Especially long-memoried webcomics readers may recall a situation way the heck back in the early parts of the century when Penny Arcade and some other sites got into a situation with a company called eFront. Long story short, eFront was an ad network that wound up not paying a bunch of people, and potentially having legal claim on many of their affiliates (to the extent that perhaps they could have fired Gabe & Tycho and taken over the PA name). Whole thing blew up in their faces, and some leaked ICQ logs made their principal officer (one Sam Jain) and another affiliate webmaster named Tim Eckles look pretty bad. Ah, schadenfreude.

So why drag up old news?

Because this morning I happened to notice this story at British tech newsleter The Register, and it mentioned a name that stirred old memories. It seems that since getting out of the not paying webcomics business, Sam Jain has been in the fake spyware warning pop-ups that try to scam you into purchasing bogus malware protection business. Notorious scamware titles such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner and ErrorSafe are among those flogged by Mr Jain’s current venture. At present, he is being assessed $8000/day in a contempt citation for, among other things, not showing up to court to answer charges.

Unfortunately, the most persistant scam artists and unscrupulous business types tend to disappear and reappear at intervals — often revisiting a previous venture after it’s thought that everybody affected last time around has forgotten names and lessons learned. So let this serve as a reminder to all in webcomics (and everybody in any kind of venture, really) — while past actions are no predicter of future performance, Sam Jain has a history of bad behavior in our community, and should be looked upon with a weather eye should he resurface.

Since yesterday we at Fleen shared the best of the season’s tendencies, today we take the opposite tack. From Kate Beaton, a less supersitious Scrooge confronts his demons, with predictable results.

And from Down Under, David Morgan-Mar offers Christmas end times, one angry Santa, and a thorough loathing of what is surely a common present under many trees, Monopoly.

Flurry of baking going on at the homestead: cheesecakes a’ chilling, bread sponges a’ aging, and there are rumors of cookies. Allow me to share the good will (etc) of the season with you, as I have lately received two cartoon cards of the electronic variety that I trust you will find as charming as I did.

First up, received from Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman, the latest in Roman’s holiday cards series. From there, you may enjoy previous entries, including Dave and Pikachu discovering the true meaning of Kwanzaa.

Secondly, a card that I was supremely happy to receive — you may recall how pleased I was to discover a strip called Rooby Moon last year. Then the RSS notifications tapered off, and it it seemed no more. But Rooby creator Chris MacNeil sent along holiday greetings and it appears that my forgetting of the strip was premature after all. Safe journeys all, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

It’s that time of year, when those who follow [fill in the blank] produce list of the [best | worst] examples of [fill in the blank] of the year. This year, I’m going to take a slightly different tack; this is not a list of the [integer] Best Webcomics or Top [integer] Webcomics Stories of the year.

Webcomics, like all other forms of artistic endeavour, and a matter of taste. If you like it, it’s good. If you don’t like it, it’s not so good. If you like it enough to spend money on it, it’s really damn good and a creator loves you in proportion to your financial largesse. So we’ll be breaking down what I thought was good enough to spend money on this year, which is representative of nothing more than my personal tastes; map them to yours as you wish. And before somebody points it out, even this is a flawed model, since my purchases tend toward certain items (original art) and away from others(bumper stickers). Finally, we’ll note that these aren’t necessarily books first published in 2008, just ones that I bought in 2008.

Webcomics Books That Gary Liked Enough To Buy In 2008

• The Great Outdoor Fight and The Achewood Cookbook
• Digger volumes 2 and 3
• Do Not Eat
• Dr McNinja: Surgical Strike
• The Fart Party
• FreakAngels
• Girl Genius volume 7
• Girls With Slingshots volumes 1 and 2
• How To Make Webcomics
• Jellaby
• Moresukine
• Octopus Pie: A Brownstone Companion
• Penny Arcade volume 5
• Ahoy Hoy!
• Set It To Awesome
• Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars
• Pugs: Gods Little Weirdos and Nerds On Parade
• Silent Kimbly: Clip Art
• Starslip Crisis volume 2 and Chainsawsuit
• Templar, AZ: The Great Outdoors and The Mob Goes Wild
• Wondermark: Beards of our Forefathers

Books That Gary Would Have Spent Money On In 2008 But The Authors Kindly Gave Him A Free Copy

• The Book of Biff #3
• Zot!: The Complete Black & White Collection

Book That Gary Can’t Count In Either Of The Prior Two Categories Because He Contributed To It

• Unshelved: Frequently Asked Questions

Books That Don’t Tie Directly To Webcomics But Are By Webcomics Creators And Worthy Of Your Consideration

• Chiggers
• Secrets & Lies

Books That Rumor Has It Are Alleged To Be Released Next Week And Thus May Sneak Into Calendar Year 2008

• The Devils Panties volume 2
• Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation

Book That Gary Wishes Would Get Made Someday Because He Would Totally Buy It

• Name’s Bang

That’s it for now — stay tuned for other year-end content in the coming days.

The kind of cold where you come in, and you can’t talk easily because your cheeks are too stiff to move on your face and your ears ache all the way into your skull? Bleah. Time for a warm corner and a warming drink and warm thoughts.

There are, of course, few places warmer than a working kitchen, and it appears that Liz Cusack Greenfield has found a kitchen to work in. “Less time for comics” is the downside for you and me, but “Don’t have to run an internet store any more” is the upside for Liz. To celebrate, it’s a closing-up-shop sale at the Stuff Sucks Boutique — get your orders in now, because come the first of the year, it’s shuttered for good. She does hold out the possibility of more comics and drawings in the future, so wish really hard on that Christmas star that she continues to share her artwork with us all.

And what’s a warmer thought that a wedding, in any event? Courtesy of Matt Boyd (the writerly half of Three Panel Soul), please enjoy his comments at the wedding of Ian McConville (the arterly half) and Jess Weigand this past weekend:

As a man named Ray Smuckles once said “Just put the symbolic ring on. The real ring went on basically when you met.”

Fleen congratulates the happy couple, and marvels that Boyd managed to work a requested Achewood quote into his speech without referring to the bride as a vittles bitch.

… and I am sunburnt! No, wait, that’s Beatrice from Much Ado. I am sore from shovelling that freezing crap out of my driveway. Also, it’s Friday afternoon and I want to knock off and relax. But at least I don’t have to have my comickin’ impaired by a faceless corporation:

Cartoonist Ed Appleby of Ed’s R Us has been producing full color comics on the web for over nine months now. In an effort to streamline his work and produce sellable originals, he has been drawing strips on 19″x24” bristol board and having them scanned professionally at his local Staples.

This all came to a screeching halt on December 10th. Ed dropped off the originals for the week of Christmas (Dec 22-27), as well as the two Sundays previous (Dec 14 & Dec 21). When the originals were returned, no scans accompanied them. Five attempts at getting the originals re-scanned later, and still no scans. Attempts at getting Staples to send Ed the scans by E-mail, burning them onto a CD or putting them on a jumpdrive have all met with failure. [T]he Hub, where Staples copy center sent the originals five times … are sending scans from previous weeks insisting that they are the correct ones.

Ed has vowed to post the proper strips back in the archive once he gets them, and there will be a strip at Staples expense for every day he is forced to miss because of their mishandling.

Fleen would like to express sympathy towards Appleby, and to offer up a small Christmas present in the form of advice: given that Staples charges you to scan your strips and you’re held hostage by them, maybe it’s time to invest in a scanner of your own. You don’t even have to buy it from Staples. And yeah, none of these will scan 19 x 24, but plenty of webcomickers scan a strip in halves and join ’em up in Photoshop. Take the leap, Ed Appleby! Let Santa drop something under your tree and see how rapidly it pays for itself (don’t forget your travel time to/from Staples, car wear & tear, gas, and the frustration that you’re feeling now).

Okay, weekend. See you on Monday.

Fortunately, I have a ready guide to gifts in hard times courtesy of Chris Onstad. Now that the Great Outdoor Fight book tour is wrapped, hopefully he’ll have time to continue making and writing about sandwiches.

Mailbag Quickies:

• Animated holiday card from The Wannabe Pirates.
• Open auditions for new members through the end of December at webcomics collective SpiderForest
• New chapter and some pages to go with it at Kitty Hawk. ‘Bout eight weeks back I wrote that Kitty Hawk’s several-pages-per-weekly-update model would likely let the story evolve in a FreakAngels-like fashion. Since then, I have decided that:
  1. It’s a bit more … not episodic exactly, but composed largely of brief vignettes
  2. Like FreakAngels, I enjoy reading this one occasionally, with multiple updates giving me plenty of pages to pore over

  Pop over and see how you like it.

I opened up my email yesterday and received this unsolicited gem:

…I was just looking over some old Fleen articles about Zuda’s contracts and I just cannot freaking get over it.

Did you know that, with a 1% cover price share and assuming the books are equal in cost, a Zuda book would have to sell 10,000 copies to make the creator what I would selling 100 copies of Templar? And that’s assuming there are no penalties in the payout for deep discount/damaged/give-away books, and the payout isn’t be split in half between a writer and an artist or something.

Jeez, man. JEEZ.

Ah, Spike, it’s clear-headed, straight-to-the-point logic like this that makes me want to high-five you across a convention table ’till bystanders think we’re the coolest people in the universe (upon re-reading this sentence, I realize that the casual internet reader may be determined to find some innuendo there — get your minds out of the gutter, people). The other reason is the gag referenced up top — click the link to see more, then click the next strip if you think you can handle Reagan in all her glory.

Just to be clear, I checked with Spike that she was okay with me sharing her quick microeconomic analysis with all of you. She replied in the affirmative and added:

I can move 100-plus copies of TAZ at a good con (MoCCA, SPX, SDCC).

So there you have it — the raw worth of the Zudadeal in real terms, from somebody who’s doing webcomics every day.

Speaking of self-publishing, got a bit of delayed gratification on deck for you, courtesy of Steve Troop:

In June 1996, the first issue of a four-part limited series, introduced the world to Mayberry Melonpool and the crew of the spaceship, The Steel Duck.

In July 1996, the comic book market crashed, cancelling hundreds of titles—including the remaining three issues of The Melonpool Chronicles. Though finished, they sat on a shelf gathering dust…

You can fill in the blanks: Troop launched Melonpool online, and twelve years on the trade paperback is finally being released. Copies go up on the ComixPress site next month, but Steve tells me he has like ten copies that can be shipped in time Christmas to most areas if you order now. Email Troop at melonpool2000, which is an address belonging to the .com that paid the yodeller to go Ya-HOOOO-oooo! in their commercials. Seriously, you’ve waited twelve years, it’s just not reasonable to wait any longer — especially considering that Troop’s got talent on the book the likes of Linda “Castle Waiting” Medley and Doug “Too much cool stuff to list” TenNapel.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Brian “Box” Brown, who has just been awarded a Xeric grant. To quote from their webpage, the Xeric grant is awarded by the Xeric Foundation, which:

[A]ssists comic book creators with some of the costs in self-publishing their work. It is not the Foundation’s intention to fully support an artist/writer through the entire process of self-publishing, but rather to encourage creators to experience the learning process involved in working towards such a goal.

Brown tells me that the grant is the outcome of some longer stories (6 to 10 pages) that he started doing for Top Shelf 2.0 earlier this year; after a while, he’s got 50 or 60 pages, and an application in with the Xeric Foundation. If all goes well, this will lead to the publication of a 96 page book of stories, Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing in the Spring of 2009. Most impressive about this: Brown tells me he only applied for the grant three months ago — that’s a fast turnaround.

In other news, creators looking for an alternative to ADSDAQ got another option today, courtesy of Joey Manley, Kentucky Colonel:

Today, ComicSpace LLC announced that it has launched Webcomics World, an advertising network for webcomics and
comics bloggers.

Be sure to check out the cartoonified Manley in the pitch to advertisers; even if this venture were to flame out by close of business today (and to be perfectly clear, that ain’t happening), the entire endeavour would be worthwhile just for producing that smiling mascot. He’s so cute!

In any event, list of associated clients available for your perusal, and with this launch, the new Comic Space is starting the baby steps towards Aduz. Now we find out how the targeted advertising game works in a bum economy — and the good news is if it works now, it’s got nowhere to go but up.

Ah, December, you look an awful lot like April sometimes. April, some of you may recall, is when both the first Gunnerkrigg Court and second Devil’s Panties books were due; publisher Archaia Studio Press (in conversation with me) revised that to “before San Diego”, and has since been bogged down in financial difficulties. But Jennie Breeden tells us that DP2 now has a release date, which gives one home that GC may see release at the same time. Not willing to leave her books in the hands of others, Breeden has announced pre-orders for DP3 — order it through your friendly local comic shop.

• So last night I heard the Sound of Young America interview with Dave Foley and Calvin McDingly, and now this morning Sinfest continues the Kids in the Hall vibe. Good times.
• Speaking of good times, it occurs to me that within the DC comics milieu, both batdickery and superdickery are accepted terms. Leave it to Wonderella to trump every dick move ever pulled by Bats and Supes put together. That right there is a graduate-level dick move, and why Justin Pierce understands the innate ridiculousness of the superhero genre — all it takes is one self-centered superhero jerk to destroy all that’s good in life in the most cruel and hilarious way possible.