Everybody is either in transit to Seattle for EmCity or making final preparations before leaving tomorrow. I could mention that Dresden Codak’s Kickstarter is being reported as the fastest-funding initial 24 hours of any comics project and is already the #8 most-funded Comics project after approximately 40 hours, or that the Machine of Death card game Kickstarter has just unlocked something called — rather ominously — FATE BLITZ, but we’ve heard enough about those two projects of late, so I won’t.

Instead, two brief items:

• One, for the next while, Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya will be running Lucky Penny in lieu of their regular diary strips. For those that didn’t catch the announcement last year, Lucky Penny is an original graphic novel by Panagariya and Ota for Oni Press, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to have a release date just yet. The shift to LP will let Ota work on just one thing for a while, hopefully speeding the day when we see a print collection, new Benign Kingdom projects, and more.
• Two, I have on past occasions mentioned Christopher Bird and Davinder Brar’s Al’Rashad: City of Myths, a weekly longform comic of politics, religion, intrigue, and characters that tell you what you need to know about them by how they dress¹ and hold themselves when they speak. It’s terrific stuff.

  But please note that I said “need to know”, as for a great deal of time I have wanted to know a great deal more about these characters and the world they inhabit; my guess is perhaps 10% of what Bird has world-built in his head will ever see the page. And wonder of wonders, Bird has answered my silent plea with a character page chock full of biographical and geopolitical nuggets that make my heart sing. I am so happy that I’m not even going to engage in the privilege of every comics reader and kvetch about the obvious contradiction between biography and previously established story and clearly Bird doesn’t care about continuity like true fans would and … [Editor’s note: At this point Gary was dragged away and had some manners slapped into him; we apologize for the fuss.]

  Ahem. As I was saying, please enjoy Al’Rashad, updates Mondays, and please overlook both my misplaced enthusiasm as well as my inexplicable omission of Al’Rashad from the recommended comics list over there to the right. Get to reading.

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¹ I particularly note that the Caliph of Al’Rashad dresses very plainly, which reveals great deal of his character.

The annual scramble for San Diego Comic Con hotel rooms started at 12:00 noon EST and by 12:02 I was done with a promise of an email with my assignment. Here’s hoping.

Oh, and since this is going to be a Kickstarter-heavy post,let’s get something non-Kickstarter out of the way up front — I have of late been enjoying the crap out of Help Us! Greatest Warrior, which appears at a Tumblr near you The title character is bean-like, more than a little dude-crazy and will utterly kick your ass if she can be bothered. Creator Madéleine Flores has been killing it, and you should hit the (very brief) archives right now.

• Is this new? I think this is new. David Malki ! posted in an update for the Machine of Death card game Kickstarter that he will use the powers of technology to add a special reward for backers that also back a different, unrelated game. This is, I believe, the first Kickstarter crossover:
  

  Story War is a little bit similar to Machine of Death in its broad strokes (“combine random elements to accomplish a wacky objective”), but varies in the particulars.

  If you pledge to both games (physical versions), we’re gonna compare our backer lists and each send you an exclusive bonus card: a Machine of Death card that references Story War, and a Story War card that references Machine of Death! We’ll also send you a PDF with a set of suggested CROSSOVER RULES for combining both cards in HIGH STAKES INTERLEAGUE PLAY. [emphasis and SHOUTING original]

  I can’t wait to see what other cross-pollinations this might lead to. In this case, it’s a match of equals (both Story War and Machine of Death are well over their goals, so neither is trying to gain success by drafting off the other), but I could see especially successful projects being approached by struggling projects, trying to succeed via cross promotion that mostly goes one way. Secondary market, anyone?

• Speaking of secondary markets, about ten days back we mentioned a new service from TopatoCo called Make That Thing with some speculation about how MTT might be structured and a promise of more details soon. That was supposed to have been last weekend via an interview with TopatoCo VP Holly Rowland, but weather systems (and now EmCity) got in the way, so we’ll be talking with Holly next week.

  In the meantime, Make That Thing had a public unveiling last night, and we’re able to see some of how MTT is going to operate. In addition to shipping and fulfillment services, MTT will be offering promotional services, and will also be able to offer certain kinds of production:

  Because each campaign involves a high amount of personal attention and attention to detail, we only take on a handful of projects at a time, and only those that we think match up well with the kinds of things we know how to make – primarily comics, books, and games.

  We don’t know how to make USB toasters or solar-powered flashlights, so we simply won’t take on Hardware, Design, Video Game, or Fashion projects. Other people are better at that than we are. However, the rewards for your project are heavily weighed toward the following:

  • Printed materials (books, comics, posters)
  • Printed or embroidered apparel items (T-shirts, polos, neckties, aprons)
  • Novelties and baubles (stickers, patches, bookmarks, foam swords)
  • Other things that don’t involve inventing a new type of manufacturing apparatus

  Then we might be a good fit.

  They’re in closed beta right now, and as MTT finds its feet, I suspect they’ll be taking on projects primarily from the existing roster of TopatoCo clients. However, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if future clients found an MTT campaign as being similar to an audition for joining up with TopatoCo as an ongoing client. More when I get to chance to talk to Rowland, where I’ll be sure to ask who thought it was a good idea to leave a forklift with the TopatoCo Funployees.

• Speaking of Make That Thing, we knew that the Machine of Death card game was going to use MTT on account of that was sort of their soft launch. Now we know that their second client will be the Dresden Codak book which is well into holy shit territory with nearly US$120,000 raised in the first 15 hours. Aaron Diaz¹ has been hard at work since launch trying to come up with stretch goals that he hadn’t anticipated needing for a week or more. Even if you don’t read Dresden Codak, go check out the campaign just for video, then ask yourself honestly how fancy your pants are.

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¹ The Tolkien and Dinosaur Scholar Par Excellence. Oh my glob, Aaron, you need to draw the main players of The Silmarillion as maniraptors.

I ain’t Elisabeth Kübler-Ross but I do know something about the stages of grief, such as when Achewood (the once-unstoppable behemoth of absurdist-realist philosophizing) sputters to a near-halt¹. As noted previously, Chris Onstad is not my bitch and however he may find joy in producing aspects of Achewood that I may then consume, it’s all good. I get to share that particular creation that he lets loose on the world whether it’s once a day or twice a year, and however much I may miss it, I cannot complain too much about not getting free entertainment on a my desired schedule rather than that which Onstad can accommodate given the shape of his life.

So it is with a mixture of excitement and don’t-get-too-excited-yet that I noted his first Achewood-related bloggance in more than a year:

Hi. I’m back. I have some good news for you. It’s been a long time coming. A lot has changed since I fell off the face of the earth.

First and foremost: I’ve been working with a team of artists, engineers, and producers to bring Achewood to life. To give it the voices, richness, and opportunities it never had as a comic strip.

I’m flying to Los Angeles today to begin a week of network pitch meetings. If things go well, we’ll find a home for our show. Please cross your fingers for us, send us your good energy. And please, share this clip with your world. I’m very proud of what we’ve done.

There are many other things I want to share with you. About Achewood, about this, about all the loose ends, and about my plans for it going forward. This is the tip and the bulk of the iceberg, but there is much more. It’s been a very busy couple years, full of life-size tragedies, manifold germinations of happiness, and surprising rebirths—just like Achewood.

The pitch meetings mentioned are to explore the possibility of an Achewood-related animated series? special? film? project of some sort, the teaser of which makes me smile. Because I’m totally in the tank for Achewood, I’ve been parsing through those 19 seconds of sound and motion² for any clues they might offer³. Because I’m a realist, I know that even properties with a constituency within an entertainment company can be optioned, paid for, and spend years or decades in development without ever coming to fruition. At this time, possibilities exist — which is more than was true last week.

• Poorcraft 2, on the topic of traveling on the cheap, is well in production and on Saturday Poorcraft bookrunner Spike dropped some news on it. While P2 will see Diana Nock returning for art duties, Spike herself will be stepping back from writing duties as Ryan Estrada — webcomics own Marco Polo — handles the script. Or handled, as the book is well into the gettin’ drawed stage, meaning that Estrada’s work is largely done. Can’t wait to see how Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here turns out.
• Updating our EmCity seating information, news comes this morning that a fairly substantial chunk of Artists Alley island F will be given over to Benign Kingdom. The official exhibitor’s list mentions B9 occupying seat F-16, which is also listed as the home of Johnny Wander. However, word is that B9 will actually occupy seats F12-F16, of which three seats are listed as occupied, and two not listed, which tells me that Grand Vizier George is probably planning to have people rotate into the space seats throughout the show, as well as giving the usual occupants a little more breathing room than is normally found in Artists Alley.
• Given that various Strip Search parties have said that the show will be launching this month, and that the Strip Search site lists the show as running Tuesdays and Fridays, and there’s only one of those weekdays left in the month, Im’a keep a browser window refreshing tomorrow. If nothing else, I’ve been very impressed with the Artist interviews that have run, and how well the Strip Search producers (possibly Khoo) are at stirring up shit in such a blatant fashion. If there’s a reunion show, we may see murder yet.

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¹ To wit: five strips in all of 2011, twelve in the first six months of 2012, and zero since.

² As opposed to Sound and Motion.

³ Such as the 0:11 mark, where it appears that Teodor has been retired in favor of Roast Beef as Ray tests his Whiskey á la Mood sampler. It also appears that Ray is the centerpiece of this teaser, which makes me wonder if he still sounds the same as when Onstad voiced him.

So Howard Tayler’s Kickstarter is running at some 3000% of goal and counting, and he’s got a really important update that you should read. Certainly, read it if you’re a backer, but also read it if you’ve ever considered running a Kickstarter yourself because he talks about how your plans can get completely pooched not just from failing at a Kickstarter, but from succeeding too well¹.

The original scope for this project was as follows:

• Fund the creation of up to five different coins, at volumes which allow me to sell them at conventions, and keep stock on hand.
• Fund at somewhere between $10k and $20k after thirty days.
• Ship all the coins in mid-April

For reference, Tayler is just shy of US$55,000 as of this writing. Between Tayler’s experience and other runaway successes we’ve seen where the delivery of rewards becomes a serious burden², I’m starting to wonder if creators should make much more liberal use of limited rewards. Expecting to see no more than X to Y and a proportional number of backers, and you’ve arranged your schedule for the next few months around those assumptions? Limit the rewards so if you get a blowout success in the opening hours, you aren’t obligated to do more than you’re capable of.

If there’s pent-up demand, you can always say, I’m gratified so many of you want in on this, I’ll whip up some new rewards tiers and let the rest of you give me money while making the appropriate shifts to your schedule. And hey, nothing drives up interest like initial scarcity. If you’ve got a relatively straightforward set of rewards with a predictable production schedule, reliable supply chain, and scalable delivery operations, feel free to leave everything unlimited. In all other cases, some hard-nosed realistic self-assessment will probably be what stands between you and madness.

• Speaking of Kickstarters, Zach Weinersmith wrapped up his this morning, raising US$341,667 towards his newest book. If my math is correct, the number of backers he’s gotten at the various tiers means he’ll be signing his name approximately 4194 times in the various books that get signatures. Although many of those signatures will come from earlier books, which means Weinersmith may already have them signed and his hand won’t fall off the week after the big pallets arrive at his house.
• Nobody does data–sharing like Dorothy Gambrell³, and it was gratifying to see that her latest way to envision information is blowing up all over the damn place in the last couple of days. You won’t find it on her website, though, as it was made for Psychology Today’ February 2013 issue. In case you don’t subscribe, the editors have made her infographic of where missed connections occur by state available. If you’re a Scientologist, it’s all over Tumblr without attribution, which totally sucks.
• More EmCity participant notifications have come in, meaning I’ll have to go back to my earlier post and update the lists and maps. In the meantime, please consider yourselves notified that John Troutman and Ryan Smith will be at table Q-19 in Artists Alley.

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¹ Paging Rich Burlew, who gets all the slack in the world for an unpredictable injury that forced him to stop work for months, but who also wound up in the situation of having to create 25 separate product categories and try to keep nearly 15,000 backers happy while being just one person. That’s the sort of situation that sends sensible, grounded people on benders that take Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas as a to-do list.

² Above and beyond the simple shipping aspect, regarding which I will have more to say next week; the real work is in the design and production of everything you promise.

³ Except maybe Randall Munroe. If Gambrell and Munroe ever collaborated, my brain would explode from sheer enjoyment.

First, a quick update on yesterday’s Webcomics Folks and Where to Find Them at EmCity posting: Kel McDonald was kind enough to let us know that her booth (number 1008, for those playing at home) will, in addition to herself, Kory Bing, and Magnolia Porter, also be hosting Meredith McClaren, David Willis, and Tyler Crook. Keep the updates coming, people.

Okay. To my knowledge, the greatest overfunding of a webcomic-related Kickstarter on a percentage basis is not Homestuck (which achieved a relatively modest 355% of goal), Smut Peddler (415%), Diesel Sweeties (2006%, now we’re talking), or even the vaunted Order of the Stick (2171%), but Darren Gendron’s Monster Alphabet board book, which scored a funding rate of 5015%. Granted, the goal was only US$500, but a fifty times overfunding is pretty damn impressive.

I mention all this because Howard Tayler¹ launched a Kickstarter for a collectible last night at 10:00pm EST and had funded less than four minutes later. As of this writing (just over 13 hours into a 30 day campaign), Tayler sits at just under US$40,000 on a US$1800 goal, putting him at 2214% of goal, putting him past Order of the Stick and coming up on halfway to Gendron’s achievement.

Again, low funding goals make overfunding percentages easy to hit², but take a look at the projection on Tayler’s project, which is on track for an unreal 34,286%. Yes, yes, I know — Kicktraq projections never come true, or Ryan North would have cleared US$1.7 million and Andrew Hussie’s Homestuck more ten times that. But! Look at the initial Kicktraq projected values vs actual funding and take them as a ratio and you’ll get a fairly narrow range³:

• Homestuck: 5.75
• Smut Peddler: 5.17
• Diesel Sweeties: insufficient data (only last four days shown)
• Monster Alphabet: insufficient data (dates don’t correlate with campaign)
• Hamlet: 2.92

Across a wide range of initial goals (US$500 to US$700,000) and a wide range of overfundings (355% to 5015%), the ratio of initial projection to final funding runs between about 3:1 to 6:1. If these are representative, Tayler can expect to take in somewhere in the range of US$100,000 to US$200,000 (as of today, since the projection has gone up since yesterday, probably because it launched so late in the day), with a percentage funding of somewhere between 5500% and 11,100%. Of course, my sample size is so small as to make predictions laughably inaccurate, thus the very wide ranges given.

And you know what’s weird? That’s not even the oddest thing about this campaign. The oddest thing (apart from the fact that Tayler, who’s self-funded all his rather pricey books, is Kickstarting at all, especially for such a low-total item) is that Tayler opted to make something that has such a tenuous connection to his core IP.

The challenge coin (or “coins”, thanks to stretch goals being obliterated almost immediately) has never appeared in Schlock Mercenary. He had to explain what challenge coins are in the opening paragraphs of his Kickstarter description, and yet he’s hit upon something that his readership simply cannot live without.

Furthermore, this I didn’t know about these things existed but it must be mine is priced above the usual impulse buy for an unknown quantity⁴. The challenge coins are related to Schlock Mercenary (two of them, at least; the stretch goal “Not my circus, not my monkey” coin is Howard trying to import a Polish aphorism) but not as directly as a book, and they’re an unfamiliar type of item.

That’s the key takeaway today — your fans may not know what they want and a sufficiently unique item (don’t bother with challenge coins, that’s been done now) may just take off into the stratosphere. If you’ve got an item that can be produced in a wide range of quantities at decent margins to yourself, Kickstarter means there’s no reason not to try.

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¹ My evil twin. Happy eleven-and-a-quarterth Birthday next week, Howard.

² As in so many things, Rich Burlew’s Kickstarter was an anomaly, being both massively overfunded on a percentage basis and having a very high initial goal of nearly US$58,000. To a lesser degree, Ryan North’s Choose Your Own Hamlet is also a trendbreaker, with a higher-than-normal goal of US$20,000 and an achievement of more than 2900%.

³ Again, Order of the Stick is an anomaly, as the initial projected total wound up less than the actual total, giving a ratio of 0.718 which just doesn’t ever happen in nature.

⁴ I’m basing that statement on Jon Rosenberg’ Quantum Theory of Money which states that fans at a show are willing to part with up to twenty bucks without too much hestiation.

However! From my many hours assisting at booths at various conventions, I can tell you that quantum unit holds for something that fans recognize, like a t-shirt. I know what a t-shirt is, and it features a design related to something I like is the situation that leads to that twenty changing hands.

Odder items are more likely to follow the rules for impulse purchases, whereby somebody that isn’t a fan is willing to drop money on something they don’t know, or actual fans are willing to drop on something that isn’t represented in whatever they’re a fan of.

Impulse buys max out at five bucks. Anything more and you can see the gears turning in their heads — I don’t know this thing, so I’m not willing to risk a great deal of money against the possibility that I may not derive as much utility or enjoyment from it in the future as I suspect I might at this very moment. I really have to stop listening to the Freakonomics podcast, it’s rubbing off on me.

If anybody was going to do an extra-special comic for update number Six! Six! Six!, you knew it would be KC Green.

Ah, late February, when the comic-reading public’s fancy turns towards the far northwestern reaches and the first major show of the year: Emerald City Comic Con. As in past years, the webcomics contingent and their allies are well represented but the show floor is a bit compex, recalling the bifurcated layout of MoCCA Fest back when it was still in the Puck Building¹. The main floor of EmCity is broken into North and South areas, with a section of Artists Alley in each area. Let’s break ’em down so you can find people.

The bulk of the webby-ish creators are going to be in the South area, shown here:

And the showrunners have helpfully clustered webcomics types within about a two-aisle radius of the easily-located Dark Horse booth (1102), immediately in front of the main hall entrance. Start from there and follow the arrows:

and you’ll end up in the booths of Weregeek/Lunasea (705), Wasted Talent (806), the Great and Bountiful TopatoCoan Empire (with a dozen or more creators at 905 and 1002), Kel McDonald, Kory Bing, Magnolia Porter, Meredith McClaren, David Willis, and Tyler Crook (1008), Dave Kellett & Kris Straub (1107)², Something*Positive and Girls With Slingshots (1108), Scott Kurtz (1105)², Blind Ferret (1106), The Oatmeal (1202), Girl Genius (1204), The Devil’s Panties (1205), Brad Guigar (1206)², and Unshelved.

Staying in the South area, the bulk of the Artists Alley denizens may be found in the B, D, and F islands:

That would be Katie Cook (B-08), Raina Telgemeier (B-10), Dean Trippe (D-01), KrazyKow (D-03), Dave Roman and John Green (D-11), Mary Cagle (F-10), Evan Dahm (F-12), Phil McAndrew (F-13), and Yuko & Ananth (F-16).

Casting your eyes to the North area, you’re going to want to head left coming off the Sky Bridge:

Over on the west side of the hall you’ll find Alaska Robotics (2606), Erika Moen and Dylan Meconis³ (2615), John Troutman and Ryan Smith (Q-19), and the Cloudscape Comics collective (R-03). It’s a little bit of a hike from the South area, but worth the few minutes it’ll take you to traverse the distance.

Naturally, I’ve probably missed people in my survey that I should have included, so if you want to correct any oversights, the comments are open and awaiting your feedback.

Edit to add: exhibitors to list, updated map of the North area.
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¹ Back before the Great Comics Conflagration of Aught-Eight. Such a tragic day.

² The members of Halfpixel appear to have split themselves across three booths; unconfirmed reports indicate that they may be arriving at the show in separate limousines, and that Yoko Ono has been seen canoodling with an unnamed member of the collective. More on this as it warrants.

³ If you see Snowicane Erika, ask her if this time she’s come to Seattle to make friends. #teamerika

It’s been more than five months since Rich Burlew sliced his thumb up good and his return to comics has been slow — he managed to get one update in just before the end of 2012, and has averaged about one a week since then. Having so few chances to get story into play over such a log time must surely be frustrating, as he [SPOILERS] dropped a (long-awaited, it’s true) bombshell on us today.

Certainly, Burlew has been willing to kill off major and minor recurring characters in the past, but the one previous case of killing off a major cast member resulted in him getting better¹. This feels somehow more permanent, and the loving rendering on the last panel speaks to an artist being forced to wait nearly half a year longer than he’d planned to get to that particular development. Rest In Peace (perhaps temporarily), Death’s Lil’ Helper. You’ll be sort of missed, kinda.

I don’t think I mentioned the Johnny Wander book launch party on Saturday night — it was a blast watching Yuko Ota draw a strip with panels determined by suggestions written on little slips of paper and chosen randomly (the first of them should be today’s update, which should be available here at some point in the next few hours but which presently doesn’t exist). Let’s just say that small cats, unicorn power, and droopy socks work together surprisingly well. Oh, and also that Aaron Diaz‘s dog, Special Agent Dale Cooper, is both adorable and remarkably well-behaved in a large crowd.

Speaking of Aaron Diaz², we had a terrific talk about recent progress in dromaeosaurine research³ — to the point that Evan Dahm came over and guessed You’re talking about Deinonychus, aren’t you? — and his immediate publishing plans. You’ve no doubt seen the teaser image for the forthcoming Dresden Codak book, which has proved to be a production challenge.

Consider: Diaz regularly does individual updates that are actually a page or so in size and then intersperses them with single images that are the equivalent of four or five pages. How the heck do you put those in a single book? Answer: with a lot of creative layout, and two different trim sizes, the smaller of which will be at least 30 cm tall by 25 cm wide and the larger of which will approximately match the dimensions of the Little Nemo collections (a mind-bending 53 x 42 cm).

With any luck, he’ll be Kickstarting the books in the very near term, and sometime after that — presumably after his all-but-certain Machine of Death game card set — he’ll have time to do a book of dinosaur art. Dude’s got opinions on the thunder lizards and I want to see them illustrated.

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¹ Albeit more than 220 updates and two years later.

² The Tolkien Dinosaur Scholar Par Excellence.

³ This doesn’t have anything to do with past questions like whether or not theropods are represented by modern avians, or if they had feathers — Diaz will brook no dissent on these topics. Rather, it was about hunting styles, with the smaller, shorter-legged, stiffer-tailed dromaeosaurs now being thought of as not active, chase ’em down type predators like their larger, longer-legged, flexi-tailed cousins. Rather, they make have been arboreal, hanging out in tree branches (perhaps their feathers forming camouflage) and dropping onto their prey as they wandered by.

Yesterday, Chris Yates put up images of the last Baffler!s in Webcomics Fortnight Deux, meaning since we last mentioned them there have been contributions from Evan Dahm, David Willis, Rebecca Clements (that one astonishes me; I simply can’t believe that Yates and Assistant Emily the Lion were able to translate such a complex image into wood and paint), Andy Bell, and Danielle Corsetto. Mr Yates has been busy posting the Baffler!s to eBay, where as of this writing 13 of the 16 puzzles are available for bidding.

Guys, they start at fifty bucks, which is criminally cheap¹. As much as I’d love to grab up the Fat Pony, Tigerbuttah, Beartato and Friends Pizza Party, and Year in Japan [no link yet] for a grand total of US$200, we all know that ain’t gonna happen, and nor should it.

Yates and Assistant Emily deserve as much money as possible for the hard work they’ve put in, and the individual creators who contributed designs likewise should be fairly compensated for coming up with such wonderful designs. The auctions run for five days each; go crazy, outbid me, and have fun reassembling them.

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¹ As of this writing, none of the bids have cracked US$65, plus shipping. And don’t go complaining about the shipping charges, Yates packs his stuff to the point that tactical nuclear weapons couldn’t damage it in transit, which is exactly what you want if you care about your puzzle arriving with all of its pieces present.

I realize that I’ve been looking at Kickstarter wrongly with respect to a fairly fundamental question: When does it reach steady state? When does it happen that the high-profile projects slow down, hit a nice, predictable rate, and my budget for supporting such things stops getting busted? Answer: It doesn’t.

Case in point: the promised Kickstarter campaign for the the Machine of Death game hit yesterday afternoon, achieved its US$23,000 goal in about twelve hours, and is plugging away for another month. The sheer creativity that this game will demand of its players¹ (not to mention the track records of the principals) virtually guarantees the that stretch goals (and there will be many, many stretch goals) are likewise sticky and attractive. I’m guessing somewhere between US$150-200K by the time it’s all done.

And yet, the most intriguing part has little to do with the game itself. About two thirds of the way down the project page is a paragraph that I can only call a soft launch announcement for what could be the most exciting Kickstarter-related thing of 2013:

I’ll also be working with TopatoCo’s new subsidiary, Make That Thing, which is a dedicated fulfillment agency specifically for campaigns like this. TopatoCo has a warehouse full of people who do nothing but receive pallets and ship packages all day long for over fifty of the internet’s top artists (including me, Kris, and Ryan). So they and I will be working together to ensure that all the products and rewards from this campaign will be produced and shipped to you as quickly and efficiently as possible. [emphasis original]

One of the perennial complaints about Kickstarter campaigns (and by no means is this limited to the [web]comics sphere) is the sometimes very long time it takes to fulfill pledge rewards, even once the project in question has been actually produced. A very successful project can overwhelm a creator with shipping and fulfillment for literally months, and now TopatoCo are stepping into that niche.

Nothing is known outside the walls of either current or future TopatoCo World Headquarters about Make That Thing, so I’ll be sitting down next weekend with TopatoCo VP of Asskicking Holly Rowland to ask her about it. TopatoCo has been extraordinarily careful about picking clients and not growing their business past the point that they can handle the work, but if Make That Thing is truly a subsidiary, with its own systems, procedures, and staff, and if they decide to make their services available to Kickstarter projects outside of the TopatoCo stable? Game changer. Now we know why they needed that whole damn building for themselves² — they’re on their way to become the Amazon of one-off projects.

And that was going to be all I wrote until the four jolly lads at Cyanide and Happiness took the only logical step after turning down TV money for a C&H show last month — they launched their Kickstarter about ten hours ago and are already past 25% of their base goal of US$250,000. I’m very curious how much money will be necessary to achieve their top stretch goal (it’s presently masked), which is:

The C&H guys will 4-way joust to the death

Presumably, the last survivor will get to keep the money. No bets on this one, I can think up completely plausible reasons why each of the four would be the winner of that particular deathmatch. I hope they stream it.

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¹ Machine of Death: The Game of Creative Assasination is going to reward those who are quick with their wits and able to jump from idea to idea with ease. The description of the project is going to act as a filter for those who will not be temperamentally inclined to excel at or enjoy this game, as it is full of dancing language, leaping from place to place in a dizzying fashion. In other words, I have to plunk down money on this sumbitch.

² And if they do become a fulfillment house for major Kickstarter projects, they’ll need to start looking for another, larger building pretty damn soon. Maybe just head back to Eastworks and take over the whole thing?

I don’t mean to be flip, and we will talk comics in a minute, but today almost all my mental bandwidth is being taken up by a music video featuring a youth choir, the Barenaked Ladies, and Commander Frickin’ Hadfield¹. I am not immune to earnest hopefulness, especially when it’s got a catchy tune.

So, comics.

• I first noticed French webcomicker Boulet about this time last year when he posted an absolutely astonishing 24 hour comic called Darkness. Today I noticed an announcement from AdHouse Books that Darkness will see print in April which makes me very, very happy. Sadly, it’s being produced in limited numbers, and will primarily be available — as near as I can tell — at Boulet’s appearances at Stumptown and MoCCA. If you get a chance to grab a copy of Darkness, absolutely do so.
• KaBOOM! continues mining the talent of webomickry and indy arts for covers of its Cartoon Network-spinoff comics, with Brian Butler, Mary Cagle, David McGuire, and Mad Rupert getting the nod for the covers of Regular Show #2. Gotta say, Rupert’s realist take on the main cast is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
• Finally, congrats to Brad Guigar, for today marks the day that his internet comicking efforts become a teenager, and we all know how difficult teens can be. In three years when his webcomics are screaming that they hate Brad and why can’t they borrow the car, be sure to give the guy some love.

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¹ He is seriously the most inspiring, fire-up-everybody-on-the-potential-of-space astronaut we’ve had since forever.