Day’s almost done, so let’s get this done.

• 10! Years, that is. I missed it earlier, but this past Sunday marked ten years of Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew. Despite various heatlh-related hiatuses, Burlew has managed an average of 92 (sometimes ridiculously complex) strips a year for a decade, or one every four days, so if you’re one of those that complain about not getting your free entertainment more regularly, please be quiet.
• 2500! Strips, that is. Ryan North, despite writing all the awesome comic books, revivifying an entire book genre, training a small mammal, inspiring two bestselling anthologies, and writing a critique of a movie novelization longer than the novelization itself has found the time to create 2500 completely sweet episodes of T-Rex. Also he is very tall.
• Return! Just in time for Halloween, that is. Dave Roman is more blur than human; he is in constant motion as he promotes comics to young readers, and amazing characters fall out of his brain and onto the page with astonishing regularity: Jax Epoch, Astronaut Academy, Teen Boat¹ … and back today for more installments, Agnes Quill. There couldn’t be a better time for the plucky, smart teen detective and the haunted city she calls home, what with it being October and all.

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¹ Be careful about searching for the term “teen boat”, as the porn industry makes the term “teen” fairly toxic to search for, especially if you’re at work.

Today’s about value for your discretionary spending dollar.

• The webcomicsosphere chatter fairly exploded over the weekend with praise for a very short comic (18 pages, including covers, afterword, and 14 nearly-wordless pages) by longtime creator Dean Trippe. Something Terrible is about something terrible that happened to Trippe, how it affected him, and (not to put too fine a point on it) how he was saved by his son and Batman.

  It’s a devastatingly honest work, a very public piece that says This happened to me, it became a part of me, but it’s not who I am. For 99 cents, you can download Something Terrible from Sellfy, and when you’re done reading it, you’re going to be in the mood to support Trippe’s comic-making, so maybe donate a bit more via his own webcomic’s page — or better yet, grab a print of his previously-released print, You’ll Be Safe Here.

• Now while I wouldn’t go back and not read Something Terrible, I have a feeling that (like me) you might be in the mood for a shift of tone. How about we trade adult-and-serious for adult-and-hilarious? Fleen fave K Brooke “Otter” Spangler has many fine wares in her Internet Shoppery but we’re on a budget so we’re heading to Amazon instead for her PDF-only pulp novel, The Russians Came Knocking, starring her technologically-augmented Federal agent slash manwhore, Josh Glassman. Obligatory disclaimer, Otter’s a good friend of mine, and she just might have put in the bit about the squirrels after my run-ins with the brush-tailed little bastards, and for that I will love her forever. That’s another 99 cents, so we’re just under two bucks in our buying trip.
• Having made it throgh TRCK¹, your laugh muscles may be warmed up enough for a pro-level workout, and the sexiest man in webcomics² is going to provide it. Brad Guigar has recorded his infamous laugh as a ringtone for your phone. Three ringtones, in fact, including the laugh courtesy of the infamous episode #76 of Webcomics Weekly when a troublemaking Skype locked into a loop of Guigar’s laugh-chuckle³ and nearly killed Kris Straub and Scott Kurtz. It’s US$2.99 for the three ringtones, meaning that we’re at a grand total of US$4.97 and you’ve got three shiny pennies to buy candy with.

  Or, alternately, you could go make your own money via memefication, with bonus points for ensuring that the webcomic creator gets none of it.

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¹ And one must remember that around Josh, the verb knocking takes on a particular meaning, as in knocking boots or knocking shop.

² I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Mrs Guigar is a lucky, lucky woman.

³ The madness starts around 7:45.

Before I have to clear out of here to make a Friday-afternoon flight.

• Jim Zub’s Makeshift Miracle resumes from hiatus today, until October at least. If you haven’t been reading, get started on that.
• Matthew Inman gets some props from Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich of RadioLab in an interview over at The AV Club. Said props are specifically on the topic of murdershrimps, but the interview itself is a nice meditation on the nature of creativity and creative partnerships.
• Hiveworks continues its rapid expansion with the addition of Hurricane Erika’s Oh Joy, Sex Toy. A long time ago I wrote about a theoretical webcomics support-services provider that I termed Aduz; today in addition to Hiveworks and its hosting/advertising gigs, you have TopatoCo’s curated merch-handling, Make That Thing’s Kickstarter-wrangling, Blind Ferret staking out a spot between HW and The Big T, Breadpig expanding from mostly publishing-related ventures into Kickstarter sherpa services, and the ever-present George. Aduz is here, service providers keep growing to fill the need, and here’s hoping they manage their growth smartly so as not to overextend beyond capacity¹. Exciting times.

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¹ TopatoCo are the masters at this; I’d estimate they could be at least 30% larger than they are right now, but only by doing a crappier, less-fun-for-them job, which is something they are not willing to do. If every company took that as a model, the economy would be a lot stronger and going to a job that required pants wouldn’t suck so much.

So the floor plan for NYCC 2013 is out and do you see what I see? Or rather, what I don’t see? The hazardous-to-life-and-sanity construction zone running east-west through the Javits Center is gone, praise be to whatever you find praiseworthy¹. That means that we can tell you who is webcomics-like that’s gonna be there, and where you can find ’em. As in past years, the people that you’re going to want to see are in several clusters, including Artists Alley, and aisles 900, 1300, 1600, and 2200. Also, there’s a couple of gonzo you’ve got to be kidding booth choices way the heck over in the 300-400 zone that I’m including for giggles. Let’s check ’em out.

Artists Alley
As was the case last year, Artists Alley is in the North Pavilion of the Javits, accessible via a roughly two block long passageway from the north end of the main convention center. It is my most sincere wish that the showrunners have learned how to funnel people into and out of the convention center without making it impossible to navigate to the North Pavilion². Unfortunately, the AA map requires a zoom of 650%+ to get to the point of legible table numbers, so I won’t be marking those up the diagram. Nevertheless you may here find Ramón Pérez (K10), Jim Zub & Edwin Huang (H6), Katie Cook (C10), and Strip Search hippie love commune survivors Katie Rice, Maki Naro, and Mackenzie Schubert (V5, V6, V7). Also, plentiful ATMs and natural light, yay.

Main Floor
Since we were just in the North Pavilion, let’s start from the north, high-numbered end of the main show floor (on the right side of the image) and progress southward.

The 2200 Aisle is our first cluster of interest, where we’ll find comic strip publisher Andrews McMeel (booth 2219), occasional show home of Matthew Inman. A little deeper into the hall and you’ll get :01 Books (booth 2237), Blind Ferret (booth 2246), and Cyanide & Happiness (booth 2247). For those playing at home, that’s two high-traffic booths directly across the from each other; fortunately, they’re also on a main travel aisle.

Continuing south, there’s a quick jog to the front of the hall for ShiftyLook (booth 1620), which is probably your best show of catching up with random webcomickers who aren’t at their own booths or tables. Three aisles over, you can find Boom! Studios (another possible place to find random webcomickers, at booth 1344), and 1977 The Comic creator Byron Wilkins (booth 1367).

A few more aisles along, you’ll get The First Law Of Mad Science (booth 972) close by the deserving-of-your-support Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (booth 965). A bit thin on webcomickers this year, I’ll grant, offset somewhat by the largest contingent of webcomickers as invited guests of the show that I can recall.

Oh, and for anybody looking to get away from comics entirely, keep heading south until you hit the 300-400 zone and there you will find both Brooklyn Bewery (booth 427), which I sorta get as there is a panel on comics and beer on Friday, and the Embassy of Spain Trade Commission (booth 341), which I don’t get at all. But I am going to go and ask why the Spanish love comics.

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¹ I’m chuckin’ around praise today like it’s going out of style.

² Or perhaps I should say dangerous, to the point that I never made it there last year, despite hearing that it was very nice.

Or, typing into WordPress through a phone, whee.

One correction re: a comment on yesterday’s post. MICE will be at the address listed but that’s on the campus of Lesley University, not Harvard. The fault is entirely mine, but in my defense colleges are cheek-by-jowl in Cambridge and Google Maps returned a result for that address and “Harvard”. Mea culpa.

Let’s keep this quick and I’ll see what I can do about front-loading posts from the hotel for the rest of the week.

• Do you like comics that are awesome? And do you like bargains? Then allow me to direct your attention to the Dr McOmnibus, 500 pages of Dr McNinja goodness including 24 all-new pages available nowhere else and dammit Dr McNinja creator Chris Hastings you know I’m a completist and now I have to shell out a fraction of the money I spent on the equivalent books when they came out.¹ Damn you, Chris Hastings … damn you.
• BOOM! Studios Cartoon Network tie-in alert! Adventure Time and Regular Show are heading to the Greater Boston area² for this year’s Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo this weekend, and they hope to see you there³:
  

  Catch Adventure Time comic artists Braden Lamb and Shelli Paroline along with the Regular Show comic team Allison Strejlau and KC Green at the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo! MICE 2013 is September 28 – 29 at University Hall 1815 Mass Ave. Cambridge, MA and it’s free admission!

  That’s on the campus of the esteemed Harvard University, accessible via the MBTA’s Porter Square stop.

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¹ Actually, the problem is more shelf-space related than monetary. My damning stands.

² Cambridge. Anytime you see a reference to “Boston area”, it always means Cambridge.

³ To the extent that non-person artifacts like comic book series can want anything.

This post was going to be about the upcoming New York Comic Con‘s webcomics-related exhibitors, but as the floor map isn’t up yet, that’s kind of a useless thing to do. NYCC showrunners ReedPOP have informed me that the map should be up this week, so we’ll tell you who’s gonna be there then.

In the meantime, I did notice that Reed have invited a number of webcomicky types as actual guests of the show: Kate Beaton and Ryan North are Spotlight Guests (Saturday only); Chris Hastings (Saturday), Ed Brisson, Jim Zub, Lucy Knisley (Friday/Saturday), and Tony Cliff (Friday/Saturday) are Special Guests.

I’m not sure what the difference is between Spotlight Guests and Special Guests (or, for that matter, Featured Guests); my guess is that when Beaton, North, and Hastings have their panel presentation together on Saturday, Hastings will get a slightly less fancy name card and have to drink still water like a peasant while Beaton and North imbibe fancy mineral water straight from a Canadian glacier.

• I’ll confess, I all but lost the faith, but then on Saturday afternoon an item popped up in my RSS feed¹ that caught me by surprise: Ramón Pérez was talking Kukuburi:
  

  it’s been a wild year and half. my career has skyrocketed in various different directions. 2012 was full of promotion and travel, i was barely home, and when i was i was squeezing in what work i could to make ends meet. 2013 has been a continuation, though i purposefully cut down on travel in order to refocus on work. while fantastic it’s been a blur. it seems time moves quicker and quicker as you get older and take on more responsibility.

  but i wouldn’t change a thing.

  things are still busy, but i’m exerting more control rather than blindly riding the wave. over the past two years i’ve talked with many people who have expressed their love of kukuburi, and others who have pronounced it’s TOD.

  over the past month i’ve slowly begun to dust off the proverbial cobwebs as i ramp up towards kukuburi’s imminent return. it’s been almost two years after all. i’m not making an official proclamation of a return date, but rather to let those readers who have been patient know that i am gearing up. realistically, i’m saying early 2014. january or february is my target. [spelling original]

  Let me say not About damn time (after all, Ramón Pérez has provided Kukuburi free, from the goodness of his heart) but rather Thanks. I’ve reconciled myself to some stories never reaching their end, but that doesn’t change my desire for them. The fact that Kukuburi will get a finish is a gift and I’m grateful.

• Speaking of unexpected returns, thanks to Zach Weinersmith for pointing out the return of Liz Greenfield to webcomickin’:
  

  OH MAN @lizgreenfield is doing a comic again. http://swallow.fr/

  Ms Greenfield, or the John Cusack of webcomics storytelling, has been engaged in other forms of creation for some years since Stuff Sucks wrapped (with no real home left online, except for a hit-and-miss presence in Wayback Machine snapshots to September 2007), but now she’s back. In her words:

  Swallow is the story of a young American in Paris whose spirit animal is social networking, following a fantastical event. Grab yourself an attractive chair and hunker down.

  One update so far, and I’m confident in recommending this one to you with that little to go on. Greenfield is one of the great storytellers, full of characters that can’t wait to get onto the page so you can share in their lives. Bookmark it now, return MWF until the story’s done.

• Okay, not a return, but definitely an opportunity; I have in the past mentioned Christopher Bird and Davinder Brar’s Al’Rashad, which is a very good weekly comic full of adventure, intrigue, and sly humo[u]r. It seems that Brar (the art half of the partnership) will be a bit busy in the near term, which may necessitate some delayed updates; Bird wishes to keep the comics flowing with a side-story or two, but will require an artist:
  

  This would be a straight work-for-hire gig, moderately fast turnaround time, with compensation – not token compensation (“exposure” is not money! A few bucks per page is not ENOUGH money!) but not big-leagues compensation either. If you’re interested or know someone who is, shoot me an email and we’ll talk. [boldface mine]

  Good on Bird for his approach to artistic partnerships — pay your artists, with money. If he finds somebody half as good as Brar, the Al’Rashad prequel stories will look fabulous, and just as importantly I’ll get background on some of those oh-so-slowly-revealed characters².

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¹ Obsolete technology, my ass.

² Wulf! Do Wulf! My guess is he’s the Rex the Motherfucking Wonder Dog of the Al’Rashad world and I want to know more about him.

Not ready to post yet, waiting to get inquiries answered so I don’t post bogus information. I know, right?

While I have your momentary attention, I’ll just mention that next week may see very delayed posts; starting on Tuesday, work will take me to a client that’s in a secure industry, and I expect both physical and network access to be on the strict end of things. I may or may not be able to reach my own site so we’ll see how that goes.

Welp, I promised you a trawl through the New York Comic Con 2013 programming, with an eye towards webcomics, and you people owe me.

For starters, this is less a comics show and more a whatever we can call pop culture¹ show, and everything goes into one, largely non-filterable list by day — TV, videogames, screenings, and autograph sessions are all mixed in with actual panel discussions. I had to wade through time & place notifications of Hulk Hogan autographing your stuff to find actual content.

Secondly, this year (at least I don’t recall it from prior years) NYCC is putting in untitled placeholder sessions; I encountered at least three of these TBA sessions with no description, title, or topic, but an assurance that we’ll love it. They did say that two are on the videogame track and one from TV, so let’s assume they’re not of interest.

Thirdly, there’s a lot of stuff to work through; the preview “night” begins Thursday at 3:00pm, but programming begins earlier that day for professionals (with a number of actually interesting-looking sessions on comics in libraries and school curricula). But, chances are you won’t be attending those sessions, so let’s focus on what happens once the doors open to the great unwashed.

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

We’ll have a list of webcomicky exhibitors in the coming days.

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¹ For example, the single most-repeated item in the panels list I could find was autograph sessions with this young woman, who appears to be notable mostly for not wearing as much clothing as you or I might [MSFWDOYC]².

² Marginally SFW, depending on your circumstances.

A couple of things happened that people have been kind enough to email me about, and I figure I could share those with you. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Sure it would.

• The accolades keep rolling in for Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers and Saints, which has been included in consideration for the National Book Award (where it is the only graphic novel this year). This is the longlist, the finalists have yet to be determined, but Yang’s got a proven track record, considering that American Born Chinese was an NBA finalist in 2006. Not only that, but if my search skills are correct, ABCwas the last graphic novel to get an NBA nod, and Mr Yang also appears to be the only repeat nominee in the Young Adult category in that time. Interesting.
• New York Comic Con is fast approaching and I’ll be keeping an eye on webcomicky goings-on from the show floor again this year; programming has appeared on the NYCC website, with all four days populated as of this writing. As usual, watch out for last-minute changes, and as others have noted, there are some interesting scheduling conflicts:
  

  @NY_Comic_Con has programmed @KodanshaUSA‘s panel against @shonenjump‘s, & the @FUNimation+Kodansha panel against @yenpress. Nice.

  And the Funimation and Vertical panels are also at the same time! Yay!

  I’ll do a thorough schedule-trawl and let you know what happens in webcomics world on the floor; if nothing else, you can meet/greet Maki Naro, Katie Rice, and Mac Schubert of Strip Search in the Artists Alley, as a result of having won reward challenge #4.

• Speaking of big-city cons, Pittsburgh Comic Con kicks off a week from Friday, and you know who will be there, at the booth of Official Fleen-Approved Cool Place The Toonseum? Caroll Spinney. If you don’t recognize that name, perhaps you recognize his work in the personages of Mr Bird or Mr The Grouch? It’s Pittsburgh for crying out loud, the hometown of Mr Rogers, so take a cue from him and do the neighborly thing: if you’re at PCC, drop by the Toonseum booth and thank Spinney for his contributions to the world. If you don’t, I’m not mad, but I will be disappointed in you.
• Speaking of museums and the weekend of the 28th, the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco will be participating in the Smithsonian magazine’s ninth annual Museum Day Live event:
  

  The Smithsonian magazine Museum Day is a nationwide event and offers free admission to any visitor and one guest with a Museum Day Live! Ticket to a participating museum or cultural institution.

  Inclusive by design, the event represents Smithsonian’s commitment to make learning and the spread of knowledge accessible to everyone, giving museums across all 50 states the opportunity to emulate the admission policy of the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C. Last year’s event drew over 400,000 participants, and this year’s event expects record-high participation.

  The Museum Day Live! Ticket is available to download now at Smithsonian.com/museumday. Visitors who present the Museum Day Live! Ticket will gain free entrance for themselves and one guest at participating venues for one day only.

  For those that don’t happen to be in San Francisco on the 28th, there will be plenty of other venues participating, so grab your tickets now (one per household, per email address, more information on the tickets page).