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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That grass looks like it came out of children’s storybook; Mike Krahulik has mentioned wanting to do a children’s book, and given what I’ve seen of the Penny Arcade’s attempts at kiddiebooks (and things that look like kiddiebooks), I’ll go out on a limb and say I’m ready to purchase that effort the day it’s published.

In other news:

• Long before I met Dave Roman, I was captivated by one of his many projects — in this case, a collaboration with John Green called Teen Boat; after all, how many things combine the angst of being a teen with the thrill of being a boat? (By the way, a Teen Boat Safety Note: please do NOT go to teenboat-dot-com unless you seek to lose your employment) Anyhoo, the recent Teen Boat Dreamboat video has now gone high-quality, which you can enjoy over at the Vimeo site in all its musical glory.
• Hey kids, do you like the originator of Estradarama (alternately, the theoretician behind Estradanomics), the globetrotting adventurer (and confessed Ryan) Ryan Estrada? And have you managed to work your way past the heavyweight (and frankly horrific) interface at Zuda? If you answered “Yes!” to both, you may be interested in Estrada’s contribution to this month’s Zuda-off, The Kind You Don’t Bring Home To Mother. This page is on record as not being thrilled with Zuda, but having previously read through TKYDBHTM, it’s a real kick and you will likely enjoy it.

Events!

• Those of you in Toronto will have the opportunity to hear panelists including Kate Beaton, Emily Horne, and Ryan North at the Keep Toronto Reading Web Comics Panel at the North York Central Library tomorrow at 6:30pm. Moderated by Christopher Butcher of The Beguiling, organizer of the upcoming biannual Toronto Comics Art Festival and generally smart guy.
• Those of you in New York can enjoy North, Horne (with her partner in madness Joey Comeau), Chris Hastings, and Chris Onstad at Titans of Small-Town (as of this writing, some tickets appear to still be available). Doors open 6:30pm at 303 Grand in Brooklyn. If I see you there, we can compare notes to see if Hastings is still tired from the night before, when fiance Carly Monardo is featured at My Plastic Heart’s New Moon show, interpretations of the Chinese Zodiac, at 6:00pm, downtown in Manhattan.

Finally, a dip into the mailbag for an intriguing email. Y’all remember Ben Heaton? He did Terror Island with Lewis Powell for a couple of years, has been running Request Comics since, and is likely at least one of the official keepers of The Ham Project. Ben sent me an email, which I now share with you:

Remember when Randy Milholland asked Something Positive readers to match his yearly salary in donations, and they totally did? I’m going to see if Request Comics readers can pull that off too.

I’m unemployed, so the target value is $0.

If you want to support request-based photocomicry, come check out the donation drive here. Even if you donate nothing, that’ll go a long way toward my goal. Especially if you donate nothing.

I’d note that donation drives really only work once, so here’s hoping that Heaton gets his $0; if you’ve got nothing to donate, it’s hard to think of a better place to not give it than to him.

Happy Thanksgiving, Canadianaians! I understand you’re all taking the day (and some of you, the week) off. Today just feels like a day o’ miscellany, so let’s get our feet wet.

• I know other people have pointed this out since yesterday but holy brick-throwin-mice, yesterday’s Sheldon was freakin’ beautiful. This is how you pay homage to the masters. Just check out the lettering on that puppy, and tell me that Herriman isn’t smiling in his grave.
• Call me cynical, but I have a feeling that there’s a pretty high correlation between webcomics fans and people who read mythology for fun starting in junior high. To that underserved demographic, let me point out how much I’ve been enjoying The Miserable World of Promotheus ever since I discovered it in the aftermath of Estradarama ’08. Eternal torments/hearty laugh chuckles, both delivered by a liver-plucking eagle — what more could you ask for?
• Was pointed to Vendable, recently. It’s about … well, let’s let the strip creators speak for themselves:
  

  Much like Rocky is a movie about boxing, Vendable is a webcomic about the vending machine business. Renton Hicks lives between his past in Paterson NJ and his future there, which looks like the same model of vending machine that he has to maintain everyday. The only thing that it’s stocked with isn’t particularly good for his heart. And . . . well, there’s other people who vend, and also there is Fatima Kutkin, the voice-disabled niece of the guard at the warehouse that Renton works in. She’s got a job lined up there, and is hoping for a quiet place to while away her lack of rightness. Here are their anti-adventures.

  Which, to be honest, doesn’t sound terribly promising, but I’m quite enjoying it. Haven’t read back through the 30-odd pages enough to completely formulate in my head why I like it, but I do. This bears more watching.

This year’s nominations have been announced, and in the Online Comic category, we find the following:

• Achewood, Chris Onstad
• Danny Dutch, David King
• Slow Wave, Jesse Reklaw
• Thingpart, Joey Sayers
• Traced, Tracy White

My question: what could top the famed gorilla suit? The awards will be given at this year’s SPX, October 4th, in Bethesda, Maryland.

• Speaking of Achewood, the previously-referenced NPR interview has been positively identified as occurring on their flagship program, Morning Edition, tomorrow. Find a station to listen on here, or listen to the streaming audio after about 10am EDT (GMT-4).
• Estradarama updates continue in yesterday’s post; Ryan himself has taken off for a well-deserved break for a few days, but has left an auto-updating runthrough of all the guest pieces on his site. The fun starts here and continues with a new strip every hour for the next almost three days. Having upped his efforts from last year, I suspect that next year will be the Estradaramest.
• Rick Marshall Will ‘n’ Holly interviews Jennie Breeden, she of the leaf blower and panties; one of these days, I’m gonna have to just cut out the middleman and get the Rickster to just run these interviews here. This is how it’s done, folks.
• Jeff Zugale made an odd discovery lately — doubling up his strip production at Just A Bit Off so he could have a buffer against a vacation, he found that doing two strips a week was no more difficult than one. So why stop when he got back? JABO will now run on Mondays in addition to Thursdays, and who knows? If he gets to three days a week, maybe he’ll find a gift from Ryan Estrada in his email next September.
• I was going to tell you about Danielle Corsetto‘s print sale to raise money for a new printer, but she’s already sold out of the special packages ($20 = 5 prints of your choice!). What this means, of course, is that now she’ll be able to offer more prints, so start looking through her back catalog and figure out what you just can live without for the upcoming Holiday giving season.

The Daily Telegraph talked a great deal about webcomics in their Digital Life section over the weekend; extensive quotes from Chris Onstad and some hack quasi-journalist. Best part — I got to point the reporter at some of my favorite webcomics, and I hope they all get big bounces out of it.

Least favorite part — another dozen webcomics that I adore didn’t make it to final copy. I would have thought that Britain’s only remaining broadsheet might have shown some love for Britain’s most famous webcomicker, but no. But at least Wonderella is there, derr hey? If anybody has a print copy of the Telegraph with the story, we at Fleen would love to obtain it.

In other news:

• Kevin Forbes of the chronically–underreviewed Simulated Comic Product is stealing a page from the Ryan North playbook and releasing webcomics tools. Specifically, a panel-layout program; any creators that play with it and want to do a review, drop me a line.
• Final Estradarama count: 46, including the lost I’m Just Drinking installment. Early reports from Mexico indicate that Estrada has been unable to wrest his Cintiq back from fellow communard John Campbell, and is at risk of developing 12 previously unknown forms of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Lost in the aftermath of Estradamania (Estradacalypse? Estradarama? anyway, check of the inside scoop on the recurring dadnugget theme) was a note from Jeffrey Rowland on the relative success of the highly-disturbing me shirt. Now for those who may scoff and say that $28 is not a lot of money, bear in mind that the fine folks at the CBLDF need every penny they can get for the infinitely-prolonged Gordon Lee trial, and $28 is a bit more than one membership would net them. I’m certain it will be appreciated.

Also lost in the fray was any mention here of the Ignatz nominations, including well-deserved nominations for Achewood, Grace, Persimmon Cup, Thingpart, and my nemesis, crusher of my dreams.

Sadly not overlooked, the crap-fight in the comments section: it’s been suggested that the comments be locked, deleted, and that we all agree to never speak of this again. Much as I am tempted, I’m philosophically opposed to it. As unpleasant as it is to see a genuinely awesome accomplishment get tarnished by proximity to unwarranted unpleasantness, it did happen. Time may be an illusion (and lunchtime doubly so), but we can’t just rewind and “make it didn’t happen”.

I believe that Jennifer Babcock‘s future is well assured, and I don’t think that inspiring people on the internet to such heights of emotional outburst is necessarily a bad thing for a career in museum curatorship — if nothing else, it proves that her efforts will attract attention, and hopefully spur people to learn more about the creators she highlights.

That being said? I think we’ve nearly all agreed that it’s over, it’s done, we’re all embarassed by it, and attempts to restoke the flames accomplish nothing. A rousing flamefest is good for my hits, but let’s try not to live down to John Gabriel’s expectations, hmmm?

So let’s end on a high note — from Christopher B Wright:

Help Desk published its 1500th strip today. This shining achievement is marred slightly by the simple reality that there are younger comics with larger archives — but these are comics written by cartoonists who can only be described as “driven” and “dedicated,” whereas I can charitably be described as “unfocused” and “an undisciplined wreck”.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the people who made this goal possible: my readers, who routinely put up with my dodgy publication schedules, the captains of industry, who made it so easy to come up with 1,500 jokes about their total lack of moral fibre, and of course the inventors of “cut” and “paste.”