Okay, here’s the deal. The Javits Center is a nightmare, thanks to a bunch of things, not the least being ongoing construction.

Last year, the work zone pretty much bisected the show floor, consuming perhaps 20% of all potential booth space, leaving about 60% of the floor space on the south side of the divide and the remainder on the north side. This year, the work has shifted south, with perhaps a quarter of the floor space south of the work area and 75% to the north, so if you knew your way around the floor last time, you don’t now.

Secondly, the numbering has reversed: last year, the booth numbers increased as you went northwards (matching the street-numbering pattern of Manhattan), but this year the high numbers are downtown and the low numbers up.

Thirdly, NYCC has never gotten around to arranging a webcomics or indy-creators zone; to be fair, it doesn’t draw the mass of established creators the way that San Diego (home of the original Sexy Lagoon) does, so it’s would be difficult to do on that basis. On the other hand, to see people of interest to readers of this page will require traversing the entire floor, from literally a back corner on the south side to literally a back corner on the north side.

Fourthly, the Artist Alley is, for all intents and purposes, in another building. See the white bit that’s attached to the Javits Center in the picture up above? That’s the North Pavilion, and that’s where Artists Alley is, a full block north of the far-north wall of the main center. So what we are saying is, break out the comfortable shoes if you want to see webcomickers and their natural allies.

Here is the main floor:

The top of the map is WEST.

Now you’ll notice that there are four highlighted areas: the extreme southwest corner, just to the right of the construction zone (that big grey blob) a somewhat sizeable oval, and the extreme northwest corner. Here’s what you’ll find in those spots:

• Waaaay southwest at booth 3374: ShiftyLook, with a stack of licensed webcomics, a freeplay arcade, Anthony Clark, Chris Hastings, and Cardboard Ryan North.
• By the construction zone at booth 2153: Brad Guigar, who continues a tradition of being in close proximity of the pass-through tunnels skirting construction.
• In the big blob in the middle, roughly aisles 900 – 1200: Oni Press (booth 1221), :01 Books (booth 1214), The Oatmeal (booth 1061), SMBC (booth 1023), Blind Ferret (booth 950), and Cyanide & Happiness (booth 944).
• Waaaay northwest at booth 166: Benign Kingdom, presumably including creators from both B9 and B9.5.

Now if you exit the main show floor to the bottom of the map shown, go down one floor, and head north, you’ll come to the tunnel to Artists Alley, where you’ll find the likes of Chris Giarrusso (table C10), Kel McDonald & KC Green (table J8), Bill ‘n’ Gene (table W1), Jim Zub (table W11¹), and Ramón Pérez (table X8).

Granted, a lot of this could have been avoided had the long-running construction wrapped up sooner, but you have to wonder if maybe there are some table-holders that possibly don’t meet the definition of “comics” even at its most inclusive, and perhaps might have been bumped to allow everybody to be in one building? I’m lookin’ at you, Baconery (booth 3237). Yes, I get it, you’re a delicious meme but you aren’t goddamned comics.

Let’s finish this on a positive note: Sin Titulo is racing to a conclusion and is so close you can taste it. Read it now.

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¹ Should Zub wish to talk business with his ShiftyLook associates, it’s literally going to be a half-mile walk to do so.

You get to do that when you’re an unpaid internet opinion-monger, you know. Even though nobody has to actually honor the Day in question, I have a feeling that you’ll be willing to do so in this case¹ because the books in question are very cool.

Today is the release date for both Hope Larson’s A Wrinkle in Time (The Graphic Novel) and Mark Siegel’s Sailor Twain (or, The Mermaid in the Hudson), both of which have earned your attention and time. But Gary, I hear you cry, I am of but limited means and cannot afford to obtain both books for myself, what should I do? Look, you can sell plasma² like twice a week, just read them both and thank me later.

• Speaking of Hope Larson, her husband has done some comics that a few people have read, and he’s done a really smart interview with Andrew Hussie about Homestuck, the Homestuck Kickstarter³, and all the odd interactions that constitute “fandom”. Highly recommended.
• Speaking of crowdfunding campaigns, Matthew Inman declared his favorite part of the recently-concluded Operation: Let’s Build A Goddamn Tesla Museum to be a bit of mathematical elegance. If you feel like talking about things that are divisible by three with Inman, you’ll be able to ask him in person at New York Comic Con next week.
• Speaking of NYCC, the rundown on when you can find Messers Clark, Hastings, and PseudoNorth at the ShiftyLook booth has been posted, along with the fact that the “booth” is actually a freeplay arcade. If it’s anything like the arcade that ShiftyLook put together for a party at SDCC, it will be awesome.

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¹ Or “these cases”, as the case may be.

² Or do experimental drug testing, or sell organs. Whatever.

³ Sitting at US$2.07 million and just about 48 hours exactly to go as I’m writing this; final prediction: US$2.3 million +/- US$100K depending on whether or not the end-of-campaign bounce materializes. It usually manifests in the last week of a campaign, but this one has been atypical in so many ways.

Warning: there are things in today’s post that will likely make you go Ohhhh, ick.

• Updating the Rich Burlew Does Not Like Broken Glass story, a whole bunch of words and one photo that cuts straight to the heart of the matter; Burlew reports that his right hand will remain in a cast for another month or so, then get to see what kind of functionality his thumb has. Add in rehab and physical therapy, it could be a while before Order of the Stick sees updates, and longer still before his remaining Kickstarter rewards get produced.

  While this page is surely of the opinion that delays in fulfilling KS promises does nothing but damage the credibility of those who use the service, we also recognize that Extraordinary Circumstances will sometimes occur, and this surely qualifies. Also, I am strongly considering a Kickstarter of my own to raise the funds to buy chain mail oyster-shucking gloves for all my favorite creators¹.

• Speaking of painful and Kickstarter: that US$1.00 pledged of US$200,000 goal (presuming it isn’t canceled sometime in the next 44 days) is painfully sarcastic and gonna leave a mark. Then again, the chief hook of the campaign in question is to convince starting-out cartoonists and comickers that they should pay US$60 for the privilege of submitting a single page to a comics anthology which means that it’s official: the vanity press model has decided to make a simultaneous run at both comics and Kickstarter.
• Speaking of painful: some folks (cough, cough, Dave Kellett) find JRR Tolkien’s The Silmarillion to be a painful read, but these folks are wrong. Wrong and bad and wrong some more. For those that stand in opposition to the unbelievers, Aaron Diaz² has been threatening for the past week or so to do one painting per chapter of The Silmarillion, and the first of them dropped today.

  Future installments will be presented at Diaz’s Tumblr under the heading of Silmarillion Project, and here’s hoping that perhaps Diaz kicks in multiple paintings for some of the longer chapters so as not to short-change them³. Somewhere, somebody in Middle Earth Enterprises gets to decide who does the annual calendars and such around Tolkien’s works, and I think Diaz could easily spend the next half-decade illustrating scenes from The Silmarillion without feeling a lack of inspiration.

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¹ I know of at least one top-tier creator with an insurance policy on his hands; this is looking less like paranoia and more like prudent planning every day.

² The Latin Art-Throb.

³ For example, Of Thingol and Melian, the fourth chapter of Quenta Silmarillion is only a page and a half in my copy of the first American edition, but the Akallabêth is more than twenty pages and yes, I am a gigantic nerd.

Boo! Did I startle you? No? Well, it’s good that you have a stout heart, as today is full of scarifying scares that are very scary. Boo.

• First up, Spike has decided that the natural followup to her phenomenally successful and dirty (in the best possible way), filthy (ditto) Smut Peddler anthology is to shift from the erotic to something a bit more thanatotic: a horror anthology to be entitled The Sleep of Reason. Much like Smut Peddler, The Sleep of Reason¹ will feature an open submission process, with details around Halloween, so if you have ideas for spooky stories, now’s the time to start developing them.

  But don’t get too far ahead of yourself — while Spike’s made it known that she’s looking for full-page comic work (and legit scary, please) — things like minimum or maximum lengths are still unannounced. Since it’s Spike that we’re talking about, it’s paying work, with contributions due in May 2013, and publication to follow (judging from Smut Peddler’s example, probably around November or December). So if you think that you can bash together a visual story as disturbing as, say, Emily Carroll’s work, keep your eyes on Spike’s twitterfeed for further news.

• Know what’s lost some of its original, terrifying nature? Mermaids. Lure you to your death beneath the waves, or to be dashed upon the rocks? Lost to time, reduced to shilling Starbucks. The menace of mermaids is lost to nearly everybody, with only occasional reminders that mermaids were not always very nice. Still, it can’t all be doom and gloom, and Mark Siegel’s decided to celebrate the imminent release of his own menacing mermaid story with a goofy little story, complete with double entendre title.
• Sometimes, the monsters are real. They lay in wait, they demand their tolls, and then they … do nothing, actually. If! You! Dare! read the story of one brave man, the abyss he stared into, and the monstrously indifferent treatment that he received, treatment that would have driven a lesser man to madness, despair, and death! It’s seriously spooky; no, really.²

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¹ Per Spike, the title is taken from a piece by Goya entitled The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Creepy, but I always was more of a Hieronymus Bosch man myself; standing before his magnificent Last Judgement in the Groeningemuseum you simply cannot look at the center panel and not take away deep meaning. For me, the principal lesson was Screw not with the bunnies of the Apocalypse. Don’t even get me started on The Garden of Earthly Delights Heck of a weirdo, ol’ Jerry B.

² Okay, not that spooky, but c’mon, it’s Guigar. PS: Boo.a href=

Guh, work just threw me for a loop, so this is gonna be quick.

• Okay, I missed an anniversary, but to be fair, so did the creators. Today’s Not Invented Here featured a note from co-creator Bill Barnes noting that NIH is now three years old. A quick click back to the first strip shows it was actually on the 21st of September, making today the 1,102nd dayiversary for Barnes, Paul Southworth, and Jeff Zugale. Congrats, guys, and here’s to 1,102 days more.
• Also missed by a couple of days (only three this time, and fortunately Heidi Mac caught it): the launch of a new webcomic that will be worth your attention. Longtime readers of this page know that I usually don’t make recommendations on brand-new strips, but there are some reasons to vary from that caution, particularly with established creators. And truthfully, it’s hard to be more established than Faith Erin Hicks, especially when the webcomic in question is her next serialize-online-print-when-done project, in conjunction with first-time writer Prudence Shen.

  Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong has 20 pages up already, has set about three different plotlines in motion, and given us a clear insight into the personalities of about six different characters without anything feeling forced or rushed. Daily updates start on Monday, and I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that we all end up liking this at least as much as Friends With Boys¹, on account of :01 Books (who are hosting NCPGW in webcomic form and publishing in book form in May 2013) don’t associate themselves with junk, yo.

• Finally, only a day behind: there’s a new website design up for The Beat, and it’s pretty awesome. Everybody take a look and tell Heidi I sent you.

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¹ And if you didn’t like Friends With Boys, what happened in your past that rendered you incapable of liking good things?

A’course, it’s not really a surprise when the product is shot through with eye-meltingly gorgeous Becky Dreistadt¹ as The Bear just so happens to be. It also doesn’t hurt that the project is driven by comics impresario Ryan Sohmer, who is caught bein’ all sincere in the intro video; heck, that previously-suppressed side of Sohmer was probably worth another US$40-50K of the total.

Anywho, thanks to the support of people buying multiple copies (I know I’ve got holiday gifts for new parents covered for a while), there’s a mountain of bonuses in the pipeline, including prints, wallpapers, greeting cards, bookmarks, dust jackets, Becky signatures (by my count, nearly 3350 books need signing), and a 0.04% chance of walking away with a Dreistadt original. Extra special thanks to everybody that made that last stretch goal possible, as a 0.04% chance of a Dreistadt original is 0.04% more than the number of Dreistadt originals I have presently.

• Sticking with the Blind Ferret family for a moment, Danielle Corsetto gets to so something cool — go back to the ol’ alma mater for official reasons². Specifically, next week she’ll be mounting an alum exhibition at Shepherd University’ Frank Center Gallery from Monday, 1 October to Friday, 2 November, with a kick-off talk on the first day from 5:00 to 6:00pm and a reception³ until 8:00pm. Those of you in/around Shepherdstown, WV (it’s just about where Maryland and the two Virginias meet) should definitely drop by and say howdy.
• Keeping with the themes of both events and higher learning, this weekend (specifically, this Saturday) will see the latest iteration of MICE (or the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo if you’re not into the whole brevity thing) in Cambridge, MA, on the campus of Lesley University in a casual, friendly, first-name-basis funfest. Webcomics and webcomics-adjacent creators like Alexander, Box, Braden & Shelli (who tie things back to Adventure Time, taking us full circle), Chris, Colleen, Dave, Dirk, Jamie, Jason, John, KC, Kevin, Ming, Paige, Ross, Sophie, Stephanie, and Zach will be there, chillin’, and generally being awesome people. Oh, and it’s free, so what are you waiting for?

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¹ Speaking of whom, she’s also half of her usual Becky and Frank pairing in a seven-page backup story in the latest issue of Adventure Time, out today.

² I did that once on a recruiting trip and man, it’s awesome.

³ Read: snacks and booze.

For anybody that’s ever wanted to talk about a creator’s newest work and and put a career in perspective at the same time, there’s adequate writing and there’s sublime¹ writing. A stellar example of the latter dropped yesterday from the highly capable FILM CRIT HULK², talking about Hope Larson, by way of discussing A Wrinkle In Time. If you’ve ever wanted to feel humble about a public hobby as an opinion-slinger, consider that you’ll never be as good as a fictional radioactive ragebeast³, not that I would know anything about that.

• WE’RE DOWN TO THE whoops sorry. We’re down to the last five days of Operation: Let’s Build A Goddamn Tesla Museum, and O:LBAGTM frontman Matthew Inman decided to sweeten the rewards structure a little. As of this writing, twelve of the miniature Tesla Coils are still available, and remain one of the coolest, most mischief-potentialled tchotchkes ever offered up in a crowdfunding endeavour. Oh, and it should also be noted that said offer coincided with Inman’s 30th birthday, so Happy Birthday to him a day late, and also to Penny Arcade’s Mike Krahulik today; Christmas in September, indeed.
• Perennial blog favorite Scott C had a big to-do in LA last week for the upcoming Great Showdowns book, and it went well. In and around his west coast time, Mr C hung out with the author of the foreword of said book, a moderately well-known magician and professional society officer by the name of Harris at his day job. While this particular workplace has a history of being kind to webcomickers, this particular visit went a bit above and beyond as Mr C found himself pitching in on the job. When “day job” equals “starring on a primetime sitcom”, these sorts of things just happen, I guess.
• Speaking of primetime sitcoms, it’s probably about the only medium that Steve Troop hasn’t tried to conquer (yet) in his quest to bring Melonpool to all people, everywhere. The comics end of things are a means to an end, with puppets being where it’s at through all those permutations. Troop’s been pointing those puppets in the direction of movie-making for more than a year of development now, and is moving onto the next stages:
  

  For the last two years, the creator of one of the first webcomics has put down his pens in favor of bringing his sci-fi puppets to the big screen. In the last few weeks, a successful Kickstarter campaign has made this dream a reality.

  Melonpool: The Motion Picture is slated to start filming in February 2013. The feature-length film tells the story of Mayberry Melonpool, the sci-fi addicted captain of a spaceship full of misfits who must pull together to save the universe from a seemingly unstoppable foe — if they don’t kill one another first.

  Best of luck to Troop, and don’t turn your back on those puppets — they look like troublemakers.

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¹ If somewhat shouty.

² The boldface is mandatory, I feel.

³ Seriously, the finest piece of film writing I’ve ever seen was FILM CRIT HULK’s 7000 word dissection of Eat, Pray, Love. Me, I would have just repeated EAT PRAY LOVE MAKE HULK WANT SMASH 1000 times.

It has been some hours now since Ryan North updated Dinosaur Comics with today’s strip (I am judging here by the timestamp in the RSS feed at 8:07 EDT) and there is still not a Twitter account by the name of doctor_weedfart_haver_420¹. I would have expected one by now! Okay, granted, there is somebody now going by @doctorweed420, but I think that we can all agree that’s just not close enough.

In short, slow day, or maybe not; I’m a bit behind due to some rather extensive funerary circumstances over the weekend, and I must say that both Ryan and @doctorweed420 have done a great deal to cheer me up today, so thanks for that. Back to the usual tomorrow.

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¹ Nor doctor_weed-fart_haver_420, assuming that the hyphen was significant and not just indicating continuation across a linebreak.

Faster your seatbelt, got some weird stuff for you today.

• Following up on yesterday #1: I was trying to avoid giving unnecessary weight to the issue, but my obliqueness confused some people, so for anybody wondering what the hell I was on about, read this, imagine the reaction from people who live to be angrily offended¹, and take it in the context of this. Thankfully this little blowup has had a relatively brief half-life.
• Following up on yesterday #2: Rich Stevens, as of this writing, is alive and triumphant over bacon in the battle of man vs delicious, cured meats. KC Green got a good portion of the ordeal on video for those that want to see the 32-slice battle in motion.
• Following up on yesterday #3: Not found in the NYCC session schedule (because it’s not a session), news that Anthony Clark, Chris Hastings, and a cardboard cutout of Ryan North, will have a major announcement at the ShiftyLook booth regarding a secret project. Before you ask, I already tried to obtain the cardboard cutout of Ryan for myself, and according to Hastings there are “plans” for it². Booth 3374, Thursday at 5:00pm, y’all.

New stuff:

• I’ve got my copy of the Bucko collection, do you? Maybe I can convince you with a peek at the extra-special bonus material! Namely, the full story of Queen Teri Hurricane Bluray-Devastatah d’Gresham, a thing of power and beauty, but tragically omitted from the online serial. Okay, yeah, you also get the promised three, er four-way, which (spoilers!) turns into a six-way. Dudes, it is so hot.
• Since we’ve previously established that Questionable Content is the locus of all webcomics crossovers and thus exists in all their realities, today’s revelation has … disturbing implications. Namely, that Hannelore Ellicott-Chatham is just another way of spelling Tommy Westphall and webcomics don’t exist. Sorry.
• Speaking of sorry, I’m not sure how many of you might have seen the latest update to the Order of the Stick Kickstarter, where we find out that Rich Burlew had a bad encounter between the tendons of his drawing hand and some broken glass. His wife reports that the surgeries went well and he’s expected to recover all function, but for the moment is pretty hepped up on goofballs, delaying both his strip and the Kickstarter rewards that he’s been producing. We at Fleen wish Burlew a speedy recovery and all the goofballs he needs to hepped up on in the meantime.
• Ordinarily, I’d be wishing a happy birthday to several people active in the [web]comics orbit today, including David Malki ! and K. Sekelsky, but I’m afraid that I can’t today. That’s because today marks the 100th anniversary of Chuck Jones, one of the most formative influences on who I am, and today he’s the only one I can wish a happy birthday despite the fact that he’s not around to hear them. Sorry, everybody else, today is Chuck’s day; feel free to insert a paraphrase of the Saint Crispin’s Day speech here if you like.

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¹ AKA, “Tumblr”.

² Dang.

Seriously, internet, you need to refine your personal index of suspicion when something potentially outrageous comes across your screen. Take a breath. Consider the source. Ask yourself, Is it possible that maybe this isn’t meant to be taken seriously? And think twice before you decide to make with the complaints and virtual lynch mobs because, well … yeah.

• Let’s talk about something more pleasant, shall we? As noted yesterday, the Hour of Truth is rapidly approaching for R Stevens, and you can follow along his own personal Grand Guignol online. If anybody has access to an emergency services scanner in the Easthampton area, maybe listen for dispatches¹ and let us all know if things go wobbly? Time to smoky, salty, delicious danger is (as of posting), approximately 22 minutes.
• The New York Comic Con is in three weeks, and they’ve done us the service of listing programming, albeit in a pretty inconvenient format. I’ve gone combing through for sessions that are related to webcomickry in general, and have found the following for you; please note that times and locations are subject to change.

  Thursday, 11 October
  Surviving the Public (Unshelved)
  12:00-1:00pm, Room 1A08
  Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum of Unshelved get things off to an early start on Press/Pros/VIPs day, before the show floor opens even, with a keynote on customer service (library focused, naturally) and the immutable truth known to anybody that’s ever dealt with the public: the customer is seldom right.

  Friday, 12 October
  Webcomics – From Hobby to Business
  6:30–7:30pm, Room 1A08
  If you camp out in the room long enough after Gene & Bill, you can see Ryan Sohmer and Lar de Souza recount the story of how they got to a multimedia empire from a humble start in the Canadian comics mines. Bonus: you can probably get Sohmer to talk about his personal ascent into healthy, clean living from the hell of Red Bull addiction. It’ll be like Behind the Music only without Jim Forbes narrating.

  Scott C and The Great Showdowns, from Ripley vs the Alien Queen to Han vs the Green Fellow!
  7:00–7:45pm, Unbound Stage
  Scott C gets the brand-new Great Showdowns book off to a roaring start; this one is going to be so fun you guys.

  UDON Crew: New Titles & Tributes
  7:45–8:45pm, 1A06
  Jim Zub and his studio are all over the damn place these days, what with tribute books, webcomics, licensed properties and every damn thing. The secret to this is that they, like the great and magnificent shark, never stop moving. Okay, they do sometimes (sharks, I mean), but Zub & Co don’t; come find out what they’ve got on tap next.

  Saturday, 13 October
  Kickstarter and Indie Comics!
  4:00–5:00pm, Room 1A08
  Benign Kingdom. George Rohac. Secrets of successful Kickstartering. Just remember one thing: George might teach you everything you know about Kickstarter, but he won’t teach you everything he knows.

  Sunday, 14 October
  I got nothin’.

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¹ Key words to listen for: Man down, smells delicious. If they have to slap paddles on him and shout Clear!, I’ll bet he sizzles.