened, but a cluster of webcomickers (actually, that last link actually refers to the webmaster of a webcomicker, but you get the idea) found themselves on a podcast devoted to free and open-source software. If you missed it, replay should be available sometime day after tomorrow here-ish. Thanks to Help Desk creator (and podcast participant) Christopher Wright for the heads-up.

For those keeping track of such things, there’s still a stack of books from the recent comics gathering that I got and haven’t read yet. Capsule reviews: Dr McNinja 3 and Girl Genius 8 are both shining exemplars of how to bring a payoff to every thrice-weekly page, while still having an overall story develop. Since I’m mentioning Girl Genius, word from Phil Foglio is that the recently-finished-catching-up-online Buck Godot epic, Gallimaufry, will see print in January. Hooray!

• If you’ve ever looked at the list of websites over there to the right, you may have noticed waaaay down at the bottom is one that hasn’t seen updates in a long time; Owen Dunne’s You Damn Kid updated for a long time, released a book (via Keenspot’s imprint), got optioned by Fox TV, went on hiatus, came back, went on hiatus, launched a bunch of other comics, went on hiatus for a long damn time, came back with a live-action video series this past February, and managed a pair of updates before reverting to hiatus.

  Please don’t misunderstand me — I labor under no illusion that Owen Dunne is my bitch, and I don’t mean to bring up the irregularity of his comickry as a means of criticism. Life gets in the way, and through all the interruptions, YDK has retained its place on the links because I really like Dunne’s work and consider myself essentially infinitely patient waiting for the next iteration which begins today:

  [Y]ou get paid and hate your job, I make squat but I like to do this. And that place where we meet in the middle is The Happy Monday Place. Or something like that. So welcome, and I hope you make it a regular stop each week.

  So here’s how it will work. A new page every Monday, with new comics, a short installment of the Barnyard Pete Show, and a monthly edition of Banion — The Podcast. The individual pages will be archived, not the individual comics. (However, the old YDK comics are archived, just click on the text at the top right of the comic.)

  Catch that? The Barnyard Pete live-action shorts will now be in Flash (much faster to produce), and Banion (clueless but serious detective in the Joe Friday tradition with his own webcomic) will now be podcast as an old-style radio drama. Looks like my theory about webcomics being a breeding ground for other forms of creativity wasn’t too far off. Speaking solely for myself, Dunne had me at an all new Nippleshine Manor! Welcome back to the game, Mr Dunne — should a hiatus come up again, I’ll be waiting for your return.

• Know who else we haven’t heard from in a while? Nicholas Gurewitch. Know who’s trying to remedy that? Andrew Farago:
  

  The Cartoon Art Museum’s Monsters of Webcomics exhibition is so big that it needs TWO opening receptions with special guest Nick Gurewitch, creator of the popular webcomic The Perry Bible Fellowship.

  On Thursday, August 27, Gurewitch will meet fans and sign copies of the two bestselling Perry Bible Fellowship collections, The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack. The booksigning is free and open to the public.

  On Friday, August 28, Gurewitch guides Perry Bible Fellowship fans through an artistic thesis about visual storytelling, and will go behind the scenes of comic-production with co-writer/spiritual advisor Evan Keogh. Special guest Michael Capozzola (stand-up comedian and creator of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Surveillance Caricatures) will lead a Q&A with Gurewitch immediately following the presentation. This is a ticketed event. General admission for this presentation is $10, or $5 for members of the Cartoon Art Museum.

  Those of you in the San Francisco area at the end of the month, take notes and report back to us.

In today’s breaking news, Legend of Bill creator Dave Reddick has joined (n the past hour or so) Blank Label Comics. For those not familiar with Reddick’s work, he assists Jim Davis on his strip about a large cat (dunno, don’t think that’s going anywhere), as well as working on various Star Trek-themed strips for Gene Roddenberry’s production company, a single-panel webcomic, and the aformentioned Aragonesque barbarian epic. Look for Legend of Bill to show up on the BLC front page shortly (and maybe at the same time, the code’ll get fixed so that Shortpacked! shows up again (unless … there’s something they’re not telling David Willis? Could this be a Dave-for-Dave swapout?).

Our main story today is what’s likely the last reminiscence of San Diego Aught-Nine: the AfterCon party on Saturday night, hosted by the Cyanide & Happiness gents, Zach Weiner‘s new sketch-comdey undertaking, and the superstars of nerdcore.

I’ll confess something here — I never really got it when a stand-up comedian included lengthy stints opening for music acts. Okay, maybe Sinatra I can see, but the number of people that’ve opened for high-energy, heavily-amplified, passionate-fanbase artists? I just always figured they enjoyed being told “You suck!” and “Gedoff the stage, we want ____ !” Turns out? Not so much.

The audience at The Casbah last Saturday was The Nerdcore Tribe — having missed much of the hip-hop revolution on generational grounds and having an untrained ear that’s not good at catching the verbal dance that characterizes your quality rappers (not that this is unique circumstance with me; I once had a really enlightening half-hour chat with Harvey Pekar about how to train my ear to really get jazz … he called me “man” and “cat”, of which I am very proud), I didn’t catch much of the lingual dexterity exhibited by YTCracker and MC Lars — but there ain’t nothing wrong with my eyes. The crowd was into it, completely absorbed, singing along and on ready to devolve into the joyous riot (no harm, no foul, lots of bumps and bruises) you get on the dance floor when the beat takes you over. If anybody would resent an interruption of their vibe for electronic funnybook cartoons and movies, it was them.

But funny is funny. Catching a short of the oh my God that’s horrible and funny I’m going to hell but I’ll be laughing all the way variety (such as The Sign or I Love Noodles), it doesn’t matter if it’s what you came to see or not. You’re into it. And longer pieces, with Weiner’s troupe of pranksters (including James Ashby, one of his collaborators on Snowflakes) work just as well when they’re as funny as Gateway Drug, LOL CAT, or the as-yet-not-online Ultimate Staring Contest. Even a projector failure (which must have made already-nervous hosts even nervouser … don’t worry guys, you broke every leg out there) couldn’t put a damper on the enthusiasm.

Lessons learned — I’m not too old to stand in a one-room small venue, beer in hand, listening to rappers. I do in fact know all the words to MC Frontalot‘s Livin’ At The Corner of Dude & Catastrophe and Diseases of Yore. The sense of humor that lets a creator sustain a webcomic is (for the right people) transferrable to other media and forms of expression. Beer bought for you by Zach Weiner is always extra-tasty. Many thanks to all the people who put together the show, so graciously invited me, and to the parents who worked so hard making the costumes.

Know what’ll perk you up today? NUNFIGHT! Okay, very little to do with webcomics (aside from the fact that this little gem ran on The Sound Of Young America, which is very webcomic–friendly, and that it’s crying out for webcomickers to draw their impressions of the battlin’ nuns — that’s right, I’m calling for a meme to get started here), but dang is it funny.

Okay, webcomics:

• Ima come right out and say it: one of the highlights of my day is Skin Horse, because what can possibly be wrong about a webcomic that deals primarily with paranormal-managing government bureaucrats who subtly recall the less-well-known Oz books and gets regularly cranked up to about 14 on the Insane-o-Meter? Unstoppable zombies, talking dogs, killer robots, crystalline entities, baby cobras that only want hugs, opera-loving silverfish, a likely-undiagnosed-Asperger’s brain transplanted into a military airframe, and a transvestite psychologist who bags all the babes?

  And it’s drawn by Shaenon Garrity, the one person able to compete with Ryan North for the title of Nexus of All Webcomics Realities? The first year’s worth of strips are collected into a book which is now set for pre-order and it is worth your time and money so much that it hurts.

• Everybody saw that the latest round of Xeric Grant awardees got announced last week, right? It’s not always the case that the Xeric winners have been sharing their work online (either before or after the grant), but in this crop it appears that Adam Bourret and Joshua Smeaton have made their work available for your perusal. Please enjoy Bourret’s I’m Crazy and Smeaton’s Haunted.
• Do you know any DJs in San Diego? Tweet @topatoco if you like to work parties.

Seriously, I’ve got email and story tips backing up because there’s timely stuff happening today. Where to start?

• Maybe with the relaunch of Webcomics.com and Brad Guigar‘s promotion to Editor-in-Chief? I’ve been doing this gig for like three and a half years now and I’m still just “Editor” … if Brad gets a promotion, I think I deserve one too. Suggestions for a new editorial title welcome — something that conveys a bit of gravitas, like “Benevolent and Terrifying Philosopher-God-King-Editor”.
• Then we’ve got the latest from Brian Carroll, who updates the Natalie, Queen of the Scots fundraising page to let us know that the lawyers have done their lawyering and cash intake is once again cleared for launch. In addition to everybody else that’s come together to help Carroll, he’s got a very special assist from webcomics own wandering monk/utility pinch-hitter:
  

  Hey Gary-
  Reporting from on scene at Lobsterback down here in Florida, where I’ll be helping Brian Carroll make Natalie, Queen of Scots. It’s time to move my filmmaking career to the next level. Sure, I’ve been a Bollywood voiceover artist and a B-movie zombie extra, but I really wanna do is be a grip!

  We at Fleen believe by the time he moves onto his next far-flung destination, Estrada will have gripped everything on the film set that possibly could be gripped, and may also in fact have gaffed.

• Got a detail wrong on Monday — the Lookouts story continuation by Oliver Grigsby and Becky Dreistadt is not running Wednesdays at Penny Arcade. It’s running today, Friday, Monday, and next Wednesday, and to make it up to you for the mistake, please enjoy some of Dreistadt’s concept art. She’s made me tear up a little with what that vile basilisk did to that littlest Lookout, but man — she sure does draw monsters purty.

I was sitting on the news until the anticipated Wednesday launch, but since it’s been announced over at Penny Arcade, I get to share. Your eyes are not deceiving you — that image up there tells you that Becky Dreistadt will be drawing an ongoing Lookouts story (written by the impressively-resuméd Oliver Grigsby) for your consumption starting the day after tomorrow. Now be kind and don’t completely wang the TKT server, hey? Space out your clicking over and revelling in the lush, painted-on-paper-and-every-damn-thing art in an orderly fashion, please.

Wasn’t sitting on the second big item, but man — sometimes the news cycle moves fast. Long story short — Brian Carroll of Instant Classic remains at heart a filmmaker, and faced with a sudden funding crunch for his indy feature, Natalie, Queen of Scots, he turned to the internet for help in raising the money to move forward with production. That was Saturday.

‘Bout twenty four hours later, nearly $20,000 had been raised. Three hours later, the ugly spectre of US securities law made itself known, and it became necessary to take down the fundraising appeal to consult with counsel. At this time, all indications are that N,QoS remains a priority for Carroll & Company, and all away the latest information with bated breath.

By the time you read this, Carroll may know what the proverbial deal is, and he will doubtless share with us at the first opportunity (which can probably be found at the Twitter hashtag #findaway.