It’s been described as outdated, and the webcomics-centric RSSPect even closed its doors recently, but RSS is still worth the very minimal effort it takes to subscribe to a feed or check it once a day. Why, without RSS, I don’t know how many people would have known about the imminent return of Tüki Save The Humans.

What’s that? You didn’t know that Tüki was coming back from hiatus¹? Well, let me point you towards the announcement, which I received via RSS:

The wait is almost over!
Season Two of Tüki Save the Humans is set to kick off here on boneville on Monday afternoon, June 9th! We are also working on a Social Media campaign that will widen our presence on the web! Thanks to all our readers for the support on our recently won, Rueben Award [for online strip — long form]! [emphasis original]

Okay, you might have seen that if you’d been in the habit of checking the Boneville blog, but otherwise you probably wouldn’t have known, as I haven’t seen the announcement anywhere else yet. So do Smith a favor, and spread the word — Tüki is back, and that can only be a good thing.

Speaking of RSS feeds, I’m not the only one that feels fondly about them — the redoubtable R Stevens likes ’em so much, he wears his heart on² his sleeve, or at least his chest. Alas, the RSS shirt design is being retired to make room for new stuff³, so it’s on sale now for US$15 while they last. The technology persists even while the shirt needs must go, but given the quality of shirts that Stevens (and everybody else that sources from Brunetto) vends, it’ll last roughly forever, or at least until RSS gets replaced by DBS (Direct Brain Syndication, which won’t be creepy at all).

Spam of the day:

fleen.com, recommend which you reply simply by discussing a location regarding development, yet swiftly increase everything you already are carrying out to be able to improve in which talent.

The robot uprising has come, and they’re starting with blogspam.

________________
¹ The original plan was that Tüki would run in 24-page chapters, one page a day, three days a week, taking two months. Then, there would be a two month hiatus to prep up the next chapter. By that schedule, we should have seen the launch of chapter two in April, and just been wrapping it up about now. A’course, some of the time between the end of chapter one and April was taken up retooling the website, which was pretty necessary.

Please note, I am not criticizing Jeff Smith for not following the original plan. The man can produce his comics on whatever damn schedule he feels like and I’ll be there to read it, and come next month, to buy the reprint of the first issue. Fortunately, reading things on whatever schedule may come is really easy, because RSS feed.

² <sigh> Yes, yes, Hurrr … he said heart-on. You’re very clever.

³ Quote from the announcement that Stevens sent out via — you guessed it — RSS.

There two brief items up here before we get to the major point of discussion today: STRIPPED.

• Via R Stevens at The Nib, itself at Medium: pixel Neil deGrasse Tyson. You know who else R Stevens has pixelized? Me. Is this proof that Dr Tyson and I are destined to be best friends? Probably.
• For your consideration, Tom Siddell has added his previously print-only Annie in the Forest Part 2¹ to his website, free for you to read. Once again, Siddell’s done us a service, making an item freely available that could otherwise be making him money. Read it, enjoy it, drop a few bob via his donation link, or possibly by buying something from him next month at the MoCCA Fest in three weeks.

I watched STRIPPED over the weekend; anybody that caught my twitterfeed between Friday night and Saturday morning saw what I thought of it — it was masterful. But what I’ve been thinking about since was the choice of interview subjects that filmmakers Fred Schroeder and Dave Kellett chose to return to time and again. These folks were the centerpieces of the story of comics.

• There was less of Bill Watterson’s (rightly) lauded contribution than I might have suspected, and the film was not the less for it; in a handful of voiced cutaways, he made incisive points, but he wasn’t used in the film merely for the sake of Being Bill Watterson. I never thought I’d say this, but I admire the restraint that must have been required to not include every syllable of Watterson’s voice that found its way to tape.
• Darrin Bell is not a household name; Candorville and Rudy Park are both pretty damn good strips, but you likely wouldn’t place him or his work without prompting because we’re past the era of superstar comics-page creators. He’s disarmingly young, frighteningly smart, and wonderfully sincere in his many interview snippets. There have to have been many, many creators that spoke about their journey of becoming a creator, but there was a spark to Bell’s interview segments that made him a natural. I can’t wait to see the entirety of his interview.
• Greg Evans is a man I met, briefly, at the NCS Ruebens Weekend; he very kindly took the time to make me feel welcome in a place where I felt out of place. His strip isn’t for me, and I found myself surprised and a little thrilled at how much he was in the film. He almost perfectly straddles the line of long-term creator recognizing the changes in the industry², looking at them realistically, and really wondering how he can ride that wave rather than rail against it. He might have been the decades-long syndicated creator that jumped feetfirst into indy creator endeavours if Bill Amend hadn’t beat him to it.
• Patrick McDonnell is unapologetically Old School³. His tools are old school, the art style is old school — midway between Segar and Herriman, with a verbal sensibility perched directly between Schulz and Kelly — and his air of not concerning himself with the challenges facing the syndication model is older than old school. Syndicated cartoonists didn’t worry about their business model ceasing to exist in the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s; it simply was and would continue to be. Around McDonnell, you get the impression — at least for him — that reality has not changed and will not. His approach to cartooning and the business of cartooning is as Zen as the spare, airy, light-filled studio where he was interviewed.
• Jim Davis, who came up through the cartooning trenches as an assistant before catching lightning in a bottle with Garfield, is far more philosophical about cartooning than one would think he would need to be. He famously created Garfield with a businessman’s eye — there were lots of dogs on the comics page but not many cats, and he saw a market niche⁴ — and has overseen a juggernaut of success based on the broadest possible appeal.

  He is, as a result, richer than God — maybe richer than any cartoonist has ever been, barring only Sparky himself — and is reported to be sitting on a buffer longer than a year. He has a small corporation’s worth of people working with and for him to get All Things Garf delivered to the world on a daily basis. He needn’t involve himself in any aspects of Garfield at this point, he could walk away and live in luxury for the rest of his days.

  But he does. He does because (and this is from the Kickstarter backers-only full interview with Davis; the rest of you, I hope you get to see it) he thinks that one day, he could write the strip that makes the whole world laugh. Because that possibility matters more than every TV series, movie, and tchotchke put together.

• Mort Walker has been in cartooning for more than six decades. He oversees strips that have been on the page long enough that your parents (or grandparents) read them. He could be everything that’s wrong with comics but it’s clear that he stays in the game not out of stubbornness or to show Those Darn Kids how it’s done, but because he remembers reading Moon Mullins on Sunday mornings with his father, back in the 1920s. He’s see the rise and maybe-fall of comics first hand and never lost his full investment in the medium.
• Stephan Pastis is perhaps the one voice not completely in harmony with the others; he’s perhaps the most recent syndicated cartoonist to find widespread success (or at least, as widespread as it’s possible for any strip launched in the last 20 years to have achieved), and for all the success he’s had with Pearls Before Swine, there’s an edge in his interviews.

  In his segments, he seems like he’s pushing back against the changes in the model, like he wants to actively drag the entire industry back four or five decades. In his most telling exchange, his frustration becomes overt — and completely understandable — when he notes the odds of ever making it as a syndicated cartoonist, and then doing so just as the business implodes. I made it to the NBA, and the stadium is collapsing. His energy would make him a stellar independent creator/owner in the webcomics mode, if only he hadn’t spent so much time in the past openly contemptuous of it.

  His counterpoint, however, is absolutely crucial to the film, if only because he’s willing to express the frustrations that probably everybody in syndicated cartooning (or maybe those not named Davis or McDonnell) must be feeling. Pastis is not the enemy of progress, but he’s no friend of the particular path it’s taking.

Oh, yeah, some webcomics types said smart things too, and Chris Hastings gave as concise an explanation of How Webcomics Work as ever could have been.

Also Cathy Guisewite. And Scott McCloud⁵. And Lynn Johnston. And Jenny Robb. And RC Harvey. And Kazu Kibuishi. And Shaenon Garrity. And David Malki !. And more that I’m certainly forgetting now.

STRIPPED is sprawling, comprehensive, hilarious, heartfelt, honest, and wonderful. It went by in an eyeblink, with no wasted moments or times that don’t serve the narrative. It’s as good a history of comics — where they came from, where they are, where they’re going — as ever there has been, and it’s only the merest fraction⁶ of the material that was collected during production. It feels like the work of a lifetime, and I mean it as the highest compliment that it’s astonishing to think that it only took four years to produce.

If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s probably somebody in your circle of friends that has, given that you’re on this page to begin with. Ask around; I think you’re going to find that everybody’s that seen the movie is of one mind. Something uniquely American that’s touched three or four generations is changing, but will never go away; you should know its history, and barring a time machine that lets you experience the last century of comics first-hand, STRIPPED is the best way to do so.

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¹ More specifically, only available at the 2013 Thought Bubble Festival, now obtainable through the internet boutiquery services of TopatoCo.

² For example, Evans has produced Luann digitally for more than a decade.

³ Disclaimer: he’s also approximately a neighbor; we very occasionally run into each other on the street or in a restaurant and do that 20 second Hey! How are you? thing. It happened at the Reuben Weekend, which caused us both a moment of cognitive dissonance, as we were 3500km away from our usual random meeting stomping grounds. Finally, we chose the vet that took care of our greyhound for most of her life (and our new greyhound, who just had his first visit) based on his recommendation.

⁴ Which, if you think about it, is a very webcomics thing to do — find a niche that isn’t served and become their favorite. Only Davis did it in nineteen-freaking-seventy-eight, before a lot of webcomickers were born. Hell, if you go to his website, he’s got the entire 35+ year archive freely available — you can’t get more webcomics than that.

⁵ The full interview with McCloud — a couple of hours worth! — was released to KS backers last year. I really hope you get to see it someday because dang is that guy smart.

⁶ At just about ninety minutes, carved out of more than 300 hours of interviews, it would be possible to produce another 199 movies of equivalent length from material already on hand. Although I’m pretty sure that the 10 or 15 minutes that they spent talking to me needn’t be seen by anybody.

Lagies and jenglefens, I have at long last my copy of To Be Or Not To Be A Chooseable-Path Adventure by Ryan North, William Shakespeare, and YOU (hereafter TBoNTB). While I understand that it is necessary that somebody be the last to have their book go in the mail (especially when there are more than 14,000 books to be sent), but given that shipping started a month ago I’ve been quietly getting more and more desperate for my copy.

I am just saying, had I opted to buy a copy of TBoNTB in San Diego, I could have gotten it signed by Brandon Bird, Tony Cliff, Evan Dahm, Lar DeSouza, Aaron Diaz, Becky Dreistadt, Meredith Gran, Christopher Hastings, Tyson Hesse¹, Mike Holmes, Andrew Hussie, Matthew Inman, Dave Kellett, Kazu Kibuishi, Braden Lamb, Sam Logan, David Malki !, Dylan Meconis, Carly Monardo, Ethan Nicolle, Shelli Paroline, Jon Rosenberg, Jeffrey Rowland, Andy Runton, Kris Straub, Zach Weinersmith, and Jim Zub, which would have been a modest headstart considering there are more than 40 other artists who contributed. But I didn’t and now I have years of artist-chasing to get the entire thing signed and that is okay Ryan we cool we can still be pals.

Instead of dwelling on it, I riffled the pages to a random story end illustration (by Faith Erin Hicks on page 582) and it is now my goal to read through TBoNTB however many times it takes to end up on that page. Spoiler alert, it features Ophelia doing something awesome but does not require her to stab hell of dudes. I also expect to find the book even more delightful than I did last year when Ryan North asked me to proof a not-quite-complete version of TBoNTB.

Oh, and according to the copyright page up front (I’m the guy that reads the copyright page), somewhere in TBoNTB will be found the lyrics to Rapper’s Delight by The Sugarhill Gang which I note came out in 1979 which means that Ryan North has never lived in a world without Rapper’s Delight. I think this is the exact situation that Willie Shakes was describing when he wrote O, brave new world that has such tight rhymes in’t!.

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¹ Who also illustrated the copy of Poor Yorick which I also received.

Although the best rule one can follow on the internet is Never Read The Comments, I find it for somewhat obvious reasons useful to go through those at this site. The post from Tuesday of this week attracted some comments that caught my eye, not only for their length, but for the mention of something that’s been on my mind a fair bit. Responding to my commentary on his latest Kickstarter, the probable cover identity that self-identifies as Eben Burgoon discussed his logic for resubmitting an initially-unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign; here’s the important part:

I really fundamentally looked over the Kickstarter last time and rethought my plan of attack. The main thing –- hire Lauren as the artist and do so with my own pocket money so that my goal was far more reachable. She’s an incredible talent, deserves to be paid for her hard work, and if I am going to ask the internet for money to help see this work to it’s end –- I sure as hell better pony up too.

The Lauren referred to would be Lauren Monardo, a colleague via the Brainfood Comics project, and creator of several comics that aren’t really accessible on the web right now¹. Monardo’s credentials (which are excellent) aren’t the point here — the important part is the bit about deserves to be paid for her hard work and I sure as hell better pony up too.

Burgoon’s regard for his artist made me happy, particularly because I’ve spent entirely too much time reading Ryan Estrada’s For Exposure twitterfeed and watching his dramatic re-creations of people that don’t think artists should be paid. Hopefully (although in truth, I hold out very little hope for this), the bozos who have provided Estrada with so much material will look at Burgoon’s example and realize that their pathological short-sightedness is not the only way to approach making comics.

• Speaking of art having value, there are times when you can get away with not paying a creative collaborator — when said collaborator finds value in something other than up-front cash², or volunteers to work for free, or is dead and the work is out of copyright. That last one doesn’t come up too much, but may do in the not-too-distant future.

  Evan Dahm (whose work you should be familiar with, seeing as he’s put a few thousand pages of it out there for you to enjoy for free) has of late been noodling around with images inspired by The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; that would be the original Wizard, the novel by L Frank Baum, adapted a few million times³ since it was first published in the dawning days of the twentieth century.

  Many people have taken their artistic whacks at the Oz milieu since W W Denslow’s original illustrations, notably the work being done presently by Skottie Young for the Baum novel adaptations being published by Marvel. Dahm isn’t talking about doing a sketchbook though, or an adaptation; he’s thinking bigger:

  My name is Evan Dahm and I would like to illustrate and publish an edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was published in 1900 and is now in the public domain. I like it a lot and I think I can illustrate it in a way that works with the story and has a visual character that’s distinct from other interpretations.

  I can’t recall anything like this happening previously. There was an edition of Huckleberry Finn with racist language softened a few years back (which prompted an emulation with the n-word replaced with robot), and there have been some pretty beautiful comics editions of classic works (Kipling seems to be a favorite there), but I can’t recall somebody producing a new edition of a prose work to do their own spin on illustrations.

  And what illustrations! Dahm’s new Baum-sketchbook Tumblsite is full of promise as he starts what will likely be a lengthy project; he’s set ground rules for himself that guarantee that it’ll be years before The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum with illustrations by Evan Dahm sees print. However long the wait, I’m ready to grab a copy.

• Also speaking of art having value, here’s an emergency commission announcement from Dean Trippe. whose MacBook had a crisis and requires replacement as soon as possible. If you like Trippe’s meld of clean line and capes, he’s declared an impromptu convention complete with bargain pricing for superheroic inked drawings. DeanCon lasts through the weekend, so get your requests in now while you can.

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¹ The Slightly Askew Adventures of Inspector Ham & Eggs leads to a dead page, the Brainfood Comics page has a bunch of unreadable symbol placeholders and a Call of Duty 2 ad, and may be somebody squatting on Monardo’s former domain.

² Possibly an ownership stake.

³ Sadly, a Google search for “wizard of oz” puts Baum’s novel (the first of 14 in the Oz series) sixth behind various references to the 1939 film, although some of those are because one of three surviving Munchkin actors died at the age of 89.

As noted last week, A Softer World launched a Kickstarter campaign and released their 999th update, leaving everybody (or at least me) wondering what Emily and Joey would cook up for strip #1000.

Wonder no more.

What initially appeared (to me, at least) as a double-size update has been growing over the past few hours:

We are updating the 1000th comic all day! It’s like a story! A whole big STORY! *passes out* PS KICKSTARTER

As of this writing, it’s eleven rows tall, and each time another strip is added the alt-text changes with it. I suspect that there may be meaning — even a parallel story — there, all those yellow pop-ups will be lost in time, like tears in rain.¹

• There’s been a foofaraw in the writerly corners of blogistan for a couple of days, as a posting credited to the VP of the Horror Writers Association (and on the HWA Los Angeles chapter blog) purported to divide the world into professional writers and — gasp! — hobbyists, and succeeded mostly in pissing off a great number of professional writers. As is often the case, I find the John Scalzi (who is not the only writer I follow that scored only 1/10 on the quiz, far below the 8/10 necessary for validation) may have put it best:
  

  Here’s the actual quiz for knowing whether you are a pro writer or not:

  1. Are you getting paid to write?

  If the answer here is “yes,” then congratulations, you’re a professional writer!

  Okay, that’s Scalzi in snippy mode; he made an even better point a bit further down:

  The problem with [HWA VP’s]² quiz is that it confuses process for end result. Her quiz is about process, and presumably her process — what she thinks is necessary for one to do in order to produce the work that create the end result of making money as a writer. But process isn’t end result, otherwise in this case I wouldn’t be a professional writer, which I clearly and obviously am.

  Confusing process and result here is not a good thing. It confuses writers who are hungry to know what “being professional” means. The things [HWA VP] describes can lead to being a pro writer, but it’s not the only path, or a guaranteed one, not by a long shot. In this respect this quiz defeats its own purpose — it offers no indication about whether one actually is a professional writer, only whether one has jumped through the process hoops that one single writer believes are important to become a pro. [emphasis original]

  This thought of process vs status has been on my mind a fair bit; I don’t think that I’m letting any cats out of any bags to say that Brad Guigar asked me to do a first read on The Webcomics Handbook³, and I find it suffused with a tone of Topic A: Okay, here’s how I do it, and this works for me; you may find a variation on this that works better, or a way that’s completely different and that’s cool. What matters is what you produce. and how few absolutes there are. Maybe Guigar should send a copy care of the HWA.

• Speaking of what you produce, readers may recall that international mystery man Eben Burgoon of Eben 07 launched a Kickstart for a side project called B-Squad back in December, one which didn’t fund very well, and was ultimately unsuccessful. Like others before him, Burgoon has opted to resubmit the B-Squad, a technique that is rarely successful.⁴

  Unlike those others before him, Burgoon is capable of learning from his mistakes: he’s redone his project scope (reducing a US$8000 goal to US$3000), tinkered with his stretch goals, and borrowed successful ideas from other projects (case in point: challenge coins). As a result, he’s much more likely to succeed the second time around.

  In a domain where success is too often assumed to be inevitable, it’s natural for Kickstart campaign owners to look towards successes as things to emulate. These might be your own previous projects (such as Bill Barnes, Paul Southworth, and Jeff Zugale funding the second Not Invented here collection), or they may rely on accumulated name recognition and goodwill (say, Tavis Maiden taking a boost from Strip Search to launch a new strip, much like his fellow Artists have done). It’s rare to see somebody adjust approaches after a stumble rather than just have a hissy fit⁵ about it. Here’s hoping that Burgoon is the start of a trend.

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¹ Rutger Hauer is the man.

² I’ve taken the name because it’s pretty obvious in the posting, and because I suspect that the VP in question is taking a fair amount of shit today for the pretty significant overreach in the original article. I just don’t feel like piling on right now, as I’m presuming that the mistake was one of execution and not intent. Should reports come about that no, the execution matched the intent that that’s actually the viewpoint being promulgated, I may reconsider this notion.

³ Spoiler alert: it’s very good.

⁴ No names, but seriously I’ve seen Kickstarts that failed to raise even ten bucks resubmitted with nothing changed expecting a different result.

⁵ Again, no names, but remember the guy whose project failed to fund and he changed the video into an obscenity-laden screed about how the world didn’t deserve his genius ideas? That was great.

Okay, okay, I’d meant to get this post up yesterday, but as much of the day was taken up with Airport Fun Times, and I am also on vacation this week (my hotel in Portland is conveniently close to something called Voodoo Donuts, which seems to always have a line outside), you’ll get what you get and you’ll like it.

Fortunately, I think that you’ll like this one a good deal.

The STRIPPED (check out the snazzy new website!) panel went up in an inconvenient location (the literally far corner of the San Diego Convention Center) at an inconvenient time (7:00pm, against the Masquerade, big media parties, and need for food after the major day on the show floor), and still managed to — as they say in Hollywood — kill¹.

Sitting at the front table were co-directors and hivemind Freddave Kellett-Schroeder, editor Ben Waters, and associate producer Jen Troy². Messers Kellet-Schroeder did most of the talking and retain their uncanny ability to both finish each others sentences and interrupt each other for maximum comedic effect; those kids need to take their schtick on the road. In response to an enquiry from the Kellett half of the directorial team, a show of hands indicated that the majority of the audience had been backers of the film’s two Kickstarter campaigns, so they’ve been following along through the four year process of making the movie. More precisely, the interview process started four years ago, Waters and Troy began their work two years ago, and but for a few remaining clearances, the movie’s essentially done.

Without further delay, the first clip was shown. In essence, it’s the first six or seven minutes of the film, about 80% of which had previously been released to Kickstarter backers as a sneak peek. Various unattributed creator voices³ talk about what comic strips mean to them over a scene of a father and daughter reading the Sunday comics together at breakfast⁴. The titles are interspersed with a scene of a comic being drawn (fans will recognize Kellett’s art style), with more clips of creators (with names this time) talking about what comics mean to them, their favorite strips (Peanuts, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County, Foxtrot, Nancy, and Pogo got called out), along with reminiscences of reading the comics page on the floor as an earliest memory of childhood. It sets the stage for a movie that’s a love letter to comics beautifully.

However, that wasn’t always the tone of the movie. In a process that could conceivably stretch to a half-decade, a movie’s narrative has the potential to change⁵; in their first assemblage of footage, Schroeder-Kellett were convinced that what they had in their hands was a disaster movie: comics were endangered, they had to get the interviews done and the movie released quickly before they went away. The second clip they showed had been the original opening to the movie which focused on the theme of comics and newspapers failing⁶. It was a doom-filled two or three minutes that closed on a Bill Watterson quote⁷ about daily comics disappearing.

Following test screenings with filmmakers that they trusted, Kellett-Schroeder came to the conclusion that the opening was radically out of step with what the rest of the movie was about; in the years since they’d started gathering interviews, they’d found hope and certainty that although comic strips are changing, they are also broadening and diversifying and thriving in ways that weren’t obvious at the start of the process. Although it was time-consuming and expensive, that mean the film had to change and it certainly seems better for that correction. As Kellett put it, With a documentary, you’re writing a story with other peoples’ words, and that means making mistakes and learning as you work.

The third clip was the proverbial money shot; in the year since the first clips of STRIPPED were shown at SDCC 2012, Watterson’s involvement grew from answering questions via email to answering questions in an audio interview⁸, which are spread throughout the film as relevant underscores to points being made. In the section titled The Golden Age of Comics, we get to see what the lifestyle of the rich and famous cartoonist of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s was like: newsreel interview clips, sitting on the couch next to Johnny Carson, popular movies built jet-set rich cartoonists, Jim Davis doing a commercial for American Express, Mel Lazarus guest-starring as himself on Murder She Wrote⁹ — there were decades where those making newspaper comic strips (especially serial adventure strips) were millionaires and billionaires. The first Watterson audio clip — the first time he’s allowed himself to be recorded! — closes out the section. There was a hush in the room that lasted two beats past the fade-out, then the applause erupted.

Bill¹⁰ has been very nice, Kellett said, very generous, and that theme recurred; each of the interviewed creators came in for effusive thanks and praise. More than once, Kellett said, somebody they were talking to extended the scheduled interview by an hour or more because they were so invested in the discussion. Kellett pointed out that not only did this add to the amount of transcribing Troy had to do, she also has had to obtain clearance on 627 different comic strips that are visually identifiable in the film. She seemed okay with that.

• The Q&A section opened on the obvious question: How did you get Bill Watterson? His name was at the top of the wish list of must-have interviews (because who hasn’t been moved by Calvin and Hobbes?), but it was accepted that there was no way they’d get him. But in talking to so many other cartoonists, people that Watterson is in contact with and respects, word filtered back to him that these two guys are legit and worth talking to, and if you aren’t a part of this, it’ll be a little lacking. Because of that, Watterson reached out (!) and said he wanted to be a part of it. He spoke over the phone for 40 – 45 minutes in total, and later a recorder was sent to him to ensure the highest possible audio quality for his answers.
• The one clunker of a question came next. A gentleman stood up and asked Can I play devil’s advocate and
  (Kellett: No. Next question.)

  ask, haven’t comic strips gone the way of jazz? Nobody makes movies from comic strips anymore, adventure strips are dead, compared to graphic novels, do they matter? Do people still care?

  Kellett again: Thank you for that, I’m going to go kill myself now. But then he pointed out that comic strips are nowhere near the point of, say, opera, which only survives because of state sponsorship and whose heydey as a popular art is centuries past. There’s an amazing renaissance flourishing, but it’s not concentrated. We will never again see the billionaire cartoonist, but there is so much more good work.

  Schroeder: Art Speigelman said No popular art ever dies, it either becomes “Art” like jazz, or it finds another way. There’s just so much more out there vying for your attention, but you won’t see the huge popularity like in the ’40s when daily entertainment consisted of just comics and radio.

  Kellett: And there are more comics creators making a living than 30 years ago, and comics speak to more people than they used to. If you were a black woman or gay boy in the ’40s, what comics spoke to you?

• Briefer questions: Asked if there were transcripts of the interviews (Troy nodded furiously), it was said that the dream outcome would be a coffee table book that we would not have to publish. Asked when the movie can be seen and how, the process of determining distribution and timing is in active exploration now. Asked if Garry Trudeau was in the movie, it turned out that there were three or four people they really wanted but who didn’t want to participate: Trudeau hates to do interviews, Berke Breathed very kindly declined, Scott Adams deferred on account of his vocal dystonia, Gary Larson and Art Spiegelman also opted not to participate. But as filmmakers, they are thrilled by the 70, 80, 90 interviews that they did get.
• Second best laugh of the night: If the future is on the internet, did you interview any webcomics guys?
  Kellett: We did not. I’m not very familiar with that world. (In actuality, webcomics become increasingly prominent in the second half of the film, and dominate the last third.)
• Noting that Kellett and Schroeder are interested in releasing the full videos (possibly as a series of DVD extras, or 99 cents per on iTunes, or whatever), one questioner wanted to know if they would release the full Watterson audio interview. The consensus was that they would have to ask if he was comfortable with that, and it would probably depend on how he felt about the final film. They speculated that he would be amenable to his interview appearing in print, and amenable to appearing in a book, at least.
• Asked what interview most shocking, Kellett told the story of meeting Jim Davis at PAWS headquarters, the three-building complex rising out of a cornfield in Indiana after following a dirt road, with sunbeams perfectly illuminating the scene and imagined heavenly choir going aahhh-AAAHHH! and realizing That’s where Garfield lives! I’m sorry, what was the question? Clarifying that the question was about shocking opinions, they decided on Stephan Pastis, noting that in the film he and Kellett argue and it got heated. I think it made the documentary better, we wanted the film not to be about our viewpoint, we wanted him in there. He was great.

  Schroder: At first we thought web/print would be hardcore in their community, but they’re all cartoonists.

  Troy: Every interview was amazing, everybody has their own take on creativity, but Patrick McDonnell was my favorite. I was transcribing and he talked about how creating the strip he’ll go into a Zen state and I realized I wasn’t typing any more.

  Waters: A lot of people were watching their language a little bit, but the Penny Arcade guys not so much. They’re very frank, maybe brash, nobody else really talks like that in the movie. Everybody is very nice.

  Kellett: We all fell in love with Cathy Guisewite. Younger unmarried me wants to date younger unmarried Cathy Guisewite. Please nobody send this to my wife.

With time closing in, they showed the clip from last year focusing on how webcomics make their money (it’s done as an 8-bit videogame starting with CARTOONIST NEEDS FOOD BADLY and ending with a boss fight for audience) and took two last questions.

• The first resulted in the biggest laugh of the night when asked how they handled their inner fanboy while interviewing heroes. Kellett responded, Sometimes we didn’t. Fred and I were flying to Canada to interview Lynn Johnston, it’s like four connections and on the first leg of our flight we got the email from Watterson. Literally the whole flight we were GIVE ME THE IPHONE AGAIN, LOOK WHAT HE SAID HERE FRED, HE MADE A STAR WARS JOKE!!¹¹ Schroeder: Dave did that.
• Given the instruction to make the last question a good one, a young man stood and said he didn’t have a question, he wanted to thank the panel on behalf of every eight year old kid that’s ever loved comics, thanks for grabbing that passion, and being able to share that with everybody; his voice was cracking and it was pretty obvious what the comics have meant to him. Kellett was visibly affected by the honest emotion, and reiterated that the film couldn’t have been possible without the help of everybody they spoke to, but also the people that have been supporting the idea of STRIPPED from Day One. The ovation was enthusiastically and genuine, and if it had appeared in a movie you might have felt it too contrived to be real. Fade to black.

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¹ To paraphrase noted filmmaker Mr The Frog, It’s gonna be boffo, Lenny! Totally socko!

² Big ups to Troy, who had the good grace to speak slowly and use ordinary words, a boon for those of us (me) transcribing in the audience; I attribute this to the fact that it was her job to log the film — that is, sit through all 300+ hours of interviews and transcribe the entire damn thing. Respect.

³ I believe that I recognized Lynn Johnston, Greg Evans, Jim Davis, Cathy Guisewite, and Jerry Holkins in that vocal montage but again — no names shown. Yes, I am a tremendous nerd.

⁴ The breakfast scene was beautifully art-directed, and I say that without a trace of irony or sarcasm. First time I saw the five second pan across the table, past the coffee and juice and toasted bagel smeared with fresh creamery butter, I got hungry. Well done, Mr Schroeder.

⁵ And, in the case of documentaries, I’d argue has an obligation to do so in a lot of cases; if you come into a documentary with the conclusions predetermined, you aren’t showing how things are.

⁶ Literally, it started on a cold open on Gregg Evans being asked about the state of newspaper comics, getting a pained expression on his face, and letting out a ragged sigh.

⁷ Which I believe was from his famed speech at Ohio State’s Festival of Cartoon Art in 1989. Watterson has always been not just a genius-level maker of comics, but a scholar and observer who has few equals, and foresight about where they’re going that’s nearly unparalleled. We’ll be hearing more from him in this piece.

⁸ I confirmed with Schroeder later that the audio portions were not in person, so it’s no use trying to kidnap one of them to divulge where Watterson lives.

⁹ What is this theme with cartoonists and murder?

¹⁰ Not Mr Watterson, I note. Of all the people in the world to be on a first-name basis with!

¹¹ For full effect, you have to imagine Kellett’s voice Dopplering up in the all-caps part.

We’re less than eighteen hours into 2013 where I am, and already things are off to a fast start.

• Firstly, more news of Strip Search has come to light, including details I couldn’t get Robert Khoo to divulge if his (or, more likely, my) life depended on it. Maki [Edit to add: I’ve discovered that Maki is not uni-named, and is more fully known as Maki Naro; Fleen regrets the deviation from our usual naming conventions], from Sci-ənce dropped news that he was a participant, that production took place in December, and that the other eleven creators vying for the top prize were Lexxy Douglass, Amy Falcone, Ty Halley, Alex Hobbs, Abby Howard, Monica Ray, Katie Rice, Mackenzie Schubert, Nick Trujillo, and “Hurricane” Erika Moen.

  [Edit to add: Missed one! I took my list from Naro’s posting, and did not notice that there were only ten names listed rather than eleven; Naro initially omitted Tavis Maiden, and I missed his name on Lexxy Douglass’s post. Mr Maiden helpfully contacted me via Twitter to point out the oversight; Fleen regrets the error.]

  Best news: most of these creators aren’t known to me, so I can now get exposed to new talent. Even bester news: the three whose work I am familiar with are really damn good, which gives me confidence in the other nine. Specifically, I’ve had my eye on Douglass’s¹ art blog since she was featured on PA: The Series going through the hiring process; Rice has been tearing it up at Dumm Comics for going on five years, and Moen is basically an unstoppable force of nature. My already-high level of anticipation for SS just went through the roof.

  One last thought — I’m really hoping that Maki didn’t speak out of turn (it is mere days since Khoo wasn’t willing to tell when production took place or who was involved) and as he (Maki) rightly observes:

  Khoo is a very kind, friendly, and utterly terrifying man

  I kid, I kid, Douglass also disclosed her involvement today, but she didn’t make a show of terror so she doesn’t have as good a pull quote. Obviously, the NDA period is over — or Maki and Douglass are dangerously overconfident, not realizing that their doom is nigh.

• Speaking of fast starts, Ryan Estrada has launched the second iteration of The Whole Story (six months after the first), this time on Kickstarter. Since the launch at midnight EST, TWS: Winter 2013 has exceeded the extremely modest US$2500 goal, which had the entire purpose of reimbursing Estrada for the out-of-pocket costs that he fronted to creators and translators; everything that comes in from this point will be split among the creators (of which Estrada is one, meaning he gets a share, but not the entire total going forward).

  Moving TWS to Kickstarter from its earlier distribution site makes sense — it’s easiest to just set the “pay what you want” model to a minimum of a buck, and to add bonus content by exceeding the average amount paid in the prior incarnation, than it is to adjust those pricing structures on the fly. Having a set period of time for the campaign creates a scarcity that wouldn’t exist otherwise for electronic content.

  And holy jeeze, there’s a lot of previously-released and brand-new content available, including KC Green’s latest story comic at the pay-what-you-want level; the bonus level (a paltry thirteen American dollars) includes almost 200 pages of Ryan Andrews comics that bore themselves into your soul and don’t let go plus Green’s magnum opus, The Anime Club. At this point, just call The Whole Story the e-book equivalent of Benign Kingdom.

• Finishing up on the Kickstarter front, at the beginning of December we at Fleen mentioned a Kickstarter from longtime mystery man Eben Burgoon for a project called B-Squad, wherein characters will be killed off by the roll of a die and replaced by others waiting in the wings. Burgoon’s project is four days from completion, and I’m particularly interested in its progress, because it’s the first test of something I learned back in October.

  Some may recall how I shared some information from Kickstarter Director of Community Cindy Au, at the B9 panel at NYCC; specifically, the magic inflection point appears to be 1/3 of goal. If you reach 1/3, you’re extremely likely to succeed, and if you fail, you very likely didn’t approach even 1/3 of goal. As of this writing, Burgoon’s B-Squad is at 39% of goal, with four days to go.

  The projects I’ve had my eyes on since I learned of Au’s thumb-rule haven’t hung around the 1/3 mark for more than a few minutes before racing ahead to success, so I’m curious to see what happens here — a big push to get support and a slide over the line before the campaign closes? Or a statistical outlier? Dare we, as Kickstarter attention-payers, turn Ms Au’s prediction on its head? That could cause the laws of Kickstarter physics to start to fail and create a tear in the fabric of crowdfunding-spacetime, the likes of which not even the ghost of Ryan North could navigate. I’m just saying, if Kickstarter eats itself, we only have ourselves to blame.

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¹ That’s entirely too many “s”es.²

² So is that.³

³ And Guigar.

Seriously, people — all kinds of mid-week days I’m scrambling for content, and then this gets dumped on me all at once? Do none of you want a weekend?

• Hired! Jim Zub may be the smartest guy working in comics, and working every angle of them — publishing licensed work, writing original creator-owned comics, writing revived videogame IP, and thinking very hard about everything he does. To that we can now add writing for DC, as Jim Zub is taking over Birds of Prey. It’s a pretty high-profile gig, as BoP is regarded as a well-written book (having a long legacy of Gail Simone as chief wordsmith), and not just an IP-parking exercise in stasis. Here’s hoping that he can keep up all his own projects while still working for the bigs; nobody deserves success for all his hard work more, but I confess that I’m more interested in the things that are uniquely Zub than things dreamt up by somebody else getting a Zub spin. The first one is just … Zubbier? Zubesque? Zublike¹, I guess.
• Kickstarted! How did I miss this? Girl Genius is doing a videogame, and with two weeks left in the Kickstarter, they’re up over 500% of goal. More interestingly (since GG fans are pretty rabid and any project related to Agatha Heterodyne was going to be supported to the point of success), this is the first time I’ve seen what appears to be a new cultural evolution of Kickstarter projects, in the form of the Kicking It Forward pledge.

  Short form: people running Kickstarters promise to dedicate no less than 5% of the profits from their campaigns (after costs and fulfillment of their own projects; we’re talking actual profit here, not gross proceeds) to supporting other Kickstarters from other project teams in the future. This is a terrific idea, and puts me in mind of something I saw on Twitter the other day (heck if I can remember who tweeted it originally, sorry); in a nutshell, it was an opinion that people running Kickstarters who have a track record of backing other projects are more likely to see support (at least, from the twitterer in question) than somebody who’s first interaction with the platform is to ask for money. Kickstarter is a terrific tool, a key part of business plans for independent creators of all kinds, but having it be a real community may be where its full potential gets unleashed. I’m very excited by these developments.

• Unmasked! Search the archives of this page for Eben07 or Burgoon and you’ll find many references to a shadowy operative, a peerless spy-type agent and the webcomic he’s produced for a half-decade, and now he’s just gone and made himself all public and every-damn-thing. Eben Burgoon has Kickstarted a new project about an underfunded set of misfit mercenaries sent on deniable missions with a reality-show twist: every mission, somebody will be eliminated, leading to lots of funerals. The B-Squad, as it’s called, sounds like a hoot, so do give a look, yes?
• Speaking of! Kickstarters for the last time today: Ryan North is up over US$275,000 for TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST, which means mini-plush Yorick skulls. Something tells me that Ryan North may be in the mood to celebrate come Monday, 17 December for the Third Annual Beguiling/Dinosaur Comics Holiday Party with fun and good times and Ryan and Kate and Joey and a Secret Santa and booze. The party starts at 7:30pm and goes until whenever Paupers Pub is tired of the shirtlessness (Ryan), tomfoolery (Joey), and knife fights (Kate). You’re on your own for bail money.

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¹ Insert your own Being Jim Zubkavich joke here. Zubkavich, Zubkavich? Zubkavich. Zub.

The rumo[u]rs are making the rounds regarding Jim Zub’s Skullkickers #17, available tomorrow in fine comic shops everywhere; actually, I’m not sure you can call it a “rumo[u]r”, when you come right out and say it in the solicitation:

Somebody DIES! Or, everyone DIES! There’s lots of DYING! Oh man, it’s some kind of DEATH-fest goin’ around. It’s all epic and brutal and a major character DIES so you better order a ho-jillion copies. No, seriously, someone DIES. Big DEADING in the house. Also: The end of our incredible third story arc. Sweet.

I would have put some emphasis in there, but I think it’s pretty apparent that the takeaway is “major character dies”. Now this being comics, death is a temporary condition, the result of an imaginary story or retconned immediately so that you can have drama but still put things back the way they were. But not if you name is Zub, Sparky. There’s a for-real shocking conclusion, a cliffhanger, and a stack of questions that amount to How the hell is he going to keep the story going for another three arcs after that? Do not doubt the Zub, he will find a way.

(more…)

Getting back into the swing of work, a bit behind, so perhaps you’ll forgive me if I point you towards some things that I’ve noticed over the last little bit and forgo the more thinky things like the Harvey nominations?

• For starters, we’re coming up on the opening of We Love Webcomics at Doublepunch Gallery in San Francisco. It’ll feature the works of incredibly, almost stupidly talented people. Quite frankly, it would be worthwhile to attend if it featured no more than three random Showdowns, any two Rebecca Clement whimsies, and Natasha Allegri’s tribute to Snooki. As it turns out, I have no special knowledge that any of those things will be present, but then again, you could substitute just about anything by Campbell, Clement and Allegri and have it rock, not to mention the work of Furuichi, Green, Jonathan, and more. Those in the westerly climes, do check it out for us, yes?
• Late-breaking realization #37: by not attending SDCC this year, I am missing out on obvious purchasing opportunities. Under normal circumstances I’d be picking up copies of the new Chainsawsuit, Starslip, Scenes From A Multiverse, Penny Arcade, Super Stupor, Drive, and Flight collections. Just the shipping on all of these books is almost enough to justify the flight and hotel costs for the week¹. That’s not even considering that I wouldn’t be able to pick up the newest Schlock Mercenary and Digger books, since Tayler and Vernon won’t be there either. Gonna be an expensive July….
• Doing me the favor of not having a new book that needs purchasing, the ever-mysterious E Burgoon passed some information to us² regarding some of his(?) recent semi-covert activities. Of greatest interest is the fact that Burgoon has worked a deal with the seemingly-legitimate front organization friendly local comic shop, Empire’s Comics Vault in Sacramento, to offer seminars designed to bring more artists and writers to webcomickry. It’s possible that there may even be video of the first of these for your edification and/or viewing pleasure in the near future.

Okay. Going slightly off script here for a moment; I think that I’ve calmed down enough to approach this rationally and not go on the written equivalent of a tower-based shooting spree. A few hours ago I read this:

[Blog] : One chapter ends, another begins… http://www.mindpollution.org/2011/07/05/one-chapter-ends-another-begins/

… which lead to the unwelcome news that Rick Marshall, consummate comics reportage pro and relentless booster of webcomics, has been let go from this position at MTV Splash Page (no link, because screw them). Rick’s way too much of a gentleman to see this as anything but an opportunity to explore new projects, but I’m not. I’m going to say that MTV are foolish for not realizing what a resource they had (Rick’s Rolodex is deep and broad, and his interviews revealed a knowledge of comics to match); keeping him on a blog with the too-narrow focus of comics-meets-movies-and-TV was understandable when that was all that MTV had in the way of comics coverage, but not asking him to helm their dedicated comics blog (MTV Geek; again, no link because still screw them) was shortsighted in the extreme³.

So, if you’re looking for somebody that exemplifies journalistic best practices and has a deep and abiding love of comics and all they do, drop Rick a line — he makes the rest of us that dabble in banging out copy look bad, while making the medium, its creators, and fans look very, very good. Anybody that’s lucky enough to snatch him up will be lucky to have his talents working on their behalf.

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¹ It is very, very expensive to ship to the Fleenplex.

² Via the traditional dead-drop, as befits his(?) strict adherence to the best practices of tradecraft.

³ Which should not be construed as a criticism of anybody that MTV did invite in to work on MTV Geek. There’s some good work being done over there, but I think you’ll forgive me if I decline to read it in future.