Some things go exactly as you expect; anybody could have told you when PAXEast registrations went live today, the tickets site (and the hotels site, for that matter) were gonna get hammered like the Obamacare site on launch day. Seems to have sorted itself out, in the sense that much of the registration and hotel inventory are now spoken for. Have fun in Boston, y’all.

• One thing that’s been pretty much constant for a really long damn time is that every morning, there will be a new update at Sinfest. Love it or hate it (or, given that it’s about five different strips in one, love parts and hate other parts), Tatsuya Ishida’s strip is something you can practically set your watch by — checking the archive, the last break in the daily schedule I can find was the several weeks long gap between 14 June and 10 July of 2006. More than 2600 days in an unbroken streak followed until today.

  Not that Ishida (who is quiet and not well-known in webcomics circles) owes us an update or anything — it’s just that when a long-established pattern suddenly changes, it sure as hell catches your eye. Fleen hopes that all is well with Ishida and thanks him for all of the free comics to date, and appreciates him in advance for any that he creates in the future.

• More than seven years of an update streak is a pretty big number, and here’s another: 1,254,120, which readers may recall as the number of United Sates Dollars raised by Rich Burlew in his record-shattering Kickstarter campaign last year¹. I’m bringing Burlew and his campaign up because he emailed me regarding The Lando Effect (as described by Rich Stevens yesterday) and declaring it the reason that said Kickstart became such a huge success:
  

  I just wanted to point out that the Lando Effect that you mentioned in yesterday’s column is exactly what powered my Kickstarter project. The initial pitch included a bonus digital story about the history of a secondary character, and also allowed three backers to buy additional stories about any character they chose that would then be distributed to all backers. As the drive went on, I added more side stories with each goal hit … So, yeah, it absolutely does work, as long as your audience is invested in the series as a whole and the chosen character is compelling enough in their main story appearances to pique interest.

  In case you didn’t have a reason to believe Stevens, Burlew has given you one-point-two million more reasons, and also ascribes to the “side story” model the success of his print collections that pre-date the Kickstart. Just don’t ignore his last line, which we’ll repeat here with a little emphasis added:

  So, yeah, it absolutely does work, as long as your audience is invested in the series as a whole and the chosen character is compelling enough in their main story appearances to pique interest.

  Also, try not to have near-career-ending injuries at any time; if you find yourself on the cusp of having a near-career-ending injury, just imagine Burlew standing a meter or so in front of you, sadly but firmly shaking his head and silently mouthing the word No.

• Finally, it’s Wednesday, and that means it’s Charles Christopher day², and for those of you that have always wondered Hey, Karl Kerschl lives in Montréal, when will we be able to read Charles Christopher in French?, the answer is Real damn soon now, Sparky:
  

  The first volume of The Abominable Charles Christopher has been translated for the French market by my pals at Studio Lounak! It’s their first publication and it’s a beautiful hardcover volume with a spot-gloss on the lettering.

  It’s available through a number of retailers and you can buy it now from werehouse.ca, which also stocks my other books, as well as books by Becky Cloonan, Andy Belanger and Cameron Stewart.

  This is the first of many such volumes, and hopefully more translations!

  Given how non-culturally-specific TACC is, I’m not surprised at all to see that Kerschl’s pushing for translations — there’s a world of people who would read these gorgeous, heartfelt comics in other languages, and I hope that they spread the word far and wide in their respective linguistic communities. My French is extremely spotty³ so I think I’ll give this one a miss, even though it comes with an exclusive bookplate that looks pretty gorgeous.

_______________
¹ Which resulted in a creative-production and fulfillment job that would send most rational people into a fetal ball o’ panic, and give rise to serious thoughts of taking the money and fleeing to a country without an extradition treaty. Burlew continues to make progress (hampered as he was not only by the scope and scale, but also by a near-career-ending injury 13 months ago) and has set the standard for communicating progress made on the many aspects of fulfillment via his brilliantly-designed Workometer.

² Also weekly computer maintenance day, but maybe that’s just me?

³ When traveling, I count myself lucky if I can use the local language to get a train ticket, a hotel room, and a beer. I’ve managed that so far in Czech, French, Dutch, and Japanese, but I only “studied” one of those for four years in high school. Oh, and when I speak French, I have a tendency to drift into other languages, including on one particularly embarrassing occasion outside of Antwerp, tlhIngan Hol.

If you find any broken links or missing photos in posts, do let me know; I think that I’ve got everything fixed for the current calendar year, and will be working my way back through older posts as I encounter them. Yay, hosting! Also, while I’m thinking about it, something about shifting hosting just brings the spammers out in full force — in the past 48 hours I’ve had to clear more spam out of the filters than the previous two weeks; for some reason, they’re really attached to this old post regarding the SPLAT! Symposium back in March 2008. No idea why it’s so attractive to people that really want me to buy fancy shoes.

Okay, it’s late, let’s do this:

• Congrats to Krishna Sadasivam on 15 years of PCs, Weenies, and PC Weenies.
• Big thanks to the USPS for bringing me a copy of Skin Horse book 4 (which continues the tradition of the previous volumes of somehow ramping up the crazy and loopy and the ha-ha to ever-new heights).
• For those of you with RSS feeds, there’s one that you really should be on, courtesy of the very sexy R Stevens; Perpetual Edge Case is not where you go for pixel comics, it’s where you go for philosophical musings when they occur, and when they do they’re full of mad wisdom. I’m going to quote liberally (that is to say, in its entirety, because you need to read it) from the one that dropped yesterday, entitled The Lando Effect:
  

  Free games with in-app purchases are apparently the One True Way to make money off indie games. I can’t find the articles I read that I got that from, so I hope you’ll indulge me for the length of this email.

  The point is that people more easily spend money on stuff inside a game than they do paying a small amount up-front for the game. You’re more likely to buy zombie-fighting upgrades to your Plants or Mighty Eagles for when you get frustrated by Angry Birds than you are to spend $10 for the game itself. (I am the opposite, but what else is new?)

  As someone who’s kinda been doing that with free comics that eventually translate into merchandise sold to 1-2% of readers, that makes a lot of sense to me.

  But what about in-app purchases *inside comics*?

  Let’s take Scott Pilgrim for example. It’s a dumb-kid-hero-quest-romance narrative with a clear line between lost boy and the boss characters he needs to defeat to find love and be a “man”. (I’m being extremely reductionist here.) But what makes the series special are all the side characters. What if such a book came out today for free as a digital series? How would you make a living off it?

  If you were selling it to me, you’d offer the story in a free serialized form with the ability to buy “side quests” to see more of characters like Wallace and Knives and Kim Pine who otherwise just come in and out of Scott’s story. Give me Scott’s story for free but sell me the Mighty Eagle of Kim Pine getting in a bar fight or Wallace going out on dates.

  The Empire Strikes Back is free, but for .99 you get an 8-minute Lando featurette showing a failed romance that ended just before the events of the movie which set him up to make a deal with Darth Vader. Twin Peaks is free, but you can give David Lynch a buck for a monthly webisode about the front desk of the Great Northern hotel or of Audrey Horne ordering pie. Spider-Man comics are free, but for 75 cents, you can follow the villains or Aunt May around for an extra 8 pages of hijinks.

  I wonder if that would work. You put some ads on the free stuff, which folks who buy the extras don’t have to see. You get readers who would never plunk down for the book itself. You get to spend more time with the fan favorites who don’t really advance the main plot. [emphasis original]

  If you don’t already subscribe to what is for all intents and purposes the Rich Stevens Conspiracy-of-One Newsletter, get on that.

That’s it for today and remember, if you need Christian Louboutins, I apparently know about twenty three guys that can set you up.

Update to add: Steven has posted the essay at The Medium.

I might get used to this.

No, that’s a lie, ain’t gonna happen anytime soon. As usual, many thanks to Jon Rosenberg¹ and Phil “Frumph” Hofer². I cannot say enough good things about either of them, so buy Jon’s books and tchotchkes and hire Frumph for all your WordPress/website needs.

Oh, and needless to say — let us know if anything’s broken. Contact form is over there to the right.

_______________
¹ Disclaimer: he owns my soul.

² Who is so good that you can go to sleep thinking Jon might need to shift hosting and wake up to an email that says Heya, Phil here, moved your site and here’s your new credentials, you’re all set.

Oh Zach Weinersmith, you scamp, you’re always making me look at things differently.

• Speaking of changes in perspective, there’s a crackerjack recap by Hurricane Erika of the talk she gave at this year’s XOXO Fest. Part bio, part perspective on life as an independent artist, part look to the future. The thing about Erika is, every time I read one of her comics, I learn something about somebody else — how they view the world, what their experiences are, how they’re different from me. I am utterly convinced that her work has made me more empathetic than I would have been otherwise. Hell, she (with co-conspirator Jeff Parker) turned a member of a feared and despised subculture into a sympathetic character without even divulging her name. She’s smart, she’s humane, and you should give it a listen.
• For reasons unknown even to myself, today’s Achewood made me think on my favorite character, Mr Cornelius Bear¹, and I got to wondering how long it had been since we’d seen him with his young paramour, Polly. Answer: It has been five years (almost exactly) since today’s sentence, the whirlwind of attraction and the dinner party at Ray’s. It has been more than four years since last we saw mention of Polly, a strip that led directly to the most Mexican Magical Realism adventure of all time, Todd’s foray into North Korea. Lots of things have changed in the four years since, but Chris Onstad’s ability to delight is not one of them.

_______________
¹ Naturally, except for Ramses Luther Smuckles, who kicks men’s asses and votes

Well! That was fun! Let’s mention all the things that I wanted to talk about yesterday, yes?

• Because of the interruption, I’m behind on pointing out Spike’s amazing near-24 hour comic on making it in comics (think of it as a very narrowly-scoped version of Poorcraft, only instead of being about life in general, it’s about being a comics artist in particular) and the Kickstarter for Natasha Allegri’s Bee and Puppycat to be made into a series. Both of these things are awesome, and I have practically nothing to add to what was already said (except, perhaps, to note that the US$10,000 limited reward for the Bee & Puppycat Kickstarter was snagged up sometime in the first hour and forty-five minutes).
• Heck I’m even behind on congratulating Gene Luen Yang for Boxers & Saints moving up from the Long List to finalist at the National Book Awards in the category of Young People’s Literature. I noted after the long list announcement that I’d been unable to find any other graphic novels that have been nominated in the history of the NBAs; with this latest (and supremely well-deserved) nod, Yang is certainly the first to repeat for graphic novel recognition. Heck, even getting nominated more than once is rare — Kathi Appelt is nominated this year alongside Yang and was also in 2008, and Rita Williams-Garcia was nominated back-to-back in 2009 and 2010. That’s some pretty rarified company that Yang finds himself in.

Now that I’m caught up, let me get ahead of the curve on two other items I found interesting:

• Lauren Zukauskas does the great Rachael & Penny and opened up orders for a very limited run of her first print collection, which is now unfortunately sold out. However! She is taking pre-orders on a new print run so you can still get in on that. R&P is terrific stuff, so give this one a good look, ‘kay?
• And the always-valuable Jim Zub took the time to share numbers once again (see earlier data here) on how Skullkickers (a critically-lauded, modest-selling indy comic) has finally earned out and become net profitable. It took 23 issues and more than two years, and it’s a very small slice of profit, but it’s profit. If you’re trying to make money on your own in comics, read everything Zub has to say about Skullkickers — it’s the perfect complement to Spike’s comics-lifestyle travelogue.
• Lastly, some good news in a world that seems bound and determined to exploit the crap out of independent creators; from Ryan Estrada (who else?):
  

  If you need a happy ending: I’ll be sending well paying job offers out soon to some artists I found by editing @forexposure_txt

  Suck on that, wannabe exploiters; creators worth working with get paid, with money.

Just past noon on Saturday at the recently-concluded New York Comic Con, I saw (from the corner of my eye) the back of Ryan North’s head at the BOOM! booth as he was signing Adventure Time comics and I was speaking with Ananth Panagariya and Yuko Ota. I blinked but a moment and Ryan North was gone. You would think that a 2 meter tall man couldn’t disappear, even on a crowded show floor, but he did, as if he was never there in the first place. Filing this away for future reference¹, I said my goodbyes to Ota and Panagariya and made my way down into the bowels of the Javits Convention Center.

In the pleasantest of surprises, I found that the death crush of people moving to and from panel rooms had been largely alleviated by specific lining-up corrals, and that the hazards of years gone by were gone. I was able to walk freely to the vicinity of the line for Room 1A8, where I found Kate Beaton and Chris Hastings chatting with fans near the front of the line. A short while later we would enter the room along with Beaton and North’s agent (and the panel’s moderator), Seth Fishman — although North had not appeared. On the dais, there was a brief flurry of consternation, wondering how a 2 meter tall man could be hidden under any circumstances, and the possibility that a substitute Ryan might have to be somehow procured². Fortunately, North appeared both in the room and unconcerned as he casually glanced at his phone and noted that five minutes remained until the start of the panel and sat at the table.

The panel itself (titled Beyond The Webcomic) dealt with past, present, and future creative eandeavours, and took a focus on how webcomics have changed rapidly in the time they have existed, and so a creator that wishes to keep creating must adapt into other areas as well. Rather than try to provide a transcript or recap, I’m going to give you some choice quotes and exchanges from the hour, roughly in chronological order.

Comics is the only thing I have complete autonomy with, so it’s the first thing on the chopping block. — Beaton on the prioritizing of comics vs other projects when time is tight.

In response to a question from Fishman about projects they regret not being able to do, due to time:

I said no three times in the same day about two weeks ago and I felt like a jerk but it was also empowering? — North on not being able to do everything.

This is fun, thinking of stuff I regret. I was going to do a McNinja Choose Your Own Adventure book; Ryan was doing Hamlet at the same time³ and we were going to have a crossover in our books. But then I realized his was a million times better and I dropped it. — Hastings, followed immediately by:

Oh my god. It was my fault? — North.

I was going to so something with Time’s blog, I would have had access to all their archives and photo references, but it fell right when I was moving from New York to Toronto. I don’t regret it, but it would have been cool. When I first started getting offers I felt like I had to say yes to every offer, because what if they never offer anything again? But if the work is good, the offers will always be there. — Beaton.

What they’re working on or have coming up:

I have a book deal with Scholastic, I’ll be doing picture books for kids, and there’s a pony in it. [signs contract] — Beaton, as recounted yesterday.

Success in comics is amazing and I don’t completely trust it … so I’m very interested in exploring these other avenues. — Beaton again, following up on why she’s doing so many non-comics projects these days, most of which she can’t tell us about yet.

Coming up next is Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe, I just got in the final script and the first issue went to press this week. It releases starting in November every other week, so you get all four issues pretty quick. I’m about to announce the Kickstarter for a Dr McNinja card game. I’m also working on Galaga with Ryan … it’s a very corporate webcomic. They don’t make ANY money on it, they don’t even TRY. They just pay us. — Hastings, on what is best in life.

The new thing is Midas Flesh, which will be coming out soon. [North was interrupted and asked to recount how he came to work with BOOM]. The BOOM origin story is they emailed me asking if I wanted to write Adventure Time and I said yes.

Well, first I emailed my wife to ask if I could do it, not asking permission, but asking if I was capable of it and she said yes. The other thing is the sequel to Hamlet, which will be Romeo And/Or Juliet. — North.

On being asked about their dream project:
I’d like to write a movie. — Hastings.

I’d kind of like to write a computer game. I also have a pitch for the first half of a Back to the Future reboot but I don’t want to be the guy that people say You ruined my childhood. But you know that somebody’s going to remake it and I just don’t want it to be horrible. — North.

Is Strickland going to be in it? — Hastings.

Absolutely! It’s all about Strickland. He doesn’t age. — North.

I’ve been talking to the National Film Board of Canada about doing something with them. I don’t have time for it now, but I’m sure the opportunity will come around sometime. — Beaton, on the very real possibility of working with a beloved Canadian institution.

_______________
¹ I must think deeply on how this incorporates into my theory that Ryan North actually died last December and has had his mighty spirit occasionally contained within an artificial shell ever since.

² As if you could find in any other person the height, playful command of language, and undying love for and from both Noam Chompsky and Joey Comeau that are the very definition of Ryan North.

³ Editor’s note: this is roughly contemporaneous with the period of time that Zach Weinersmith was working on Trial of the Clone, for the webcomics CYOA trifecta.

I’m not sure what was more unusual — that the closest thing I have to a home-town convention got covered (due to Work and Family circumstances) in about half of a Saturday, or that the Javits Center’s renovations have cleared off the main show floor to the extent that such was possible for me to do.

Having learned my lesson last year re: the impossibility of swimming against the tide to Artists Alley, I arrived good and early on Saturday morning, my press badge in hand and my Twitter account credentials resolutely un-registered. Early enough, in fact, that the possible chokepoints where you had to physically touch your badge to a reader to enter or exit the grounds weren’t very chokepointy at all, but I wasn’t entering or exiting with large swells of people.

• A few minutes after 10 they let us into Artists Alley were I immediately made my way to the table of Scott C. to purchase the second Great Showdowns collection¹, which came with an amazing sketch of Mr The Frog and an amusing story as to why Mr C. always thinks of me as Doug.
• A short while later I was making the acquaintance of Maki Naro, Strip Search veteran and PopSci cartoonist without portfolio. This was a casual visit rather than a formal interview, and so I can tell you that Naro’s got some good-looking stuff ready to drop in the near term, and I’ll be talking more about that once it does. For now, I’ll merely say that his beard was as magnificent as I suspected. Also, his Hippie Love Commune compatriot, Mackenzie Schubert, was busy with somebody every time Naro and I had a conversational lull until such time as I had to leave the AA floor, so I apologize that I didn’t get a chance to talk with him also. Next time!
• I was initially disappointed that the redoubtable Jim Zub wasn’t at his AA table, but on a hunch I dropped into the orbit of the ShiftyLook booth, waiting for an on-stage interview. I believe I mentioned previously that the forthcoming Samurai Jack comic by Zub looks great, and I shared this opinion with him; he replied with some good news: the five-issue mini has already been extended to a ten-issue run. So when Jack launches later this month, do me a personal solid and buy it, and keep buying it, because good numbers at the start of the run could be what convinces IDW to change things to “ongoing” status.

  Before leaving, I mentioned to Zub that more than anybody else I know in web-/creator owned-/freelance comics, he’s succeeded in making himself the brand, as opposed to any particular project he works on. People that have never heard of Skullkickers will read Samurai Jack, others will read his Lil’ Red Sonja oneshot, or Makeshift Miracle, of ShiftyLook projects … a lot of them will take a leap of faith and try out one of his different projects because he’s done such a good job at transferring fan interests from one to another. Hold that thought, it’ll be recurring.

• Moving a few aisles over to the BOOM! booth, I ran into Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya, waiting to start their signing for Adventure Time: Candy Capers. Speaking of creator-as-brand — they’ve moved from autobio into licensed work-for-hire, as well as original graphic novels (like Lucky Penny, serializing now at JW), along with other projects. It’s not easy to move from such close association with a project that is literally about your own life into being well-regarded in lots of different spheres, but they’re well on their way.

  They didn’t even mention at the time (because it wouldn’t be announced for a few more hours) their involvement on the NAMCO High game (previously mentioned with respect to the involvement of Andrew Hussie back in San Diego). Because that announcement? Involves a significant chunk of webcomics. Hussie is now identified as Creative Director, Panagariya as Head Writer, with a writer’s room including Magnolia Porter and Brian Clevinger, and character design/animations from Ota, R Stevens, JN Wiedle, Ashley Davis, and Geneva Hodgson, with more contributors to be revealed. Kudos to Ota and Panagariya for keeping to the terms of the NDA, and congrats to everybody else for getting to work with so many creative people at once².

• This is getting a bit long, so I’ll bring you the fun quotes from the Kate Beaton, Chris Hastings, and Ryan North panel on life Beyond the Webcomic tomorrow, but I will leave you with one choice bit now. Beaton has projects she’s working on, so many that she can’t talk about, but she announced one of them at the panel: a 32 page illustrated children’s book for Scholastic, featuring a certain pony that you may recognize; in fact, the panel was the very earliest that Beaton could announce the deal, as her agent (Seth Fishman, who moderated) handed her the contract to sign as she was sharing the news. That’s what you call immediacy in the internet age.

_______________
¹ Bonus fun: this book contains the Showdown from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, which hangs on my wall.

² I wasn’t going to get NAMCO High, but if Magnolia Porter is writing character/dialog for high school students? I’m there.

The last ten years were a gift.

I’ll be back in a week or so. Be good to each other until then.

Sometimes things happen quickly. Time from noted SF author John Scalzi tweeting about being referred to as a mangina to noted fantasy author Seanan McGuire deciding that sounds more like a kaiju than an insult: 2 minutes. Time from that to noted SF author/webcomicker Howard Tayler¹ to throw a little fuel on the fire of there needing to be a mangina kaiju illustration: 8 minutes. Time from that to noted webcomicker and thriller/pulp author K Brooke “Otter” Spangler² to take up the stylus and get to artin’: 2 minutes.

And a mere 69³ minutes later (which included research), the kaiju in question was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. From offhand complaint to brain-melting horror: 81 minutes. Not to mention Tayler’s later upping of the ante (complete with robo-tighty-whities), and a short while ago the unveiling of the inevitable battle between the two by webcomicker Kasey Gibbs. We live in a weird, weird world, my friends.

• Hey, you know how Godzilla — or Gojira, if you prefer — was the first of the kaiju, and how he’s basically a great big dinosaur? Okay, radioactive and otherwise informed by movie logic but a dinosaur nonetheless. Dinosaurs have power, and dinosaurs don’t have to do what parents and teachers say, and this is a fundamental truth that every child knows.

  None moreso that Allie Brosh who has illustrated to great effect exactly what happens when you let a child become a dinosaur and it escalates to an entirely out-of-control state with awesome and fearful speed. What I love about Brosh’s (too infrequent, but I’ll gladly take what I can get) missives on childhood is how truthfully they capture the state of being a child; children can be little sociopaths (in the clinical sense of the word) and she doesn’t shy from that fact.

• Coming soon! Katie Rice announced a start date for her Strip Search-winning new webcomic, Camp Weedonwantcha, on Monday 28 October.
• Not to be outdone, fellow Strip Search finalist Abby Howard has already released the first two installments of The Last Halloween to Kickstarter backers (no, I’m not sharing my link with you, that’s what you get for not backing when you had the chance), which were described as “three weeks early”, so we should be getting the launch of TLH in a week.
• Also not to be outdone, final Strip Search finalist Maki Naro is dropping hints that his new webcomic, Sufficiently Remarkable, is gettin’ close. If I were a betting man, I’d bet that when I track Mr Naro down in the NYCC Artists Alley next weekend, we will have some SuRe to discuss (and since he’ll be sitting next to Ms Rice, I’m certain that CW will also come up). Also please note that I am not a betting man. In any event, this month will most likely go down in history as The Great Strip Search Launchening Of October Aught-Thirteen, yaaaay.

_______________
¹ My evil twin.

² Disclaimer: a personal friend, and curiously the only one mentioned so far without at least one Hugo Award; get on that, Hugo nominating committee!

³ It’s a coincidence, grow up.

That is to say, here are various things happening near to the world of indy- and webcomics, and you should check them out.

• Jim Zub was kind enough to send me an advance review PDF of his forthcoming Samurai Jack #1 and it is good. How good? Understand that I’m not precious about comics — I don’t do the collecting-for-future-value thing; if it’s not something I want to read again, I don’t keep it. Even though I’ve read it, I’m going to buy a copy of SJ#1 when it drops in three weeks because it’s damn good and people that do good work deserve to be paid for it.
• One of the way you can support people that do good work is to pay them, with money. One of the ways that a lots of comics artists get you to pay them with money is via convention sketching and commissions; you can imagine that it would be an unusual thing for an artist to decide to give up a channel for making money (and thus allowing them to keep their career as an artist), but sometimes it’s for good reasons:
  

  Something I should say in advance of Thoughtbubble next month – I’m no longer doing commissions/sketches of characters that aren’t my own.

  It’s been a long deliberation about this but I’ve finally come to the conclusion that it’s not really something I enjoy doing.

  And if I’m not enjoying it, I feel like I just rush through it and produce a mediocre piece, which isn’t good for you, or me.

  So, my apologies for anyone who was looking for Batman/Catwoman/etc sketches. I’ll still of course sign stuff.

  I’m aiming to have some nice prints, and hopefully a new sketchbook, and copies of Sin Titulo¹ which I will draw in.

  I’m also going to try and bring some new pieces of my own, drawn and framed, which will be for sale, so you will be able to buy an original. [links, empahsis mine]

  Stewart’s coming at this from exactly the right perspective — trying to make the commission game have value for the fan, while also not being something that puts work into the public view that isn’t his best. It’s laudable, and fans of artists only for their mass-market work will hopefully open up to the idea that there may other things that those favorite artists draw that are just as (more, even) compelling. I’m reminded here of an early NYCC where I watched (Stewart’s onetime studiomate) Karl Kerschl entertain a stream of Flash fans that couldn’t be bothered to take two seconds to look at The Abominable Charles Christopher.

• Speaking of NYCC, let me update our NYCC Webcomics-type Exhibitor List to include Scott C, who will be in the Artists Alley at table N2. I missed him in my trawl of the exhibitor list due to his being identified as Scott Campbell, a name I sometimes forget is his. In any event, Mr C is one of the friendliest guys in all of the comicky arts and you should go see him and buy a print, painting, book, or other tangible expression of his art².
• A’course, it is not just we, the readers of comics, that creators depend on — they must deal with publishers, editors, freelancing, and work-for-hire in varying degrees. It is with that topic in mind that longtime comics creator Kurt Busiek Mark Waid [Editor’s note: How the hell did I mistake those two gentlemen?] wrote to young comics freelancers about dealing with work-for-hire and it’s a must-read for all those that aspire to work in corporate comics:
  

  [I]f you never listen to another word I say, and I talk a lot, please know this: the only one watching out for your future is you.

  Be professional. Be a problem-solver. Be willing to compromise in the face of a solid argument. Be willing to lose sometimes because you’ll learn more that way than you will by always winning. Ultimately, if a client is paying you for your services, he or she has every right to set the specifications, just as you have a right to your integrity. But when people jealous of how you make a living try to rag you with that old truism that every company employee has to eat shit now and then, remind them that you are not an employee. You’re a contractor. You do not receive health benefits, sick days, pensions, vacation time, or any of the other considerations traditional employees receive. Your clients have zero ethical or moral ground to lie to you, to denigrate you, to cheat you, to demand more from you than they’re paying for, to unapologetically walk back on promises or treat you maliciously, or to exploit your need to put food on the table. The good ones won’t. Never trust the bad ones.

  The quality of your work is all that matters. That’s what buys you longevity. [emphasis original]

  There’s much more at the link, and it’s all worth reading.

• Let’s end on an out-of-this-world note. Sure, you can plunk US$39.95 down with a bogus registry to get a pretty certificate that a star was named after you, but the real astronomical brass ring is having the governing body of astronomical names recognize you. Randal Munroe of xkcd now has an actual asteroid named for him, and he does what any good geek would do with that information:
  

  The first thing I did was try to figure out whether 4942 Munroe was big enough to pose a threat to Earth. I was excited to learn that, based on its albedo (brightness), it’s probably about 6-10 kilometers in diameter. That’s comparable in size to the one that killed the dinosaurs—definitely big enough to cause a mass extinction!

  4942 Munroe is described here, and it can be found here. And may I say that although the vast majority of NASA is shut down due to a factional hissyfit in the House of Representatives, these two websites are still up and running and therefore must be essential, QED.

________________
¹ Sin Titulo is fabulous and yes you can read it for free on the web, but remember what I just said about rewarding good work? Go do that.

² Once again, all about rewarding good work.