I received this morning an email from a woman named Mary R with an observation and a question:

You mentioned in an article a while back that Box Brown lost the Everything Dies site and it got replaced by a linkfarm. Fleen still links to it though–is it there as a dire warning to other creators, or have you not gotten around to removing it yet?

Which I was glad to receive as I was under the impression that I had removed the link to what used to be Box Brown’s eschatological¹ comical exercise and was surprised to see that it was still there. Several attempts to kill it via WordPress resulted in processes that seemed like they should have succeeded, but did not. It did allow me to set the link to not display, but it’s still there in the database, mocking me.

As a result of Ms R’s eagle-eyed observation, we know have top men working on the WordPress issue, and I have taken the opportunity to comb through the blogroll and do some recategorizing, some pruning, and also to remedy some inexcusably-overlooked sites (welcome, Broodhollow!) so thanks to her. If you notice something odd about the site, please do let us know, as looking at it every day means that things you would find obvious have faded into the background noise of my brain.

• Speaking of followups, the cancelled-due-to-superstorm webcomics creator hullabaloo at Wild Pig Comics in Kenilworth, NJ, is back on! Saturday, 15 December from noon to 4:00pm will be when you get to meet and/or greet Danielle Corsetto, Bill Ellis & Dani O’Brien, and Jamie Noguchi right about here, around the corner from Dunkin’ Donuts and right next to a great smelling hot dog shop.

  Wild Pig itself is convenient to major transportation arteries, they offer terrific discounts, and also have a lounge area/library (I’ve never seen that before in a comics shop) where the person you drag along with you can relax in comfy seating and maybe flip through a copy of BONE.

• So everybody that went to Thought Bubble over the weekend had a fabulous time, by all accounts. The accounts also say that webcomics own John Allison took the “gong” (as our British cousins say) for Best Comic in the inaugural British Comics Awards. Fellow webcomicker Darryl Cunningham lost out in the Best Book category to Nelson, an anthology featuring the absolute best of British cartooning talent (including Allison and Cunningham, so it’s like Cunningham won anyway and Allison won one-and-a-half times). As previously noted, webcomicker Josceline Fenton was nominated for both Best Comic and Emerging Talent (which she won), and I see she was also part of Nelson, making her somebody to really keep an eye on in the future.
• Launched over the weekend (and piggybacking off of attention given by recent a Carson Daly appearance and a teaser/trailer featuring Nick Offerman), a Kickstarter campaign to get Axe Cop into the one media channel it hasn’t yet conquered: documentary film. The goal is to release by May 2013 to coincide with the launch of the Axe Cop TV show, which given the nearly four-year effort to bring Stripped to a final cut, seems ambitious.

  However, there are factors that probably make the Axe Copumentary simpler — it appears that filming has been done over the past several years of the Axe Cop phenomenon, and having a singular focus would certainly make for an easier time with respect to the number of people that you’d have to interview, trying to come up with a coherent narrative through-line, and heck, just getting copyright clearances for all the visuals. ANYway, if you want to watch Malachai Nicolle grow up on camera, now’s your chance.

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¹ Fleen: not just rumination on webcomics, but also a vocabulary-building exercise. You’re welcome.

It is nearly the weekend; a somewhat vexing obstacle at work has been resolved; next week will feature pie; my dog’s insides are not nearly so poisonous as they were yesterday. There’s a few things from webcomics, too.

• One of the ways I judge the reach of creators is by noting when they intersect with people I know from outside webcomics. Thus, the EMT student wearing the Bearmonster shirt (who got surprised with a Jeph Jacques sketch and who actually head-desked in surprise), the niece asking Zach Weinersmith for rules clarifications on an in-comic tabletop game, and the friend of 20 years casually remarking that nothing brightens his day like Anthony Clark’s twitterfeed.

  That day-brightening effect is a fairly widespread opinion, and it is also empirically observable (at least to me) that Clark is pretty much the Most Beloved Guy in Webcomics. Thus, the tremendous outpouring of good wishes yesterday — his 30^th birthday — culminating in multiple life retrospectives for all to enjoy. If you didn’t get a chance to wish Clark happy returns yesterday, there’s no time like the present.

• Speaking of birthdays, yesterday was also the birthday of Greg Dean’s Real Life Comics which is now an actual teenager on the internet, holy crap. Need proof? Here you go, Sparky. And not a birthday per se, more a rebirth, as Brad Guigar (who likely does not remember being 13, or even 30, on account of his advanced age²) announced the return of Courting Disaster from hiatus, and did so with a bang³.

  In CD’s run, there’ve been questions about dating, sexual etiquette, slut-shaming, embarrassment, infidelity, happy funtime toys, intrusive relatives, and more, but to celebrate the resumption Guigar went straight to the sine qua non of sex-advice columns: the three-way. HOT, and almost like he’s trying to generate attention for the strip just as it returns from break! Also, as if my calculations are correct, Brad’s getting to the point of having to have “The Talk” with his sons, which means he can just drop ’em in front of the CD archives and tell them to start clicking, then check in with him if there are any questions. CONVENIENT. True, this course is possibly not recommended by experts, but let’s let him have this one.

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¹ If we allow “now” to include “memories of last night”: My bartender invents amazing drinks.

² Which happens to be a full year and a half younger than me, sigh.

³ I’m so, so sorry.

Make that normal-ish; a power outage in Manhattan (thanks, superstorm!) resulted in Fleen’s hosting being up, yet unable to connect to other resources necessary to actually appear on your brain-boxes for a period of time yesterday. I haven’t seen it recur, but I’m also not self-browsing all day long; should you see problems crop up, feel free to drop a line to gary at this here site.

In the meantime, let’s return to one of our recurring themes: ideas. Raw material destined for refinement, currency, object of sacred communion, or more common than dirt — everybody’s got an idea about ideas. They form the center part of Matthew Inman’s latest comic, an eighteen screen behemoth about creating on the internet (which touches on many more things that just ideas, and includes a nicely-argued support for my own personal rule of browsing¹). The ideas section talk about where they come from, and leads to a particularly useful metaphor of ideas not as discrete items, but as the generated result of a process, here described as a river².

Nobody’s idea-river (or pond, or pool, or puddle, or superstorm) is going to produce exactly the same quantity of ideas any anybody else’s, or the same quality for that matter. Although distinct, they will often bear striking similarities to others, to the point of cliche. Enter Ryan Estrada, remarking over Twitter how tiresome he finds the overused concept of The Prophesied Chosen One. Tiresome enough that he comes up with his own twist and throws it out for others to use:

Story idea: A crazy old man just tells hundreds of kids they’re the chosen one, hoping that by law of averages, one of them will succeed.

He just looks up their details on Facebook when they enter his cave so it sounds authentic.

Someone steal this idea, I’m too bored by chosen one stories to even write a parody of one.

Maybe it’s like a ‘thing’ in the kingdom. All the creatures know that whenever a stranger walks by they go “are you HIM?”

There’s just like, a mountain of dead chosen ones outside the villain’s castle.

I’m in favor of this — tossing ideas out, seeing what people can make of them; there will always be germs of stories or gags that you can’t see a way to use (cf: Chris Hallbeck’s professed inability to use ideas if he doesn’t draw them right away) which are doing the world no good cooped up in your brain. If it’s something that you can use later, great, tuck it away, see what becomes of it; but if it’s something you aren’t ever going to use? Throw ’em out there and see if somebody can use ’em:

A Director falls in love with an extra. But due to union rules, he is not allowed to speak to her. Has to communicate through assistant.

The obvious thing is that she would fall in love with the assistant, but if you’re gonna steal my idea, please make it better than that.

I just love the idea of a romance story centered around an obscure film industry union rule.

I don’t think that Estrada really meant “steal” in that middle quote, but I think he was quite serious about wanting to see his open-sourced idea not be used in an obvious way; just because you don’t have the time, inclination, or vision to shepherd an idea through to fruition doesn’t mean you want to see it treated cavalierly. So if you share an idea with the world, feel free to make a suggestion to spur maximal creativity in its usage; if you use an idea so offered, do your best to not be lazy or obvious in its development. Ideas might be more common than dirt, but there’s still value to be found with a bit of care.

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¹ “Never read the comments”. The only regular exception to this rule is The AV Club, and they’re less amusing now that Frakes doesn’t get to reminisce about his wild times on the TNG set all the time.

² Complete with beaver slap fights, which are awesome.

Rich Burlew continues to heal his sliced-up thumb as fast as willpower allows¹, but both new comics and progress on the many, many projects related to his Kickstarter² remain fairly well stalled at the moment. But a simmering secret project (that didn’t require direct involvement to the same degree as other items) has come to fruition that ought to satisfy the most die-hard Order of the Stick fans: the first in-scale tabletop game miniature, eventually to become a full line. Roy Greenhilt comes unpainted, with multiple eyebrow options, and is as near a perfect projection into three dimensions of Burlew’s stick-figure style as could ever be expected. No word yet on who the second figure will be, but personally I’m hoping for a sexy, shoeless god of war.

• Missed in the superstorm: the recently-announced, Spike-led horror anthology did indeed open up for submissions as scheduled and is accepting story proposals for another sixteen days. Note that you don’t have to have a comic done by then, just get your story pitch in — the actual submission isn’t due until May. In case you’re wondering if The Sleep of Reason is a cool enough project for you to get involved in, check out the murderers row of already-confirmed participants and wonder how it could possibly get any better³.
• How about something a bit more hopeful, but still with enough darkness to keep it from being all weak tea? The New York International Children’s Film Festival announced the return of their annual Studio Ghibli retrospective for five full weeks starting 16 November and running until 20 December. Week one’s schedule is already posted, featuring screenings (in new 35mm prints, both dubbed and subbed) of Nausicaä, Laputa, Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away. If you’ve never seen these films on the big screen, you’re missing out; if you’ve never seen these films, period, what the hell is wrong with you?
• If we move further away from the darkness to where there is only sunny optimism and gentle humo[u]r, I’m pleased to note that I received my copies (one to keep, one to give to the next first-time parent I know) of The Bear in yesterday’s mail, and dang if it isn’t beautiful. I’m not sure how much direction Ryan Sohmer gave to Becky Dreistadt in the choice of animals and staging each of the little vignettes he wrote but if he’s smart (and Sohmer is very smart) he got out of her way and let her imagination run wild. Because dang, have I mentioned what you get when Becky’s imagination runs wild?

  In any event, it’s a gorgeous book, and I am encouraged by rumo[u]rs I hear that there will be a The Bear 2, as that means more animal paintings from Dreistadt, and if there’s one thing that a nation (and world) badly divided by petty dislikes and prejudices needs, it’s more of her animal paintings. You literally cannot maintain a bad mood looking at these. The only downside to a second volume? Sohmer and Dreistadt had to sign nearly 4000 copies of The Bear; I’m figuring a second book could easily double that, leading one or both to possibly have an arm fall off and nobody wants that. Just in case, the magic word is Xam! Really.

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¹ Which is roughly the same speed if willpower is taken out of the equation. Honestly, thinking at a sliced tendon doesn’t do much at all.

² Of which, to be fair, several were clearly labeled at the time of the Kickstart as This will get done some considerable time in the future after the easier things to fulfill to the most people are done.

³ Answer: if Terry Moore decided to get involved somehow; seriously, Rachel Rising disturbs me on a deep, existential level every damn month.

No new big surprises or aftereffects from the superstorm, gas rationing got lifted this morning, trains are almost back to their usual, semi-fictional schedule, and last night’s Adventure Time season premiere was amazing. Feelin’ good!

• I have been neglectful of pointing out that Thought Bubble is running this week in Leeds, with the emphasis on this coming weekend, 17-18 November. Guests of webcomicky note include Kate Beaton, John Allison¹, Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson, Scott C, Darryl Cunningham, Paul Duffield, Cameron Stewart, and Huw Davis will be there also, but he may be a bit tired on Sunday as he’s running a 10K race that morning. Maybe bring him a smoothie or something?

  There will be book debuts (including from Marc Ellerby, and the European debut of Tiny Kitten Teeth), panels (including a discussion on digital comics: Bury Theatre, Royal Armouries, 1:40pm – 2:30pm, with Dreistadt, Gibson, Beaton, C, Duffield, and Simon Fraser), and the annual British Comics Awards (Bury Theatre, Royal Armouries, 6:00pm – 7:00pm). Any/all [web]comics fans in the middle part of England are encouraged to drop by and say “hi”.

• New Wigu! Times two! Jeff Rowland has apparently found a moment’s free time in between the wedding and the immense holiday rush of new things to drop comics on us! Add in a new Overcompensating on the same day and it’s like Christmas came early for me.
• Hey, know what I haven’t mentioned for a while? Recipe Comix, courtesy of Saveur magazine, which had been a bit spare on the ground, but have of late resumed an approximately biweekly schedule. I bring this up as a twitter exchange yesterday allowed me to point Mike Russell towards Helen Rosner, who handles submissions for Recipe Comix in between getting to enjoy fabulous meals that she then tweets about for the sole purpose of making me hungry.

  Ahem. That is to say, if you have a connection to food (and don’t we all, particularly in this harvest/holiday timeframe) and make comics, you might want to drop a line to Ms Rosner and see if your idea would work for Recipe Comix. Guys, let’s come up with so many pitches that RC has to run weekly — that is the definition of a win for creators (you get paid), a win for Saveur (content to share) and a win for me (new food experiences to check out). Get cracking.

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¹ Speaking of John Allison, a Tumblrpost of his from this morning caught my eye and made me snort out loud. A certain percentage of my readership may well have attended the same college I did, and if they did so in a nearly 30 year span from about 1972 to about 2000, then the name “Thad Smith” evokes not muscle-bound beach hunks, but rather a lanky professor of political science who just may be the greatest teacher to ever push chalk.

From teaching students how to read Pentagon black budgets to breaking Kris Kristofferson’s collarbone in a rugby match during his own undergrad days, Thad (as he insisted on being called) was never less than a font of fascinating information who was careful to never let on what his opinions were as he forced his classes to defend their own. Hell, in four years the only political opinion I ever got him to ‘fess up to was an almost visceral dislike of Ed Meese, who is somehow still alive and as soon as I’m done writing this sentence will go back to being forgotten as he so richly deserves.

So yeah, that was pretty funny.

So I have this deal with Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson: when I back their Kickstarters and qualify for a Becky painting, I tell her Do mine last. I know you’ll get to it when you can, clear out everybody else’s before mine. I know that she’ll always have literally a couple hundred paintings to complete, and I have long suspected that not having the pressure to get all! those! paintings! done as quickly as possible means that I’ll get something worth the wait.

Case in point — tiki greyhounds, which I received yesterday and caused me and my wife to squeal with such delight that our own greyhound was startled. It is honestly the most happy-making art I’ve ever seen in my life and I wanted to share it with you all.

• Speaking of Kickstarters, one started a few hours ago and is (as of this writing) approaching the 82% funding level with most of 21 days still to go. I speak, naturally of Johnny Wander Book 3² by Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya, and I applaud them for a couple of things:
  • The book is basically done; we’ve seen things like Yuko’s design work for the cover over the past month, and Ananth has put together many, many books; the campaign is basically to manage pre-orders, not to support the creators while they make the book.
  • And also to put an earlier book back in print; while there are still copies of JW volume 1 to be had, one of the things you need to do as an independent publisher is make sure you keep enough inventory on hand for the next _____ months of selling.
  • Panagariya and Ota are doing something I’ve been wanting to see for a while — they’re compressing the time for the campaign down to just three weeks. I’ve often wondered if longer campaign times allow interest to wane, and if a shorter one would create a sense of urgency because you need to do it now or miss out. I don’t think anybody would actually be crazy enough to put up a Kickstarter for the 72 hours I once suggested as an experiment, but I’m betting that the right project with the right audience could make a killing on a one- or two-week campaign. After all, in the time it’s taken me to write the last three paragraphs, the campaign has cleared 87.6%, and will likely be at goal by the time I’m done writing.

  Anyway, JW volume 3, it’s wonderful stuff (almost as wonderful as tiki greyhounds), go get in on that while the getting’s good.

• I followed a link over the weekend (sorry, can’t recall who posted it, but I suspect it was probably Colleen Doran) to a law blog with a focus on marketing and technology, where I discovered something that does not yet appear to be entirely settled case law: can an offhand comment in an email suffice to create/change contracts? Even to the extent of giving up copyrights? The particular case cited by the author, Eric Goldman, seems to indicate not, but there appear to have been other cases that decide in the other direction. Goldman says he hasn’t yet decided to implement a standard disclaimer on his emails, but thinks that it might be a good idea. For those of you who like boilerplate:
  

  Nothing in this email is intended as an offer and the author disclaims any intention to make an offer or create an enforceable agreement through any email messages. Any agreement with the author of this email must be in a signed paper document!

  As always, please consult with a trained legal professional if questions of rights or contracts are something you have to deal with, and make sure you don’t give anything away by accident. Giving things away by accident makes tiki greyhounds sad. =(

• Know what makes tiki greyhounds happy? 97% and rising.

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¹ Because nobody will appreciate a good gander at this like The Tiki Queen of the East Bay. Please note that I do not seek to challenge her for tiki collection supremacy, as she has devoted her home to tiki in a way I could never match, and that’s before you consider the contributions by both Sergio Aragones and Stan Sakai.

² Disclaimer: I provided a blurb for JW volume 2, and I happened to see Ota and Panagariya just yesterday. Feel free to read into those whatever you’d like.

I first noticed it in Ryan Estrada’s twitterfeed, taking time out from his honeymoon to point out a photo of the Obamas with a copy of Kean Soo’s Jellaby. Subsequent consensus is that the photo is from 2008, and it looks as if the First Lady is holding the book for one of her daughters, but honestly none of that matters. What matters is that the Obama girls have excellent taste in reading material.

As long as I’m noticing things via other people, here’s a thinky essay on creativity by Linds Redding (with whom I was not previously familiar), pointed out by Colleen Doran (who really is frigteningly clever and you should pay attention when she’s got something to say; cf: all about bad publishers). Redding talks about his time in the advertising game, and an exercise in creativity that required brainstorming and then walking away from ideas overnight:

This human powered bullshit filter was a handy and powerful tool. Inexpensive, and practically foolproof. Not much slipped through the net. I’m quite sure architects, musicians, mathematicians and cake decorators all have an equivalent time-honed protocol.

But here’s the thing.

The Overnight Test only works if you can afford to wait overnight. To sleep on it. Time moved on, and during the nineties technology overran, and transformed the creative industry like it did most others. With the new digital tools at our disposal we could romp over the creative landscape at full tilt. Have an idea, execute it and deliver it in a matter of a few short hours.

Or as the bean counters upstairs quickly realized, we could just do three times as many jobs in the same amount of time, and make them three times as much money. For the same reason that Jumbo Jets don’t have the grand pianos and palm-court cocktail bars we were originally promised in the brochures, the accountants naturally won the day.

Pretty soon, The Overnight Test became the Over Lunch Test. Then before we knew it, we were eating Pot-Noodles at our desks, and taking it in turns to go home and see our kids before they went to bed.
plummeted.

The other consequence, with the benefit of hindsight, is that we became more conservative. Less likely to take creative risks and rely on the tried and trusted. The familiar is always going to research better than the truly novel. An research was the new god. The trick to being truly creative, I’ve always maintained, is to be completely unselfconscious. To resist the urge to self-censor. To not-give-a-shit what anybody thinks. That’s why children are so good at it.

There’s more history, some analysis, and then Redding gets to what I think is the key thesis:

This hybridisation of the arts and business is nothing new of course – it’s been going on for centuries – but they have always been uncomfortable bed-fellows. But even artists have to eat, and the fuel of commerce and industry is innovation and novelty. Hey! Let’s trade. “Will work for food!” as the street-beggars sign says.

This Faustian pact has been the undoing of many great artists, many more journeymen and more than a few of my good friends. Add to this volatile mixture the powerful accelerant of emerging digital technology and all hell breaks loose. What I have witnessed happening in the last twenty years is the aesthetic equivalent of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. The wholesale industrialization and mechanistation of the creative process. Our ad agencies, design groups, film and music studios have gone from being cottage industries and guilds of craftsmen and women, essentially unchanged from the middle-ages, to dark sattanic mills of mass production. Ideas themselves have become just another disposable commodity to be supplied to order by the lowest bidder. As soon as they figure out a way of outsourcing thinking to China they won’t think twice. Believe me.

Redding is more mourning what’s been lost than looking for where to go next, but I think there’s a decent prescription to be derived from what he’s had to say, in several parts:

1. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Give them away. Repurpose that tweet into a comic. Don’t be afraid to burn more gags than you could use in a week. Hell, use ’em all in one strip, your brain will bake more cookies.
2. That old, pre-industrial model? It’s nice work if you can get it, but you’ll have to work far harder than you ever would working for The Man, more than likely. Seriously, the word “easy” should be banished from your vocabulary, because your chances of achieving real satisfaction and comfortable circumstances are just as slim on your own as they are hitting the jackpot working for somebody else. It’s going to be tough either way, but if you’re going to have to work that hard, it may as well be for you.
3. Remember that the easiest way for somebody to take advantage of you is with your active cooperation; failing to educate yourself (or letting others convince you it’s not important) counts as active cooperation, by the way. Figure out what you don’t know and find a way to learn it, or hire somebody to work for you to do those things.
4. Don’t trust anybody that says they have a recipe for your success, even me¹; take all advice with many grains of salt, decide carefully what works for you, and never stop re-evaluating your plan.

Okay, that’s enough for you to think of over the weekend. See everybody on Monday.

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¹ Especially me.

I guess given how long I’ve been doing this¹ and how much I’ve written², I suppose it was inevitable that one day would events would conspire to suggest the theme “Randy”.

• First up, the Toonseum continues to have some of the most aggressively eclectic programming of any museum I’ve ever heard of (remember their collaboration with the Musuem of Uncut Funk?), and are continuing that tradition on Saturday, 1 December with the Kids Christmas Cartoonfest. Holiday special episodes³ run from noon, there’s a singalong at 4:30, crafts all day, storytelling, and Santa. Five bucks per person.

  So how does this fit into the “Randy” theme? Because the special guest for the afternoon will be actor Ian Petrella who appeared in A Christmas Story as … Randy! Oh, stop acting all disappointed that it isn’t Ralphie, you’ll still buy a ticket for the Red Ryder BB Rifle raffle.

• Secondly,and more Randy-oriented, Uncle Randy has a present for you. I believe that I’m on record as greatly admiring all the comics by Randy Milholland, but I’m especially taken by the (approximately annual) Super Stupor comics, as they take up stray strands from the (very occasional) Super Stupor online comics and spin them out to wonderful stories that really make cape comics appealing.

  Seriously, I’ve enjoyed Super Stupor #1-4 more than any superhero comic from the big publishers in maybe ten years because Milholland does more to make me care about characters in a one-shot issue than the past seven decades of neverending same-old interspersed with continuous EVENTS! THAT! CHANGE! EVERYTHING!

  It’s been long enough since Super Stupor #4 that I was wondering if #5 was ever coming along when lo and behold: yesterday Milholland dropped the first page of what would have been issue #5, but instead he’s decided to post online for free.

  

  Which means two things:

  1. Come back to the Super Stupor site for the next, I’ma say twenty days or so, and enjoy the story. Based on this first page, it doesn’t appear that Milholland’s using his established characters to the same degree as previous issues, so if you don’t know who Toy Boy, Punchline, Arch-Angela, Rumble Bee, Eye-Sore, or Big Killhuna are, you’ll do just fine.
  2. I need to get in touch with Randy and find out how much he wants for the art of this first page (and here I thought I’d never want a drawing of Mitt Romney in my home). If you enjoy the story, you might want to buy a little something from him, too.

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¹ Going on seven years.

² Goodness, if I skip Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, I’ll round out this year with 2000 posts; I wonder how many words that comes to.

³ Oh man maybe they’ll have A Christmas Special featuring He-Man and She-Ra! Or — dare I hope? — The Star Wars Holiday Special featuring an especially coked-out Carrie Fisher and Bea Arthur!

Until, you know, the nor’easter shows up later today; ordinarily it wouldn’t be a concern, but I’m looking at this one tree that I’m certain thinks it got left out when all the cool trees got knocked down by Superstorm Sandy last week. There’s also a boil water order for my town, the furnace is acting up now that it’s really getting cold out, I see snow coming down, and — most horrifyingly — I have to go the the MVC and renew my driver’s license. But at least Donald Trump is in a deep existential funk over the election, so I guess it all balances out.

• In the meantime, I’ll note that while I was without power last week, the ninth iteration of Child’s Play launched, and has accumulated US$300,000 in the first week. Good start, nerds, let’s see if you can better the US$3.5 million (give or take) that was the 2011 tally.
• More numbers I missed last week: Chris Hallbeck hit Maximumble #500 last Thursday, which when considered with its companion piece Minimumble (approaching #250) and original-flavor The Book of Biff, means that Hallbeck is drawing five panels of comics per day (one in color), five days a week, and I can’t recall the last time he missed an update of any of the three. Taking them all together, he’s put up 2403 updates and that number goes up by fifteen every week. Oh, and he managed to get his kid on national TV this morning; not bad for a man who is nearly 37% eyebrows by mass.
• Readers of this page who like comics and booze¹ may recall² that at the end of the summer I pointed you towards a New York City event aimed at teaching wine newbies how to tell good stuff from bad hosted by Kristen Siebecker. The next session of Popping Your Cork (with an emphasis on drinking good stuff at Thanksgiving) will take place next Wednedsay, 14 November at 6:15pm, spots are filling fast, and if you use the discount code THANKS20 will get 20% off the session price. Spots are going fast, so sign up now if you want to look all fancy come the 22nd.

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¹ I know, what are the odds?

² If all the comics and booze haven’t destroyed your memory.

It seems to me that our system would work a lot better if voting were based on Zach Weinersmith’s “votey” button, which brings up a reward when you point at it. Vote, get a ranting, naked Weinersmith in return. Democracy!

Things coming up:

• UK alert! Scott C and Olly Moss will be doing a joint signing at Forbidden Planet in London the day after tomorrow. Also, sharp-eyed viewers may have noticed Mr C on television last night, in accordance with prophesy.
• Of webcomics-specific happenings, one of the more well-received (by both attendees and exhibitors) of late has been the annual Webcomics Rampage at the Austin, Texas output of Dragon’s Lair Comics. This year’s info is newly released, with David! Willis! sharing both the invite list and programming on his Tumblr. The fun runs the second weekend of December, with both a fullTexas contingent of creators, and also those from less Texasy climes.
• Via Scott McCloud’s twitterfeed: a touching reminder for all of us that have dogs in our lives that nothing lasts forever. I’m putting the world on notice: when my greyhound¹ dies, I am gonna be a mess. Think of this moving remembrance by Claus Daniel Hermann as the less poop-oriented counterpart to this equally aware-of-canine-mortality offering from Matthew Inman, which has a few naughty words and had my wife laughing so hard that she possibly met the clinical definition of respiratory compromise.

  In conclusion, dogs rule. Vote dog!

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¹ Healthy, happy, but twelve and a half years old; also, my first dog.