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.

The spiritual/cartoonical heirs of Harvey Kurtzman had their shindig on Saturday night, and as near as I can tell from the winners list, the most calls to the podium were for various Daredevil properties and one Ms Kate Beaton, who won for Best Online Comics Work, Special Award for Humor in Comics, and (most impressively) Best Cartoonist. The exceedingly modest Beaton remarked on her Tumblr:

To have won these awards is touching, and reaffirming, and I was not expecting so much faith in my work, but I thank you for your votes and your confidence. God knows, I am not the greatest cartoonist drawing breath at the moment, but I will try to always improve, and produce the best work I am capable of. I hope that I live up to your present opinion in further endeavors.

Also grateful for all of the wins: Mrs Brad Guigar. See, Brad was Kate’s designated award-acceptor, which meant he got in a lot of cardio sprinting to the podium and back three times, which means that he’s healthier today that he would have been otherwise, and why on earth wouldn’t a healthier Brad be a wonderful thing?

Continuing the webcomicker presence at the podium — Ramón Peréz hasn’t been able to keep up with Kukuburi so much due to the demands of paying work, but since one piece of that paying work was the stellar (and twice-honored) Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand, I’d say that Pérez made the right decision. And rounding things out, Vera Brosgol will always be a webcomiker in my heart, no matter how unfinished Return to Sender remains; she was justly recognized for Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers for Anya’s Ghost, about which this page has had much good to say.

One more thought regarding Maryland’s annual designation as Center of the Comics World: this Friday, the day before SPX kicks off in Bethesda, the University of Maryland (College Park)’s Stamp Student Union will be holding a special panel discussion on webcomics:

“Pixels and Paper: Comic Art in the Digital Age,” is a panel discussion at the Hoff Theater in Stamp on September 14th from 2:00pm – 4:00pm about the creation and dissemination of comics in the digital age.

FREE and open to the public, the panel will converse on a number of topics related to the creation and dissemination of comics using both analog and digital methods, and how those choices are made.

Participants include Sally Carson (Fixpert), Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson (Tiny Kitten Teeth), Jeph Jacques (Questionable Content), and Rob Ullman (Atom-Bomb Bikini).

Not listed there, but also participating: Holly Post, Vice President in Charge of Kicking Your Ass for TopatoCo. This panel will feature much good information, and probably hugs.

So many talented folks to talk about today. Are you ready? You should be ready.

Updating more people at SDCC (which kicks off, goodness, a week from tomorrow for Preview Night), namely:

• I missed Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson because they’re exhibiting under the name Monster Milk, their LA-based collective of friends and colleagues; had I but known, I would have pointed you to booth 1232. And I managed to completely overlook the fact that Kazu Kibuishi has taken out space under the name of Bolt City Productions, booth 2235; lots of Flight, Flight Explorer, and Explorer: Mystery Boxes contributors will be dropping by there, so keep your eyes open.
• Speaking of big comics shows, the Harvey Awards have announced their nominees, to be voted upon and handed out at Baltimore Comic-Con, 8 and 9 September in (obviously) Baltimore. As is often the case with the Harveys¹ there are some headscratchers and discussions as to whether or not a particular nominee really belongs on the ballot, but they’ve done a pretty good job in the category of Best Online Comics Work, and I don’t have any complaints with this year’s field:
  • Battlepug, Mike Norton
  • Bucko, Erika Moen and Jeff Parker (and just in time for Bucko’s print release)
  • Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, Tony Cliff
  • Gronk, Katie Cook
  • Hark! A Vagrant, Kate Beaton

  Fantasy (with giant critters), murder-mystery (with juggalos and dick jokes), swashbuckling action (with kick-ass ladies), all-ages humor (with cutie-pie of a monster), and history/literature used as a prism to comment on the state of society (with Strong Female Characters searching out yogurt that makes you poop) represents a pretty wide swathe of story forms and genres. Nicely done, nominators!

  The Harveys also have a number of creators from the web/indy-comics world scattered through the other categories, including Beaton’s print edition of Hark! A Vagrant (Special Award for Humor in Comics), Vera Brosgol’s Anya’s Ghost (Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers, and this page’s Best Comic of 2011), the many talented creators of Flight #8 (Best Anthology), and Beaton one mo’ ‘gin as Best Cartoonist. Fleen wishes all of the nominees the best of luck.

• Speaking of burying the lede, you have probably noticed by now (since the story broke yesterday while I was messing with SDCC session listings) that Pendleton Ward’s other Frederator Studios animated series, Bravest Warriors, is getting a comics treatment, and it comes courtesy of artist Mike Holmes and A Softer World scribe Joey Comeau, with cover work from Boxer Hockey creator Tyson Hesse.

  Should I mention that it is completely a coincidence that Ward’s Adventure Time comics are written by Ryan North², in whose attic Joey Comeau once lived? Or that Mr North can often be found in proximity to Mr Comeau in a shirtless and/or unconscious state? Coincidence?

  Only in the sense that Mr North and Mr Comeau, both being incredibly creative individuals with a habit of seeking out likewise creative individuals, would inevitably meet. And in all honesty, I can’t think of anybody better suited than Joey Comeau to embody the spirit of teens that save aliens with the power of their emotions, since we all know that Joey Comeau is 147% unfiltered emotions by weight.

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¹ Which are nominated by petition, with no jurying or comitteeing between the masses and the nominations, resulting in sometimes unusual choices dominating with nods in multiple fields.

² Nexus of all Webcomics Realities and So Many Other Things, You Guys.

Update to add: I will be noting people I missed the first time around in later postings and adding them after the fact here (although I’m not redrawing maps). Keep coming back!

At long last, the 2012 edition of The Fleen Guide To Webcomickers In The Wild is releasing today (and, as always, corrections and additions are welcome), but first a quick followup on an old story. One may recall that last month I spent some time playing Pai Gow with Mike Krahulik and Robert Khoo in Las Vegas, and as a result learned about their new Lookouts comic with Cryptozoic Entertainment. This morning the good folks at Cryptozoic were kind enough to send me some additional info, which I am happy to share with you.

Issue #1 will debut at SDCC, rolling out to comics shops in late August; those of you with Comixology accounts can jump on that bad boy on 6 July. This will be an ongoing series, broken up into six-issue story arcs, each focusing on the Lookouts earning a particular badge. Personally, I’m most interested in reading the excerpts from the Lookouts Handbook which will be featured in each issue. Oh, and the SDCC issue will feature covers by Krahulik and Doug TenNapel, obtainable from Cryptozoic’s pop-up store in the Gaslamp.

Okay, Comic Con floor map. You can get the full thing here [PDF], or just use the images I’m including instead. We’ll start with the full floor map:

… and use it as our basis of comparison. Most of the people that have something to do with the sorts of things we talk about here are concentrated in the right half of that map, so let’s zoom in on that a bit, shall we?

As you can see, three highlighted areas are called out: the Small Press Pavilion (at the top, in lavender), the Webcomics Pavilion (below and to the right of the SPP, in orange), and the Independent Press Pavilion (down at the bottom, in pink). We’ll be zooming in on some of these areas, starting with the two at the top of the map:

Webcomics Pavilion:

Small Press Pavilion:

They’re not in either Pavilion proper, but the good folks of Oni Press, who deal with many webcomics people, should also be visible over there to the left.

Now let’s hop over to the Independent Press Pavilion for a moment:

Independent Press Pavilion:

Now let’s look a little further out of the immediate pavilions, yes?

Using the pavilions, you should be able to navigate pretty easily to find Alaska Robotics (with special booth guest Marian Call, oh my goodness, booth 1033), the Cartoon Art Museum (whose ongoing sketch-a-thon will attract a plethora of talent too numerous to list here to booth 1930); immediately behind CAM, you’ll find Weregeek and Little Vampires (booth 1831); the aforementioned Doug TenNapel (getting ratfisty and nnewty at booth 1601); Drawn & Quarterly (one may find Kate Beaton calendars at booth 1629); and First Second (where one may find Vera Brosgol signing, or cowering, or both, booth 1323).

We’ll have to go a little outside all the prior areas for the next hot spot:

BOOM! Studios/KaBoom are all off by their lonesome, but they’re where you can find all your Adventure Time/Marceline and the Scream Queens needs met, including possibly appearances by some of the many webcomickers that have worked on those books (booth 2743). Finally, not really fitting in on any of these maps (except for the right-hand one up above), between the big blocks marked MARVEL and SIDESHOW COLLECTIBLES you may find Bolt City Productions, for all your Flight-related needs (booth 2235).

Okay! Time to leave the right half of the hall and venture waaaaay down to the left half:

Literally at the far side of the hall is where you’ll find the Artists Alley, and in its vicinity, one more webcomicker. Zooming in:

Hall G:

Whew! Lots of webcomickers to catch up with this year. Thing is, I know that other creators are attending, so if you know of anybody that’s co-boothing and not specifically listed, let me know and I’ll update here, thanks. Come back tomorrow and we’ll have the first roundup of programming information.

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¹ Please note that I’m going by the names as listed on the SDCC site, which means that I don’t necessarily know if somebody is booth-sharing if they’re not listed under their own name. Corrections cheerfully accepted. title=Click to see the section of the floor where you

The new year has arrived, and it with it the resumption of news, happenings, and suchlike. Forward.

• The incredible talented hivemind known as Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson¹ have returned from their New Zealand sojourn and hit the ground running. You may have noticed the announcement that TKT will be back to a weekly schedule (with irregular Tigerbuttahs as time allows), following a year of many, many projects. You may have seen the blurb about the soon-to-be-released Yo Gabba Gabba! short, with an animation assist from Meredith Gran². You may have noticed a new blog wherein Dreistadt will paint and Gibson will describe a new creature every MWF until 151 of them have been painted and described, which will form the basis of a gallery show³ (for those wondering if Dreistadt can do 151 paintings in a year, last year she did 240 and in 2012 is aiming for 300).

  Would it surprise you to learn there’s more? Sources tell us that BD&FG have planned to make (or collaborate on) no fewer than four other major projects, which may or may not include:

  • book(s)
  • toy(s)
  • gallery show(s)
  • comic book cover(s)
  • a major motion picture
  • a series of wine bottle labels
  • a livery redesign for QANTAS
  • an animated series
  • sleep amounting to as much as three hours a night⁴

  That’s assuming that sometime during 2012, Disney/PIXAR don’t come to their senses, drive a dumptruck full of money up to BD&FG’s front door, and say, This is a retainer — just draw and write down anything that comes to mind. The Dreistadt/Gibson creative partnership has been steadily building, and this feels like the year where it blows up into a massive, sustained, public-consciousness⁵ success. How is such a thing possible?

• As it turns out, the answer to that question is encoded in the Q & A session that Robert Khoo took some time from his schedule to conduct on Reddit the other day. There’s a ton of questions and answers, but the underlying current comes down to:
  

  How do you do what you do?

  And the answer, essentially, reduces to:

  Work harder than you ever have, longer than you ever have, and better than you ever have. Repeat forever.

  I’d submit that the most important part of that encapsulation is Repeat forever; the death of ambition to grow and improve, the lack of drive to give your audience more/better/more again will come through as indifference, which will be met by the same in your readers. Okay, yeah, sure, you could phone it in for the next couple of decades and still have people clamoring for more, but I have a feeling that’s not the kind of creator you want to be⁶.

  The other bit I pulled from the Khoo & A⁷:

  Where do you think the webcomic business will be in 5 or 10 years?
  Relying on more outside vendors that do business services specifically for independent creators.

  Word of God, folks: the future is TopatoCo.

• Let’s tie it all together with a bit that my buddy Otter wrote today (which I will have to quote here in depth because A Girl And Her Fed — which you really should be reading — doesn’t do permalinks for blogposts):
  

  I have a great life.

  You guys are a huge part of it, too. I like the idea of creating something; I love the idea of creating something that exists for other people. Creating for is, to me, better than simply just creating. My life might be better because of this comic but it is also more difficult — the time I dump into this is like working a second job — and I absolutely would not pursue this if it were just me shouting across the Internet. I am not that selfless a person. [emphasis original]

  For those of you that wish to be part of the “for” group, I would be remiss were I not to point out that the first A Girl And Her Fed book, Rise Up Swearing, is now shipping. As a reminder, I wrote the foreword, but remember the sequence of events — I was thrilled to contribute because I think AGAHF is great⁸, not vice versa.

And that’s 2012 off to a rousing start with my footnote addiction threatening to engulf everything. Let’s do this thing.
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¹ Somebody once tried to condense their names together, celebrity press style, into “Frecky”, about which the less said the better.

² Speaking with both the Gran and BD&FG halves of that equation a few months back, it sounds like a perfect mesh of talents.

³ I will be watching this one very carefully so that those creatures that I particularly like may be identified well in advance of said show, in the (perhaps vain) hope of getting in dibs when it’s time to purchase some art.

⁴ Obviously, some of these are red herrings, meant to throw you off the trail until announcements are made, but here’s a freebie: the sleep thing is an unachievable lie.

⁵ Think “Kate Beaton” for scale.

⁶ In nearly all cases, the only thing that your audience will pay you is their time, so you’ll have to decide if that’s a good way to make rent. But if you can you can find somebody to pay you to create in that manner, more power to you.

I mean that sincerely — ride that train as long and far as you can, as your success costs me nothing. I’ll be giving my time (and money) to creators that I can tell are stretching themselves.

⁷ I’m so sorry.

⁸ Also because Otter has threatened me, but you’ll have to read the book for the whole story.

As you all know, the first rule of the internet is Never read the comments. Ever. Seriously. But to every rule there is an exception, and for me that’s The AV Club, whose commenters are astonishingly sarcastic and amazingly inventive with their hate when they dislike something. There’s pretty much never a thread where everybody is in agreement; to date it has only happened under two circumstances:

• On the reviews of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a poster purporting to be Jonathan Frakes tells stories about his time on the set, practical jokes, binge drinking, and sexin’ up every woman he lays eyes on; it is universally agreed that Frakes is hilarious.
• The comment thread of the Kate Beaton interview is, as of this writing, nearly 100% people sharing links to their favorite strips and agreeing how great she is.

Oh, did you not know that Kate Beaton got interview by The AV Club? She totally did.

Day One at NYCC report (micro edition, since I was only there for a little while):

That willingness to buy has been on my mind a lot since last night, as I wound up making it to Jorge Cham‘s Rutgers/UMDNJ screening/talk just as the final applause in the room was breaking and a rather small percentage of the audience drifted out. The larger portion surged forward, commerce on the their minds.

Due to some travel difficulties, Cham had arrived immediately prior to the event and hadn’t had time to get organized for post-Q&A sales and signing, so I jumped in to help. I have worked some pretty significant rushes on the register at some damn busy booths during really big-ass¹ comics shows, and I’ve never seen the monetary turnover that I experienced last night. Three sdizeable cartons of books, plus more stock that Cham brought with him in luggage, were gone in about 35 minutes. As the last person in the purchase line shifted to the signing line, there were five books left on the table.

By the time the signing line had worked down, people waiting for friends in that line had bought four of them.

Let me reiterate: there was one book left on the table when we packed up to go eat. As a veteran of years of bookstore experience (high school, college, grad school), I can tell you authoritatively that is the Platonic Ideal of selling, even better than having no books left — because now you’re absolutely certain that nobody who wanted to make a purchase left without the opportunity to do so.

I can also tell you authoritatively that every one of those purchasers will be passing around their copies to friends who couldn’t be there; those that couldn’t afford as many books as they wanted will be hitting up Cham’s store as soon as the next stipend check clears. Come springtime, they’ll be back for the DVD of the movie they just saw.

Cham does a lot of these trips (okay, the movie part is new, but he’s been doing the speaking engagement thing for years now); The Power of Procrastination is the name of the lecture he delivers to these audiences, and I imagine he’s pretty much got it down to a science² by now. But I think he should start working on a new boilerplate presentation.

Every business school in the country, every organization, meeting, and conference of marketers (all of whom should be able to afford a speaking fee at least as generous as that of a graduate student association), should have him come lecture on The Power of Niches. The percentage of the general population that does the even higher education thing is small — about 10% if you include those that hold Master’s and Doctoral degrees. Conventional wisdom would dictate that you want a potential audience that’s closer to the 100% end of the spectrum, but Cham’s purposely limited those that will have an interest in his work to barely double digits.

Within that population, though, Cham’s got the game entirely to himself. Instead of competing with other creators for the coveted 1000 True Fans (the ones that will actually buy stuff), where you pretty much have to be a particular reader’s #1 or #2 favorite, Cham has selected an audience where he’s #1 — nobody else is creating for the audience (which only gets you to “default #1” status), and he speaks to them from an authentic place. They aren’t comics fans — they were surprised that I had come by because webcomics as a general concept isn’t in their experience; they read one comic religiously, and it’s the one that speaks to them.

I heard variations on Every week, there’s something in your strip that’s exactly what I’ve experienced a couple dozen times at that signing table — that’s not something that you can fake. You can’t decide, I’m going to go after the underserved ______ niche and they will automatically flock to me, because that niche will peg you as a fake immediately. That’s the lesson that those B-school students and marketers need to learn, that the niche is important, but the legitimacy of the experience is more so. And hey, having a second niche to yourself can’t hurt, can it?

Many thanks to the organizers of the evening for feeding me, and for a fascinating conversation about cells that have little feet to move around with, how antibiotics get proteins to punch bacteria in their little faces until they leak out their insides and die, linguistic variations in Indonesia and Malaysia, what a monster Jenny McCarthy is, and which genes turn fruit flies gay³. It was great.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some nerds to visit.

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¹ And we’re talking metric big asses here, which are 2.54 Imperial big asses.

² Pardon the pun.

³ Really. Hot dude-on-dude Drosophilia action.

Warm, bright, sunny, low humidity, and just hours after an anxious afternoon/evening of tornado watches. Oh weather, can you be any crazier/more wonderful?

• It’s less than a week until three books by noted webcomickers drop — one may stoke anticipation for Anya’s Ghost, Astronaut Academy, and Level Up here, here, and here, respectively. Come Tuesday, you can find out if I was right about them or not¹.
• Heroes Con kicks off this weekend (starting tomorrow, actually) in Charlotte, NC, and while their website seems to list a considerable number of guest cancellations (including Frank’n’Becky and Tyson Hesse), one has to expect a certain amount of last-minute plan changing and it’s nice to know in advance of the show rather than be disappointed, yes? In any event, Fleen Faves heading to the show include Danielle Corsetto, Dustin Harbin, David Malki !, Carla Speed McNeil, Andy Runton, Dean Trippe, Joel Watson, and Jim Zubkavitch. Tell ’em I said hi.
• If you find yourself in the opposite of North Carolina (generally agreed by most authorities to be Toronto), you can still get your fill of webcomics people, as Ryan North² will be speaking tomorrow night on comics as part of a lecture series that invites people from completely different fields to talk on completely different things to spark creativity. As the website of The Treehouse Group states:
  

  3 people × 3 topics = 1,000 ideas

  North will be joined by John Paul Morgan (speaking on the process of invention) and Nathalie Desrosiers (speaking on Twitter and civil liberties).

• Finally, it has been established in the past that if there’s one thing that gets under the skin of Kate Beaton, it’s that comics cliche of the woman twisting her spine to show of breasts and buttocks simultaneously (and a rightly-so under-skin getting, as it’s a truly ridiculous and pandering pose). Exhibit A.

  It has also been established that when something does get under the skin of Kate Beaton, that something is in for a cartoon dope-slapping. Exhibits B, C, and D. Just in case you ever wondered, Huh. Can cartoon high-heeled shoes ever truly be sarcastic? the answer is “yes”.

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¹ I was.
² The linguistically pedantic amongst you may object to the term “webcomics people” being applied to Ryan North, who forms but one webcomics person. However, these pedants are overlooking the fact that Ryan North easily qualifies for a plural term, much like how the Queen of England uses “we” and “us”. Ryan North is, after all, both the Toronto Man-Mountain and the Nexus of All Webcomics Realities. Deal with it.

Meredith Gran, at the Pizza Island panel, in response to the question, “How will the studio defend itself in the zombie apocalypse?” — I’m gonna die.

I trust that puts all of the zombie nonsense to bed once and for all. What else can we learn from this year’s MoCCA Festival?

• It’s easy to spend a lot of money on good stuff. In the photo up there, one may find mini-comics by Box Brown (Everything Dies 4, 5, and 6), Sophie Goldstein (her work apart from Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell is simultaneously more moody and more lighthearted, with one mini dealing with the pitiful few survivors of a global holocaust, the other with a mildly disgruntled cat), Kel McDonald (partnering with Marie de France to do a take on a fairy tale of the sort that used to exist prior to Grimm and Disney prettying them up — secrets, betrayals most foul, and righteous vengeance involving a de-nosing) and the NERD Comics collective (on the theme of Darwin).

  One may also find books by Sylvan Migdal (Curvy 1 and 2), Collen AF Venable & Stephanie Yue (Guinea PI: Pet Shop Detective 3), and Evan Dahm (Order of Tales 3). One may additionally find prints from Kate Beaton, Meredith Gran, and Yuko Ota & Ananth Panagariya, along with a small piece of evidence that I am fated to die by TRUCK. That’s right, David Malki ! had an actual MACHINE OF DEATH into which I willingly placed my hand and received my fate.

• Nearly all of the above (as well as those without wares that I had not yet purchased) spoke of what’s coming up — Migdal’s new comic will feature a Victorian lady dealing with planet-destorying space opera; Malki ! spoke about the expected rush of audition tapes for the rapidly-approaching MoD live stage show; Dahm spoke about the scope and scale of his current storyline (Vattu will be larger than any Overside story yet seen), as did Latin Art-Throb Aaron Diaz (Dark Science will be longer than Hob, but not ridiculously so).

  Ota & Panagariya may be announcing a very interesting print in the future, so keep your eyes peeled for that. The newly-free Frank Gibson promised numerous amazing projects with Tiny Kitten Teeth (and life) partner Becky Dreistadt. Scott C is busily brainstorming new Showdowns every day, and Tracy White and I had nice talk about How I Made It To Eighteen.

• You meet the nicest people at these things; waiting in line for the Pizza Island panel, I met a charming young man named Zach who will shortly be launching a new webcomic that sounds intriguing, and may have a niche to itself. Think Bryant Paul Johnson’s now-wrapped Teaching Baby Paranoia, only actually true. Alternately, think documentary, but shorter and less investigatory than Darryl Cunningham‘s muckraking (and I use that word in the most complimentary sense).

All in all, quite a lot for one day. What else is going on in webcomics today?

• Long run: Achieved! Chris Daily’s Striptease (which bears the distinction of being the first webcomic whose creator I ever met, waaaay back at the first MoCCA Festival, speaking of closed circles) hit 1000 strips today. Ten and a half years (more or less), radically changed art styles, a cross-country move, a collaboration on a second strip (itself more than four years old at this point) and a marriage can’t keep the true-hearted webcomicker down. Well done, Chris.
• Return: Achieved! Karen Ellis’s long-hiatused Planet Karen (fewer than a half-dozen updates since November of 2009) popped back today, with the promise of maybe more strips in the future? PK had been one of my favorite autobio webcomics, and I do hope Ellis is able to find the time to keep up with it.
• Free Stuff: Achieved! Dave Kellett’s self-published Sheldon collection, Literature: Unsuccessfully Competing Against TV Since 1953 (which you may have heard got an Eisner nod last week), probably isn’t in as many hands as some of its competition for Best Humor Publication, so Kellett’s making it easy for Eisner voters to read. Got a data connection? Got 12 MB of free drive space? Voting in the Eisners? Then download a PDF of Literature here so that you can give it due consideration.

  I’m guessing that there’s no way for the download server to know who’s actually an Eisner voter and who isn’t, so Kellett’s essentially giving his book away for the next couple of weeks (there’s precedent, as when Ursula Vernon was nominated for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition back in 2006, Digger was subscription-unlocked to allow voters to examine her work). If you’re taking advantage of the freebie and like what you see, won’t you consider buying a copy? I’m sure Dave (and his young daughter, who likes things like food and shelter) would thank you.

It appears that Cathy Guisewite’s eponymous newspaper strip wrapped yesterday, which wouldn’t merit a mention here except for something that happened in the country immediately north — Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper went looking for interpretations of Cathy‘s wrap, and they went to webcomickers.

Angela Melick, Ryan Pequin, Kate Beaton, and Mike Winters offered up their visions of how the strip’s end might have looked, while mercifully offering an APPR (aaacks-per-panel ratio) of 0.61538, a value so low that scientists are still figuring it out.

NYCC exhibitors with a webcomics bent seem to be centered roughly in the 2200 – 2500 aisle region, with some offshoots into the small press area (300 – 500 or so) and Artist Alley. Speaking of Artist Alley, the listings are both brilliant and a pain — brilliant because there’s a gallery view that shows samples of the artwork in case you don’t remember a creators name, a pain because not every artist is represented in the gallery, and even in the comprehensive list there’s no table numbers (yet). On the other hand, wandering the AA aisles is a good way to find new creators you didn’t know about previously, so call it a wash.

As usual, I probably missed a bunch (for instance, the SMBC Theater will have a session on Saturday, but I couldn’t find a booth listing), and anybody that you suspect will be at the show but isn’t listed here, check the Dumbrella booth (where KC Green and Becky & Frank, among others, will be found).

A pair of followups for you all this Monday morning:

• Dale Zak, who you may remember from a fast-moving backlash against an iPhone webcomic-reading app that he released and then almost immediately withdrew, has come back for Try Two.

  This time, his app seems to be more explicitly designed (or perhaps just more accurately described) as an RSS reader, and doesn’t appear to be using the names of webcomics in his promotional blurbs (which had been one of the loudest points of protest last time).

  Given that I don’t have an iPhone/iPad and can’t test-drive the thing myself, it does appear from casual inspection to follow all of the ethical concerns one would want from such an endeavour. Thoughts?

• Also, there’s been a recurring discussion in the community about spec work, particularly a flavor where a “contest” harvests work from lots of creators but may or may not ever pay out. NPR’s On The Media considered the pros and cons of crowdsourcing in a story broadcast this past weekend that’s worth a listen.

In other news, lots of convention news.

• The run-up to San Diego Comic-Con continues apace — programming highlights will be discussed tomorrow, and there are a few more additions to the Webcomics Exhibitors List. In addition, Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson appear to be supplementing the (ridiculously underpriced) Tigerbuttah book with Tigerbuttah plushes. Hopefully, Customs doesn’t become so enchanted with these cute lil’ guys that they “confiscate” the entire supply for themselves.
• New Show On The Block Intervention scored a bit of a coup: Molly Crabapple will be bringing Dr Sketchy’s Anti-Art School to the show as both a discussion panel and a full-blown three-hour event with free admission for con attendees. Artists, however, are encouraged to reserve one of the limited (though free) slots at the front of the room, where sketching will be easiest.
• Baltimore Comic-Con will again host the Harvey Awards, with MC duties again provided by Scott Kurtz (who will have to work pretty hard to top his performance last year, which killed). The Harveys announced their nominees, and of interest to webcomics fans are certain names:
  Misery Loves Sherman creator Chris Eliopolous for Best Letterer (for his comic book work)

  Steve Hamaker (with lots of webcomics at his site) for Best Colorist (for his work on BONE)

  Longtime webcomicker Kazu Kibuishi for Best Original Graphic Publication For Younger Readers (for the second Amulet book)

  Flight 6 and ACT-I-VATE, both done by more webcomickers than one can reasonably count (for Best Anthology)

  A.D.: New Orleans After The Deluge (for Best Previously Published Graphic Album, the “previous” being online)

  Oh, yes, and the category for Best Online Comics Work:

  Kate Beaton’s Hark A Vagrant
  Steve Ellis, David Gallaher and Scott O. Brown’s High Moon
  Nathan Schreiber’s Power Out
  Scott Kurtz’s PvP
  Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo

Finally, some congratulations are in order:

• To Blank Label Comics for their spiffy new homepage
• To Angela Melick, engineer, webcomicker, and now no longer a planner of weddings

Whew! Is that everything? I think that’s everything. If I missed anything, promise I’ll get to it tomorrow.