Priorities:

1. Leisurely breakfast — check
2. Take dog to dog park for runnings and butt-sniffings — check
3. Clean shoes thoroughly — check
4. Not write anything for the webcomics blog because most of webcomics is taking off today with the exception of Meredith Gran dropping 11 pages on us — dang
5. Celebrate the achievements of the organized labor movement and the benefits derived from it Drink beer — in progress

Happy Labo[u]r Day, kids.
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‘Nother day, ‘nother book goes up for pre-order — Starslip volume 3 this time — and Topatoco scores another client. Honestly, it might be easier these days to tell you when Topatoco doesn’t pick up a prominent webcomic as a client. Understand I’m firmly of the opinion that Topatoco is one of the best thngs that a webcomics creator not determined/business skilled/time-blessed enough to run their own merch line can have in their corner, and I’m still surprised by how rapidly (yet smartly) they’ve grown.

I’m really wondering how long it will be before a boutiuqe internet-creator merchandise company becomes a legit media company with a reach and influence equivalent to, say, Dark Horse. Best guess? Five to ten years. Three years if Jeff and Holly can find somebody to keep Weedmaster P occupied. I think I’m going to have to ply them with liquor in San Diego and see what I can get them to commit to on the record.

In other news — and if I’m asked about this in the future, I will deny it all — reports now indicate that a major trove of intelligence data are nearly compiled, and should be complete in less than a week. The shadowy (perhaps fictional, perhaps they only want you to think he’s fictional) operative known as Agent Eben07 has been linked with a dossier of information dating back more than 40 years that could have lasting impact on the world’s geopolitical situation. All are encouraged to … did you hear that? Listen carefully — burn everything, and I was never here! The one-eyed dog barks at midnight! The one-eyed dog barks at mi~~

Things can happen very quickly on The Twitters:

Outcome: Awesome. Todays strip, borne of desperation, made me giggle like a little kid. Well done.

• Speaking of Twitters, John Campbell has turned his new account into a forum for serialized insanity; it’s like reading a non-drawn version of his comic. And with Josh Fruhlinger‘s new Twitter account, it’s Aldomania every day!
• Friend of webcomickry Rick I Hate That Stupid Movie And It’s Not Even Out Yet Marshall has managed to get his semiregular MTV Splash Page feature on comics that should be movies over to the web side o’ things — Dr McNinja‘s a good start, but I really want to see his take on Templar.
• As learned from various shadowy sources, the “person” known as Eben07 may or may not exist, and may or may not be responsible for a similarly-named webcomic. Nevertheless, Eben07 (the person or persons) has reached a milestone with Eben07 (the comic); the following is an excerpt from a dossier received by Fleen via methods that we are not at liberty to disclose at this time:
  

  Our comic, Eben07, will be releasing a collection of the episode Operation: For the Love of Russia on June 7th. It is a 52 page full color book with a trade-paperback style cover for $10.

  [redacted] features all the comics from Operation: For the Love of Russia (many of which were redesigned to read and feel more like a comic book page) including the guest comics from Jason Zuckerman and Stephen Lindsay and Lauren Monardo, as well as a “never to be released on the web” epilogue that divulges [redacted].

  [redacted] be selling it in person at the Sacramento Comic Convention on June 7th as special guest invites (I think we’re the only web-based comic that’s going to have a special guest table, but [redacted].

  Fleen readers are advised that the one-eyed dog barks at midnight, and that location “SCC” is go. Repeat, SCC is go.

So a couple of days ago, I noticed entirely by chance a Project Wonderful ad for a webcomic I’d not heard of before — Circle vs Square. It’s a bit spartan visually, with little beyond a plain circle and a plain square seeking to dominate each other (think Death to the Extremist). Okay, eyeballs delivered, nothing immediately grabbed me, moved on.

Yesterday, alert reader Eben Burgoon wrote to coincidentally point me towards CvsS, because that very visually primitive strip seems to have broken new ground in the creativity of selling out — it has incorporated Project Wonderful ads directly into the comic itself. Since I first hopped over there last night, it appears that the PW ads in the strip haven’t changed (LadyStar x2, Chainbear, Burgoon’s own Eben07, and Calamities of Nature), but it certainly appears that they could.

So I call upon webcomickers with something to advertise to see this as a challenge. What kind of button content can be snuck into the middle of CvsS strip #170? How can its content be subverted? It’s mass collaboration time, gang. Get creative.

In other news:

• Chris Flick over at Capes & Babes is too proud to sell out … but not too proud to entice people to be friends with free art:
  

  I am currently offering a free, hi-rez, full-color marker illustration of Kang the Time Lord. All you have to do is follow me on Twitter or add a link to Capes & babes on your blog side bar. If you add a Capes link to your site, you need to send me an e-mail but if you follow me on Twitter, I will send you a DM with a link to the PDF.

• In case your RSS feed hasn’t caught up, new Dresden Codak; creator Aaron Diaz got this update to us much faster than the previous one, which will hopefully be a trend.
• Finally, not webcomics, but friend-of-webcomics (and all good things, really) Neil Gaiman has been awarded the highly prestigious Newbery Medal for his contributions to children’s literature (in this case, in the form of The Graveyard Book). As noted in this morning’s NPR interviewette, Gaiman’s work is now part of an organized canon of children’s lit, and will likely be there “on the Newbery shelf” forever. Richly deserved, and a bright spot of news in these dreary times.