As I recall it, Friday at San Diego Comic Con was bookended with Jim Zub: I got to see him almost first thing in the morning, and I sent somebody else to find him almost last thing of the day.

In the earlier case, we talked Samurai Jack and how its recurring extension, five issues at a time plays with story structure¹, the fact that he’s busy and booked months in advance², and drooled over some of the early art for Dungeons & Dragons: Legends of Baldur’s Gate. If you follow that link, the right-hand cover image looks great, but Zub showed me the original B&W art on a tablet and it is even better; I hope they release a variant of the series that’s all B&W because damn, even the best coloring over those inks is covering up some beautiful detail. Zub’s over the moon about getting to script this title, and talking with him about it you can see him reverting to Kid!Zub, playing D&D in a basement with his friends, having the time of his life, stretching his imagination, and having no inkling that some day he would be creating canon around these characters; it’s seeing that enthusiasm about all his projects that makes me conclude that nobody enjoys Comics! more than Zub.

Which is why I saw Minsc and Boo come to life from the inks Zub had shown me, I had to make sure they would find each other; I gave the gentleman and gentlehamster directions to Zub’s Artist Alley table, but they reported back he wasn’t there; undeterred, I dug out the time and location of Zub’s first panel today (see below), so hopefully they’ll catch up with each other and get a picture or two.

Most of the rest of the day was a blur, but there was one memorable exchange, and I did catch some good cosplay photos; let’s take them in order.

I’m not sure I would have recognized Chip Zdarsky when he dropped by the Dumbrella booth in the afternoon, but for the fact that he looks exactly like his Twitter avatar. I thanked him profusely for Sex Criminals (noting that I love everything about the book), then realized he was standing next to Matt Fraction and repeated everything I just told Zdarsky. I found out that in the trade collection, they didn’t get clearance to use the lyrics of Fat Bottomed Girls, but they told me that they did come up with new Post-It captions over the lyrics from the original issue which means I have to buy the damn thing again. Alas, the reason that they dropped by the booth was out on a burrito run, which led to this exchange which I wrote down verbatim:

Congrats to both men for their Eisner win last night, especially in light of the fact it means there will be one less ritual slaughter today.

Cosplay!

• This gentleman assures me that he has a HENCH 4 LYFE tattoo, but for me the best part was the angry eyebrows on the mask.
• I saw many Mothers of Dragons, but this young lady was the one that really caught my eye — not tall and regal, but small and likely to be underestimated, a bit grubby, and utterly ready to cut out your heart and snack on it.
• This pairing of Carl Fredricksen and Kevin got so very much right, from the eyebrows to the pack of dogs and baby Kevins. For the record, the walker had all four tennis balls on it, and that is a grape soda bottlecap pinned to his shirt.
• The return of Sailor Bacon, may heaven have mercy on our souls. Today, he’ll be getting in the ball pit. The Lar deSouza quote that accompanied the picture was Hey, I paid for these bloomers, and everybody’s gonna see ’em!
• Not cosplay, but I thought Maki Naro might want to see: a Sufficiently Remarkable shirt in the wild, all the way from Australia.

Busy day for the panels today:

• Steven Universe at 10:00 in the Hilton Bayfront; I’m going to that one as a civilian since I enjoy SU too much to pay attention in a detached, reporterly fashion
• Pitching Comic Stories with Jim Zub at 10:00, 25ABC; watch out for Minsc and Boo
• Berke Breathed at noon, 9; just 9, no A or anything like that
• We Are BOOM! at 12:30, 24ABC; I got to take a moment yesterday to thank Shannon Watters for her work on the KaBOOM line, which gives work to so many of my friends
• Lucy Knisley Spotlight at 2:00, 28DE
• Usagi Yojimbo 30 year retrospective at 3:00, 28DE; that room should probably be larger
• Comics Journalism at 6:00, 23ABC; aka Bitter, Haggard Wordbeasts, aka My Tribe

Spam of the day:

And that is a routine the key reason why it truly is genuinely crucial that particular person examine that learn. For certain fedora paper hat generally shine will likely be developed by employing topics of decorative themes adequate.

I would actually pay good money to see fedora paper hats; they could go with paper neckbeards and paper fanatical devotion to Bitcoin.

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¹ Originally slated for a five issue run, there’s a single five-issue story that’s grand in scope. Extended to ten issues (the last of which we’re about to see in print), it gets smaller stories, leading off with fan-favorite The Scotsman.

Extended again to fifteen issues, Zub was asked for another long story, so there will be another five-parter, the title of which I am sworn to secrecy because it constitutes a massive spoiler, but which will lead off with a scene of Aku engaged in domestic hobbies in a very, very funny fashion.

Extended yet again to twenty issues, we’re back to shorter stories (including one that will be written and drawn by series artist Andy Suriano), but ending on a two-parter. Zub’s never quite sure when (if?) the series will end, so he’s trying to put a satisfying conclusion in every fifth issue in case it has to serve as a series finale.

² We counted six books that he’s presently writing: SamJack, the final arc of Skullkickers, the newly announced Dungeons and Dragons, the Gail Simone pair-up on Conan/Red Sonja, Wayward, and an unnamed (at this time) Marvel title; he’s already wrapped up the writing on Figment, which comes to a definite story end on issue five.

San Diego Comic Con programming started to drop today, with Thursday’s slate now available for your perusal. As usual, I’m listing out things that caught my eye; your mileage may vary.

Thursday Programming
Graphic Novel Programming at Your Library
10:00am — 11:00am, Room 23ABC
If you’ve been wanting to get your work into libraries, this is probably a good place to trawl for librarians.

Legends of TV Land
find it yourself
This is just to point out that Betty White now counts as valid topic for SDCC panel time. Look, I get it, she’s a treasure, but we’ve really jumped the sharknado on this one¹.

Under the Dome: Panel and Exclusive Sneak Preview
11:15am — 12:00pm, Ballroom 20
I am including this solely to make Jon Rosenberg’s head explode.

Welcome To Night Vale
12:00pm — 1:00pm, offsite
TopatoCo will be presenting a panel at the Geek and Sundry Lounge on 4th Ave in the Gaslamp, covering the secret history of one weird little town. As it’s offsite, no SDCC badge is needed.

Gene Luen Yang in Conversation with Scott McCloud
3:00pm — 4:00pm, Room 28DE
This is the first must-attend of the show for me. I’ve never met Yang, but I owe him many profuse thanks for his body of work.

NASA’s Next Giant Leap
3:00pm — 4:00pm, Room 6A
Okay, I’m not sure why Seth Green is moderating this one, but any panel with Buzz Frickn’ Aldrin and Bobak Frickin’ Ferdowsi² on it gets my attention. They may have undersized the room for this panel.

The Sergio & Mark Show
3:30pm — 4:30pm, Room 8
The two most consistently amusing people in comics.

How to Kickstart Your Dream Like a Pro
5:00pm — 6:00pm, Room 25ABC
Spike, Ryan North, David Malki !, Zach Weinersmith, Aaron Diaz, and George Rohac are, inexplicably, not on this panel (indeed, half of them won’t be at the show). However, I’ll give a dollar to each one of them that attends the panel to kibitz from the floor.

Understanding Stories: The Making of a Graphic Novel
5:00pm — 6:00pm, Room 7AB
McCloud again; hopefully includes previews of The Sculptor.

Cartoon Hangover: Bee and PuppyCat and Friends
5:30pm — 6:30pm, Room 6A
Natasha Allegri, Becky & Frank, Madeleine Flores, Allyn Rachel and Kent Osborne (voices of Bee and Deckard), and others. Second must-attend of the show for me.

Indie Comics Marketing & PR 101
6:30pm — 7:30pm, Room 8
Panelists from comiXology, BOOM!, and Fantagraphics. Could be some very worthwhile info at this one.

Spam of the day:

As explained NASA’s Glenn Research Center, the biggest market of gravity is “the average location with the weight from the object.

This spam may actually tie with this one:

how much is 100 grams in tablespoons

… in terms of fundamentally misunderstanding how basic concepts like mass, volume, and gravity work. Going to ask me how much time twelve parsecs is next?

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¹ Sharknado 2, naturally, has its own panel on Thursday because of course it does.

² Who, let’s be clear, oversaw the most audacious landing in space exploration history before his 33rd birthday. Respect, my brother engineer.

There are few things in this mortal coil that are going to put me in as good a mood as getting to talk about (or, preferably, with) Colleen AF Venable. Onetime photowebcomicker¹, Eisner-nominated kids book author (with Stephanie Yue), and integral part of :01 Books. How integral? Well, she’s designed more than 100 books for them over the past few years, she was the visual reference for a main character in one of their best books of last year, and she’s the latest proof that :01 knows that sometimes, the best talent is right under your nose³.

Because :01 just picked Venable’s YA graphic novel, Kiss Number Eight, for publication in 2016:

I wanted to write a hopeful book about growing up queer in a conservative community — both in the present day but also in the past —- inspired partially by my older sister’s coming out and the reaction of my very Catholic family, both good and bad. (How Catholic you may ask? Let’s just say it includes multiple nuns … who wound up being incredibly supportive.) There’s this obsession to box things in: Blue on this side. Pink on this side. But gender lines are much more fluid. Love is love, and if we had any control over it the world would be a lot less interesting.

I may have mentioned in the past that my secret to Not Dying is to pick out some piece of culture that I must have, that either isn’t released or isn’t finished yet; I then make the command decision that obviously I have to live until _____ comes out. Kiss Number Eight just became my newest mortality-avoiding goal, because I cannot wait to see what Venable (a one-woman cheerfulness factory) does with a topic that requires an acknowledgment that those you love the most can very much hurt you. Venable’s light, humane touch with characters will well serve a story that could (in lesser hands) turn into a cloying, mawkish, clumsy after school special⁴.

The art will be supplied by Leela Wagner, and it looks fabulous; in fact, the preview pages are such confident work⁵ that it makes it hard to believe that this will be Wagner’s first book. My guess is that by the end of the week, she’s getting serious inquiries for future work. In the meantime, let’s just hope that Wagner and :01 Books release more sample pages because waiting two years is going to hurt.

Spam of the day:

????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????
Woman ???? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????
???????????????????????

There are so many things this could be trying to say, I am hard pressed to come up with just one interpretation.

• A fedora-laden comment on the unknowability of the female mind as compared to that of the putatively logical Man?
• A keyboard with an overly-aggressive repeat-press sensor?
• Deleted dialogue from that one Next Generation episode with the aliens that didn’t have genders but Riker still got laid?

The mind boggles.

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¹ Rejecting traditional notions of drawing, Venable’s photocomic found common ground with Bernie Hou’s Alien Loves Predator, David Malki !’s Wondermark, Chris Yates’s Reprographics, Chris Dlugosz’s Pixel, and Steve Hogan’s Acid Keg², collectively known as the Playground Ghosts, which engendered much loyalty in their readers and still has some discussion in its old forum.

² Which bucked the trend by not being a pixel, montage, or photocomic.

³ There’s precedent, as :01 published editorial honcho Mark Siegel’s hauntingly beautiful Sailor Twain. As there’s really just four people that make :01 Books work, this means that once Callista Brill and Gina Gagliano get books out from :01, they can change their motto to Remember, we’re not only the publishers of the best graphic novels in the business. We’re also creators.

Yeah, it’s a little longer than By Art We Live, but it’s got that certain je ne sais quoi that just screams classy.

⁴ Alternately, a Very Special Episode of Blossom.

⁵ It reminds me variously of Jillian Tamaki on This One Summer, Jen Wang on Koko Be Good, and Boulet on Darkness. Hey, :01 Books, get Boulet to do a graphic novel!

Hoo boy, when Dr Dante Shepherd posted to Twitter last night about the hate mail that today’s Surviving the World would bring, he wasn’t kidding. Because — professor that he is — he’s laid out the rhetorical equivalent of a chemical reaction that describes freedom on one side, lives on the other, and asks if the two parts are actually in balance.

Just … just read the whole thing, and then take five minutes to think about what he’s actually saying before you decide he’s an enemy of freedom and needs to die, okay? To quote my favorite line from one of my favorite movies on the topic of freedom, Well, in all my years I ain’t never heard, seen nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about. Hell yeah! I’m for debating anything. His position is that the freedom that some demand requires (as does all freedom) a sacrifice that is being paid by others who don’t have the chance to object; if you’re going to contact him in high dudgeon, answer that point.

On decidedly lighter notes:

• I smell crossover! The latest storyline at Not Invented Here is about to collide with Unshelved, which isn’t totally surprising given that a) they’re both written by Bill Barnes, and b) NIH launched with an explicit acknowledgment that it and Unshelved share a reality. To the book depository!
• Promised Kickstarter updates: the Oh Joy, Sex Toy print collection and Girls With Slingshots book tour campaigns wrapped up last night, with totals of US$69,270¹ and US$36,676 respectively. In both cases, they fell within the margin of error of the original FFF, but not the new, stil-under-development FFFmk2. Nobody said that it would be easy to reduce something as complex as Kickstarter funding to a simple calculation, but I shall persist.

  But let’s not lose fact of the important part: Danielle Corsetto and Erika Moen will both be giving considerably more money to guest artists than they would have otherwise, and both demolished their original goals (GWS: 367% of goal OJST: 385% of goal), and that’s worth celebrating in any circumstances. Well done, ladies, now get your ass on the road/get bare asses in print!

Spam of the day:

Ralph Lauren is definitely an outline to the American dream: the long grass, antique crystal , the name Marble horse . His product , no matter whether clothing or furniture , deciding on perfume or containers, have focused on the top of the class customers yearning for an ideal life .

I don’t know; I’ve always found Ralph Lauren to be kind of schizophrenic, yo-yoing back and forth between cowboy kitsch and snooty aristocratic aesthetics. I guess they both feature lots of horsies.

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¹ Damn you, anonymous donor that gave US$1 at the last minute and ruined the US$69,269 total!

A number of Kickstarts to follow up on today. Let’s take a look, shall we?

• We’ve just reached the midpoint of Augie and the Green Knight’s campaign, and is flirting with US$260,000 in funding. At this point in their 30-day campaigns, To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventure was sitting about US$250,000 (43% of an eventual US$581K) and The Tomorrow Girl was about US$320,000 (or 61% of an eventual US$535K). I chose those two projects for comparison because of the similar level of popularity of their creators, and the similarity of the project: a pure book in fancy packaging (like TTG) that spawned lots of related-media spinoffs (like TBoNTB).

  Assuming a similar trajectory, AatGK is about 52% +/- 9% of its way to final total, putting it in the range of US$498K +/- let’s call it US$45K. Given my original prediction was US$400K +/- US$134K, we certainly seem to be heading for the high end of that range, and the 3rd or 4th most-funded publishing project¹ of all time (and probably the #1 children’s book).

  Oh, yeah, and the audiobook is going to be narrated by Ellen McClain, a factor which isn’t actually juicing the total. See, author Zach Weinersmith and Breadpig have decided that all supporters of any reward (that’s US$10 and up) will get the audiobook. Had they required supporters to get a physical reward (US$25 and up), I’m pretty sure you would have seen a majority of the nearly 700 bottom-tier backers upping their pledges by US$15 each — but Weinersmith isn’t in this for the money. He just wants to get a story with a kick-ass heroine out into as many hands as possible.

• Finishing soon: Danielle Corsetto’s summer tour funding, and Hurricane Erika’s book-kicker, both of whom are about three days from finishing, both of whom are getting into the end-of-campaign uptick, and both of whom at this point are applying pretty much every extra dollar to other people.

  Thanks to their backers, Corsetto (as of this writing) is paying each of her guest artists an extra US$100 per strip while she’s on tour, and Moen (ditto) is bumping her guest artists (future and — crucially — also past guest artists) to US$90 per page (the average strip being 4-5 pages). Both ladies are at their top of their respective games, both of them deserve your support for their own work, and both of them deserve it even more because they’re supporting other creators in a tangible, food-and-rent fashion.

• Long since finished, but you can still get in on the Kickstart backing because they’re nice guys: the Christopher Hastings-inspired card game of ninja combat and awesomeness is about to start shipping, meaning you have mere days left to pre-order at the same pricepoints and bundles as the original Kickstart. You might not have gotten your act together last November, but now your can get KS-exclusive rewards because they think you’re still pretty cool.
• Not Kickstarter-related, but worth your attention in its own terrifying way: Paradox Space, the official place for official works set in the Homestuck offical extended universe, has finally gotten around to a Sweet Bro and Hell Of Jeff story. The madness descends once again, this time springing from the fertile, febrile imagination of KC Green, a match so perfect that it defies imagination. Dear readers: Summer Sea Fun is the last comic you need ever read.

Spam of the day:

aspect each in the costs for that mortgage, particularly when it is possible to find unnecessary service fees apart from the fascination. [sic throughout]

Apart from the fascination? Is the fascination not enough for you?

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¹ That Planet Money shirt is still not publishing, and screw squirrels anyway.

Still on slow network, but not quite as bad as yesterday. I’ll take it.

• Best reason to get an eBay account if you don’t already have one: the Stan and Sharon Sakai Benefit Auction, launching next week. Watch this space for further information as it become available. Or, you know, just wait until the 6th and search for “sakai benefit auction” on eBay.
• The Bram Stoker Awards, given by the Horror Writers Association, are the premiere recognition that you are writing something seriously spookifying and creeping others the hell out, while also serving as an inducement to always stay personally on the straight and narrow¹. The finalists for the 2013 awards are in, and alongside familiar names such as Stephen King (competing against his son) and Joe Hill (competing against his father), there is the category for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel, where one may find a series of print efforts, as well as Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo. Okay, granted, he’s nominated for Sin Titulo (Dark Horse Comics), meaning the print edition, but we know it was a webcomic first. Best of luck to Stewart, that Stoker Award would look great next to his Eisner.
• Week to week, it’s even money whether the most thinky comic will come from Randall Munroe or Zach Weinersmith; while the competition may still be open for thinkiest comic, unless Munroe does some real quick publishing Weinersmith won for the thinkiest book by a webcomicker this week. Behold: Polystate: A Thought Experiment in Distributed Government, presently sitting at #5 in Kindle books on the topic of political science.

  I haven’t read Polystate yet (no Kindle, for one thing), but judging from the description I feel confident in reminding Weinersmith that when Stephenson thought up franchulates in Snow Crash he meant them to be all dystopian and satirical, not a model for serious consideration. It’s on your head if society breaks up and devolves into an anarchic, polystatic form, Zach. Yeah, yeah, I know — about to have a new baby in the house, you wouldn’t notice if society collapsed for the next eighteen months or so, but some of us are trying to have a civilization here.

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¹ on the grounds that if you ever do stray and commit some crime, the fact that you thought up something scary enough to win a Brammy will almost certainly be used as evidence at your trial that you are malevolent and spend time thinking about how to harm your neighbors.

You know, Matt Bors is a damn good cartoonist; I don’t agree with his take on everything, but I like that he’s got a clear POV, a rational, consistent approach, and a habit of kicking up rather than down. I read his stuff and react in about equal measure with

• Heh — you tell ’em Matt
• Huh — I never thought of it that way
• Feh — you’re crazy, Bors

Voiceless fricatives aside, that’s a pretty ideal mix of reactions when dealing with political cartooning. However, I think that Bors may be even better as a cartooning curator/editor, a task he’s had at Cartoon Movement [edit to clarify: Bors is no longer with Cartoon Movement although at the time of this writing he was still listed on the masthead], and more recently at Medium, where he edits comics under the heading of The Nib. Since taking the reins at The Nib in September, he’s been collecting talent and enticing more than a few webcomickers with the opportunity to stretch themselves by playing to a new audience and get exposure paid for their skills. He was kind enough to describe how things are going over at The Nib for me:

Medium hired me as a full time cartoonist and editor in September and I launched The Nib, a collection for political cartoons, comics journalism, non-fiction, and humor in general. I’m going for an eclectic mix and I’m pulling in web cartoonists and people from all over the print world. That means a funny strip by John Martz, a journalistic comic from Susie Cagle, or a comic by Bill Roundy about dating gay men with vaginas.

I’ve been publishing original cartoons from the likes of Rich Stevens, Zach Weiner, Liza Donnelly of The New Yorker, and Brian McFadden of the New York Times. Rich is bi-weekly and Weiner is doing an original cartoon once a month. Scott Bateman is doing charts. Wendy MacNaughton is doing some work for me as is Jen Sorensen.

Josh Neufeld is doing a series on a family bouncing back from Hurricane Sandy. Sarah Glidden’s going to be contributing. Canadian conservative political cartoonist JJ McCullough is doing sprawling op-ed cartoons. Molly Crabapple published an illustrated report of her time covering Guantanamo Bay. Shannon Wheeler, Tom Tomorrow, and Ted Rall are involved. I’m talking to more than a dozen others about contributing.

Asked about working with web-types, Bors said:

I love getting cartoonists to stretch out and do something a bit outside of their normal workload. The strip Rich did on Penny Arcade came about through some back and forth we had about their job listing controversy. We’re always spitballing about topics and I try to just direct his bottomless energy reserves into the best possible comics.

More on that job listing controversy in a moment. Back to Matt:

I have a regular stable of contributors now and that will only be expanding in 2014. I have a substantial budget to do this and you’ll be seeing other names you recognize in coming months.

That’s the most important part to me — not just that comics are being seen as an essential part of a website that’s aiming to be a place for conversation — but that they’re valued enough to pay the creators. Here’s hoping that it becomes the start of a trend online and revives the idea of paying for cartoons in print. Thanks to Matt Bors for taking the time to answer our questions.

Okay, about that job listing. I’ll confess, I’m a bit surprised that this one came in for a fairly large wave o’ comments, considering that previous Penny Arcade job solicitations haven’t, and (to my reading, at least), they’ve all presented the idea that working at PA will involve a hell of a lot of work. It’s maybe because this job is more clearly delineatable into different job functions; many of the criticisms I’ve seen have been in terms of If it’s four jobs, why aren’t you hiring four people?

But honestly, it’s probably more because of the combo of these two lines:

We’re terrible at work-life balance. Although work is pretty much your life, we do our absolute best to make sure that work is as awesome as possible so you at least enjoy each and every day here.

and

Annual Salary: Negotiable, but you should know up front we’re not a terribly money-motivated group. We’re more likely to spend less money on salary and invest that on making your day-to-day life at work better.

I’ve seen more than one critique zeroing in on the salary description; if PA runs three trade shows and sells all that merch, why aren’t they paying their people more? Good question, and if you’re the four-function unicorn that could actually fill the job, definitely one that you should ask in salary negotiation. However, as a privately-held company that doesn’t release financials, none of us has any idea how much profit PA derives from the various iterations of PAX¹ or how much margin they make on all that merch. We do know that they carry headcount that is not only not profit-making for the company, but dedicated towards an entirely non-revenue-generating endeavour.

And, this morning, we have information from the guy whose departure in the next couple of months prompted the job opening in the first place. Kenneth Kuan² shared his perspectives on being the Penny Arcade IT Department, and he doesn’t come across as exploited or burned out. There’s going to be a special mix of job skills and temperament that will be able to fill this job, and my suspicion is that person would take the job at almost any pay scale that didn’t require food stamps.

As Kuan points out, different people have different motivations for their work; case in point, while I like my job very much, it’s definitely work and there is a threshold salary below which I wouldn’t be willing to do it. When it comes to blogging, I’m not paid at all and motivated by less tangible things³. When it comes to my work as a volunteer EMT, I’m not only not paid, I drop a significant sum of dosh each year for the privilege of helping the needy (and the abusive drunks, but let’s not go there) (please let’s not go there, I’m riding tonight).

None of which is to say that the PA job posting is off-limits for commentary; Mike and Jerry have built a career around throwing grief where they think it’s deserved, and in the process become both Major Players and Public Figures. That status that makes them legit objects of criticism and/or ridicule, as the situation warrants.

I don’t imagine they’re losing any sleep over this discussion. However (and this applies as well to political cartoonering, bringing us full circle), criticisms and ridicule are always more effective when they’re about what somebody has verifiably done, as opposed to what they are assumed to have done. My gut feeling is that this time, the balance of the critiques are falling towards the latter end of the spectrum.

Now that I’ve doubtless managed to infuriate everybody on all sides of the issue, have a happy Thanksgiving (if you’re in the US) or Thursday (everywhere else) tomorrow. I’ll see you on Friday, provided my blood-pie level doesn’t have me in a coma.

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¹ I’ve worked for various corporations that put on trade shows, exhibitions, conventions, conferences, and the like, and they never turned a profit on such events. The hotels, conference space, event planners — all the external show-running partners — did, but the actual subject of the show would be damn lucky to break even. Point being, none of us knows whether “Three PAXes” appears in the PA ledgers in black ink or red.

² Whom I met briefly in January; nice guy.

³ It’s probably closest to my motivation for spending half my college life on the radio, which I regarded as an opportunity to inflict my musical tastes on (theoretical) listeners in a very modest radius.

I love it when creative types are creative in more than one way, and I mean that as sincerely as I’ve ever meant anything in my life. Case in point: Andy Bell has more creatures, critters, robots, and things in his head than he can reasonably contain, and within the room I presently occupy, I see them in the form of vinyl toys, paintings, stickers and printed books. Were I to move to the kitchen and open the freezer, I’d see them in the form of ice cubes; somewhere upstairs is a zipper pull shaped like meat, and there are also sculptures and plushes and things that I don’t own. Specialization is for insects.

• But, Gary, I hear you cry, that’s one webcomicker type that works in multiple interesting ways. Who else? Glad you asked me, Sparky; how about Jeph Jacques, one of the proverbial¹ giants of webcomics, has launched a project close to his heart: a Kickstarter to record his next Deathmøle album in an actual studio, leading to CDs and possibly vinyl.

  The Permanence campaign cleared goal in an entirely predictable 2.5 hours, no surprise there — until you consider that it launched in the dead of night when not so many people were paying attention, and that 2.5 hour mark was at approximately 2:15am. In the twelve hours since, the project has closed in on spitting distance of US$25,000 and is well on track for six digits of total given that there’s still 29 and a half days to go. Heck, even if metal’s not your thing, check it out just for the names of the backer tiers, and keep an eye out for stretch goals once Jacques has a chance to think them up.

• Okay, that’s two. What else you got? How about voice acting, a topic that is near and dear to my heart? I trust that you have all seen Natasha Allegri’s complete Bee and PuppyCat, yes? And you noticed Wallace, right? And you noticed that Wallace was voiced by Frank “Becky and Frank” Gibson, right? This makes our Frank the sixth (and possibly best) Frank Gibson at IMDB, officially qualifies him for a Bacon Number of 3 (via Tom Kenny), and makes him entertainment industry royalty. Yay, Frank.
• These examples are somewhat obvious, Gary; can’t you come up with something that stretches the idea a little? Straight to the breaking point, if you like. Look, merch design is a part of the webcomickin’ game, and thus the push of Penny Arcade into the world of cloisonné pins is just another bit of merch. Except what they’re making isn’t just merch, it’s a social ecosystem with rules, artistic and business partners, and a touch of fanaticism for good measure:
  

  If you have pins from a previous show (Boston or Australia) you should bring them [to PAX Prime] to trade or just to show off. I saw a guy in Australia holding a cardboard sign on the last day that said “Will trade dignity for PAX East pins!” If you do have some pins from another show to trade I can promise you they will be like gold at Prime.

  Like a lot of social ecosystems, I’m not sure that I want to get in on this one — I have enough completist tendencies that the “Gotta catch ’em all” impulse would likely become dangerous to my sanity, my wallet, or both. However, I will state here and now that anybody cared to set me up with a Robert Khoo and/or Brian Sunter, that would be awesome. No particular reason, nope. Definitely not a secret shrine in my basement, no way. Honest.

• Finally, if you want to get a good idea of what kind of multi-modal² creativity exists/mutates/is possible in webcomicking and beyond, the annual symposium³ to such ideas will be kicking off in the DC Beltway ‘burbs the weekend after next. Intervention is back for its fourth iteration, having hit that self-sustaining point far quicker than is usual for the smaller-scale, single-hotel type shows.

  The guests and programming are eclectic, the participants range from audience to enthusiasts to major pros, and the cross-pollination of creative energies are going to be considerable. For those looking to step into other areas of creative expression, it ought to be of considerable interest.

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¹ Literal as well. How large is Jeph Jacques? In that photo at the top of the page, the Cintiq in the foreground is the new 57 inch prototype.

² Oof, what a horrible word. Sorry for that.

³ In the original sense of the word: drinking party.

As noted last week, A Softer World launched a Kickstarter campaign and released their 999th update, leaving everybody (or at least me) wondering what Emily and Joey would cook up for strip #1000.

Wonder no more.

What initially appeared (to me, at least) as a double-size update has been growing over the past few hours:

We are updating the 1000th comic all day! It’s like a story! A whole big STORY! *passes out* PS KICKSTARTER

As of this writing, it’s eleven rows tall, and each time another strip is added the alt-text changes with it. I suspect that there may be meaning — even a parallel story — there, all those yellow pop-ups will be lost in time, like tears in rain.¹

• There’s been a foofaraw in the writerly corners of blogistan for a couple of days, as a posting credited to the VP of the Horror Writers Association (and on the HWA Los Angeles chapter blog) purported to divide the world into professional writers and — gasp! — hobbyists, and succeeded mostly in pissing off a great number of professional writers. As is often the case, I find the John Scalzi (who is not the only writer I follow that scored only 1/10 on the quiz, far below the 8/10 necessary for validation) may have put it best:
  

  Here’s the actual quiz for knowing whether you are a pro writer or not:

  1. Are you getting paid to write?

  If the answer here is “yes,” then congratulations, you’re a professional writer!

  Okay, that’s Scalzi in snippy mode; he made an even better point a bit further down:

  The problem with [HWA VP’s]² quiz is that it confuses process for end result. Her quiz is about process, and presumably her process — what she thinks is necessary for one to do in order to produce the work that create the end result of making money as a writer. But process isn’t end result, otherwise in this case I wouldn’t be a professional writer, which I clearly and obviously am.

  Confusing process and result here is not a good thing. It confuses writers who are hungry to know what “being professional” means. The things [HWA VP] describes can lead to being a pro writer, but it’s not the only path, or a guaranteed one, not by a long shot. In this respect this quiz defeats its own purpose — it offers no indication about whether one actually is a professional writer, only whether one has jumped through the process hoops that one single writer believes are important to become a pro. [emphasis original]

  This thought of process vs status has been on my mind a fair bit; I don’t think that I’m letting any cats out of any bags to say that Brad Guigar asked me to do a first read on The Webcomics Handbook³, and I find it suffused with a tone of Topic A: Okay, here’s how I do it, and this works for me; you may find a variation on this that works better, or a way that’s completely different and that’s cool. What matters is what you produce. and how few absolutes there are. Maybe Guigar should send a copy care of the HWA.

• Speaking of what you produce, readers may recall that international mystery man Eben Burgoon of Eben 07 launched a Kickstart for a side project called B-Squad back in December, one which didn’t fund very well, and was ultimately unsuccessful. Like others before him, Burgoon has opted to resubmit the B-Squad, a technique that is rarely successful.⁴

  Unlike those others before him, Burgoon is capable of learning from his mistakes: he’s redone his project scope (reducing a US$8000 goal to US$3000), tinkered with his stretch goals, and borrowed successful ideas from other projects (case in point: challenge coins). As a result, he’s much more likely to succeed the second time around.

  In a domain where success is too often assumed to be inevitable, it’s natural for Kickstart campaign owners to look towards successes as things to emulate. These might be your own previous projects (such as Bill Barnes, Paul Southworth, and Jeff Zugale funding the second Not Invented here collection), or they may rely on accumulated name recognition and goodwill (say, Tavis Maiden taking a boost from Strip Search to launch a new strip, much like his fellow Artists have done). It’s rare to see somebody adjust approaches after a stumble rather than just have a hissy fit⁵ about it. Here’s hoping that Burgoon is the start of a trend.

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¹ Rutger Hauer is the man.

² I’ve taken the name because it’s pretty obvious in the posting, and because I suspect that the VP in question is taking a fair amount of shit today for the pretty significant overreach in the original article. I just don’t feel like piling on right now, as I’m presuming that the mistake was one of execution and not intent. Should reports come about that no, the execution matched the intent that that’s actually the viewpoint being promulgated, I may reconsider this notion.

³ Spoiler alert: it’s very good.

⁴ No names, but seriously I’ve seen Kickstarts that failed to raise even ten bucks resubmitted with nothing changed expecting a different result.

⁵ Again, no names, but remember the guy whose project failed to fund and he changed the video into an obscenity-laden screed about how the world didn’t deserve his genius ideas? That was great.

It’s the little touches that you notice, the ones that say I’m paying attention, like turning a piece of wall art into an impromptu superhero in a classy, understated way. Well done, San Diego.

• For those of you in (or coming to) San Diego, you now have one more thing that you should include in your to-do list: on Friday morning at the Hachette booth (#1116, around the corner from Webcomics Central), there will be a This Is How You Die signing, with eight of the writers and artists from the book in one place for your convenience. Additionally, there will be another eight contributors on the show floor at various places and times, a checklist of which David Malki ! has helpfully provided for you. One possible correction to that checklist: it has Braden Lamb at booth #2734 and he may in fact be at booth #2235 due to the previously-mentioned Great Booth Swap of Aught-Thirteen. I’ll check around today and get back to you on that.
• Speaking of booth #2743, Scott C will be there, and you may want to ask him about something cool coming in October. The only thing that could make a second volume of Great Showdowns better is if it included the amazing Pacific Rim Showdown from yesterday, but an October release date means these books are already in the printing pipeline. Oh well, guess that means that there will have to be a third collection in a year or so. Darn.
• Finally, those of you looking past the end of SDCC and who will be in New York in a couple of weeks, and are sick of the extremely hot summer already, Kristen Siebecker has announced her latest learn to drink the good stuff class, this time on the topic of pairing wine with warm-weather foods. You get booze, you get snacks, you get a convenient new location at the West Elm Market in DUMBO, Brooklyn, you get 10% off the class with the code EMAIL10, and 15% discount in the market after the class. August 7th, 6:30pm, at 50 Washington Street in Brooklyn.

For the rest of the week, expect postings throughout the day, as often as I can make them happen.