You now know where to find me on the evening of 7 November. But I warn you — nothing will keep me from the Achewood signing.

• This is what I get for not scrolling past the comic — I completely missed the wonderful news from Christopher Wright which is now a week old:
  

  For about a year my wife and I have been in the process of entering an adoption program. In January we went live, in the spring we were matched, and today we took our daughter home from the hospital. … [W]e now have a beautiful little girl who has made it clear that while she permitted the nurses in the hospital nursery to believe she had settled into a regular feeding and sleeping schedule, now that she is home she will tolerate nothing of the kind.

  Fleen congratulates the happy family on their good fortune, and apologizes for just figuring that the comic was not updating because you were living in a Hurricane Ike-carved ditch waiting for power to come back.

• Sorry ladies, he’s off the market. Reports indicate that Jeph Jacques has successfully gotten married; footage from our chartered paparazzi-copter indicate that no fewer than twelve college-age women have been injured in related riots. Fleen congratulates the happy couple, who are reportedly honeymooning at George Clooney’s villa in Italy.
• And finally, we note the 1000th strip/four year mark has been reached by Able and Baker. Fleen congratulates the happy creator.

Some few things that have gone by the wayside of late:

• Minimalist fumetti experiment tiny ghosts recently passed the three year mark. Fleen congratulates “the author”.
• Hell and damnation-themed Little Terrors! recently returned from hiatus. Fleen congratulates creator Jon Scrivens.
• New homicidal bears-themed webcomic Bear Nuts is looking to traumatize your childhood memory of Care Bears (although perhaps not as badly as others have done). Word is that creator Alison Acton is looking to do some promotions, so budding business of webcomics types are encouraged to hit the comments and conduct an impromptu group discussion on advertising strategies and swap success stories.
• In Australia, it’s already tomorrow, which is how Twisted Musings has hit the three year/200 strips mark when it’s still clearly Tuesday. Fleen congratulates creator Jason Frazer, and continues to bitch about freakin’ time zones.
• Finally, listening to the latest Webcomics Weekly on the iPod during the commute this morning and heard the beginnings of what could be a fascinating discussion. Kris, Brad, and Dave (answering a letter in their mailbag) talked about the importance of not giving away your work “for the exposure”. That was good, here’s the potentially brilliant part — the lads decided that what they need to do is have the Econ 101 talk on how to price your work. It’s not a topic I’ve seen out in the public sphere before, and hopefully they’ll have that for us next week.

Wedding Season: getting married this week are both Jeph Jacques and Andy Bell. Not to each other, but each to a different lady. Fleen congratulates all concerned.

Anniversary Season: today marks 10 years of the Bobbins/Scary Go Round continuity on le web. Also, the return of the dreaded earwig.

Wedding Season: Rich Stevens doesn’t alter the fundamental dynamics of his cast (hmmm, time to update that chart) all that often, but when he does, he goes big. Plus, the tagline at the bottom of today’s Diesel Sweeties will likely be the funniest thing I’ll read this week.

Sneaky, sneaky. Fake Shortpacked! update to cover the real one, so that a very important question could be asked. With such planning (and sneakiness) could the answer be in doubt? Everybody feel good for David and Maggie.

• So no Onstad interview, thanks to the whole economy crashing and burning again. Wall Street is in flames, brokers have been sighted with ties around their heads forming a primitive, Lord of the Flies-style society, but I want a voice to go with the picture, dammit. Next week sometime, still on NPR.
• Speaking of cartoon cats, there’s a new maquette of Scratch Fury, Destroyer of Worlds coming from PVP. It’s made by the same people that did the Applegeeks EVE figure, which I can tell you is one hell of a nice piece of work. Production is going to be limited to those that pre-order, so you won’t be able to pick one a’ these up at the con table next year.
• Speaking of resinous cirtters, SLÜG figures now available from Chris Yates at Reprographics. Group effort this time: Yates designed and paints them, but they were sculpted and cast by Nikki I Don’t Know If She Gets An Exclamation Or Not, But She Did Marry The Dreamcrusher Rice. Some of the SLÜGs exist in editions of as many as five, some are one-offs, and there’s only 35 made at this time.
• Conventions coming up, neither of which I can make it to, dammit. Next weekend the nerd hordes descend on Baltimore, including the only East Coast appearance of all four HTMW authors (they’re gonna make me cart that damn thing to hell and breakfast to get all four signatures, aren’t they?). As an added bonus, Nexus of All Creative Comiclike Endeavours Shaenon Garrity informs us of a contest to win tickets to the Harvey Awards, to be presented at BCC. How cool is this show? The one time I attended, I wound up sitting next to Neil Gaiman. Just saying.

  The following weekend, the just as nerdy but less cosplay-inclined hordes descend on Bethesda for SPX. I’m super-bummed about not being able to go to that one, as I hear that the ever-fascinating Kate Beaton will be venturing Down South to attend along with Emily Horne of A Softer World; Kate and Emily remain at the top of my list of creators I have yet to meet in person.

• Finally, let’s break out today’s anniversary announcement, and note that Chasing the Sunset hits the big 5-0-0 today.

Okay, time to go renew my driver’s license. Pray for Mojo.

This year’s nominations have been announced, and in the Online Comic category, we find the following:

• Achewood, Chris Onstad
• Danny Dutch, David King
• Slow Wave, Jesse Reklaw
• Thingpart, Joey Sayers
• Traced, Tracy White

My question: what could top the famed gorilla suit? The awards will be given at this year’s SPX, October 4th, in Bethesda, Maryland.

• Speaking of Achewood, the previously-referenced NPR interview has been positively identified as occurring on their flagship program, Morning Edition, tomorrow. Find a station to listen on here, or listen to the streaming audio after about 10am EDT (GMT-4).
• Estradarama updates continue in yesterday’s post; Ryan himself has taken off for a well-deserved break for a few days, but has left an auto-updating runthrough of all the guest pieces on his site. The fun starts here and continues with a new strip every hour for the next almost three days. Having upped his efforts from last year, I suspect that next year will be the Estradaramest.
• Rick Marshall Will ‘n’ Holly interviews Jennie Breeden, she of the leaf blower and panties; one of these days, I’m gonna have to just cut out the middleman and get the Rickster to just run these interviews here. This is how it’s done, folks.
• Jeff Zugale made an odd discovery lately — doubling up his strip production at Just A Bit Off so he could have a buffer against a vacation, he found that doing two strips a week was no more difficult than one. So why stop when he got back? JABO will now run on Mondays in addition to Thursdays, and who knows? If he gets to three days a week, maybe he’ll find a gift from Ryan Estrada in his email next September.
• I was going to tell you about Danielle Corsetto‘s print sale to raise money for a new printer, but she’s already sold out of the special packages ($20 = 5 prints of your choice!). What this means, of course, is that now she’ll be able to offer more prints, so start looking through her back catalog and figure out what you just can live without for the upcoming Holiday giving season.

And what do I find in my Inbox? Our very first guest strip, featuring our Masthead Guy. That’s right, it’s time for another Estradarama, which today features the following comics as of press time, in no particular order:

• Wigu, Overcompensating, Scary Go Round, Anders Loves Maria, Shortpacked!
• Wapsi Square, Girly, Dresden Codak, Sketchies, Astronaut Elementary
• Skin Horse, Aslan, 8 Bit Theatre, Joe Loves Crappy Movies, PC Weenies
• Dueling Analogs, Lifemeter, Bunny, Guest Strip Project (appropriately enough), You’ll Have That
• Templar AZ, a special bonus Wonderella, Alma Mater, Dreamland Chronicles, Bellen
• Theater Hopper, and Sam and Fuzzy (bonus strip, scroll down to read), ComixTalk (blog), Real Life, Patches
• Unshelved
  Updated to add those updating after press time, or just missed the first time around; again, no particular order: Alien Loves Predator, Angry Bee With A Gun, Silent Kimbly, Butterfly
• Cow and Buffalo, Kawaii Not, Pictures for Sad Children, Project: Rooftop, Joe and Monkey
• Ihooky, Dominic Deegan, Dorkboy, Cyanide and Happiness, Count Your Sheep
• Digital Unrest, 2P Start, VG Cats (apparently, created for last year’s Estradarama, but not run until yesterday!), Todd and Penguin, Taking Up Space
• Ninja Bunny, Horribleville, Left Handed Toons
  Updated to add: all additions past this point derived from Estrada’s hourly update (see here); everything above here discovered by Fleen and its readers
  Prometheus, Chairs For All Occasions
• Hilarity Comics, Robot Comix, We The Robots, River City Mechanical, Aki’s Comics Review (from the Lunchbox Funnies main page)
• Muffin Time, Sir Reginald (no address other than Estrada’s page), Able and Baker, extra Life’s a Bluff, extra Livin’ on Poker Road
• LOLBees

Please note that some of those may shift from their present linked addresses in the future. If last year was anything to go on, those 31 39 43 46 52 60 62 65 strips (plus two blogs, plus the empty strip, plus the comic book) are a bare fraction of what will make itself known by end of business today. But then there’s the mysterious 1/100 in the signature of all the strips. Could Estrada be attempting 100 guest strips in a single day?

And if you recall Estradarama 2007, you’ll remember that Ryan Estrada used the occasion to also launch the Cartoon Commune. This year, he announces the availability of a full comic book, written with John Baird of the Create a Comic Project, Create a Comic Project Presents: Climate Change. The 34 page book is available now through Lulu for the low, low price of $6.00 (or $0.50 for a download). Oh, and he drew a strip for the CCP, too.

Okay, you know the drill — let me know what I missed in the comments, I’ll add ’em to the bullets above in groups of five, and we’ll do it all again next year. We all know I’ve missed a zillion strips, but I can’t spend all day hunting them down.

In completely unrelated news: non-Estrada shake-it-up strip at Octopie, and a good, old-fashioned bidding war for an original strip. Neat.

Updated to add: As several people have pointed out, Ryan Estrada has called the total at 70, but discovered he only had 69, so he did an extra strip of Aki Alliance to bring it up to 70, then VG Cats ran its strip from last year, so we’re going to call it 70 + a comic book as the official total. Which means that as of this writing, we’re still about 17 sightings short — get cracking, people!

Templar, book 2. Get yours if you haven’t already.

• This is not the year for Blank Label. First their server farm got hit by a car/explosion back in June, now it appears that 5/6ths of the collective are down. As of this time, it has not been confirmed that it was Hurricane Ike that put paid to their hosting, but it appears to be a reasonable assumption. As of this writing, Shlock Mercenary and Real Life are up, Melonpool, Wapsi Square, Ugly Hill and Shortpacked are down. Alternate locations for the strips include Never mind, they’re back now. All is well, and citizens are urged to go about their normal routines.
• Webcomickers getting ripped off seems to be a recurring theme these days. The jerk(s) that robbed Ursula Vernon took more than a printer, game consoles, and tools, they took Digger from me for a week and so they must be destroyed. And now comes word that Inkdick creator Pranas Naujokaitis had a brand new iMac stolen before he even got it home. A purchase or donation to either would seem to be a useful means to shine up your karma.
• To everybody that complains that David Malki ! isn’t a real cartoonist because he doesn’t draw: he’s got your art hangin’, boy. Now kindly admit you’re wrong and apologize in a meaningful way.
• Jeff Rowland’s adventures with lower extremities continue for your amusement. Here’s hoping you beat the tetanus and/or gangrene, Jeff!
• Newish blog This Week in Webcomics talks to Gordon McAlpin of Multiplex.
• From Box Brown, news of an open-source political cartooning project:
  

  Rules: Use the characters: Democrat (Donkey) and Republican (Elephant). Discuss the 2008 Election or just politics in general. Feel free to use the template. Let the bipartisan skewering begin!

And finally, a personal note. My wife was looking at Facebook “you may know this person” suggestions last night, and half of webcomics showed up there. Considering that I don’t have a Facebook account this was somewhat surprising to me, and there’s only one rational way to respond: Stay the hell away from my wife, Ryan North.

Georgia seems to be the place for live talks in the immediate future. You got Scott McCloud tomorrow night at 7:30 on the campus of Agnes Scott College. And just a bit further along in the “advance notice” cateory, Dave Kellett and Scott Kurtz will be at the Savannah College of Art and Design in four weeks. Monday the 13th they’ll be visiting with students in the Sequential Arts program, and Tuesday the 14th there will be a public talk in the evening. If you see my niece Colleen there, tell her Uncle Gary said hi.

• Wapsi Square book number three (that would be The Timekeeper’s Daughter, for those of you playing at home) is now up at Lulu. As I’ve mentioned numerous times, Wapsi reads much better in big chunks than short nibbles, so dig in and pick up on the mythology.
• On the heels of Funky Cancercancer and My Mother Is F’in Insane, we have David Willis taking a swipe at venerable busybody Mary Worth. I almost thought it was Joe Giella’s work in the first panel.
• Genius-level work in today’s Octopie. Should this strip ever go up for sale, you cannot have it. It will be mine. You can have this one instead, at least for the next three days or so.
• Quick bits:
  • R Stevens: interview on Creative Commons
  • Mezzacotta: still up for sale.
  • Wigu: now with extra backstory
• Finally, should you ever find yourself at dinner with freelance firearms specialist David Malki ! and Latin Heart-throb Aaron Diaz and you find youself in need of hearty laugh-chuckles, just throw out one word to the table. Just. One. Word:
  

  Magneto

  Trust me on this.

Various things that sound like hadrons are colliding (or not) in webcomics today. I can’t recall a hard-science topic that captured the public imagination in quite this way before, but I guess that’s what happens when your lab bench might accidentally erase the earth and everybody on it.

Soft reboots:

• Stupid and Insane Defenders Against Chaos, with a new backend and story focus.
• Pilli Adventure, as rendered 3D instead of drawn comics.
• The System, as somehow more surreal within the limitations of signage graphics than it was before. We may be into A Softer World territory here.

Okay, that’s it. Been up since way too damn early, and it’s gonna be a busy-ass weekend. Enjoy the imminent demise of the world and everybody you’ve ever loved.

Question: How much do you have to suck to steal from somebody while they’re moving? If you’ve been thinking about ordering anything from Ursula Vernon, now might be a good time.

• I’ve been noticing this thing where the depth and quality of interviews with webcomickers is really going through the roof; case in point: Girls With Slingshots creator Danielle Corsetto talks with Alex Dueben at CBR. Oh, and this one by Shaun Manning with Liz Greenfield on Steak & Kidney Punch. Rest assured that we at Fleen, rebels every one of us, intend to buck this trend.
• The WOWIO WEIRDNESS™ just won’t go away. If you missed Van Jensen’s piece in Publishers Weekly on Monday, he’s added some supplementary analysis. The most INNNNNterestin; part (in the sense that monsters are INNNNNterestin’ people): Platinum could actually lose money if WOWIO succeeds too much in the short term. Curiouser and curiouser.
• Self-described boiling vat of pepperminty machismo Brad Guigar will be signing and sketching for charity in South Jersey this Saturday from noon to five. That’s at Hall of Heroes in the Moorestown Mall, with proceeds going to Heroes for Heroes (side plug for a similar organization: Operation Comix Relief).
• And finally, check out what is still (as of this writing) the Bargain of the (admittedly young) Century: Octopus Pie strip #187 original on eBay. I think we’ve all felt the sentiment There had better be a dead person at the end of this line, and now’s your chance to own it.