Okay, so you may recall Jeff Zugale from his various webcomics, or his work on the Kindergoth comic books, or even a guest appearance full of Wooo! For a while now, Zugale’s been working for a video game company, drawing cool stuff.

But he just got laid off. Suck. But he’s also going to be giving us more comics, so that’s good. Also good — there’s a history of webcomickers getting laid off and throwing themselves into their creations with more fervor and success than when they were toiling for The Man.

Even better, Zugale’s been careful with his finances (having an innate understanding of what capitalism is, which others seem to lack), and he’s got some savings and plans. Or, as he put it in discussion, Plan A has gone by the wayside, but he also had Plans B through E.

As a guy who teaches IT pros how to prepare those other plans, I’m declaring Jeff’s experience your Takeaway Lesson Of The Day. Whatever you do for a living (webcomics or no), ask yourself what (at least) your Plans B and C are. And if that conversation results in you maybe defining your Plan B, give Jeff the props due him (and maybe buy something from his store).

Similarly, this morning brings the official announcement of the formation of a new group devoted to [web]comics as artform/medium/topic of serious talk. Yeah, yawn, happens all the time, why the big whoop? Because of some of the names attached to the project — Matt. Murray and Anne Jen Babcock. You will perhaps recall them from previous writings that were associated with Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art and its attendant Fest.

The gist of it is, members of the MoCCA board have left behind their association with the museum to form the Sequential Art Collective, so that their efforts could be made more broadly than the confines of the museum would permit. As Murray puts it, the SAC will be:

… an organization that looks to work with publishers, creators, fans and other organizations to coordinate comic and cartoon themed art exhibitions, programs, performances and lectures for and at various venues providing for and attracting the widest and most varied audiences possible.

“As far back as December, 2007 there were a number of [MoCCA’s)] leaders and longtime volunteers who began to feel that our next steps personally and professionally would be to collectively branch out and work with other organizations. We’re looking to not only bring the comic and cartoon community closer together, but to recruit new fans in other markets– who might be out there waiting for the right invitation in to the fold.”

[The mission of SAC ]is to work with publishers, creators, fans and other organizations to coordinate comic and cartoon themed art exhibitions, programs, performances and lectures for and at various venues providing for and attracting the widest and most varied audiences possible.

Given the indy- and web-comics friendly tone that Murrary, Babcock and others of their MoCCA contemporaries have always had, I’m quite intrigued to see how this plays out. There are some really capable people in on this effort — including MoCCA curators and Fest directors, and Leah Schnelbach, who was instrumental in the SPLAT! symposium — and what can [web]comics as a whole be if not thrilled that a 6′ 6″ self-described Smurfologist is working to promote the medium? We at Fleen will be following the efforts of the SAC with interest. For more information, check out the (yet-to-be-fully-launched) website of SAC or read the announcement after the cut.

(more…)

So Raina Telgemeier‘s all finished with the Baby–sitters Club series, which means nothing from her for a while, right? Nope! We get SMILE in 2010!

Scholastic has acquired Smile, Raina Telgemeier’s charming coming-of-age memoir written in comic format, currently scheduled for publication in 2010. Smile has been posted as a weekly comic on Telgemeier’s website and is about growing up, dealing with friends and crushes, and the dental drama that ensues after a trip-and-fall mishap.

Better yet? It’s gonna be in COLOR. There’s no part of this that isn’t awesome except for one little detail: the webcomic is basically on hold. Much like Kean Soo’s Jellaby, the conclusion of the story (a good 80 – 90 pages that have yet to appear online) will appear only in print.

On the one hand, that many pages would probably take until 2010 to run (remember, Raina’s got to go back and color the whole thing). On the other hand, I want to read the story, dammit (I already know how it turns out, in that Raina’s smile turned out awesome, but still). So let me just set aside $14.95 now (or whatever we’re using for economic exchanges in 2010 — soup ‘n’ old clothes, perhaps) and start countin’ the days. ONE …

On any other day, this would have been my lead, but oh well: whatever you might have heard of his personal temperment or thought of his various returns from retirement, it’s a safe bet that a solid majority of today’s webcomickers were influenced by Berke Breathed and Bloom County. So it’s a little significant to hear that he’s making Opus grow up for good, and that the ultimate fate of the scrappy penguin will only be revealed online. In other news, today’s installment at GoComics just happens to be the second of two that got me hooked on Breathed’s work way back when. Funny coincidence, innit?

From Bethesda comes word that Achewood won the Ignatz Award for best online comic; as James Kochalka pointed out, one of the awesome things about this category is that all of the nominees are really good, so you can be happy no matter who won. You can see Kochalka’s very funny presentation of the award here, and sharp-eyed readers may even be able to spot a gorilla in the midst of the audience.

• Totally missed it, which required Rosscott to point out to me that Danielle Corsetto has passed the four year mark for Girls With Slingshots Last Wednesday. Corsetto, modest to the end, announced the happy news via Twitter, but unfortunately is under the weather with post-con death rot. Send good wishes (and maybe some soup) to her, won’t you? And to Karen Ellis, too.
• Speaking of Rosscott and his very limited palette (put to remarkably good use), a photo comic I recently came across uses a similarly limited toolset — Red Pen. Thnk of a cross between the late Terror Island and the even later Bad Line (no longer exists as far as I can tell, but you can always check the Wayback Machine).
• That’s two dimensions down; anybody want to bet that Munroe doesn’t stop at three?
• Speaking of three, you’ve got about that many days to get in on the ground floor of the taste sensation fabulous mystery that is Mezzacotta. Since I read last week that social networking finally passed porn as the major driver of net traffic, I’m really wondering if the Mezz’ falls into either of those venerable categories, or is something completely new.
• Finally, one of my favorite creators in the print indy comic world, Alex Robinson, has had two pretty damn good releases in the past twelve months or so — Too Cool To Be Forgotten, and the wonderfully silly, bloody, and wordless Lower Regions. Now Alex joins us on the network side with a followup to LR at Top Shelf 2.0: Defense of the West Gate gives one of them dungeon-dwellin’ critters the chance to tell his version of what happens when the conquering heroes decide to go earn a living. Inner 13 year olds will be giving bonus points for the totally awesome, surgically precise, midline anatomical sectioning (via battle-axe) on page 12.

Okay, so Ben Gordon has written a critique of the Halfpixel Business Model (as described in How To Make Webcomics) and come to the conclusion it doesn’t work. I wish I had time to dig into this the way it deserves, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to in the near future.

So let’s be clear that this is not a formal analysis of Gordon’s entire thesis, but specifically a response based on his numbers. I’m going to talk about this using casual terminology so as to make my thoughts as accessible as possible to everybody that doesn’t know (and, rightfully, doesn’t care) about the difference between skew and kurtosis. Onwards.

Gordon looked at a sample of webcomics, and sought to estimate how much money could be made from his reading of HTMW‘s “10% Rule” (5 – 10% of your readership will open their wallets and buy things). His calculations led him to conclude that the rule is fundamentally flawed, but pointed out:

I hope someone will find fault with my analysis, because if it is sound, it is a setback for webcomics.

I’m not sure if his conclusion can be proved or disproved (we are, after all, talking about applying mathematical rules to a creative endeavour), but if his conclusion’s based solely on the numbers, I think that I’ve found the fault he was looking for, from a purely statistical standpoint. Consider the following statements from his posting:

• [the business model] cannot be verified by the majority of case studies
• I’ve chosen comics in a range of sizes from a list in Wikipedia which reports comics that support their creator(s). … I removed the ones that don’t belong and analyzed the rest.
• The formula for estimating each comic’s profit is: … We assume the average profit per sale is $5 — typical for a t-shirt
• [five calcluations of estimated webcomic profits ranging from $975 to $24,000]

First off, we need to agree on some terminology — Gordon doesn’t have “a majority of case studies”, he’s got one study with five data points. Semantics? Nope — because the number of data points is a critical element of how much we can draw reliable conclusions from the numbers. We’ll come back to that in a moment.

Secondly, Gordon’s eliminated data that “don’t belong” (for example, Achewood was eliminated because Time magazine declared it the best graphic novel of 2007 — which may have artificially inflated its numbers, I guess), meaning that we’re not looking at a random sample. We’ll come back to that, too.

Thirdly, the assumption of profit per sale is entirely arbitrary — $5, which is described as the average profit on a t-shirt (I don’t sell shirts so I can’t say, but having ordered custom shirts from the same guy many webcomickers use, I think it’s probably a bit low). But the profit per shirt doesn’t matter anyway, because it assumes that any item the creator makes will produce the same profit. Unfortunately, this doesn’t hold up.

Case in point: I have purchased a number of originals from a number of webcomickers (some of whom describe themselves as entirely self-employed by their strips and others that do not); prices have ranged from $20 to $175. Profit on even the lowest priced of them is several times Gordon’s assumption, and on the high end it utterly destroys his model. Okay, many webcomickers sell shirts, and okay, the profit on a shirt probably occupies a fairly narrow range of values, but what do we do with all the other items? You’ve got books, prints, hoodies, skateboard decks, hot sauce, and an upsell (of $5 to $10, generally) to get the item signed/sketched. That’s an incredible variation.

That price range actually points to the real problem in Gordon’s analysis — the distribution curve of those “price per original” data would form a flat line. It’s not a set of consensus values with outliers because there’s too few points — this does not allow for meaningful statistical analyses. The same situation exists with the estimated profit figures he gives: 975, 2012, 8000, 17270, 24000 … that’s only five data points. The confidence that we can derive from any analysis over such a wide range, with a distribution curve that looks like a flat line, is vanishingly small.

Statistical analysis only works if any random datum that you select to calculate can be assumed to represent many, many, similar (to the point of being essentially identical) other data that you don’t bother to include in the analysis. The key thought here is Margin of Error. You know MoE — it’s what tells you that a political race between, say, the Harbinger of the New Golden Age and the Evil Throwback to All That’s Unholy is presently split 52% to 48%, plus or minus 4.3% (and since the MoE is greater than the difference between HNGA and ETATU, we essentially don’t know who’s ahead).

Also bear in mind that the MoE is probably only to the standard level of “95% confidence”, which means that there’s a 5% chance that the real split could be even more than 4.3%. I’m going to run one simple equation to drive this home. It’s a rule of thumb that if you want to calculate the margin of error to a 95% confidence level you can do so approximately with:

0.98/√n

where n is the number of samples. In this case, n equals 5, which gives us

0.98/2.236 = 0.438 = plus or minus 43.8%

So there’s a 95% chance that the five data points we have are representative of webcomics earnings potential, with the assumption that any number we come up with could conceivably be off by as much as 43.8% from the true value. That’s not a number that we can be very confident in. Add to that the fact that statistics in general is predicated on random samples (but Gordon selected his population), and we have numbers that can’t be relied upon to any degree, even if we take the problematic $5 assumption off the table.

Heck, even recalculating for every self-reported self-supporting webcomicker isn’t going to help, because the number is still too low to provide statistical significance (honestly, we’d want a population several thousand and a sample of at least 500 to have much confidence in the numbers). It’s still an anomaly to make a living this way, and there simply are not enough data to allow for any analysis beyond the anecdotal — which is precisely what HTMW affords. This is not to say that Gordon’s question shouldn’t be asked or that his conclusions are wrong — but it is pointless to try to draw any statistical meaning from these numbers.

Speaking of “pointless”, I strongly urge that you avoid the related thread at The Daily Cartoonist, as it quickly devolved (despite Alan Gardner’s specific request to stay on the damn topic) into truly astonishing levels of dickery re: webcomickers do not have careers/incomes/lives/redeeming qualities.

It never ceases to astonish me that individuals that I have met — and who are perfectly polite and rational in person — turn into such raging exemplars of John Gabriel’s best known theorem (minus the anonymity … weird) when discussing this particular topic. I stopped reading in disgust after about 20 comments and won’t go back there. Proceed at your own risk.

The discussion at the original post is, by contrast, civil, productive, and based on logic. Gordon has been polite in responding to questions and everybody is doing their best to treat the question as an intellectual exercise designed to figure out the truth. Bravo.

Hey kids, are you going to SPX? I’m not, dammit, but that shouldn’t stop you from checking out the funnest couple of days in indy-comics (plus, last year they did this chocolate-dipping thing at the party after the Ignatz Awards that was really cool). Stuff to keep an eye out for:

• Kate Beaton, who reminds us that history isn’t just boring and dead, is bringing her first mini to the show. It’s chock full o’ the history and misbehaving Founding Fathers. PS Kate I still want to buy the original of this comic from you. Do it now while the American dollar is still worth something!
• Raina Telgemeier‘s got a new minicomic about teaching kids to make comics which looks freakin’ beautiful. Also, something about babysitting and clubs? I dunno, I don’t see that one going very far.
• Also a stack o’ moustaches. Remember, Willrad for all your rad will needs (and shirts with squid).

Dammit, I put in my Achewood order two weeks ago. Free 7th anniversary shirt until the 11th with $50 order.

Oh please oh please oh please let this agenda be on the discussion list for tonight’s debate

NAZIS, that’s who! It’s time for Wonder Woman Day III, a benefit for domestic violence shelters in Portland (Oregon) and Flemington (New Jersey). As he did last year, Paul Taylor of Wapsi Square is contributing a piece to the art auction. What, Wonder Woman isn’t allowed to wake up with her coffee and fluffy slippers? I particularly like that this WW has the arms to support some serious buttkickery. If webcomickry feels like turning this into a meme, the organizers are apparently accepting submissions for about two more weeks.

• Fleen noticed that three years of doctoring and ninjaing were marked on Monday; we would have run notice of the anniversary yesterday, but there was this big BANDWIDTH EXCEDED thing going on. Still, the entire decision to color Dr McNinja could have been made solely to set up this splash page, and it would totally have been worth it.
• Speaking of DrMcN, Kent Archer, inker extraordinaire, is taking commissions.
• Hey, do you like your stories of time travel, grad students, and wacky antics mixed with a rubbery-limbed, Saturday morning cartoon art style? You might wanna check out Chronillogical, which is at a natural jumping-on point in the story and doesn’t have too deep of an archive to get caught up on.
• Mr Oblivious: It’s like a widescreen, silent movie version of The Far Side, and something about the art reminds me of Roger Langridge. It’s worth the occasional checking-out, if you enjoy the laugh-chuckles.

So let’s try to find some fun where we can.

I should have written about this one yesterday, but I didn’t want it to get lost in all the other stuff. The opera made about this Dinosaur Comic is going to be performed in public. A guerilla group of musicians named Liederwölfe will perform the song of the sinister raccoons at 10pm this Friday, October 3rd, as part of the Pop Montreal independent music festival. So if you should find yourself in the vicinity of 30 Ste-Catherine Ouest, Montreal, and can afford a ticket price of Pay What You Can, you should be there.

Interviews!

• Rick Marshall talks with Sam Brown, who explodes dogs for your amusement.
• Von Allen of The Road To God Knows … talks to Jennifer Contino at The Pulse (Ms Contino is talking to lots of webcomickers these days, and we at Fleen wish to encourage her in this direction).
• Tracy White of Traced (and Ignatz nominee) talks to The XX-Man at ComixTalk. For good measure, White has turned the first Traced comic ever posted into an animation … time to remember your first time GETTING DRUNK.

If you didn’t happen to hear it, a 7:19 long broadcast interview with Achewood’s Chris Onstad is up at the NPR website. Highlights:

• About a minute in, 13.2 million people heard Steve “Ratboy” Inskeep make an oblique reference to cell phone nuts
• Starting around the 2:30 mark, Onstad reads four panels from page 29 (also here) in the voices of Ray and Roast Beef (!)
• An 11 page excerpt is to be found on the website of the highly-respected news organization with the disclaimer:
  

  (Please note that some users might find the language of this excerpt inappropriate.)

Lots of other things today, too.

• Ace Fleen contributor Jeff Lowrey sends us photos of Baltimore Comic-Con with this missive attached:
  

  Don’t really have a bad cosplayer photo, sorry. Best I could have done was a Harley Quinn with a bad camel toe … or a male Green Lantern also with a bad camel toe.

  I think we’re all glad that Jeff spared us. Anyway, check out the Halfpixel dudes (with Jinxlets and without), Danielle Corsetto & friend, and a crowd that seemed curious, but orderly.

• Scoop: Our sources indicate that Brad Guigar (shown in the photos above in a shirt that reveals his firm alignment with “villains”) is going to be getting a bunch more exposure. Starting on Wednesday, Evil, Inc will begin appearing in The Trend, a weekly publication that is direct-mailed throughout the greater Philadelphia metroplex. That’s right — you no longer have to take on the onerous burden of going to the website or buying a copy of the (Philadelphia) Daily News to get your dose o’ Guigar — he’s coming straight to over 800,000 mailboxes.

  The Trend is a weekly publication, and will run six strips in every issue. As he does in his annual collections, Evil-boy will convert the strips to read as continuous narrative. It’ll start with “best of” strips to catch new readers up, then dovetail with the current storyline about the time that other editions of The Trend get the strip in January, meaning 1.2 million people will get exposed to Evil whether they like it or not! Bwahahahaha!

• Finally, on Saturday evening, in the midst of a field and under a dark and forboding sky, Andrew Bell — creator of creepy, disturbing material from the darkest recesses of the imagination if not the bowels of hell itself — plighted his troth. The celebration reportedly included free-flowing alcoholic beverages (aka “demon rum”), dancing (aka “the Devil’s revels”) and a “photo booth” that collected the souls of all who sat within it (Ha! You didn’t get my soul, because I already sold it to Rosenberg for a dollar!).

  The bride, obviously aware of the horrors that await her and fully complicit in Bell’s wicked ways, was radiant, even as the depravity swirled around the tastefully-appointed tables. Two young women, in defiance of God’s will, swore to remove themselves to Massachusetts with all dispatch and “totally get married” to each other. Some of the various webcomickers in attendance mysteriously disappeared, returning later with blank visages, perhaps subjected to sights that Man Was Not Meant To See. There were cupcakes, which were delicious, but which possibly also damned the eater to an eternity of torment from which even death offers no respite. At press time, all guests were believed to be accounted for, and claimed nervously that they had a lovely time.

  In all seriousness, it was the second best wedding that I’ve ever attended (I do have to place my own first), and the most fun I’ve had in ages. I cannot possibly wish Andy and Jackie anything less than the greatest happiness, and urge you all to go check out the really cool guest strips running while they relax in a tropical paradise, lost in sun, sea, fruity drinks … and each other.

A few more editorial chime-ins: Scott McCloud puts inflation-adjusted numbers into perspective, Jeff Rowland finds the real cause of the fiscal implosion, and decides to put things right. I find logic of his plan strangely compelling.

• From the artistic transitions department: started in Manga Studio, then went hand-drawn, now it’s done with a brush. Throw in a few dead-on imitations of other styles, and one is left with the conclusion that Meredith Gran is going to conquer the world one day. Honestly, it can’t happen too soon.
• Always room for one more: Robin White’s been blogging about comics and the creative process at Skitzo Man Dot Com for a bit now … there’s mention of webcomics here and there, so why do I care? Because prior to the blogging, he did a webcomic of his own for some years, and is rerunning that retired project with commentary. It’s an interesting read, and a nice example of the self-examining voice you need to have if you’re going to get better at any kind of creative endeavour. Also, I note from the About page that White is both a) Canadian and b) living in Japan, so extra points there. PS: Robin you totally have to go to the Tezuka Museum in Takarazuka. My hands and feet are totally the same size as Black Jack‘s.
• Finally, here’s a plot that makes you think Why didn’t anybody come up with this before?: reality show in space with alien critters. Last Resort is just about to hit 100 installments, so there’s enough story there to decide if you’re going to get sucked in or not, and not so much that you have to spend all day pretending to work when the boss walks by.

That’s how the kids talk today, right? All “cool” and “hep”? Anyway, I noticed that several webcomickers have been taking swipes at the current financial crises here in ‘Merica. For those of you in the rest of the world, short version: we’ll be bartering cigarettes by this time next year. In the meantime, please enjoy the comedy musings of Matt Boyd & Ian McConville, Sylvan Migdal, and Tatsuya Ishida, and don’t forget to tip your waitress.

• New webcomic discovery: Tim Smith, one of the creators of Head In The Clouds, invited me to take a gander at this newish (two months or so) offering. It’s a two-character play, a new microscene staged in each strip, and within those inherent limitations it’s doing pretty well. There’s something about this that makes me think of haiku — very brief, very minimalist in art and dialogue, very clean and expressive. Good start so far, and I’ll be interested to see if the creative spark can be maintained inside the self-imposed structure without it going stale.
• Tommie Kelly has invited me a few times to take a gander at Road Crew, which just hit 100 updates and the end of a storyline, so this is a decent time to mention it. A little expository at the beginning, but it looks like that was just Kelly setting the basis, since there’s been a better story flow since then. At the risk of being slightly cutesy, it’s the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to F Chords’ Hamlet. Don’t get too excited about the Shakespeare references (after all, being called “the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies” sounds grandiose at first, too) — I just mean to say that Road Crew is what happens just off-panel in a story about musicians. Point it out to the roadie in your life.
• Interview with Chris and Kyle Bolton over at The Pulse. I haven’t read SMASH before, but I think I’m going to have to check it out.
• One thing I really enjoyed doing last year (and sadly, don’t have the time to do this year) was be a judge for Webcomic Idol. This year’s judging panel has just been, um, empaneled, with DJ Coffman and Xaviar Xerexes returning, to be joined by newcomers Brad Guigar and indycomics superstar Jim Mahfood (I loved the stuff he did in Oni Double Feature).

  It’s just about a week or so until the call for entries, so put your applications together, and figure out how you’re going to interact with the judging panel. Best guess — DJ will channel his inner Simon, Xaviar will be Randy, and the other two will have to reveal themselves in terms of their judging styles¹.

_______________
¹Brad’s widely known as the nicest guy in webcomics on the planet, so we’ll have to see if he can bring actual critical feedback to these kids with a Cintiq and a dream of making it big. I’ve never known him to look for anything other than the best in people, so one is forced to assume that he’s totally Paula, only less batshit insane. We hope.