Welcome back to Part Two of our talk with Tavis Maiden; yesterday we talked about his upcoming project, Tenko King, and how Kickstarter fit into his launch plans. Today we’ll be discussing how most people came to know him and his work, Strip Search, the nature of being around creative people, and how facial hair is critical to marital stability.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It all comes back to comics:

Sometimes I stop and think about the fact that Homestuck is the 4th longest work in the English language and just kinda nod. — George Rohac

• Know who’s been making himself damn near indispensable to comics as a whole, constructing what may well be the definitive filmic history of the art form? Freddave Kellett-Schroeder, the hive mind that’s been toiling for pert-near four years to bring STRIPPED to a big screen near you. Last night, Fred and Dave released the first five minutes of the film to backers of their Kickstarters, and my friends — it was glorious. Somewhat less than 5300 people have had the opportunity to see that tease, and with any luck the entire world will be able to see the entire thing soon. It’s gonna be great.
• Know who’s been making himself damn near indispensable to an entire community of webcomickers? Brad Guigar, editor and everything-in-chief of Webcomics Dot Com. And in case five years back is fading from your recollection, Guigar was one of the authors of How To Make Webcomics, which tells you exactly what it says on the cover. The thing is, as good as HTMW is, it covers a medium that changes rapidly, and five years is a near-eternity in internet terms.

  There have been many requests for a sequel over the past half-decade, and Guigar has leveraged his writing for WDC to make that sequel, The Webcomics Handbook, now available for pre-order on Kickstarter. This one’s a no-brainer, folks, especially considering that all backer tiers come with — quoting here — Guigar’s “undying friendship”. Remember, the sooner you pledge, the sooner you can book a weekend for him to help you move.

• Strip Search — let’s face it, season one of Strip Search — wrapped up its finale last night which means you’ve had 16 hours (as of this writing) to have seen it, and if you don’t want to be spoiled on it, look away. I was conflicted watching Katie Rice get named the winner: zero surprise, as she’d utterly dominated the back half of the game; elation because her work was so very, very good; crushed because Abby Howard and Maki Naro didn’t win¹.

  In the end, it came down to what comics almost always comes down to — personal preference. Jerry and Mike had to decide what they personally most wanted to see:

  • A longform, horror-based, immersive-world graphic novel² from Abby, and one where they liked her off-the-cuff work better than her planned work
  • An almost anthropological personality study from Maki, not so dependent on your traditional-type punchlines
  • A loose-continuity, every-strip-has-a-punchline story that was the most comic-strippy of the finalists from Katie, and one where as strong as her final competition entries were, her pitch material was even better, giving confidence about how strong a work with plenty of time could be

  From the beginning, they showed a clear preference for work in the vein of what Katie presented, and you know what? That’s okay. Their show, their judgment, and it’s not like giving the nod to Camp Weedonwantcha means that The Last Halloween or Sufficiently Remarkable are erased from our collective memories. I will be reading (and more importantly, buying) all three of those projects because they all hit different pleasure centers in my comics brain³.

  Everybody associated with Strip Search is bound up into a web of professional and personal connections that will last and pay off for decades (Maki had some really gracious thoughts along the same lines today). As was determined back in January:

  Khoo stressed the responsibility that PA had towards the winner. We will do them right. People put their necks out there and trusted us; we didn’t tell them shit. They didn’t know what the show would be like or how we would make them look. For taking that risk, Khoo is determined that the reward is as good as he can make it.

  It’s pretty clear that the doing-right is extending to all the Artists; consider that Alex, who we didn’t get a chance to know, Alex has moved to Seattle, as has Amy, and also Monica (I half expect to hear that Ty and Nick are scoping out the U-Hauls). Add in the proximity of Mac and Erika, and it’s clear that whatever benefits accrue to Katie being in-office will spread fairly immediately to the others in the PNW, and only slightly later to those still scattered across the country. Being part of Strip Search surely helped the crowdfunding that Monica and Lexxy undertook to success, and Erika’s new comic, and the soon-to-be-announced Kickstarts from Maki and Abby. Also, is it a coincidence that since he was on the show, Tavis and his wife had a kid? Okay, yeah, probably, but you never know.

  Whatever else Strip Search achieved (and from everything that Khoo, Jerry Holkins, and Mike Krahulik have said, it wasn’t intended to achieve much beyond being entertaining), they’ve created a resonance cascade of skilled creators who are going to make each other better. Somewhere out there are people that either didn’t make the cut or want to be on a future iteration and are stepping up their own comics games; almost none of them will make it onto the show (whenever a new season might occur), but a nonzero number of them will share their comics with the world.

  Penny Arcade Industries has given us all far more than US$15,000 of comics that we will get to enjoy. Oh, and it’s entirely possible that they’ve created a competitor that will eventually challenge them for their position on the top of the webcomics heap, so it’s a good thing that they’ve still got Khoo on their side … for now.

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¹ Unlike virtually every reality competition ever, I was fully invested in all the finalists; there was no villain or obvious weak link there, meaning that it was guaranteed I would be happy and sad when it was all over.

² AKA, “filthy continuity”.

³ Although to be completely candid, of the three I think Sufficiently Remarkable spoke to me the most and I’m not sure if I can articulate why. In my perfect world, Sufficiently Remarkable has both “daily” and “Sunday” type strips, with the latter having the same feel as the first strip in Maki’s submission packet with Riti and her father.

I’d like to start off today with a correction, or a clarification, or whatever’s appropriate when you specualte out loud and it turns out you were totally off base, but since it involves spoilery information I’ma stick it down at the bottom of the page and we can start with something else.

Books! New books! Second volumes, in fact, the both of them!

• There may be no single [web]comics character of the past few years that is as disturbing as Cornelius Snarlington, Business Deer (although whatever the hell that is menacing Wadsworth Zane in today’s Broodhollow is rapidly heading for the top spot). In case his mayhem-related office activities (or office-related mayhem activities) aren’t enough to piece your very soul, he also stares at you dead-eyed, menacingly, from the cover of the new collection of Jon Rosenberg’s Scenes From A Multiverse, Business Animals, which has just gone up for pre-order.

  Usual disclaimer: Jon got me started in this blog-based opinion-having racket and also he owns my soul. But none of that changes the fact that regardless of whatever bias I might be injecting into this discussion, PZ Frickin’ Myers wrote the foreword, and you can’t do much better than that.

• In a neat bit of self-wanging, Zach Weinersmith managed to hose up his own site by crosslinking SMBC and the Kickstarter campaign for his newest original book, Trial of the Clone 2: Wrath of the Pacifist. Like the original Trial of the Clone, ToTC 2:WotP is a choosable-path comedic story, wherein your character from ToTC has failed upward to being in charge of the galaxy and now must rule; near the end of the first book’s Kickstarter campaign Weinersmith asked if the sequel should follow the protagonist on a Good path or an Evil one, and the consensus was Good.

  While Evil often looks to be more fun, you can’t deny that there’s nothing funnier than to watch somebody attempt to do Good and screw it up (and since the “hero” of ToTC is easily the most inept being in all of time and space, there should be plenty of room for up-screwing).

  In the hours since the book-kick launched, ToTC 2: WotP has cleared 75% of its US$20,000 goal, and reached the first four stretch goals (Weinersmith having pioneered the art of setting goals below the funding goal, building excitement while guaranteeing some outcomes). So far the stretches have all been related to getting more illustrations (by Weinersmith’s longtime collaborator, Chris Jones), but I imagine that there are some interesting goals in store once goal has been met in … oh, I’d say about two hours from now.

Okay, here’s that correction and remember: spoilers ahoy.

• Four days ago I laid out a timeline for the remainder of the season of Strip Search:
  

  Okay, looking at the calendar we’ve got the Maki/Lexxy elimination tomorrow, then four more episodes on 7, 11, 14, and 18 June. I had speculated early that there might be a final three approach (there’s ample precedent in the reality competition genre), but given the setup of the Strip Search Thunderdome, it make sense that all eliminations will be two Artists head-to-head, and this schedule reinforces that thought Consider: that gives us time for a social challenge among three competitors (7 June), a competitive challenge for immunity (11 June), an elimination to get us down to two (14 June), and the Big Ready-Set-Art on 18 June.

  So, yeah, my guess was wrong; as seen in today’s episode of Strip Search, none of that is happening. I should have stuck with my original speculations, since it turns out that by defeating Lexxy on Tuesday, Maki advanced to the Strip Search equivalent of Fashion Week: he and Abby and Katie face no more challenges in the house, are sent home to work up a final challenge for two months, then return to make their pitches.

  The original strips that they develop over eight weeks must include a name, three character bios, six sample strips¹ and a t-shirt design. Judging will be shown in a two-part finale, next Friday (14 June) and the following Tuesday (18 June), which per Robert Khoo will have some live component.

  There is at this point no way to tell which of the three finalists has the edge — each of the three could (and deserves) to win the prize, who wins almost doesn’t matter. While US$15,000 and a year’s embed in the Penny Arcade machine are nothing to sneeze at, the attention that the Artists have garnered, the audience that each of their new comics will have right from the beginning, and the support system that they’ve forged among themselves² means that they’re all winners³. Abby, Katie, Maki, it’s been a hell of a ride that you’ve given us and I just want to thank you for it.

Updated to add: Tickets for the Strip Search finale just went on sale. Tuesday, 18 June at 6:30pm PDT (GMT-7) at the Meydenbauer Center in Seattle. The final three episodes will be played in the theater, with the final episode released to the world at 7:30pm. Oh and on an unrelated note, kudos to the Meydenbauer for keeping ticketing fees to an entirely-reasonable US$1.52; I just bought tickets for Alton Brown’s Tour O’ Fun and I got socked for ten bucks a ticket. Screw you, Ticketmaster.

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¹ It’s gotta be the best six strips I’ve ever written — Abby.

² Everything that the nominal winner learns from their year in the PA offices will absolutely filter out to the other Artists. There’s a precedent for this kind of very fast, very thorough knowledge diffusion, and it’s within Mission Control during the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo era. As Gene Kranz observed, it wasn’t necessary for one flight controller group (or crew) to experience everything themselves, because they worked under the model of What any one of us learns, we all learn and build on.

³ There’s no lose in this. — Maki.

Who’s in the mood for brief items? I sure am!

• Anniversaries can be tricky things. For example, today’s SMBC bears the number 3000, which is an official Big Damn Round Number in the Fleen ordinal system of mathematics. However, Zach Weinersmith has actually done a good deal more than 3000 comics, if you consider his archive.

  For starters, today’s strip is the 2955th of the current series, but then there are 132 comics in the so-called “Classic” SMBC collection (black and white, strip-style comics with actual characters and things) and another five dozen or so that appeared sporadically during the modern age (some during a hiatus in 2003 and 2004, some alongside regular SMBC from 2005 to 2007).

  But what the hell, since at least 2005 it appears that the strip numbers have been going up monotonically, and that makes today as good a day as any to recognize Weinersmith for reaching 3000 strips so everybody feel good for Zach.

• Following up on Erika Moen’s win in the Magic: The Gathering challenge on Strip Search, there was a question at the time as to whether or not Wizards of the Coast would actually be producing said deck, and you may recall that Robert Khoo was unable to comment at the time. Well, wonder no more, as Hurricane Erika shared the news on twitter that the deck is being produced:
  

  We went back to the winner, Erika Moen, and had her finish out her design without the time pressure on the show and finalized an awesome design for a skateboard deck. Now we are excited to announce that attendees to the event can enter for a chance to win a skate deck featuring Erika’s final design by Hooligan!

  More precisely, four decks¹ are being made for the giveaway, and dang do they look sharp². Congrats again to Moen, and thanks to all involved for letting us know how things ultimately turned out.

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¹ I’m guessing at least one of them makes its way to Ebay.

² You can compare Moen’s original design against the final design; it’s pretty impressive how close the colors are given that the original was done with marker rather than computer color-matching against a Pantone standard.

Via Robert Khoo’s twitterfeed:

Anyone in Seattle have access to a theatre for a live Stripsearch Finale Screening on June 18th? :)

Okay, looking at the calendar we’ve got the Maki/Lexxy elimination tomorrow, then four more episodes on 7, 11, 14, and 18 June. I had speculated early that there might be a final three approach (there’s ample precedent in the reality competition genre), but given the setup of the Strip Search Thunderdome, it make sense that all eliminations will be two Artists head-to-head, and this schedule reinforces that thought Consider: that gives us time for a social challenge among three competitors (7 June), a competitive challenge for immunity (11 June), an elimination to get us down to two (14 June), and the Big Ready-Set-Art on 18 June.

Now the most important word in Khoo’s tweet is live. In all my conversations with him regarding Strip Search, he’s never definitively answered my question if the winner was chosen during the filming back in December; while there could be an argument that this will merely be a screening of a episode already in the can, I think it’s more likely the case that whoever the final two Stripmonauts might be¹, they’ll be hashing it out in real time in front of an audience (or possibly simulcast, depending on what kind of “theater” we’re talking about). I would expect that the entire thing will be livestreamed, or at least it’d better be if Khoo, et. al., wishes to avoid a pitchfork-wielding mob because you know anybody in said theater is going to be livetweeting the crap out of this showdown.

As brought up by the Katie/Abby dinner with Khoo, Mike Krahulik, and Jerry Holkins at the end of the last episode, there remains the question of what kind of twist² the show’s conclusion may have. While I’ve seen a lot of thought given to the idea of bounced Artists forming a kind of jury (cf: Survivor), the focus of the show has been on the preferences and judgments of Holkins and Krahulik and I don’t see them opening the decision-making process to anybody else — not Khoo, not other trusted PA employees, not Artists. Penny Arcade has always been an expression of the unholy melded ids of Mike and Jerry³ and I wouldn’t expect them to break that habit at this late date.

I imagine that all of the speculation will be cleared up in the next day or so; I intend to keep an eye on the Strip Search news page, Khoo’s tweets, and Seattle performance listings.

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¹ I consider words that Khoo did share back in January: While there will be no way to tell the entire story of what happened in the mansion, there was a natural narrative that emerged during filming. By that standard alone, among the four remaining Artists there are three really compelling narratives:

• Katie starts out wobbly and goes on to dominate the challenges
• Abby starts out under-confident and proves herself a natural
• Lexxy prevails over past instances of coming up just short of the brass ring and finally makes it in the doors of Penny Arcade

Maki — whose work I adore and who also was responsible for the single best visual of the show — doesn’t have the punch to his narrative (last guy standing makes a comeback against super-talented ladies) so I’m afraid he’s not in the final. If I had to guess I’d say it’s Katie vs Abby in the final just because they are unstoppable and Lexxy doesn’t actually have a webcomic yet. But I’ve been wrong on subjective and elimination challenge calls about two thirds of the time so what the hell do I know?

² For example, I don’t consider it entirely beyond the pale that some Creator’s fiat brings back Team AmErika for a joint win.

³ In this model, Khoo forms the ego role, and I’m not sure that there is a super-ego in the mix.

We are on Day Two of at least three days of 91F (33C) weather, the air conditioning is out, and the afternoon sun is just starting to crank up the joules. Somebody kill me, or at least send me a bucket full of cold I can pour on me and my dog. That’s right, I want a bucket of pure, uncut, essence-of-cold. And yes, I’m well aware there’s no such thing as cold, only heat and less heat. What you’re overlooking is the fact that I don’t care so kindly rework the laws of physics and get me some cold, please.

• You know who is, right about now, absolutely horrified by that whole bucket of cold thing? Dante Shepherd, professor of Chemical Engineering, thermodynamicist-at-large, educational innovator, and itinerant webcomicker. Today marks five years of Shepherd’s dailyish Surviving The World¹, and on top of that he’s got some exciting announcements:
  

  Many of you have asked for a collection of STW comics for a while now, so in response, with the help of Topatoco and Make That Thing, sometime next week will see the launch of a Kickstarter campaign to help make STW page-a-day calendars! … [H]ere’s a potential example of the final product.

  Just as many of you have asked for an app for STW for years, so I’m also happy to announce that starting Monday, STW will be available through the Comic Chameleon app!

  What? You want yet one more announcement? OK, OK – based on requests, I’ll bring back recitations² sometime soon, too.

  We at Fleen congratulate Shepherd on his achievements, his future plans, and hopes sincerely he doesn’t apply that mallet to our heads for the whole bucket of cold thing. We at Fleen are very, very sorry.

• In our discussion of Shaenon Garrity’s imminent wrap-up of Narbonic reruns yesterday, we inexcusably neglected to mention that Garrity will still be doing two actively-updating webcomics for the forseeable future. Skin Horse (co-written with Jeffrey Wells) just gets weirder and more loopy as it careens from classic children’s literature reference to classic children’s literature reference³ with no sign of end in sight.

  And although it will be, by design, a limited affair, Garrity’s Monster of the Week has, over the past not-quite-year, brilliantly deconstructed most of the first two seasons of The X-Files, which means two very important things:

  1. Garrity’s got three episodes to the end of season 2 (plus one season-ending recap), and four weeks to her one year anniversary, so let’s call it two seasons per year. At this rate, we’ll get another three and a half years of what is this crap Scully and sexy, sexy Skinner. Also, mites and annoyed Shaenon.
  2. On 19 July, the Friday of SDCC week, we will be Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose and on 8 November we will get Jose Chung’s From Outer Space, the two greatest episodes of The X-Files ever and I’ll fight any man-jack that says different.
• The latest episode of Strip Search put the four remaining Artists through contract hell and — spolier alert! — Robert Khoo enjoyed himself entirely too much, cranking the charm, the smarm, and the hostility up to eleven while trying to fast-talk the Artists into thinking that his very sticky contract is a good thing for them because they’re friends. No kidding, I would watch an entire season of Robert doling out the passive aggression.

  But even above its entertainment value, episode #27 is valuable because it emphasized the importance of not letting yourself get screwed, which even veterans can have problems with⁴.

  By coincidence, today also marked the release of the latest posting at Work Made For Hire, which presented a brilliant technique for directing a negotiation on contractual points that everybody who freelances needs to read right now. Key point:

  The difference between what Dylan [Meconis] and I asked Lo was that when Dylan talked to him, he was given the power to make a very specific choice, and both options were something Dylan wanted him to do.

  Guys, I’m not a freelancer and I intend to use “The Babysitting Question” in my life every chance I get from now on. It’s brilliant.

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¹ To be precise, today is StL #1773 and in the past five years there have been 1826 days what with the leap year and all, meaning that Shepherd comes up 53 strips short of “daily”, or just over one missing day every five weeks. I think we can count this as “daily”.

² The recitations, of which there have been 100, are answers to specific questions sent to Shepherd. Since there have been 100 of them, that means he’s really done 1873 updates in 1826 days, or an average of one extra strip every five weeks. So really we can call StL daily-plus.

³ I’m still holding out for some Purple Crayon.

⁴ It may have just been the editing, but in the episode as streamed, only two of the Artists brought up the idea of having a lawyer review the contract, and only one did so right at the beginning to put Robert on notice; I was hoping it would be all four.

So I’ve been away for a bit, as mentioned last week. For those who were wondering, being married for twenty years and then getting to throw a party for your friends is sort of awesome. But I’m back now, and it seems not a moment too soon, as things are beginning to pile up around here.

• I’d planned on coming back to bloggening today, and even if I hadn’t I would have had to after seeing a blip in my twitterstream last night, the first in 18 months or so from Allie Brosh who is sublimely wonderful and had fallen entirely out of public view. It happens, and in her case, Ms Brosh has shared why it happened and done so in a way that’s honest and brave and makes me want to punch capital-D Depression right in the neck.

  I don’t know if her words+pictures today have helped more people with depression or without — being able to recognize when somebody you know is suffering and being able to help is not a skill that’s widely taught just yet, but damn if this comic isn’t a tremendous first stride. Read it, think about it, go be a shriveled piece of corn for somebody that needs it.

• Also dropping today is the latest Jim Zub project; while he was famously jerked around by DC Comics earlier this year, he was also classy as hell about the whole thing. I’m going to ascribe his newest news to that classy-as-hellness, because I’m not certain that anybody at DC has two functioning neurons to rub together, but they probably recognize kind behavior¹. In any event, Mr Zub is responsible for the writerly portion of a two-part Batman story in a digital-first anthology series, with Part One appearing on devices today and part two next Thursday, 16 May. My only quibble with Zub’s entirely understandable enthusiasm is when he says:
  

  My first published superhero story and first published DC Comics work, Legends of the Dark Knight #49, has been released on digital and mobile platforms and it’s only 99 cents!

  That’s because every time Zub shares his wisdom on making comics and making it in comics (start here, look to the sidebar that says “Tutorials” and don’t stop so long as there are still links to follow), he is himself a goddamn superhero to everybody that loves comics, and don’t you forget it, Zub.

Various new things were introduced while I was gone:

• Comic Chameleon, long awaited, has seen its official launch, meaning that you can download it to your iDevice now and start reading webcomics for free, and with the cooperation of their creators. Well done Bernie Hou and the entire Comic Chameleon team; once I get my Android version you’ll escalate all the way to “Attaboy” status.
• Dante Shepherd, this blog’s favorite Chemical Engineer², has launched a new undertaking and it’s not the second comic (provisionally dubbed PhD Unknown) that’s been hinted at for a few months now. That’s cool, we at Fleen would rather wait until it was done cooking to Shepherd (and art collaborator Joan Cooke)’s standards.

  No, what Shepherd announced was a new initiative to promote interest in and understanding of STEM topics by K-12 educators, who will presumably share their knowledge and enthusiasm with the various rugrats budding scholars who will form the technological basis of future generations. If you happen to know anybody that teaches K-12, do everybody a favor and point ’em towards Science The World so we can start building a smarter tomorrow.

• Kickstarts have also been underway, with campaigns set for the second volume of The Bear (including a webcomicky presentation of Volume 1 at MyBear.net, as promised recently), the second volume of Dumbing of Age, the first volume of Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, and the revival of the Penny Arcade Downloadable Content podcast.
• That last one has been getting a bunch of (to my mind, ill-informed) pushback, on the grounds that podcasts don’t cost anything and therefore it’s a big scam. Au contraire, mon frère, podcasts do cost something; they cost time, which if Mike Krahulik, Jerry Holkins, and others at Penny Arcade Industries take, they won’t be spending on other things that will generate money.

  Could Jerry and Mike do the podcast without impacting their lavish, Russian mafia-like lifestyles? Probably, but they aren’t just supporting themselves — their efforts are what make payroll for more than a dozen people, and with that kind of responsibility comes Robert Khoo’s responsibility to say, We have to find a way to make it pay. Me, I’m just interested to see if they set the all-time record for highest percentage funding in Kickstarter history, which as of this writing is at an astonishing 570,000% of goal. Okay, granted, that was a ten dollar goal, but let’s not lose sight of the distractingly-large number.

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¹ Much in the way that my dog will be your very best friend if you offer her a treat, but shies away from small children that haven’t learned how to pet gently.

² In keeping with tribal custom, all specific engineering disciplines are capitalized here at Fleen, in acknowledgment of the skills, knowledge, and hard work of those who practice our peculiar intersection of design, intuition, math, science, the right-hand rule³, and blowin’ shit up. Respect.

³ AKA, The engineering gang sign.

What to do when your e-book publisher decides to drop comics of an adult nature, including your very popular anthology that is surely bringing in a considerable amount of money? Sale on the physical copy, naturally. Let’s let Smut Peddler editor Spike tell the story:

Hey folks FYI: Gumroad has temporarily dropped adult content. But Smut Peddler will be available on Comixology, starting in May!

I’ve been working with Comixology for a while to get my stuff on there, and it’s scheduled to go live in a couple of weeks. EXCITED.

SALE: Smut Peddler is ALL GUMMED UP! Until April 30th, physical copies of this fabulous anthology are 33% OFF!

That was where it stood 30 minutes ago (as of the time of writing this paragraph): unfortunate occurrence, making the best of it, resilience of the artist, etc. Then I noticed that Bleeding Cool was reporting on this situation, and their report (more precisely, a link from their report) made this situation seem a bit more … tawdry.

Not because of the porn (especially tastefully done porn, predominantly from the ladies), and not because Gumroad pulled Smut Peddler (taking credit cards means that they have to adhere to policies put forth by the card companies and payment processors, a situation that has tripped up more than one previous purveyor of porntastic provisions). See, the Bleeding Cool piece talked with a guy who had his gay-themed e-book pulled by Gumroad, and he asked why, if he’s being pulled, is Smut Peddler allowed to be on the service?

More precisely, he asked three times, by name, in all caps, via an open posting on Facebook.

All of which leads me to a dilemma. We at Fleen are not in favor of rewarding people who behave poorly with links or attention. Yet we also realize that you shouldn’t necessarily take my interpretation of this situation at face value, and you should have the opportunity to judge for yourself, which is less likely to happen if you have to go searching all over the hell’s half-acre that is the internet to find what I’m talking about.

So here’s what I’ve done: Ive screenshotted the posting that the person in question made to Facebook (seen above), and removed his name. This is for two reasons:

1. If I’m being unduly harsh, the creator in question doesn’t deserve to have his name unduly linked with critical rhetoric.
2. If, on the other hand, my gut feeling on this is correct and the creator in question is engaging in behavior somewhere between a hissy fit and sour grapes¹, he doesn’t deserve the publicity that even a critical assessment would bring him.

In any event: Smut Peddler’s on sale for 33% off until the end of the month.

Let’s talk about things that are more unambiguously positive, ‘kay?

• The Jeff Rowland’s Flickr account has a new video up showing some of the activity around the in-renovations future home of TopatoCo. At one point in the video (18 seconds, to be precise), Rowland approaches a road roller, leading to the possibility that joyrides may take place at some point in the future. There is no part of this that could possibly end unawesomely.
• There are several webcomics “review” sites that are little more than exercises in drive-by vandalism, delighting in the negative for the sheer nihilistic joy of it². So I am overjoyed to see a new webcomics review site pop up that is dedicated to the prospect of sharing what the author finds to be good rather than tearing down what’s subjectively bad.³ Ladies and gentlemen, may I commend to you Robynne Blume’s Webcomics Worth Wreading, which opens with a discussion of Reptilis Rex by William Tallman.
• Strip Search Elimination #5 spoilers ahoy. Hold up here if you haven’t seen it yet.

  All good? ‘Kay, let’s start off by saying that was the best visit to Artdome we’ve had yet, and I was sorry to think that either Amy or Maki would be going home because we really are past the point of obviously weak competitors; anybody in the house could win it at this point. Also they both interacted with each other and the Creators in a way that was more lively and unguarded than we’ve seen before. Also-also, Jerry drank a comic⁴, which is not a sentence I ever thought I would type.

  Now what I find to be the curious thing at this point is where the show goes from here. When I spoke to Robert Khoo and Erika Sadsad about the show before it debuted, Khoo said that while there will be no way to tell the entire story of what happened in the mansion, there was a natural narrative that emerged during filming.

  Up until now, I’d been expecting that narrative to be Amy’s, from her initial presentation as the one person playing the game part of the competition, to her meeting and befriending of Erika Moen, aka my fucking hero. Sadly, that story’s come to an end⁵, which got me to wondering what else might be the new narrative if it’s not Amy’s Journey. Possibilities include:

  • Dr Strangeabby or: How Mike Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Tangent
  • Monica’s Story, brought to you by Depends
  • Katie Will Kill All Who Challenge Her And Eat Whatever She Kills
  • Lexxy: Third Time’s The Charm!
  • Maki, Tavis, Beardlove by Elizabeth Gilbert
  • Erika Just Wins Everything Because We At Fleen Have Been Team Hurricane Since Day Minus 218

  Your best guesses as to where the heck the story goes from here in the comments, please.

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¹ If anybody knows a short, pithy expression that means If I can’t have something I’ll make sure others can’t either, I’ll be happy to use it. For now we’ll make do with “sour grapes”.

² No links, but if you want to know why such things still exist, my best guess is found in the extended digression on the nature of criticism by Anton Ego at the end of Ratatouille:

We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

³ Honestly, if it’s that bad, let it alone and it’ll go away on its own. Or just repeat to yourself Okay, I don’t like it but that doesn’t mean other people aren’t allowed to.

⁴ And he just … kept … drinking.

⁵ At least within the context of the show, but Ms T Falcone has skillfully parlayed her time on the show into more attention and eyeballs on her comic than she could reasonably expected to have had otherwise. A lot of people are going to be following her career closely from here on out.

I’ve been wondering when the first really big Strip Search-related splash would be made and last night Lexxy Douglas launched a Kickstarter to get her webcomic started. In the order that they occur to me:

• Less than 90 minutes after launch (and about an hour after the first public tweet), Douglas had cleared her US$7500 goal.
• Reading the campaign pitch the money raised is to let Douglas turn down otherwise-paying work so she has the time to launch the comic; this stands in contrast to most [web]comics-related Kickstarters that are going to succeed, in that a request to make something that nobody’s seen yet generally doesn’t do as well as a request to merchandise something that already has an audience.
• Douglas, of course, has an audience (via social media) and is well integrated with webcomics creators, not to mention the fans she’s garnered in her time on Strip Search. Last night I thought she’d timed the launch of this KS campaign well, given that she was still seeing an uptick in attention from people that felt her elimination from the show was a travesty. #TeamLexxy will be all over this.
• This morning, I think that her timing is absolute fucking genius [A/V mixed with a liberal dose of holy crap!]; seriously Lexxy, that is some Khoo-level strategy you pulled right there. Bravo.
• As of this writing, Ms Douglas is on the cusp of just north of US$21,000 and the Gary’s First Law of Kicktraq Projections has her finishing in the US$50K – 100K range.
• Stretch goals are presently defined up to 50K; better think up a couple more and ones that don’t require physical production/shipping, on account of you’ve already got a couple hundred packages to mail.
• It appears that George helped Of course he did.

Speaking of Kickstarts, what may be the most logistically-challenging [web]comics Kickstart in history¹ is making progress, and dropped some references to a pledge-management system² called BackerKit, which you may as well get used to seeing, as I suspect it will be a standard part of Make That Thing campaigns.

I can’t give you a comparison with the previously-mentioned After The Crowd as I don’t have access yet, but the screencaps and video make it seem roughly equivalent. The one key differentiator that I noticed is that BackerKit appears to give you continuous access to manage your pledge/information, where After The Crowd gave you a time-limited, one-shot access (with the ability to request re-access later if needed).

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¹ Fulfillment will involve the wrangling of literal dozens of webcomickers, wood craftsmen, printers, translators, musicians, delicious adorable kittens, and more.

² It’s only a matter of time before the enterprise software industry reduces that to “PMS”.