Re: yesterday’s speculation if we’d see more mainstream creators doing extracurricular in-canon naughties, the answer appears to be yes.

“Walky Performs a Sex” did so amazingly well that Slipshine wants another one in a few months. So it’s gonna happen again!

I’m thinking of doing a Shortpacked!-based one this time around, as Dumbing of Age isn’t really full of currently-bangin’ couples at the moment. You can now start yelling at me really loudly to do Amber/Mike, Robin/Leslie, or Ethan/RandyMilholland’sDoppelganger or Ethan/DramafreeMcWhatshisname. You can, but I won’t promise I’ll listen. The heartdick wants what it wants.

In other news, it’s Goblin Week.

In other-other news, I will be attempting later today to fly home into a Winter Storm Warning. Fun!

This is phone-submitted, so no pics. Heck, given the topic today, probably wouldn’t have been anyway.

I’m assuming that tout de webcomics now knows that David Willis followed up his one-year advance notice of discontinuing Shortpacked! with the only thing he possibly could, hardcore pornography. I may have buried the lede there a little.

Okay, in his latest Kickstarter, Willis opened the idea of drawing uncensored sexytimes, and with the Walky/Dorothy storyline progressing as it was, it seemed a good time to get those crazy kids all naked together. Thus, he (on short notice) announced that Slipshine would be hosting Walky Performs A Sex¹, a 17-page in-canon (but outside regular storyline) on-getting-it.

Hosting on Slipshine means revenue, especially since Slipshine doesn’t do per-item charges; the lowest amount of money you can give Slipshine if you’re not already subscribing is US$24.95 for one month, so the only question was how many new subscribers would Willis drive to the site? Three hours before the 10:00pm EST Sunday launch, the answer was 100:

Slipshine got 100 subscriptions in 1 day for the first time in its history! Thanks Dumbing of Age fans. Thumbing of Age fans.

Really respectable numbers, especially considering it was a record signup rate. Naturally, they continued to sign up after the launch:

huuh if we get 10 more subscriptions in the next half hour that’ll be 200 for the day. #howaboutthat

Spoiler alert, they did:

12am CST final tally: 208… thanks everybody :), thanks @tautologicaly, and THANNNNKS @damnyouwillis . Hope everyone enjoys themselves!

In other words, Willis (let’s just come right out and admit that the surge in subscriptions was entirely due to Willis) drove US$5200 to Slipshine, some portion of whom will become ongoing subscribers. Not bad for somebody not known for “teh pornz”. One wonders how much he could make with a printed copy (maybe Spike can share details on who does the Smut Peddler print jobs). In any event, the amount of untapped revenue to be made with naughty depictions of not-that-kind-of-naughty characters is significant enough, I’d expect to see others repeating the experiment.

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¹ The actual title is much, much longer². I ain’t typing all that out on a phone.

² Hurr, hurr.

It is now a trend that when an X-Files episode I really remember comes up for treatment in Monster of the Week, it is presented at an arm’s length distance. Not that I necessarily mind in the case of Home, because watching other people freak out at it is awesome, too.

• On top of yesterday’s pre-congrats to Dante Shepherd for 2000 strips, one must also today congratulate David Willis for nine years of Shortpacked!¹, which also marks some sixteen and a half years of continuous Walkyverse continuity. Too bad it’s only going for one more year. Say what?
  

  Shortpacked! is nine years old today!

  When it turns ten, it will cease regular updates.

  That is simultaneously the most respectable admission of devotion to Big Round Numbers, the kindliest advance notice to fans of changes coming down the pike, and the clearest-eyed discussion of why to wrap up a project — namely, the ability to keep on top of primary source material in the face of personal changes in life:

  Maggie and I sort of wanted kids eventually ourselves, and so this was something I hadn’t considered. I mean, writing Shortpacked! without a growing toy collection or the funds or time to watch movies or basically spend all day on the Internet getting mad at dumb people? How is that possible? It isn’t.

  Rather than not put into the strip what he feels it deserves, Willis has been for years now transitioning his chief efforts to Dumbing of Age, a far more autobiographical work; Dumbing of Age starting in the autumn of 2010, as the Shortpacked threads started to resolve. We’ve been in a transition point for his creative efforts for at least the past four years, we just didn’t know all of his intent:

  I figured Shortpacked! would end whenever that kid happened. I didn’t want to leave my characters hanging, so starting in 2010 I immediately started wrapping things up one by one. I gave Amber closure with her father. I gave Amber and Mike a happy ending together. I got Robin and Leslie back together (as was always the plan). I got Ethan the hell away from retail.

  That right there? That’s a masterclass in creative planning. Kudos to Willis for finding a creative outlet that he can be invested in, for doing what was necessary to bring it to the point of financial stability, and for giving his readers plenty of notice that the Walkyverse will be wrapping up at the age of about seventeen and a half².

• Hey, look what I got in: books! It’s been a good two days at the ol’ Fleenplex mailbox. Thanks to Gina at :01 Books for The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza, Hidden, and The Undertaking of Lily Chen, and to Bill Barnes for Upgrade Path; their generosity is much appreciated. To receive four such very different books serves to remind me just how broad and deep this medium called comics is. Look for reviews as I have the opportunity to give ’em all a good, thorough reading.
• Quick note: work will be taking me to the Upper Midwest at the start of next week, and as a result my opportunities to update during the day may be scarce. Brief and/or delayed postings may be the result, and we trust that you won’t be too broken up about it. As always, should disaster befall me during my travels, I call upon all of you to avenge my blood.

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¹ Which, if the strip ids are consecutive, would also be the 2002nd Shortpacked! update, wowsers.

² Ironically, about the age that all his characters were when he launched Roomies! all those years ago.

PS: Aaaaaahhhhh!!

Holy crap, this thing is big — physically imposing, heavy enough to be a cause of death if rapidly applied to the base of the skull, and it even smells imposing. Thank you Mr Malki !, this will keep me busy roughly forever. So busy, in fact, that everybody else today gets quick updates instead of long writeups.

• The latest wine-learnin’ class from Kristen Siebecker¹, spoken of in the beforetimes, is upon us², with an emphasis on winter-friendly wines at 7:00pm on Thursday, 30 January, at West Elm in Chelsea. As is her custom, Siebecker has extended a discount to those using the code EMAIL10.
• Herr Doktor Professor Dante Shepherd is about to celebrate a Big Round Number at Surviving The World, and we at Fleen would like to wish him a hearty congratulations a day in advance. Tonight he may be partying like it’s strip #1999, but tomorrow he erupts into the rarefied company of those that have achieved 2000 strips. If my math is correct, he will be one of a literal handful³ of PhD-holding webcomickers to achieve such a feat⁴.
• Dave Kellett put up a future plan for himself today, and what jumped out at me was item #6:
  

  6.) MYSTERY PROJECT: In about 2-4 years, when things calm down a bit, I’m also going start on a new “mystery” project. I can’t say much about it, other than to say… it’ll channel a very different side of my creativity, it’ll take me about a year to complete, and that it’ll be super fun to do.

  It caught my eye because the last time Kellett put up future plan for himself, not quite four years ago, item #4 jumped out at me:

  4.) MYSTERY PROJECT: In addition to Sheldon and Drive, I should mention that I’ve started up a third project that I’m very excited about, but which I can’t really talk about yet. I know, I know…it’s sounds very third-grade of me to bring up a project that I can’t talk about. But here’s what I can say: I’m very excited about it, it’s my first collaborative piece since the “How to Make Webcomics” book, it both is and is not comics-related, and I think it’ll be right up your alley, when it comes time to announce it. More than that, I can’t say. But good things are a-comin’.

  That mystery project turned out to be STRIPPED, which is now so close I can taste it. One can only speculate what this mystery project will be, only we already know that it’s not a film as he took care of those possibilities in item #5. Damn, Dave, you ain’t got to conquer every creative medium known to the species.

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¹ Whose name would apparently translate as they becker from the original German. Names aside, Kristen pretty much put together the first MoCCA Festival, laying the groundwork for all that has occurred since.

² And by us I mean those of us who are within easy travel of Manhattan, and of legal drinking age, and have a desire to up their wine game.

³ This would be a cartoon-style three-fingers-plus-thumb hand.

⁴ Also, while Jorge Cham has on the order of 1700 strips, he’s also got a feature-length movie, so I’m counting him. Deal with it.

Editor’s note: Ordinarily I’d have an image of the front cover of the book here, but since that’s how Ben Costa’s bio at the back of the book describes him, I had to design a business card for him. I think it’s at least as good as Chen Guangbiao’s.

This past week I picked up a copy of Ben Costa’s Pàng, The Wandering Shàolín Monk: Winter Worm, Summer Grass, the second collection of his story of Shì Lóng Pàng, a rather doughy and unimpressive monk trying to a) stay alive; b) stay true to his monastic ways; c) find his lost brothers, in whichever order makes the most sense right now. He may not feel himself a very righteous Buddhist, but given the way that he bounces from crisis to crisis — enemies becoming friends and friends enemies — and somehow finding his path as life buffets him Pàng would make a hell of a Daoist (just don’t tell him that).

There’s actually not much I can tell you about PTWSM:WWSG‘s story if you haven’t read at least some of Pàng’s earlier adventures: the period of Chinese history he occupies was laid out in the early pages of Vol 1, the history and legend of Shàolín (and the political context in which these were developed) was presented immersively and resists any quick summary. I can tell you that Costa has done his homework … if your understanding of Gōngfu was developed from watching Black Belt Theater on channel 11 out of New York on Saturday afternoon in the ’70s (as mine was), there are details here that are far deeper than secret techniques and impressive martial arts moves.

Costa’s art is on the thick-lined cartoony side, but it fits the story well; characters are instantly distinguished by silhouette, posture, and color palette, and lengthy visual sequences are always easy to follow. Costa’s especially good at environments, with rain, afternoon sunlight, murky hut interiors, fog, mud, and the dark of shadowed forests (as opposed to the dark of gloomy night) all adding extensively to the mood of the story.

One quick note — the story of Pàng is on pause at the moment, as he wants to develop the third part of the story completely before starting to put pages up at his website. In the meantime, the Supreme Ultimate Chancellor has been busy, working on a fantasy graphic novel¹ in the meantime. This means it’s the perfect time to get caught up with the more than 350 pages in Pàng’s journey.

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¹ Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Cube, more info available here. And can I say that I love Costa’s titles? Awesome stuff.

I just have a few brief items for you today; sorry, they can’t all be 800 words paeans to new comics that I’ve fallen in love with.

But heck, since we just mentioned Stand Still, Stay Silent, I’ll note that about the time I was discovering Minna Sundberg’s new (and magnificent) comic epic, SSSS was joining up with Hiveworks. Yesterday while reading the latest online rerun of Skullkickers, I noticed a blogposting that Jim Zub had that day shifted his hosting to Hiveworks. Thinking back about a month prior, Maki Naro announced that Sufficiently Remarkable had joined up with … Hiveworks.

Earlier in the year, they chalked up business agreements with Oh Joy, Sex Toy, Girls With Slingshots, Yellow Peril, Gastrophobia, Nemu*Nemu, Girl Genius, Dumbing of Age, Shortpacked! … the list is too extensive to go into here. Which made me think that something I said in a year-end interview with Tom Spurgeon¹, when I thought I was reaching a bit in speculating how quickly Hiveworks could grow.

Turns out they’re growing faster than I thought possible, and providing support in the form of advertising cash money and more to creators. Frankly, I’m astonished how quickly it’s grown as well as how broad the offerings from its clients and affiliates are. At this point, the chief hazard I see for them isn’t survival, it’s growing too large and too quickly; here’s hoping that principals Joseph Stillwell and Isabelle Melan¸on can scale their abilities as the roster grows.

• There’s a nice review of Midas Flesh #1 by Ryan North (words) and Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb (pictures) up at The AV Club today; if it’s a little less gushingly positive than some of the reviews that page has given this creative team, well, it’s a first issue, new characters and story concept, and it’s clear that North dropped into the story quickly, knowing he’s got another half-dozen issues to fill in the gaps. It’s really good, you guys. Plus it’s got a space suit-wearing Utahraptor who needs glasses, what more could you ask for?²
• Quick! Anybody in/around Berkeley, California today? You have a few hours yet to make it over to the Central Library, where Gene Luen Yang will be discussing Boxers and Saints at 6:30pm tonight. About seven hours, to be precise, as I write this. Get goin’.

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¹ Which, uh, I promised I would link when it went live and then didn’t. Look, I just saved you reading 9000 words of me– even though the The Spurge made me sound very smart — over your holidays, you’re welcome.

² Well, I could ask for an explanation how a Utahraptor gets into a space suit without shredding it to rags with his razor-sharp death-claws, but I presume that’s coming around issue 4 or 5.

I have a few things that are coming up, things that you might want to keep an eye on, even.

• For people in … almost any corner of North America, actually, Danielle Corsetto has announced the initial outline of her Girls With Slingshots 10th Anniversary Cross-Continent Road Trip, taking place through most of July and August. More dates and locations are coming, and don’t forget that she’ll be in wildest Kenilworth, NJ for a signing at Wild Pig Comics this Saturday, 18 January, from noon to 5:00pm. Be there or miss out.
• The Hugo Awards nominations are open for those that are associated with this year’s WorldCon in London, UK. The rules surrounding who can nominate and who can vote are somewhat complex when speaking of the Hugos, so please read through all the details here; as often happens at this time of year, a number of people associated with webcomics are eligible, either in the Best Graphic Story category¹, or in other writing categories. My evil twin has put together a list of works he thinks worthy of consideration, both his own and others, for your consideration, and it looks both solid and comprehensive.

  If I might make my own additions to the list, the WSFS constitution states the Hugos are for works of science fiction and fantasy, which I think is broad enough to incorporate Kris Straub’s first Broodhollow collection, Curious Little Thing. For those of you that argue that the WSFS rules don’t say anything about horror, there have been plenty of Lovecraft-inspired works nominated for and awarded Hugos in the past, so deal with it. In the inarguably fantasy-compliant domain Minna Sundberg’s A Redtail’s Dream finished in 2013. Also published in 2013: K Brooke “Otter” Spangler’s AGAHF tie-in novel, Digital Divide, which is a cracking good modern-SF thriller. Anybody eligible to nominate, please give them a read if you’re able.

• And in keeping with the looking theme today, best wishes to Irregular Webcomic creator David Morgan-Mar², who shared with us yesterday the fact that he’s currently waiting out an annoying (but hopefully temporary) condition with his left eye. The fact that Morgan-Mar of all people would have a problem with his vision sits somewhere pretty high up on the irony scale, given that he put his PhD in physics to work in research related to image processing and machine vision, and this his 3000+ plus LEGO®™©^etc-based comics required the mechanical vision of a camera in order to be shared with the world. Yeah, comics are a visual medium, it just seems to me that in Morgan-Mar’s case, everything he touches is a bit extra visual, if you take my meaning.

  Anyway. Take care of those eyes, don’t strain yourself on the research necessary for your Sunday explorations of the history of science (more than 100 of those now, in addition to nearly 3200 comics prior to that point), and if you get any more cool photos of the interior of your own retina, do share because damn, that was neat. Those wishing to share in my get-well sentiments, Dr Morgan-Mar can be reached on Twitter, or at his personal site.

• One last bit — I am now especially looking forward to Something Terrible, as it’s passed the stretch goal to achieve hardcovers. Awesome.

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¹ This will be the first year of the BGS’s five-year existence in which Howard Tayler will definitely not be among the nominees, given he didn’t complete a story-arc of Schlock Mercenary in calendar 2013.

² Quick question: are there any other webcomics creators with an Erd#337;s-Bacon number? Morgan-Marr’s is 6, which is pretty damn impressive. Even more impressive, he has an Erd#337;s-Bacon-Sabbath number (something achieved by only 37 people in the history of the world) of 16, although that site overestimates his Bacon number by 3, giving him a likely EBS# of 13. Damn.

Just something to keep in mind as best you can. Let’s finish this up and send y’all off for a weekend of, hopefully, kindness.

• Today marks 14 years of Sam Brown’s Exploding Dog. It’s tough enough to keep comics going with characters (except for Red Robot #C-63) and plots, but to rely upon short phrases from your readers to drive the artwork? That’s a crazy monster-level of daring and skill right there. Happy anniversary, Sam.
• Following up on our earlier mention of Dean Trippe’s Something Terrible Kickstarter, the totals have passed 300% of goal, but that’s not good enough. You may recall that we discussed the possibility of hardcovers for ST, and Trippe has announced that the physical books will get hard covers at US$22,000 and as of this writing the total is at … US$19,535, with a little more than three weeks to go. Let’s get on that, people — the quality of your reward will leap if you can convince just a few more people to join in.
• As long as we’re on Kickstarter, I’ll mention the campaign for Rod Salm’s first Death At Your Door collection. We’ve mentioned DAYD on occasion over the past few years, but I confess that I missed the Kickstarter going up a couple of days ago. Fortunately, Mr Salm for dropping a note in the comments to let me know so thanks for that and mea culpa.

  One should note that the DAYD campaign has set an extremely modest goal of CDN$700, meaning that the usual Fleen Fudge Factor may not apply — but just in case it does, the F³ is presently predicting a final total of CDN$700 to CDN$1400, or 100% to 200% of goal. Everybody feel good for Rod Salm!

Okay, that’s it. Be kind.

I’ll lay this squarely on Chris Hallbeck’s doorstep; he tweeted a recommendation of a webcomic for its gorgeous art, but since I clicked over and started reading, I have been getting increasingly uneasy. The comic is called Stand Still, Stay Silent, it’s by self-described Swedish-Finnish lady person Minna Sundberg, who it turns out is 24 years old today.

1. Happy birthday, Minna
2. You are way to young to be producing work this good¹, stop it
3. You are seriously creeping me out with this comic

Were you to click through to the front page of SSSS (and you should), you’d wonder why I was (am!) creeped out. Six cheerful enough, youthful enough characters are smiling at you. Their dress indicates they are from far northern latitudes, maybe from the Lapland region. Okay, there are a couple of rifles, but also what looks like a medical bag and maybe a collapsible stretcher — they’re biathletes training in backcountry, or ski patrol members in an area with bears. Look at them, they’re so cheerful.

Spoilers occur below here, so decide if you want to start from page one of the prologue before coming back or not. Cool? Okay.

Those youthful, cheerful maybe-Laplanders are survivors of an apocalyptic disaster, and likely a near-total collapse of civilization, one that reveals itself so slowly. We start on the somewhat ominously named Year 0, Day 0² in Norway, when the complaints are about the rain washing out the roads, concern for an elderly grandmother living on her own, and the “rash illness”. A boat trip for supplies on the mainland is arranged to bring Gran to her doting grandson, and all is well. But … Iceland is shutting down the borders? Still, nobody with the mysterious disease in the patient zero group is that badly off.

Three days later, Denmark is closing its borders and conspiracy theories are running rampant. Day 5, everybody’s wearing masks, businesses are closing for the week, and a Finnish family with some weirdo members that fear nuclear war is holing up for a vacation far from everybody else. Oh, and one of the original patient group has died. By Day 9, a Swedish family heading … anywhere away, really, finds the gas station abandoned (although the pumps were kindly left on), the newspapers with only a few pages (the reporters have gone to ground along with everybody else), and seven of the original eleven patients dead, and others infected later starting to succumb. It’s starting, and nobody knows where it came from, where it’s spreading, or how long it will take to resolve.

These four different vignettes (none featuring that core cast of cheerful, youthful characters) in four different countries on four different days aren’t panicked — they’re annoyed, they’re fighting with their bosses, they’re bitching about the weather and the lack of sports pages and crossword puzzles. They still think that it’s going to be a bad month or two, and it looks like people elsewhere in the world may be hard hit and that’s very sad, but they don’t think the world is ending.

And that’s why I’m creeped out — I have a feeling that the 20 or so characters that we’ve met so far (all of them given names and relationships to the others) are already dead and they just don’t know it yet. Those six cheerful, youthful characters that we haven’t met yet? I wonder how long before we meet them, and how much life they had before Year 0, Day 0. I wonder if there are other pockets of people elsewhere in the world that are isolated enough, or closed their borders early enough, are self-sufficient enough, and haven’t succumbed to chaos … or is that youthful cheerfulness the only thing that’s kept these six and their community (however large it may be) from consuming itself?

Not knowing how we get from Day 9 to those six relentlessly cheerful and youthful mysteries is what’s creeping me out. There’s darkness and failure happening in the cracks and shadows, but it’s out of sight for the moment. We may never see the full horror of what happened to the world and whether it burned itself to the ground, or maybe just simply … wound … down as there were fewer and fewer people to perform all the tasks that keep an industrial civilization running.

Fortunately, I won’t have that long to wait to get some answers (however many we get), or at least get to know those six youthful, cheerful — explorers? defenders? scouts? recolonizers? — on account of the fact that Sundberg is putting up pages like this four days a week.

Keep an eye on this one, it’s going to be a wild ride.

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¹ And to have produced another 500+ page webcomic prior to SSSS, that’s just as gorgeous, imaginative, and assured in two languages? Stop that, you’re making everybody else look bad.

² But as yet incongruously so, because everything is still normal.

Quiet day out there, which is odd as it’s usually Thursdays that are dead, dead, dead. I suppose it’s Thursday somewhere as I write this, so let’s chalk it up to that and move on.

The Society of Illustrators has made a number of changes to the management of the MoCCA collection and the MoCCA Festival since the transfer of assets some eighteen months ago. Honestly? I’d say about 98% of the changes have been long-overdue and for the better, with the end result of raising the profile and prestige of the MoCCA collection and brand.

That process of change continues, as the SoI extends one of their annual¹ traditions to the MoCCA crowd: there is now a Call For Entries for the first SoI Cartoon & Comic Art Annual:

As we strive to expand our mission of promoting the understanding and appreciation of comic and cartoon art, we are proud to announce the first Annual Comic and Cartoon Art Competition.

This juried competition will result in an exhibition that will showcase the most outstanding works created in this genre throughout each year.

The original works will be exhibited in the MoCCA Gallery at the Society of Illustrators from May 28 through August 16th, 2014.

Opening Award Galas will be scheduled where Medals and Certificates will be presented to the artists whose works are judged best in each category.

All accepted entries will be reproduced in a full color catalog. This catalog will present not only the year’s finest works, it will also include commentary by the artists, who explain their creative processes in their own words.

A selection of 40 works from each Exhibition will then tour colleges throughout the country in an educational traveling show, a tradition that we have had at the Society for over 30 years.

Categories exist for Long Form (work longer than 40 pages), Short Form (shorter than 40 pages, including work from anthologies), Special Format (think whatever Chris Ware is doing this year), Digital Media (native to a digital format, including webcomics, online comic strips, and other digitally driven works, up to 20 images per entry), Comic Strip (short form work published in newspapers, magazines, books, online, etc. featuring four or more panels), Single Image (self-contained, with or without caption), and Moving Image (includes animated GIFs, intended to be shown on computer, tablet, via app, etc.).

I can see webcomics creators submitting in the Digital, Comic Strip, or Moving Image categories pretty easily, although I think the definitions should allow for a distinction between long form and short form digital. Somebody get on to the Society and tell them that Gary said they should do their thing differently because he said so, and I’m sure they’ll change it right away.

If submitting a long- or short form printed item, six copies need to be provided by mail; special format needs one copy by mail; digital, strip, single image and moving image are submitted electronically, with certain format requirements². Physical entries require an entry form, and the work must have been produced in the time frame Jan 2013 — Jan 2014.

Now here’s the part some of you will not like: as is common in artistic and literary annuals, there is a fee to be considered: US$20 per entry for Society members, US$30 for non-members. I don’t think this is the same as contests that give the winner the opportunity to work for free (considering it’s for work that’s already done, rather than spec work), and there are costs involved in the administration and judging³. Still if that’s a dealbreaker for you, it’s good that you know up front before putting together your submission packets.

Personally, I think that an update by Emily Carroll or Boulet, or a selection of Kate Beatonmas comics would be shoo-ins, but that would depend on how strictly the categories are defined, I suppose. I guess we’ll all find out together come springtime.

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¹ Literally, as we’ll see in a moment.

² Images are submitted at must be 1000 pixels on the longest side, RGB or JPG; moving images need to be MOV for submission through the site linked above, but links for other formats can be emailed.

³ The SoI is stating plainly that all entries will be seen by all members of the category jury, which could make for a hell of a lot of work for the jury members.