Here we roll into the end stages of SDCC. Didn’t get to see all the stuff I wanted to, unexpected stories presented themselves, and much happened. Let’s start at the top, shall we?

• The syndicated strip cartoonists held a Q&A yesterday; Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), Richard Thompson (Cul De Sac) and Keith Knight (Knight Life) engaged in what amounted to a running discussion on the the topic of As newspapers go, we go, unless we figure out something fast. We want your questions because we need to figure out some answers. Today.

  After that brief introduction by Pastis, the very first question was on webcomics (and didn’t come from me). Paraphrasing (since it came a little too fast to transcribe): Where do you stand on webcomics, with a model where you give the comic away and sell goods to make money? Knight replied with a variation on an answer he’s given a couple of times this week: You need to get your work out to as many people, by as many channels as possible, and it only makes sense for anybody in print syndication to look at this approach. But he doesn’t believe in being exclusively self-published on the web, and he doesn’t believe in being exclusively syndicated (and has different projects that follow different models). Money quote (and this one is exact): I learn as much from webcartoonists as I do from [gesturing to fellow panelists] these guys.

  Good answer, but the question didn’t directly address an issue I’d like to have seen brought up, viz., what benefit does a syndicate actually provide these days? One may not believe that papers will entirely go away (as does Pastis), and that the physicality of the actual object is something people will want (Pastis again), even while negotiating rights to new channels like the Kindle (Pastis once more) while pondering the question, “Does this add to my audience or take away?”

  Mostly though, they saw the problem as one of scarcity of space — asked about legacy strips (repeating the question for the room, Pastis phrased it as How do you feel about all the dead wood on the comics page?), the panel figured they could live with them if there were sufficient room for new strips as well. But below that is a sense of almost visceral dislike of strips that continue long past their original creators. Pastis wondered if there’s another creative form that’s perceived as so transferrable that the creator could die and the kid could continue it and it’s considered just the same.

  But at least that problem might not exist in the future — as Pastis and Knight pointed out, for about ten years now, most syndicate contracts and left the copyright with the creator (although the monetary terms are such that while the creator own the strip, the syndicate gets a significant cut). Case in point: books. Why don’t many syndicated strippers have books out? Pastis noted that there’s essentially one publisher of such (Andrews & McMeel), but not every strip cartoonist tries to get books made.

  With the avenues of self-publishing, there’s no reason not to have them, although if, say, Thompson were to decide to publish books because the syndicate didn’t want to, they’d still get about 50% of the revenue per their contracts. But Knight did point out that when a particular publisher produced books for him, he got $1 per book sold, and now that he self-publishes, he gets $11 per (this is on rights that were recovered by Knight, so he doesn’t have to share, but still — it might be almost worthwhile as a revenue stream, seeing as how the number of papers carrying strips is dropping).

• I bumped into two of the most generous people in all of comicdom — Jennifer Babcock and Matt Murray had previously been associated with the running of the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art and the annual MoCCA Art Fest, but they and others struck out last Fall to form a new nonprofit devoted to comics scholarship. Turns out what’s normally a tricky undertaking is even trickier in the midst of a worldwide economic contraction, but they’re still plugging away at it, and were very sympathetic towards the current MoCCA folks about the logistical … let’s call them challenges … at this year’s show. There’s a steep learning curve and Murray and Babcock sincerely hoped the current showrunners are able to negotiate it. Like I said, generous; if you don’t do so already, check out their undertakings with the Sequential Art Collective.
• What would happen if the guys behind Halfpixel, Webcomics Weekly, and webcomics.com held a panel and didn’t give any soundbites? Unlike some of their previous appearances which were explicitly pitched as Webcomics Weekly live performances, this session (entitled Webcomics Bootcamp) was a fairly organic conversation, with answers not neatly encapsulated down into short, pithy, ten words answers. Find a recording somewhere (we’ll link to any we come across) and listen to the whole thing — you’ll only miss out on the visuals where Scott Kurtz spilled water on the table and what looked like a large dog laughed at him from the back of the room.
  Sidenote: dissatisfied that only four people got to ask questions before time was up, Kurtz, Brad Guigar, and Robert Khoo held an impromptu Q&A session on webcomics business at the Marriott at 11:00pm; anybody that made it there, please send us a summary.

It’s time to wrap this — I still have to write up the SMBC/Cyanide & Happiness/nerdcore show, the story of how I spoke with the publisher/editor-in-chief of IDW about the Bay Boy comics (pretty good outcome on that one I think) and some changes at Keenspot, not to mention news on new webcomics statues, and photos. If I don’t get to all that before tomorrow, deal. In the meantime, the Keenspot panel’s at 11:00 (32AB) and the Zuda version of how-to-do-webcomics panel at 3:00 (4). Hope to make both of those, but I’ve got some other appointments.

Oh yeah — this is why. On those occasions that I meet somebody that reads this blog, it never fails to give me a little thrill to know that I’m not just sending electrons into the aether. Your kind words buoy me in times like now, when my liver and consciousness have reached their limits in service to webcomics, and I have to take an early night or both will be irretrievably shredded. On the up side, it means that somebody will be alive at the Dumbrella booth (which will please the new boss — details below), and there’s plenty to talk about even with me having missed the evening’s social niceties.

I didn’t manage to make it to the Miyazaki panel or the Kibuishi panel, but I did get to have lunch with The Rockin’ Teenage Combo, aka Becky ‘n’ Frank. We had some disturbingly good breakfast, spoke about how hard it is to make comics or pursue an animation career from New Zealand (beautiful place and absolute tops on my gotta-visit list, but so remote from the rest of your industry), and saw the most clever bit of experiential marketing at the Con so far — the people behind a forthcoming movie called LEGION (don’t know anything about it, but now I kind of want to) appropriated an ice-cream truck, dressed the driver & attendant as zombies, and drove around the Gaslamp hanging out the windows looking suitably dead and chucking t-shirts at unsuspecting passers-by.

On the way back in to the scrum, I had the pleasure of seeing Becky & Frank interact with the likes of Jeff Smith, Steve Hamaker, Scott Campbell, Kibuishi, and others — I never get tired of seeing artists who admire each others work interact. I snagged quick copies of Flight 6 and Owly 5 (and watched the Owly cartoon clip loop on the TV — purely adorable), and was back to the grind.

The rushes came and went, the booth crew were troupers, and organizational changes made. What began as an over-booze discussion about number trending has become an expansion of Dumbrella. Andy Bell’s wife, Jackie MacLeod, works for humanitarian non-profits in a logistical capacity, work which has taken her as far as Congo, trying to get food and medical aid to those in war zones (braving rebels, corrupt governmental officials, malaria, and baboons to do so). Jackie is a tiny person, so to deal with crap of the magnitude she must regularly deal with, you know that she has an enormous capacity to Get Shit Done. By popular acclaim (and fear of reprisals — a woman who can stare down armed insurgent baboons while dealing with a case of malaria is not somebody you want annoyed with you), she will now be known as Madame El Presidente For Life of Dumbrella. ¡Viva!

Getting serious for a moment, there’s a valuable lesson here, one that echoes a conversation I had with Robert Khoo a couple of San Diegos ago: the difference between Penny Arcade and various webcomics collectives is that at PA, there’s one person that makes a decision, and things happen. When there’s multiple people sharing the decisions inherent in prepping months for a shared week-long marketing experience — or in some collectives, having a tighter organization, complete with shared revenues — things will inevitably bog down.

Want an exercise in frustration? Try to get three or more people to agree what to put on a pizza. Now try to get five or more to agree what to put on a pizza that will determine a nontrivial portion of their year’s income. If there can be a level of trust in the skills and fairness of one person to make a decision and just go with it, things can happen, and with less potential for hurt feelings. Thus, Jackie, whose experience in war zones should just about prepare her for the job of dealing with the level of poo-flinging that is found in webcomickers. And there will be a bit more poo flung, as Dumbrella has expanded by two — de facto Dumbrellites Meredith Gran and Chris Yates are now de juris members in (good?) standing.

In other news:

• Webcomics guest star Wil Wheaton and I discussed the most effective techniques of being a grumpy old guy telling kids to stay the hell of our respective lawns — he favors the cane to gesture with, I’m going with chucking the pears that fall of my pear tree at the little whippersnappers. We agree that releasing the hounds is something you have to hold in reserve, but I’ve just thought of another issue … when do we get the garden hose?
• Fleen offers condolences to David Malki ! on not taking the Eisner award for humor, particularly after hearing him do a run-through on semi-prepared remarks in the event of a win.
• IDW will be visited today in an attempt to find out what the hell is up with the announcement that they will be doing a 4 issue comic miniseries on the topic of Bat Boy. A 4 issues comic miniseries that apparently does not involve Danielle Corsetto, who did the Adventures of Bat Boy comics for the Weekly World News after Peter Bagge originated it. What the hell, IDW?
• Andrew Farago at the Cartoon Art Musuem tells me there’s still slots open for the virtual gallery portion of Monsters of Webcomics. Short form: three strips at 72dpi, to fit on a 1680 x 1050 monitor. It’ll be a slideshow, so no scrolling. Include your name, webcomic title, URL, and keep in mind there’ll be kids so stick to PG-13 (and tamer) material. Submit by 31 July to andrewfarago who may be found at the Google-run e-mail service (dot-com). Also, they need a logo, so if you want to design something that’s truly metal, have at it.
• If you’re in San Diego, drop by the 1200 aisle and see Randy Milholland. Ask him about the sketch he did that’s Berry, Berry Disturbing. I’d tell you, but it’s both a) extraordinarily rude and b) not my joke to tell. I’m in awe of what comes out of his head.

No photos. Up today: the aforementioned IDW visit, the panel on syndication (morbid curiousity really — noon in room 7AB), the Halfpixel panel (2:00 in room 8) and hopefully the Hope Larson panel (4:00 in room 3). Speaking of Hope Larson, Bryan Lee O’ Malley was grateful when I spoke to him that he and Scott McCloud did their panel and the questions were actually about Scott Pilgrim the comics, and not Scott Pilgrim the it-won’t-be-out-for-another-year movie. Well done, masses.

Lots of people, lots of crowd on the floor at the San Diego Convention Center yesterday, although it was a weird sort of “lots of crowd”. The announcements that the doors were open lacked the usual Voice From Above panache, and the floor remained eerily quiet for a good 15 minutes afterwards — surely related to the massive crowd outside jockeying for position in the panel rooms.

Unlike Preview Night, when the hardcore fans come to spend, the crowd seemed slightly frugal, circling endlessly, deciding where over the four days of the show they were going to drop cash now, and where to do so later. There’s a feeling of anticipation in the massive hall, as if the attendees haven’t entirely made up their minds about their budget and how much it’s going to stretch.

In the meantime, there was a panel featuring a collection of reprobates and some guest ne’er-do-wells, which was moderated by some hack webcomics pseudojournalist.

Big news from the panel: Meredith Gran has signed a contract with a major publisher (the name will have to wait another week or so — the legalities of such deals can be rather random) and is expected to produce an omnibus edition of Octopus Pie (featuring some new art to make the styles more consistent and some extensions to the story) around this time next year. It’s welcome news, although those who both already have OP 1-3 (Hi!) and are obsessive completists (Hi, again!) may be slightly grumbling about having to make room on the shelf for another version. Dang, our lives just suck.

In other happenings:

• Robert Khoo is hinting at really interesting stuff from the forthcoming Penny Arcade anniversary book (which will be a history of the strip and the creators, rather than a collection of material). Due next year, a certain subset of webomics fans (I said hi, dammit!) are likely to find it terribly interesting.
• His panel duties done, Scott McCloud is wandering the halls and deciding what to attend and who to hang and talk with. Both of us fear the immensity of the room and the madding of the crowd that fills Hall H, but the talk today that features Hayao Miyazaki, John Lasseter, others from Disney/Pixar, footage from Ponyo, and moderated by Patton Oswalt may pull us in.
• The Indy Cartoonist Survival Guide panel was a mixed bag — with seven people on the panel (moderator Keith Knight, Lark Pien, Jim Mahfood, Paul Friedrich, and Miriam Libicki, Stephen Notley, and our own Dave Kellett) there were a lot of experiences and perspectives to be shared, but also a tendency for the conversation to slow — while Knight did a great job of always turning the questions to somebody new and keeping the flow going, so many voices on a serious topic that requires long answers can turn into a series of unwieldy moderator + one person talk, everybody else looks thoughtful moments.

  But the ideas were pretty good — the key thoughts can probably be summed up as Variety, Ownership, and Support. Let’s hit them one at a time:

  Variety: There was pretty much consensus that to be any kind of cartoonist, you have to do a variety of things. Whether it’s in the sense of finding income from multiple sources (prints, originals, books, shows, teaching/lecturing) or in the sense that you have run your business (hustle your jobs, manage all aspects of your career), the chances of you being able to merely sit in a room and draw, pass your finished work to other people to take care of the details, and then cash the check? Doesn’t happen anymore. Kellett talked about long-time syndicated cartoonists that have taken that approach to the extent that — decades later — they aren’t able to adapt and don’t even know their way around Photoshop.

  Knight, Mahfood and others took up the idea that cartoonists can do lots of thing; as Mahfood put it, Living in LA you can bullshit your way into a lot of situations. He spoke about pitching ideas for cartoons, getting option deals, how a graphic novel can be your calling card in the movie/TV world, and how he wound up painting a mural next to Banksy — because when asked Do you want to do X in exchange for money? he said, Yeah, I can do that instead of No, I’ve never done that. Also? Europe. They’re really into indy/comics artists over there and love Americans whose work is novel and not well-known. Somebody invites you to a show or a gallery, take it.

  Ownership: This was maybe Kellett’s key point: Own everything you produce. It’s no surprise that every year the con circuit brings news of another Golden or Silver age artist that needs funds raised to take care of a serious medical condition; years of work-for-hire got them a paycheck, and that it. No insurance, no originals to sell, no royalties, because they didn’t own what they worked on. Riffing on the theme, Knight shared how he had to buy back the rights to his own early strips when he realized that he was doing the work to make the sales, and somebody else was keeping the money.

  Lark Pien also hit this theme on the topic of pricing: too many artists don’t price their work appropriately (or as Knight put it, Nobody’s going to value your work unless you value it first). Sure, she sells prints in the $5 range, but also original art that’s gonig for more than $500 — going soft on the price points doesn’t make sense, but having a wide range of costs means that the fan can buy (i.e.: give you money) at a point that they find appropriate.

  Notley chimed in that finding those appropriate price points can be a little tricky, but that market forces can be made to work for you. Several times, he put a blank piece of paper up on eBay, with the auction winner getting the right to specify what would be drawn on it. After a couple auctions went in the $150 – $200 range, he had an idea what his fans would pay for originals and priced accordingly.

  Support: You have to manage your career, but you absolutely can’t do it alone. From the importance of the spouse/partner that’s bought into your artistic career to utilizing the fanboys and fangirls with skills, time, and dedication, this is a key driver for success. Kellett spoke about the challenges of living in a home with two artistic people, and how the solution was that one of them would work on the arts stuff for a few years while the other covered the bills, then swap and repeat as necessary — in each case, the artistic partner got the career to the stage where it could be the bill-paying career while the other developed the arts to the next stage.

  Libnicki talked about her husband being “a numbers guy”, and how he’s jumped into the organizational end of her career — keeping track of show sales, inventories, opportunities, and the like. Freidrich made a point about how being a cartoonist can let you choose how much support your career requires by the simple choice of where you live: I moved from LA back to North Carolina where I could make half the money and live four times as well. If you’re working as a webcomicker especially, as Knight said, you can live anywhere that’s got got high-speed data and regular FedEx pickups.

  Finally, there are people out there that you can find to help where you lack skills (although as Kellett put it, always try the task yourself first, to find out how much it’s worth to you to pay somebody else to do it). Whether it’s finding a fangirl to run his newletter (as Mahfood did), or snagging an intern, or (if you hit the right combination of successes and lack of successes) finding a Robert Khoo-like person to be the business guru, there are people out there.

  Maybe the best point was Knight’s final thought — there’s a lot of niches that your work can fit into, there’s lots of small sources of income that a company won’t find worth pursuing, but an individual can find lucrative in the aggregate. In other word, Indy cartoonists are too small to fail.

Today, the aforementioned Miyazaki panel (12:45, hall H), and hopefully the Kazu Kibuishi panel (5:30 in room 3; rumor is that Amulet‘s been extended from two books to five, with an option for up to ten!).

Photos:

Phil Foglio appears to have annoyed somebody in the Victorian era, who has sent their bounty hunters to correct his ways. Meanwhile, the Cardboard Tube Saumurai figure has apparently got on the human growth hormone. Those at the Dumbrella panel appear to be slightly unfocused and prone to photographic artifacts (maybe — that blur in the second photo is right where Scott McCloud and family would suddenly be sitting a moment later, and nobody saw them walk in — magic!).

Some quick photos before things get crazy:

• Remorseless killing machines should not be shorter than me. Except for cats.
• The warrior poised for action; about 6 inches tall and a beautiful sculpt.
• Sold out sushi in blue; red version in larger numbers in a few weeks.

Okay, not really, but there’s a data semi-outage that hit San Diego yesterday, and a subset of customers of my carrier were affected, leaving me with no 3G while Andy Bell (standing right next to me with the identical phone on the same carrier) had a smokin’ hot signal. Bastard.

If not for the fact that he (pictured right, above) and Chris Yates (pictured left, above) both had astounding news (Bell will be partnering with ______ to produce a figure of their iconic _______; Yates is ready to work with a major _________ of _______ to _______ his ________ … we’ll be able to start filling in those blanks in a month or so), I might have gone on a murder spree. A’course, for a proper murder spree, you need a murderdog, and the only one I know is 3000 miles away and only a year old, so that plan’s out the window. Oh, and happy first anniversary to The System.

The Dr McNinja book launch party (no pics from me due to no flash on the phone camera and too many good drinks) was a great success, with webcomics fans taking over the upper floor of Rock Bottom Brewery and the drinks menu. Modest reports from creator Chris Hastings that the book “seems to be doing well” at the show; reports from others are that it’s tearing up the 1200 aisle. The other great successes appear to be Bell’s Oh No Sushi figure (completely sold out; I appear to have gotten the second-to-last-one) and the Penny Arcade Cardboard Tube Samurai figures, both of which need to be seen to be believed.

Also, Brian Sunter (to whom I introduced you yesterday) appears to have survived Preview Night (which all agree was busier than last year, leading to some trepidation that Saturday afternoon may kill the weaker vendors right in their booths) and is eager to see what a full day of crowd brings. All the pictures I’ve taken of him since Tuesday night depict him as a blur of motion, so it appears he may be one of the strong ones. Good luck, Brian!

Up today: the Dumbrella (1:30, room 3) and Indy Survival Tips (5:00, room 10) panels; I’ll bring you as complete a report on both as I can. Pending an alignment of schedules, I’ll be sitting down with Jeff Rowland and Holly Post of Topatoco to suss out their plans for eventual mediasphere domination. Now it’s time to make my way through an uncharacteristically overcast (approaching foggy!) San Diego and past the shantytown of those camping out since yesterday for the Twilight panels (which I hope to God are today and not later on in the week, for their sakes … then again, I also hope that somebody has a stack of these to plaster all over those waiting in line).

Photos:
Stacks of the Webcomics Section, waiting to be snapped up by the eager hordes. Said eager hordes slightly absent just before the hall opened, but more than willing to innundate the webcomics neighborhood in the 1200/1300/1400 aisles.

Hey, lookit that — one of the blogs at NPR has written up a webcomics primer just for you.

I think the guy with the duck on his head he’s talking about is probably found here.

… although it appears that uploading pics is a bit dicey. The workaround appears to involve tweeting the photos and then aggregating via Twitpic — it’s a bit of a pain, so don’t expect it all the time. Let’s talk about Tuesday night at the San Diego Convention Center.

Now then, see that pic up above? That will, in short order, be the Penny Arcade booth, swarming with stuff beyond imaginings (including one of my must-haves of the show). The blur on the left is PA business guru Robert Khoo. The blur on the right is Brian Sunter, who prevailed over 800 other candidates to become the new trade show/supply chain guy. The written test that they described defied description (Khoo confirmed that I would have taken myself out of the running — had I gotten that far — on the question about laundry), but what’s more mind-boggling is that this is Sunter’s

1. first Comic-Con
2. first week on the job

If you’re in town, come by and shake his hand and wish him luck. He’s the tall, rugged-looking blur.

Other photos:

In mere hours, these empty booths will transform themselves into booths crammed full of merchandise and art. There will be crowds as far as the eye can see. Some booths are more colorful than others, and the local Red Bull distributor already knows about this place. Heading back over to chronicle the remainder of setup, and then the madness — madness I say! — that is Preview Night. Pray for Mojo.

Actually, not really — I took this whole week off work, so I got all packed up yesterday, and am now just marking time until I head to the airport. Got a pocket fulla pens and some fresh Moleskines, just ordered up the new Little Dee book, and what’s this? Stirrings from my occasionally mortal enemies at Digital Strips?

Digital Strips has just launched a new webcomic where we will be playing around in various webcomics universes like a child tools around in a sandbox.

Short, to the point, and it included a link — this is how to get my attention on a busy day. Three strips up so far, in a series that appears to promise both non-stop crossovers and the possibility of my personal nemesis, the Midnight Cartooner, being threatened or injured for your amusement. Win-win, peoples.

Okay, headin’ for the door. I’ll be in Ralph’s ere I sleep. Wonder if I can write a check for 69 cents?

Be warned, tomorrow’s post will likely be written tonight and thus not all that timely, what with flights and everything.

But today, I want to share something that those of you heading to San Diego Comic-Con will be able to pick up: following on the heels of newsprint comics sections from the likes of Box Brown and DC Comics, a good portion of webcomics (looks to be around twenty of your favorites, including some from creators who won’t even be there — that’s how much they love you!) are getting together to produce a sampler. Four pages long, full color, actual newspaper just like you remember and absolutely free to you.

Jorge Cham (official Smart Guy, who managed to show me up by sticking with his doctoral program) wrangled the artists, put it together, oversaw the printing, and will be delivering it ’round to the various booths in Webcomics Alley; you’ll be able to get your copy starting Wednesday night for as long as they last. If you should see Cham (he’ll be exhibiting with the Unshelved guys at booth 2300, which is ironically not in the webcomics area, but is near the main entrance), be sure to thank him.

Dang, don’t know where my brain is. Well, here’s some stuff for y’all:

• Sooner than expected, Little Dee book #3 has hit the store shelves; get ’em while they’re hot. Grab one of the sweet posters, too (I think I need the one of Shibuya crossing).
• Reports from last night’s Super Art Fight! are sketchy — survivors continue to trickle into aid stations, but no clear picture of the devastation‘s full scope has yet emerged.
• Told you earlier this week about the webcomics show at the Cartoon Art Museum (as curated by Andrew Farago); those of you in Tokyo will be able to get your own taste of Farago’s curatorial skills, as the CAM collaborated with Studio (freakin’) Ghibli to mount an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo on the works of famed illustrator Mary Blair:
  

  The Colors of Mary Blair is on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo from July 18 through October 4, 2009.

  Cartoon Art Museum Curator Andrew Farago and his wife, cartoonist and editor Shaenon K. Garrity, assisted Studio Ghibli with the assembly of this exhibition. The pair co-curated the Cartoon Art Museum’s 2007-08 exhibition of Blair’s work, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair, and were recruited by Studio Ghibli to act as liaisons between their curatorial team and the Mary Blair Estate.

  The travel to Japan to set up the show was chronicled by Shaenon Garrity in a three–part series at Comixology. Try not to hate Andrew & Shaenon for getting to hang around with Hayao Miyazaki (I know, the envy is overwhelming, but try anyway).

• Brigid Alverson talks to Gina Biggs on independent publishing & webcomickry. Please enjoy.

Okay, back to getting things ready for San Diego. Please forgive any erratic posting schedule that might crop up next week, and keep an eye on my Twitter; if you’re going to be there, I’ll most likely be found in a 30 meter radius of booth 1337.