Yeah, I know, I said not to expect anything today, but I’ve got a few minutes to kill before dinner, so I get to tell you (as if you needed me to) that :01 Books are stellar people. I had the pleasure of meeting :01’s editor, Mark Siegel, and telling him what a great job he’s doing; he deflected all praise towards his staff, and was kind enough to gift me with advance copies of the new Zita the Spacegirl and his own Sailor Twain. It is now pretty much certain that I will not be getting any sleep on tomorrow’s flight home.

At some point, I still have to tell you about the Kickstarter panel that took place yesterday, various plans involving various creators that still need some fact-checking, and I want to write up some conversations I have with people that make Comic-Con happen, but don’t usually get any notice — door monitors, cops on crossing duty, booth babes, waitresses in the Gaslamp, convention center medics. I found them to be uniformly gracious, polite, and entirely appreciative of a crowd that might try that patience of the best of us. Watch for those in the next couple of days.

Sunday purchases: None, but given the two books noted above.

Okay, look. It’s been a long day, a long week, and you got a mountain of text off of me yesterday morning, and you’ll get more on Tuesday. Monday evening, if Monday’s flight is particularly boring. Let’s do both of us a favor and keep this brief.

• Saturday we heard that Dave Kellett and Dylan Meconis both lost out in their respective Eisner categories, booo.
• Saturday I spent a fair bit of time talking with the always-smart Vijaya Iyer about the business of media in general and Kickstarter in particular. More on that later.
• Saturday I happened to run into Raina Telgemeier at random on the floor, and she was kind enough to give me an advanced review copy of her latest graphic novel, the hotly-anticipated DRAMA. Understand, I’m primed and ready to read DRAMA, given how much I’ve loved Raina’s previous work, but each time I’ve talked with Scott McCloud, he’s let me know how this book is, quote, A game-changer. I suspect that as soon as I read it, I am going to be getting downright evangelical about DRAMA.
• Saturday Scott & Kris announced their new Blamimation-style treatment of Mappy¹ for ShiftyLook. Rich Stevens announced that he’ll be running print versions of Diesel Sweeties material via Oni Press, as well as other projects as a writer.

Saturday purchases: RASL volume 4, given an ARC of DRAMA.

In the panel rooms today: Keenspot at 2:00, Axe Cop at 3:00.

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¹ The mouse police.

One is never really prepared for the truly weird moments at SDCC; case in point: being introduced to the very nice lady that bought a Chris Yates original Baffler!, and recognizing the signature on the credit card receipt: Lynn Johnston. Weirder: having her tell me that she bought her son (presumably the one that “Michael” is based on) one of Yates’s POOP signs last year. Weirder still: she did her best to convince other people in line to purchase POOP signs (or, from another angle, dOOd). She was lovely and it was a delight.

Also odd: the Penny-Arcade booth staff all had those brainwave-reading catgirl ears that respond to emotions. At his panel later, Robert Khoo would don a pair and react to Scott Kurtz’s mad experiments¹.

That panel (and additional details on the Dave Kellett/Stripped panel are extensive and appear below the cut.

Friday purchases: Kris Straub’s Starslip Companion².

In the panel rooms today: Penny Arcade at 2:30, the Kickstarter panel most worth going to because Vijaya Iyer is on this one.

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¹ Sample: Okay, I’m going to put an image of me in your head and we’re going to watch the ears. Me pooping. It’s a hard poop. The ears indicated interest, then deflated in existential horror.

² A book so white and understated/tasteful in its presentation, when photographed against a white background, it threatens to merge into the fabric of reality itself.

(more…)

That big Stripped announcement?

Bill. Watterson.

Okay, let’s be clear, Watterson is not breaking his decades-long habit of no interviews, but he has provided an extensive, thoughtful set of answers to questions via email, making his most public pronouncement on comics in forever.

There was an impromptu parade across the show floor a little before noon, as Jeff Rowland did the strangest thing of his life at Comic-Con this week today, snaking 200+ Homestuck fans from the TopatoCo booth to the autograph alley, which has sufficient space for an Andrew Hussie signing. The 400 copies of each of the Homestuck print collections are expected to sell out before Saturday is done.

The thing about reading comics to an audience is that it’s fundamentally an unnecessary act — the words are right there on the screen. But when the reading is by Kate Beaton, the voices add that extra something that ramps the humor up to previously unattainable levels. Head over to her archive, look up the terms nemesis or vikings or Wonder Woman, and know that as funny as it is in your head, it is somehow funnier to hear Kate read them in a capacity room of 329 people, all laughing together at the absurdity.

The remainder of Beaton’s presentation was quick personal history in photos and anecdotes, followed by Q&A. Rather than try to keep up a transcript (which doesn’t give the feel of the back-and-forth as it occurred), here were some key points:

• Research into history and literature is a matter of looking at something or reading about a time or a place, trying to look at it through fresh eyes (and a modern POV), then finding humor in the truth.
• When not drawing, Beaton reads a lot; a lot a lot. Lately, she’s into horror novels, which is what motivated Fat Pony and the ghost.
• The very popular autobio comics don’t really work on the main Hark! A Vagrant site, as they’re tonally very different. She’s trying to build a home for them and is in the midst of figuring it out.
• The Strong Female Characters are just awful people, which makes them fun to write because they’re terrible people. All they know is what Hollywood-type characters know, which is how to kick ass and have your ass out. In comics and movies, those kinds of characters are everywhere, but they were less an explicit critical commentary and more a case of Beaton, Meredith Gran, and Carly Monardo trying to make each other laugh.
• Her process is very simple: draw in sketchbook for a while, light pencil on a grid on Bristol board, then go over that with ink. The one actual quote in this piece:
  

  I really have the most basic process for doing comics. The less steps, the more genuine the line, the more genuine the faces are.

• Her family “gets it” to varying degrees; her sistershave all been to the Calgary Comic Con, and seen it, seen her fanbase, leading to the conclusion You’re famous as a DICK (Beaton: “That doesn’t even make sense”). Her parents don’t read webcomics and don’t really get the humor, be have always encouraged her and primarily worry about things that parents worry about, like Do you have a dental plan?
• Her favorite characters from classic literature to mess with are the ones that are iconic, so it’s not a big risk with people not recognizing it, but which have hidden scenes which are forgotten or don’t make it into the movie and are insane (cf: Wuthering Heights). For instance, in Dracula there’s that scene where John Harker opens the door and Mina is in there sucking blood out of Dracula’s chest and she’s like “Deal with it.” This weird chest blood-sucking, it’s not the sexy babe vampires that you get in the movies, it’s just bananas.

Thursday is always an odd day at SDCC; more people certainly than the frantic few hours of Preview Night, but lots of people still have work and those that are there tend to be four-day attendees who are still deciding about their purchases. The con almost feels like it’s holding its breath.

The sign on the TopatoCo is poignant in its simplicity:

Andrew Hussie will return NOON-ish.

The Tumblr of trolls had swarmed the booth for Thursday’s signing, requiring show personnel to wrangle the line down the main longitudinal corridor, at times as far as the 1000 aisle. By all reports, they did a good job of not letting the line obstruct the aisles, allowing three people at a time up to the booth, and feeding up the line across the footpaths three at a time. Speaking near the close of the show, TopatoCo President and Chief Executive For Life Jeffrey Rowland expressed hope that the showrunners would make space for Hussie’s next signing in the autograph area, where large lines are more easily handled.

For a lot of people (myself included), it’s not clear exactly what emotional core Hussie has tapped into in his fans, but he’s clearly found something that they’ve adopted as their own with a ferocity that defied description. Were he to declare himself divine and demand they form an army of conquest, Hussie’s enemies would be driven before him, and by nightfall he would hear de lamentations of dere weymmin. Pray that he only ever uses his powers for good.

Thursday purchases: Lookouts #1, commission inked drawing of my dog from Mary Cagle, given a copy of Trial of the Clone (which put me through entertaining heartbreak and frustration while casually reading it, THANKS OBAMA WEINERSMITH). Also: the single greatest item ever introduced at Comic-con.

In the panel rooms today: Kate Beaton spotlight panel at 1:30; Adventure Time panel, including Meredith Gran at 2:00; the Guigar, Khoo, and Kurtz show at 5:00; Stripped panel with special revelation and clip screening at 7:00.

At the ShiftyLook party, I inadvertantly discovered the secret of TCAF’s success — at least, that wasn’t what I intended to do when I started the evening. The secret lies with showrunner Christopher Butcher, who has gathered to himself a collection of creators whose work is beyond reproach, and in turn they love and respect him … and then he declares they will all do shots.

Note to self: what Butcher refers to as a “shot” is known in some corners of the world as “a triple”.

Between Christopher and Jim Zub, every guest was well at-ease, liberally boozed up, and had at their disposal a wide variety of both classic and cutting-edge arcade machines. Zombies, ninjas, tanks, ghosts, aliens, whatever needed its ass kicked received its just rewards and the sort of play that only occurs when friends talk shit with each other continued well into the night.

It was a night where Frank Gibson and Dave McElfatrick traded stories about the weirdness of life in LA and the oddities of having Big Deal Famous People as fans. Brigid Alverson and I discussed the state of municipal Emergency Medical Services. Dave Kellett managed to soil an arcade machine, make it forever unclean in the eyes of righteous people². In other words, it was a hell of a party, and in the end we all learned something.

Namely, never accept shots from Chris Butcher without first checking the size of the glassware.
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¹ No wind rushing down the plain, though.

² There was photography involved, and bare stomachs, and thank whatever deity you worship that your eyes were spared the horror. Horror, I tells ya!

It’s Thursday morning and there is an ever-shifting cluster of Homestuck trollgirls in the vicinity of the TopatoCo booth; I had the opportunity to meet a pair of them walking into the con this morning (their costumes really were very good; they were stopped for photos approximately every 60 seconds on the approach to the convention center), and was pleased to find out that while they enjoy dressing like trolls, neither of them thinks that they actually are trolls. This led to a later discussion at the Dumbrella booth where it was posited that the collective noun for trolls should be a Tumblr.

Stray thought — they may not allow strollers in the panel rooms any longer, but that hasn’t stopped people bringing small dogs with them. A man just walked by with a small Corgi in his arms that seemed bemused but mostly bored with all the outlandishly dressed two-legs around him. Adorable dog.

There was a disappointingly small crowd for Karl Kerschl’s spotlight panel, but the right people were there — lots of cameras, lots of photos, there to watch a livedrawing of next week’s Charles Christopher.

Kerschl laid out a few rough ideas that he had (a process that often takes half of Wednesday day, with a two-row strip requiring two to three hours work to pencil and ink, then to coloring), with the thought of doing something con-related. His first idea (which he wound up using) involved his cockroach therapist character, dealing with another animal (to be determined) on the topic of “agoraphobia”. The unused, second idea (which may form the basis of the following week’s strip) involved the porcupine character and LARPing. I won’t spoil the gag of the strip Kerschl drew, but it involves a grumpy ferret.

While roughing out the strip and working up the placement, Kerschl answered questions from the floor; in no particular order, he shared:

Of the ancillary characters that have really grown on, the owls are the most prominent; all of the relationships in the strip became parental relationships, which largely was from before he became a parent.

The time setting of the strip is intentionally loose — Gilgamesh, 18th century elements, bolt-action rifles, contemporary language, the practice of psychology all mix together. In a lot of ways, the color palette he uses reflects that ambiguity a lot, makes it very hazy.

On the topic of panel composition Kerschl noted that since almost starting it was most informed by film pacing. He attributed the film influence to the fact that he does a lot of silent storytelling, setting up a scene and showing reactions to it. Any success to humanity or sincerity in the story is from those reactions.

Kerschl was always interested in drawing animals. Looking back at the oldest art he has, from the age of 8 or so, it was all cougars and bears and things; as a teenager his interests switched to action-adventure and superheroes until his mid-20s. He doesn’t draw much outside of work, but when he does it’s usually a bird or some form of wildlife. Even trees, trees are very relaxing, you can’t screw them up.

Charles Christopher is the only work Kerschl still does with pencil and paper ; in the last two years, everything else has been digital. Working digitally is a lot less stressful, since I have so much freedom to undo and experiment. But it’s nice to have a finished piece of work when you’re done, and I haven’t found a way to replicate this brushpen, which gets used a lot for things like fur and texture. You get a lot of happy accidents.

Kerschl doesn’t find it difficult to get emotions from animals (which he may have just researched via a Google Image Search). The weird thing is, I don’t go out of my way to put human expressions. If you give them a bit of a googly eye, that works. It’s all body language. Along those lines, the last panel of the strip wasn’t completed, as Kerschl felt the ferret’s body language needed more careful development than he had time for.

Almost all of the storylines came from one-off gags, and pretty much all of the recurring characters. Like Sissi Skunk at first was just [he gives a dual thumbs up gesture and wide grin], and now it’s become this story of intrigue. When I first drew that skunk it was Sissi, and now I’m not sure there is a Sissi. It’s like Wal-Mart, or Aunt Jemima, this corporate thing protecting the sales force.

Most interestingly, Kerschl is working on a bunch of other webcomics. They don’t have names yet, but there are four different concepts right now. All are in the early stages of development as he works up ‘tone pieces’ to get the feel of what they could be. Probably going to pick one to work on primarily, but all will come out eventually for web/mobile/ electronic distribution..

Kerschl laid out a few rough ideas that he had (a process that often takes half of Wednesday day, with a two-row strip requiring two to three hours work to pencil and ink, then to coloring), with the thought of doing something con-related. His first idea (which he wound up using) involved his cockroach therapist character, dealing with another animal (to be determined) on the topic of

The Webcomics been very, very good to Jim Zubkavich; although he’s gotten a lot of good press for Skullkickers, that critical acclaim hasn’t translated into blockbuster sales of the monthlies or the trade collections. But since running old issues (one page a day, five days a week), trade sales have jumped, and he explained why:

I’m at a show and somebody says, “I love Skullkickers!”, so I ask them where they know if from, and it’s always online. So then I get to tell them, “Oh, we’re running pages from issue three online now … and we just released issue thirteen to stores.” Ten issues they haven’t seen, and there’s the trade collection sitting on the table and they have to have it.

Here’s hoping a lot of those online readers drop by the Image booth, Udon booth, or one of Zub’s five (!) panels and let him know how much they need those trades.

Preview Night purchases: Marceline and the Scream Queens 1, Drive 3, Starslip 5 (shiny cover), Skullkickers 15 (kitten cover); given a copy of the new edition Makeshift Miracle book 1.

In the panel rooms today: Karl Kerschl spotlight panel at 11:30.

There’s always an odd feeling on the floor in the hours running up to the launch of SDCC; expectation mixed with seeing people you haven’t seen for months mixed with a smidge of existential dread. Plus, if you’re lucky, you can get some questions answered.

Questions such as, What’s Up With The Penny Arcade Kickstarter, which was the major topic of a generous talk I had with Robert Khoo. The brief answer is, it’s an experiment, which will determine not so much what Penny Arcade does over the next year as how they do it. There’s been a lot of opinions floating around in the 36 hours or so since launch, reactions and counter-reactions as opinion yo-yos in the nerdosphere. Talking with Robert, the key to it is opportunity cost.

It’s a matter of how to get the money necessary to run Penny Arcade, and advertising (which is a great deal more than just accepting an ad and cashing the check) pays for a significant amount of PA’s operational costs — rent, health insurance, things that have a lot of zeros associated with them. As Khoo puts it, Mike and Jerry could do a lot of things for the audience, but right now they’re working for the advertisers. If this drive succeeds, they can work instead for the readers. The guys I have working selling the ads, they have other things that they can produce.

It’s not a whim, it’s not a campaign that’s going to get shut down for ToS violations (anybody that’s ever met Khoo knows he does his due diligence; you can bet that Kickstarter were extensively consulted in advance), it’s a discrete event that, in either the event of success or the event of failure, is going to provide data to PA and inform how they conduct their business.

And in the event of success, there’s going to be a lot of media companies (from webcomics up to larger enterprises) that will (or at the very least, should) be paying very close attention and determining what they can learn and implement themselves. Khoo’s goal has never been to run a webcomics company; it’s been to find new ways to provide creative media as pervasively and ubiquitously as possible. And, given the sort of businessman Khoo is, this is not an isolated event; I’m expecting two or three more shoes to drop in the near future (which ones likely depending on what happens over the next 34 days of crowdfunding).

The other question that got answered today: was the purported Rob Liefeld/Owly drawing that made its way across Twitter in the past week legitimate? Andy Runton looked a little sheepish as he confirmed the story behind its creation — that some fans had gotten the pencil sketch from Rob Liefeld and enticed Runton to “enhance” it. The best part of the conversation was explaining to Runton’s mom (who was working up custom Owly shoulder bags) exactly who Rob Liefeld is. This is such a beautiful idea that I don’t think you need to consider anything else today. Just revel in that.