Probably no post tomorrow, due to work and travel demands. I know, somehow you’ll muddle through to the weekend.

• Karl Kerschl switches between story threads without warning, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that although it’s been eleven months since we’ve seen Vivol, he is not forgotten. His long flashback to the circus days is done, but even lo these many years later, his dreams are troubling. Conflating his mother and his surrogate cub, the tragic Moon Bear, both lost to him? The melancholy in that final panel of yesterday’s strip is so thick you can touch it. Bravo¹.

  What’s that? You don’t know about Vivol, and Moon Bear, and all the other inhabitants of the forest and surrounding lands? Good thing for you there’s a softcover collection of the first two years of The Abominable Charles Christopher (and others), and a just-announced pre-order for the second volume in hardcover. My advice: spring for the sketch edition, on account of what Kerschl calls a “sketch” would in any other context be called “an amazingly subtle and detailed animal portrait”

• Speaking of Kerschl, how about a reminder of his erstwhile studiomate, now Berlin-resident? It’s been more than five years, what with interruptions for paying work and such, but Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo is down to the last few pages of its very moody, atmospheric story of art made (literally, dangerously) alive. The last page should be up any day now, and look for a collection in the near future and trust me, if you’ve never read it, read it from the beginning now that it’s (almost) complete. So much meaning that wasn’t apparent at the beginning is fairly screaming at me now. Highest possible recommendation.
• Quick note on a comment from Morgan Wick regarding NYCC and the Javits Center: there really is no mega-convention center in the New York area, what with the crowded nature of the metroplex and the necessity of building up rather than out. There were plans for a bit there to scrap the Javits and build a new megaplex featuring a convention center, hotels, and casino in Queens, but that presumes that people coming to New York would want to go to what is the bedroom community of the city instead of the business/entertainment district. Also, the South Asian casino magnate that was maybe going to pony up about a billion dollars to kickstart (no relation) the project decided not to, and it would be a decade before something like that could be done.

  The Javits could be made usable, but it will have to expand — that’s not so feasible north or south (due to road infrastructure), or to the east (due to a million buildings and a major north-south artery), so west over the water is the only possibility. There needs to be a lot more support services in the area of the Javits (steps outside the San Diego Convention Center is the Gaslamp District; an equivalent distance from the Javits is the odd deli, a service garage for taxis, and a stable for Central Park carriage horses; in terms of tourist services, it’s a desert until you get to Midtown, most of a mile away), and there needs to be mass transit, which I’m sure they’ll get to sometime after the Second Avenue subway is done. The only approach that can practically improve the insufficiency of the Javits (apart from capping attendance and changing their exhibitor preferences) is, as Wick points out, to have a second show to take some of the demand off. Somebody go do that.

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¹ Now, when can we expect to see Luga again?

Now it’s just like you were there!

Okay, quick post today, but you got like 1100 words of organizational analysis yesterday so it’s all good.

Everybody knows about the Humble Bundles, right? Buy a package of videogames (most of the iterations going back to 2010), music (once, earlier this year), or books (going on now), DRM-free, and the proceeds go to charity? The name-your-own-price feature (with more content unlocked if you exceed the average price already paid by everybody else, which is a moving target) was so effectively popular that Ryan Estrada borrowed it for The Whole Story comics collection back in June. In a case of great minds thinking alike, the Humble Bundlers yesterday added webcomics to the currently-running e-book bundle.

So if you’re a fan of Randall Munroe, Zach Weinersmith, or Mike Krahulik & Jerry Holkins, you can get a total of five of their comic collections, along with eight novels from the likes of Gaiman, Scalzi, Lackey, and Doctorow, for the low-low price of (as of this writing) US$13.48. The interesting thing is, that average price has gone up by more than a dollar since yesterday when the comics collections were first added. So you’ve got about six days to get on that, internet.

Alert readers of this page may note that I haven’t mentioned any of the webcomickers who were in Artists Alley at NYCC, and that’s for the very good reason that I never made it over there.

Let me sum up; no, wait, there’s too much. Let me ‘splain.

On Saturday, the entire inbound stream of attendees was directed (by bullhorn-wielding staffers on the streets surrounding the Javits Center) to enter only at the 38th Street (northern) side of the hall. Got that? A few thousand people a minute are streaming into the hall, on the second floor, in a southerly direction. Artists Alley, as previously noted, was in an annex that is reached by navigating to the second floor, at the 38th street side, and then proceeding north towards an access tunnel. The people trying to get to AA had to fight against the much larger in-flow of people into the hall. I took one look at that mess from the exhibit floor and decided that this was indeed the day that bonds of fellowship died and I was not braving those rapids to see people that I very much wanted to see.

Which is a shame, as I’m told that Artists Alley was very nice, with plentiful ATMs, lots of space, and natural light.

Now, we have explored in the past how the Javits Center is, on its face, a nightmare to deal with. There are still lessons to be learned and improvements to be made, and presumably some of that will come as NYCC gets older and acquires institutional memory; the showrunners at SDCC have four decades of collective experience, with a slow ramp-up in the intensity and size of the crowds to hone their skills at booth placement, aisle design, and line wrangling. Therefore, I want to respectfully suggest that the NYCC showrunners find the people from SDCC with those skills and drive a dump truck full of money up to their front doors so that they will share their secrets, because there were some bad situations on the show floor this year.

Understand that when I say that at times on Saturday the crowds at NYCC were the second most hazardous crowds I’ve ever experienced in my life¹, and the worst I’ve ever experienced in New York City, I am comparing against some very bad crowds. If you look very closely in the famous Vincent Laforet photo of the 38th Street ferry docks during the blackout of 2003, you can just make me out in the crowd² and that crowd was not as bad as some of what I encountered in the 1100 aisle this past Saturday. On the docks, we were at least all moving in one direction and managed to let people off the boats so some of us could get on; on the showfloor, it was complete immobility to the extent that the thought crossed my mind If there is a panic at this time, I am going to be seriously injured or killed.

So what can be done? SDCC sees similarly-sized crowds without this degree of problem, but they have a few advantages: more floor space, many entrances to the show floor (the JVCC floor is accessed in relatively few places, in some cases by escalator), a wide concourse off the floor for moving from one end to the other, wide “travel aisles” for people trying to get places instead of browse, and no construction³. The last issue will take care of itself eventually (and partially alleviate the floor space issue), the others will take some work. If the number of “you have to be kidding me” booths were reduced, the travel aisles become possible. If an endcap booth were sacrificed every couple aisles, the space could be used for people wanting to get photos of cosplayers, instead of doing it in the middle of the goddamn walkway⁴.

One more thing that SDCC has to a greater degree than NYCC is massive panels that take a few ten-thousand people off the floor at a time; unfortunately, this ain’t gonna happen, because the Javits again is working against us. In San Diego, the panel rooms are laid out such that this aisle can be designated as one-way going to the panels, and that aisle as one-way coming from the panels, and the circulation of attendees flows continuously. In New York, the largest panel area is essentially a blind alley, with no way to manage flow other than “everybody goes in and also comes out in this same area”. You may append whatever intensifier to the word “cluster” that you wish to describe this situation. Honestly, I was surprised at times that the fire marshals didn’t shut down the entrances until the crowds had thinned (it’s happened in the past).

In a way, all of this (barring the construction issues, which I believe we’ve hammered into the ground by now) is the result of NYCC being a victim of its own success. Too many people want in for the amount and shape of the space that’s available. While there are certainly improvements that can be made by laying the floor out smarter (there was a massively popular dancing videogame demo stage just inside one of the show floor entrances that backed up crowds to the point that no ingress was possible) and exploiting techniques for crowd management (which largely comes down to figuring out which booths will have massive lines and separating them), there’s ultimately going to be no getting around a fundamental truth: the show is over capacity, and it’s probably necessary to both limit tickets more aggressively and reduce the number of exhibitors.

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¹ The worst, most hazardous crowding I ever experienced was on a lovely spring day in Osaka, as my wife and I attempted to make our way out of the main rail station while a measurable percentage of the population of Japan tried to make its way in. It was seriously a case of “lift up both feet from the floor and you will not fall” and I developed some seriously sharp elbows as a self-preservation technique.

² I am standing next to an absolutely lovely young lady named Chrissy, who was wearing an absolutely stunning cocktail dress and stiletto heels, who was trying to make her way back to Jersey City. We became Disaster Buddies that day on account of no way was I letting her try to navigate her way home dressed like that by herself.

³ Somewhere, there is a graduate student in traffic engineering writing a thesis on how the Javits Center construction affects human flow patterns.

⁴ For this one, the organizers and even the venue are blameless; for a city that despises tourists that stop in the middle of the sidewalk so very, very much, New York is astonishingly willing to allow people to block aisles for photos. I suggest that an elite force of staffers be given cattle prods to put an end to this and also to enforce line discipline.

Couple of quick notes for you before we get to the main discussion today. One, I’m on Pacific Time this week (and with intermittent internet access), so expect less-timely-than-usual postings. Two, congrats to webcomicky types Darryl Cunningham and John Allison for their nominations in the British Comics Awards (for Best Book and Best Comic, respectively), to be presented in a month’s time at Thought Bubble Festival in Leeds. Also thanks to the BCAs for pointing me towards Josceline Fenton, nominated for Best Comic for Hemlock, a webcomic with which I was not previously familiar. Fenton is also nominated as Emerging Talent for broader body of work, which is going to bear some examination in the very near future.

Okay: George (it is the general policy of this blog to refer to people by their full names on first reference, and to prefer family name thereafter, with first name used to make thing read well, but really — “George” is the only way to name this fine gentleman).

He doesn’t make himself the center of attention, but he’s a significant guy in the world of web/indy comics. When he’s not scouting for talent and finding people for projects at Oni, he’s the behind-the-scenes make-things-happen guy in the Benign Kingdom, and may understand Kickstarter better than Kickstarter does (I believe he may have been involved in more campaigns than anybody else on the planet at this point). But apart from the day job, the Kingdom appears to be his major avenue for world domination right now, so that’s what we talked about. With the second B9 collection getting ready to ship, I wanted to find out what the future directions for the Kingdom might be.

First of all, I have to change the terminology I’ve been using, because “B9.5” isn’t going to cut it much longer; it worked when there was an original book, then a second book, but plans are for two more artbook collections every year (Spring and Fall), so I’d be running out of decimals pretty quickly. Like the Fall 2012 collection, these new books will be:

• collections of four artists
• by invitation (please, no unsolicited submissions)
• ongoing for the forseeable future

That last one is pretty important — the original four creators (Ota/Green/Dreistadt/Dahm) won’t be returning until 2014, which means that the intervening 18-24 months are already planned out and the respective details are already being worked out¹. George wouldn’t spill as to who the contributors to the 2013 books would be “until pen’s on paper”, but he was quite interested in knowing who I would want to see included. I dropped some names² on him, carefully looking for tells that I’d guessed correctly, but he gave away nothing.

More than just having a beautiful book of your best/favorite work, being in one of the biannual collections means that a creator is now “part of the Kingdom”, with the ability to do other projects that strike your fancy; the Kingdom means having a structure to arrange for the logistics of production and fulfillment, as well as serving as a guarantee of quality. As the number of projects from the Kingdom increases, expect to see an ever-wider audience that was not familiar with the creators in question³ to dominate the purchasing, based on a string of previous projects, each successful and full of positive feedback from backers.

These projects can be solo or in combination with other creators (George allowed that there will be an Exquisite Beast/Capture Creatures tandem project), and I can think of a few other projects that I’d love to see — I’ve mentioned more than once that Aaron Diaz should do an artbook of dinosaurs, and I all but begged Anthony Clark over the weekend to revive his collaboration with Emmy Cicierega, Laserpony Studios. Heck, while casually talking with Evan Dahm and Frank Gibson, we accidentally came up with an idea for a Kingdom book that would be awesome and unique and I’m not sure I should talk too much about it.

So there you are — the Kingdom is an ongoing concern, it will continue to expand as makes sense, it’s got a plan for convention appearances, and a store is on the way. The foundations are solid, in part because nothing (not even more Big Gay Ice Cream than you could eat in a lifetime) can distract George when he has a goal in mind. Also, never forget that he has the power to end the world, so let’s all make sure that he meets those goals — it’s safer for all concerned.

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¹ One of the key things to realize about George: the man pays attention and has a plan at all times. The first B9 collection shipped a month early, and the only reason the second isn’t going out early is that a quality issue made the first printing unacceptable, causing a delay to merely “at the time we promised”. George is ready to go to press the day the Kickstarter ends, because he’s planned for submissions and layout before he announces the project.

² In no particular order (and keeping in mind that the goal of B9 is to provide a channel for creators to do artbooks separate from their usual work, so creators already working in an artbook mode like Scott C don’t really need the Kingdom): Carly Monardo, Dylan Meconis, Ursula Vernon, Erika Moen, Vera Brosgol, Emily Carroll, Karl Kerschl, Cameron Stewart, and man oh man I’d kill to see a book of Randy Milholland’s watercolors. I have no idea who on that list would have the time/inclination, but there you go — more than enough people for 2013 and beyond.

³ This is already occurring. The first B9 collection had about 20% of the backers come from Kickstarter itself rather than from the established audiences of the creators; for the second collection, it was over 60% from people searching out KS projects to back.

Didn’t spend a whole lot of time at NYCC yesterday for the you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me-noon-til-nine-pm Preview Day, just long enough to touch base with the Benign Kingdom table (the new B9.5 hardcovers are absolutely gorgeous, as are the TKT hardcovers — I’m going to have some very welcome packages arrive at the Fleenplex in the coming weeks), say howdy to Zach Weiner (he’s selling disposable monocles!), pick up a copy of the new book from Matthew Inman (I unfortunately didn’t have time to discuss the purchase of the future Tesla Museum grounds at anything resembling full length), bump fists with the Most Handsome Man In Comics, and have two slightly longer conversations. Saturday will be hanging with creators day. As to those conversations:

• So, yep, you may have already seen the announcement that Chris Hastings, Anthony Clark, and Cardboard Cutout Ryan North made yesterday on behalf of ShiftyLook: they’ll be doing an ongoing webcomic based on Galaga, of all things. The problem being, Galaga doesn’t really lend itself to a story so much.

  Enter Ryan North, Human Giant (that picture up top? the cardboard cutout is life sized¹). He’s constructed a storyline around two teenage girls (who Chris Hastings tells me he was very glad he got to design not as your typical comics version of “teenage girls”, namely, “undiscovered Playmates” … they will be actual person-type girls) who manage to take salvaged bits of alien tech (which look an awful lot like giant pixels) and build spaceships in their backyard to defend the Earth.

  The launch date for the new comic is officially (and cheerfully, may I note) described as The Future!, so keep your eyes on this page for further information. In the meantime I’m going to go out on a limb and say that three established, talented creators with a history of tearing it up when working together are going to deliver a great series. I’m also going to go out on a separate limb and add how thrilled I am about all the creators whose work I love that are getting work on different properties, expanding their name recognition, and establishing themselves as talent beyond their core audiences.

  I love Dr McNinja as much as any man alive (and maybe more than most), but some day Hastings will have told the last story he wants to tell about the good doctor and his friendly staff, and I want him to have an income when that day comes. A diverse set of projects (such as ShiftyLook and all the Adventure Time spinoffs²) and a reputation for meeting deadlines make that future day all the brighter.

• Speaking of diversity of projects, Kel McDonald found me yesterday to drop some news. On the heels of Cautionary Fables & Fairy Tales hitting general availability, she’s making plans for the next anthology. Okay, sequel to a popular item, no big deal, but McDonald is looking at doing something new — the next CF&FT abandons the familiar ground of Grimm, Andersen, et. al., and will have as its theme African stories, which have never gotten a wide purchase in our popular culture.

  Even better, McDonald reports that in addition to returning creators from volume 1, she’s got a commitment from Dylan Meconis (who knows her way around a fairy tale or two). If that weren’t ambition enough for you, the plans are to take a continental approach and have each subsequent volume focus on a different tectonic landmass (volume 3 will most likely tackle Asia). Taking things to their logical conclusion, Kel and I brainstormed an approach for an Antarctic story³.

  If you want to take a shot at inclusion, you’ve got time to put together your best work — McDonald is allowing a solid year before the stories are due, and the Kickstarter to pay for book production will go up in October of 2013. Naturally, she’ll be working on plenty of other things in the meantime, but we’ll just have to wait until she’s ready to announce ’em.

• Side note: while on the floor, I was approached by a very nice young lady (and I’m very sorry, I didn’t get your name, I suck) in a Big Gay Ice Cream (try the Salty Pimp, it’s amazing) t-shirt who wanted to let me know when the Big Damn Homestuck Photo Ops would be. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it to them (I’m not at the show today, and on Saturday it’ll conflict with the B9 panel), but I did promise to help spread the word.

  If you want to witness the power of what Andrew Hussie has unleashed, it’ll be at 4:13pm today and Saturday, on the second floor, around the corner from the coat check. Look for the candy corn horns and watch their numbers swell until you realize that you’re really glad that Hussie has decided to use his powers for good and not evil.

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¹ Don’t believe me? Check out Ryan at stately TopatoCo Manor from last weekend. In fact, check out all the photos from the Greatest Wedding Ever, which are to be found here. My favorites, in no particular order:

• MC Frontalot Not Really Contemplating A Bust Of MC Frontalot
• Massachusetts Gothic With Teens
• The Last Supper (2012)
• Meredith Has Had Enough Of This Cutesy Shit I Don’t Care If We Were Roommates Carly I Mean Come On

² Speaking of Adventure Time, the not-yet-released AT videogame exists on a pair of handhelds at the ShiftyLook booth. Look for the giant Finn & Jake and find the table below their butts.

³ This is the story that the penguins tell: In the first days the Great Sky Penguin made a vast land of snow and ice, with lots of fish and leopard seals waaaaay the heck over there, and decreed we should walk back and forth from the nesting grounds. And that’s why we’re in this long line while our spouses are sitting on the eggs. The End.

Yesterday’s post was bigger than one would normally expect, particularly for a Wednesday when it is scientifically proven that nothing of interest ever happens, and yet there we were. Lost in the shuffle were some things which were (and are) worth mentioning.

• The Joey Comeau-penned, Mike Holmes-drawed Bravest Warriors comic has been upgraded from miniseries to ongoing, and that Fionna and Cake will get their own miniseries come January. Per Comeau’s twitterfeed, BW#1 will be available at NYCC (which kicked off for VIP/pro/press day a couple hours ago), and per everybody and their dog, F&C#1 will feature an alternate cover by Becky Dreistadt. Good times, my friends.
• If you look up the words “noble failure” in the dictionary, you’ll be flipping back and forth a lot because there’s probably like 700 pages between the N pages and the F pages, but let’s pretend for a moment they’d be together.

  Anyway, look ’em up, and down around reference number five or six (out of thirty-seven) there could be a mention of Zuda [no link exists¹], which did some things right (looking for new talent not already working with major comics publishers, an uncharacteristic amount of transparency for a major comics publisher), some things wrong (contests and contracts), and some things inconceivably (formatting requirements and oh lump, that interface).

  While I had some definite opinions on the entire Zudaenterprise, I remain steadfast in my stance that they popularized some damn good comics, and the people that worked there were true in their aims. This is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me: I will die in it at the stake.²

  We recently noted some of what onetime Zudaeditor Kwanza Johnson has been up to, and this week brings news of onetime head of DC Creative Services Ron Perazza (if memory serves, he stayed on after the shutdown of Zuda, but left DC a while later in the wake of a corporate restructuring about two years back) and what he’s been up to. Namely, a new site in partnership with Daniel Govar (a one-time Zuda contributor), Comic Book Think Tank. The statement of purpose is pretty promising:

  This site is the creative playground of Ron Perazza and Daniel Govar – comic book professionals with years of experience in a wide variety of creative and techincal areas. It’s a place where we can explore what comics are (or can be) and where we can share the results of those experiments with any and all who are interested.

  I’m particularly interested to see what kinds of results Perazza and Govar might produce and encourage everybody with an interest in comics to keep an eye on their experiments. For now, the centerpiece of the site is a self-contained story, Relaunch, with others yet to come. Seems like a half-dozen or so of these stories (30 clicks to finish, but some of that results in overlays on the current page, so web page count <> printed page count) might make an nice anthology? We shall see.

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¹ Zudarest in Zudapeace.

² Much Ado About Nothing, Act 1, Scene 1. By the way, do you like SHAKESPEARE? And perhaps do you like things that are FUNNY and/or AWESOME, and relate to webcomics? Watch this page in the next few weeks, because my friend, will we ever have a treat in store for you.

As comics creators make their way towards New York City, questions of identity, oddly enough, are what present themselves to me today.

• To start, readers of this page are probably familiar with Box Brown, Xeric-winning comicker and publisher of Retrofit Comics. He did a terrific series inspired by death (with a side of eschatology) called Everything Dies (no link details coming if you’ll bear with me), which until today was linked over there to the right. However, it seems that sometime in the past (exact timeframe unknown), the domain lapsed. So far, no big. Then somebody else bought it. Happens all the time.

  Then earlier today my RSS feed pointed me to a series of new posts at Everything Dies by Box Brown and they were a series of incredibly convoluted, nigh-nonsensical Qs & As about comics¹. A quick check with Brown confirmed that the site was no longer under his control and my computing-risk paranoia jumped into high gear — there weren’t any obvious means of making money from link farming on the new ED by BB page, which sent me into a full, careful exam of my computer for malware².

  Meanwhile, the site sits there, outside of Brown’s control but with his name still in the title, pumping out invitations to all his former RSS subscribers, trading (either intentionally or accidentally) on his good name to pull in people for whatever purpose.

  So let’s make this one a teachable moment: you have a project that’s wrapped, or moving to another identity, or just doesn’t need its own domain any longer? Don’t just let it fade … take down the site with a lot of notice. Let your readers know that it’ll be closing shop on a given date³, that after that point in time any references to that domain have nothing to do with you. Send out RSS notifications, make it as obvious as possible, and when the time comes, turn out the lights and lock the door on your terms. A domain name ain’t worth but a few bucks a year, but your name is all you’ve got to build your brand on.

Other things that people are putting their names on:

• Really? People are still having this discussion? [credit to Sean Kleefeld, who was the first person I saw to point out the stupid] In case you didn’t follow that first link, it’s Pearls Before Swine (which I like) creator Stephan Pastis (whom I’ve met very briefly and liked) talking about lots of things, but including this:
  

  “Now, to make it, you have to go that web route. Many of those guys, from Penny Arcade to Cyanide and Happiness to The Perry Bible Fellowship — which are all excellent — claim to make a living, but how do you know? I can tell you that even if someone does a strip and it’s fairly popular online, the money is not online. I question a lot of claims about the money being made, and the question remains that if things continue to go that route for newspapers, and you have to make money online, how do you do it?”

  Jesus. Tapdancing. Christ.

  Okay, in the altogether vain hope of putting this damn thing to bed, here’s what I’m going to do. Tomorrow, or this weekend, or sometime during the run of NYCC, I’m going to seek out Matthew Inman (whom I’ve met briefly, and liked quite a lot), who has a new book out, and I’m going to ask him if he’d be willing to release an approximate copies-sold total for that book for, say, the three months of quarter 4, 2012. Then come January we’ll run that number here, and Pastis can compare it to the first three months of whichever Pearls collection he likes.

  And then maybe we’ll all finally come to the conclusion that no, the money isn’t online, it’s in the merchandise and the collections, and the same damn thing has always been true for syndicated strips. One last time for those at the back: Sparky or Jim or whichever megasuccess you wish to discuss did not become richer than God off of syndicate checks. The money came from getting the people who read the strip (and essentially paid nothing for it) to buy other stuff with characters on it⁴.

• Speaking of Sparky Schulz, opinions of the opinionators vary, but there seems to be consensus that a Peanuts movie is a bad idea. If we can all agree on that fundamental point, I’ma suggest that we not get in each other’s faces about the consistency or purity or whatever of opinions, but also that we not make a thing about this project between now and whenever it might see fruition. I plan to put it out of my mind and not give it either the money or attention that would feed it.

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¹ At some point, they may have been written in English. I think that a mechanical translator was used to shift them to at least one other language, then back to English, then copy-edited by somebody that took English in school about fifteen years back and hasn’t spoken it since. Bizarrely confounding word choices and sentence construction that I initially mistook for a Dadaist artistic statement by Brown.

² I didn’t find any, but I don’t run my rig with garden-variety settings, most especially with respect to my almost total non-acceptance of Java, Flash, Javascript, plugins, and everything else that provides a vector for those with bad intent.

³ A nice demonstration of this was recently provided by Secretary of Geek Affairs Wil Wheaton, who revived Wil Wheaton Dot Net after years of an “in-exile” site hosted on another domain. He fixed up the one named after him, and he let people know about the move in advance.

⁴ Okay, I have to paraphrase here, since it was related by Dave Kellett during his Stripped panel at San Diego this year, and while there’s video, it’s for Kickstarter backers only and thus I can’t link you to it in good conscience. It involved Kellett and his filming partner Fred Schroeder arriving at Jim Davis’s PAWS, Inc. HQ and being shown a room, possibly 3000 square feet, filled floor to ceiling with Garfield merch. Dave asked if that was everything Garfield-related ever made, and Davis replied, “Oh, no — that’s just for this year.”

Also in that same panel: a clip from the movie explaining exactly how you make money online which is a discussion that’s been had a million bloody times.

While we all know that New York Comic Con opens later this week (Thursday for VIPs, pros, etc., Friday for everybody), and we at Fleen have mentioned some of the programming taking place, there will also be a variety of creators appearing and times and in places on the floor that you may wish to note.

• First up, Scott C, who has a pair of panels, will be spending much of his time on the floor around publishers Titan (booth 832) and/or Insight (booth 1882), with signings on Friday and Saturday. Full details at Mr C’s website. Also moderating a panel on Friday evening, and sliding between Artist Alley (far north) and the ShiftyLook booth (far south, and more about them in just a bit): Jim Zub, the hardest-working man in comics. Seriously, if James Brown worked half as hard as Zub, he’d still be on stage despite having died in 2006.
• No panels, but Meredith Gran will be tabling with First Law of Mad Science creators Mike Isenberg and Oliver Mertz (booth 2276); Gran won’t be at the show until Friday, but when she does, she will have (among other wares) copies of this week’s new issue of Marceline and the Scream Queens. Algebraic!
• Easiest for people who aren’t going to NYCC to catch up with will be the parade of creators and announcements at the ShiftyLook Arcade O’ Fun (booth 3374), since they’re livestreaming much of the weekend. If you want to catch Anthony Clark, Christopher Hastings, and Cardboard Cutout Ryan North’s big announcement, that will be Thursday at 5:00pm. Given that it’s with ShiftyLook, and with ShiftyLook does old Japanese videogame properties, you can probably guess at the outlines of the project, but let me share this bit: It’s a major property, with maybe the highest name recognition of anything that SL has done so far.

  Considering the amazing job that North has been doing writing the Adventure Time comics, and given what an unstoppable lineart/coloring team Hastings and Clark form, I’m predicting that you will be pleased when the announcement drops. If that weren’t enough, Clark, Hastings, and CC North will have various signings, meet/greets, and interviews throughout the weekend, as well as an appearance with Gran at SVA (students/alumni only).

• Know where else Clark will be? Over with his Benign Kingdom (booth 166) compatriots, which may include at various times Yuko Ota & Ananth Panagariya, Aaron Diaz¹, KC Green, Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson, Evan Dahm, and if fortune smiles on us all, George. Rumor has it that copies of B9.5 may be present for your obtaining.
• Side note: KC Green, as previously mentioned, will also be spending time in Artist Alley with Kel McDonald (table J8). And hey, you know what else Green and McDonald have shared recently? Contributions in the Cautionary Fables & Fairy Tales anthology, which is now available for purchase by non-Kickstarter backers. Know what else is also now available for purchase by non-Kickstarter backers? The Spike-curated Smut Peddler, featuring quality it-on-getting as lovingly depicted by the cream (so to speak) of the crop of webcomickers.
• Speaking of independently-created books that are getting a lot of good notices, know where McDonald, Spike, and other creators just might want to invest one copy of their books and about five bucks in shipping? How about the home base of a well-respected bunch of media junkies:
  

  Will you review my CD / book / movie / video game / poetry / pottery?
  Maybe. Probably not. But maybe. Please bear in mind that we’re presented with an enormous amount of material every day, so it’s simply impossible to respond to every item that crosses our desks, much less review it. Items for review consideration can be sent to The A.V. Club at our Chicago office (The Onion, 212 W. Superior St., Suite 200, Chicago, IL, 60654), but we absolutely cannot guarantee that anything you send us will be covered.

  They get a lot of stuff, but I imagine they get fewer comics than DVD screeners and music, so if you think you’re good enough to get noticed by the big leagues, take a shot. And what the hell: I don’t guarantee that anything sent to me will be covered either, and many, many more people read The AV Club² than read my little corner of the internets, and people still send me stuff.

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¹ Site note: Diaz will no longer be referred to on this page as The Latin Art-Throb; rather, he will now on first reference be annotated as Tolkien Scholar Par Excellence.

² Many, many more.

For those that follow this page to an unhealthy degree (hi, Mom), there was no post on Friday due to traveling, but today is two different holidays in the US and Canada and I’m totally allowed to take off from writing but I am here making up Friday because I love you people.

The reason I was traveling on Friday was to attend a wedding, but that doesn’t do it sufficient justice. Much like how Sherlock Holmes would only refer to Irene Adler as the woman, there is every evidence that this should be forever known as the wedding. In fact, you can all stop getting married now, as there is no chance that you will have more than one of these things at your wedding, much less all of them:

• A karaoke party featuring Kate Beaton and Carly Monardo channelling a murderously angry Cathy berating Heathcliff via the medium of Kate Bush.
• A service officiated by Holly Black, with a meditation on the meaning of marriage as provided by Wikipedia¹.
• More LEGO^® brand building block miniature figure dudes and ladies than you can shake a stick at; I got the world’s angriest mail carrier.
• The Beer of the Gods; that’s its actual name.
• Toasts to the happy couple offered by Stan Lee who looked an awful lot like both Chris Hastings and David Malki !; he invented the comical books and also getting married.
• Bilingual good wishes sent by the Government of Canada/Gouvernement du Canada, delivered via accredited ambassadors Beaton, Butcher, and North².
• An actual ice cream truck, turning an entire cohort of grown-ass people³ into little kids clamoring for Choco Tacos (it’s like a taco but made out of a Klondike bar) and Shrek bars (it’s like Shrek’s head but made out of cold Shrek’s head).
• Wangs, fire, and possibly wangs on fire.
• A brunch where a celebrated artist pelted a teen with handfulls (hand-fulls? handsfull?) of mini marshmallows and also a new cocktail was invented⁴.

These are things that happened, and they will not happen again; it was an organic, spontaneous, joyous celebration that will never be equaled. Holly, Jeffrey, you win at getting married, so said we all.

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¹ Citation needed.

² Long live the Queen/Livre le Québec libre.

³ As opposed to grown ass-people.

⁴ Agent Paperklip and I accidentally made something delicious. As this happened hard on the heels of a conversation about Tumblr, we named this concoction The Apple Privilege:

Hey, everybody. Getting in some EMT training today, so I’ve got limited time and limited net access. Here’s something even more exciting than the stuff I’m learning about — details on Kris Straub’s new comic:

I’ve been a little nervous to start my next series. Chainsawsuit is doing well, but I have a need to tell stories.

The first strip of my new series, Broodhollow, will go up October 8th. Set in the 1930s, Broodhollow is a cosmic horror adventure — imagine if Tintin went to Innsmouth. It’ll be full-color double-size strips, three times a week, updating Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Broodhollow is a sister city of Ichor Falls, the haunted town setting of my horror fiction, as well as the site that gave rise to Candle Cove. I thought about actually setting the new series in Ichor Falls itself, but I think that would have bound me too much to its established oppressive tone. There will be a little crossover, although Broodhollow is a different city altogether, very bright and inviting at first glance. There’s a reason to want to be there. But the scary parts will hopefully be genuinely unsettling in the style of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Stephen King, all the writers I appreciate. Never gory or slasher-y, but a sense of building dread that accompanies the unknown.

I also am working on it in terms of “chapters,” which can really be considered books. The first book will be between 60 and 80 strips, and it’ll tell a finished story. Enough to print as a stand-alone book. If there’s excitement about it, then I’ll do a second book. I told the story in Starslip very soap-opera, very seat-of-my-pants. I want everything in this series to cohere, to fit, to have been planned from the beginning.

Straub’s various Ichor Falls creations have been among the more disturbing media I’ve ever consumed willingly. This is gonna be creepy in the best possible way.

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¹ Mass Casualty Incidents; burns are bad, MCIs are bad, and burn MCIs are the the worst. Consider: there are fewer than 1900 burn beds in the entire United States, and that is an overwhelming majority of the burn beds on the planet. So don’t play with matches and for glob’s sake, never smoke around an ambulance because it’s carrying enough oxygen to roast a bus.