Zero Batman jokes? David Willis is slipping, but I suppose we’ll congratulate him anyway. I’m Batman.

• Rene Engström talks process and backgrounds. I firmly believe that if you’re going to be really great at what you do, you can’t half-ass it, and in these two simple surveys Engström shows you how much attention to the little details matters.
• Official phrase of the day: Femented horse junk. Your task is to find a way to use it in casual conversation. Speaking of which, do you suppose they will be mixing up Breast Men at the GOF launch party on Saturday?
• Today’s webcomics business lesson: Don’t ship t-shirts to Malaysia.
• Silly Daddy reviewed at The Webcomic Overlook. Make sure you read the postscript.

Mmmmmm … no. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite. A WOWIO “publisher” (that is, content provider) who wishes to remain anonymous received the following from Kristin Ellison, Editorial Director of WOWIO in response to a query as to when payment could be expected:

Unfortunately I don’t have any update on when payments will be going out. I hope to very soon and will be sending out an email to all the publishers when I do. As an apology and a thank you for your patience while we go through this transition, we will be paying an additional 5% late fee to active publishers (those with books currently on the site) and a 2.5% late fee to in-active publishers (those who have removed books from our site). We hope this will help illustrate our commitment to our publishing partners.

Our source adds:

For what that’s worth. (2.5%, apparently.)

Anybody else in receipt of communications from WOWIO regarding payment? Let us know what you’ve been told. While we’re waiting, more on from WOWIO’s payment woes from Van Jensen and Platinum’s Hero By Night debacle from Rich Johnston (links via ¡Journalista!).

• Speaking of 500 strips, Brooke Spangler of A Girl And Her Fed joins the august ranks of high-achievers. Even without the constant threat of vendetta visited upon my person, I really enjoy reading her stuff in the morning. Check out today’s celebratory strip, full of extra AAAAAAHHHHHH!
• Via Danielle Corsetto:
  

  Just a quick reminder that MY FAVORITE WEBCOMIC KUKUBURI BY RAMON PEREZ returns today! Wooooo!

  Wooo, indeed. Go check it out.

“Hob” wraps, and Latin heartthrob Aaron Diaz raps about the storyline, and Dresden Codak in general with CBR.

• I could leave this running all day long (but my students are already starting to look at me funny). I wonder how this little treat will show up in Octopus Pie book 3?
• Hey, remember The Great Halfpixel Intern Fight of Aught-Eight? Former Straub-tern Magnolia Porter has launched a new webcomic (with a month’s worth of strips on launch day!). Please to meet the ladies of Bobwhite University.
• Open secret: you can own Devil’s Panties original strips. But the cash reserve requirements of self-publishing are pushing Jennie Breeden to be a bit more prominent about it. See the blogpost here for more information, and make sure your Etsy/eBay accounts are in good working order.
• Krishna Sadasivam wrote to remind me of the latest Sequential Artists’ Pub Night too late for me to run the notice on Friday, but you can catch the recording here. To make up for my tardiness, I’ll point out that the next episode is due to start on Friday, 19 September, 10:00pm EDT. Grab some booze and start thinking of what you want to talk about.
• Those of you looking for Bellen! to be part of your regular existence (and you know you should be), be aware that Box Brown has changed his website address to boxbrown.com. Update your bookmarks accordingly.

Chris Daily has now given us 800 Stripteases. Not that kind. Geez, get your mind out of the gutter.

Mailbag:

• JG Brin wrote:
  

  The Crown Prince just celebrated its third anniversary. To mark the occasion, I’m moving to a Monday and Friday update schedule instead of just Mondays. I am hereby wishing myself luck.

• Joseph Hewitt wrote:
  

  I have three bits of news from Transplant Comics. Matt Sandbrook (of Chip Shop Adventures) has been featured in a children’s book. He’s the one responsible for the animated DVD that comes with The Big Noisy Book of Vehicles. And earlier this summer, he released a music video for the band Captive State.

  Ben Costa of Shi Long Pang (where the massive action scene has wrapped after months) has finally released the ending of Cloaca Maxima. It gets even more disturbing than before, of course.

  Finally, at Ataraxia Theatre, Mischa’s Story is starting up again with guest art from Francisco Munoz. Other artists who have signed on for pages listed here.

• Tim Demeter over at Clickwheel would like you to know that the print comic Elephantmen is getting podified. Not sure how well the very detailed art from Moritat and Ladronn will translate to the small screen, but maybe you’ll be able to use the online reader.
• If Chris Yates had a costume rack with more clothing and less papier-mâché, fewer aliens, a superheroics story to tell and a bunch of Germans hanging around: Union of Heroes.

Okay, time to batten down the hatches in advance of Hanna coming to say ‘hi’. See you on Monday if I don’t wash away.

Dark Horse‘s MySpace offering for September hit yesterday, with three of the four entries from the world of webcomics. You got Mitch Clem‘s Nothing Nice to Say: Getting Hip (two pages), Chris Onstad‘s Achewood: One Dollar Genius (eight pages), and the very fancy Liz Greenfield‘s Steak and Kidney Punch (eight pages). And the other offering is an eight-page Larry Marder Beanworld tale, so it’s all good.

• For further proof that Onstad is taking over the world, there’s another piece in the Sandwich Duel due today, and this little beauty on the Achewood front page (no permalink):
  

  Achewood NPR interview airs next week.

  My guess? Weekend Edition Saturday or Sunday, The Bryant Park Project, or Day to Day, but nothing known for sure at this point. Good news: NPR programs are generally available for streaming within a hour of their initial broadcast.

• Interview day:
  • Brad Guigar interview. For added fun, imagine the guffaws in your head (note to self: 1. Mix down 10-second repeating clip of Guigar laughing, 2. Embed everywhere humanly possible, 3. Profit!)
  • Also got one with Lil’ Johnny A (note to self: buy things from Allison before prices go up due to dollar not being quite so sucky)
  • Joy! Rick Marshall gets back to chattin’, this time with Bernie Hou of the hiatused Alien Loves Predator and the non-hiatused If You See Something
• Ephemera note of the day: a micro-piece on webcomics bid’ness from Entrepreneur magazine; very little there you don’t know if you follow our happy little medium, but quite a bit new if you don’t. Secret fear: flood of I’m gonna make it big in WEBCOMICS ideas bubbling up in the brains of B-school douchebags types looking for easy pickings and providing crappy comics. I trust that if they show up, you will know how to greet them.

Emmett Furey at CBR follows up on the WOWIO payments issue; for the record, we at Fleen have been contacted by exactly zero creators that have been paid for the second quarter. If/when checks ever do show up, we’ll let you know.

• The webcomics are so relentlessly digital that we sometimes forget that these guys can bust the ancient technology out when they need to. Check out Mike “Gabe” Krahulik and Scott “Scott” Kurtz (no action shot, sorry) painting with acrylics.
• Moustache bonanza? I like where this is heading:
  

  Monsieur Moustache is truly making his rounds! Check out his latest travel destination!

  Yessssss. Be free and spread your influence, my moustachey brother.

I’m still a little bummed out to learn that Don LaFontaine died yesterday.

• Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars goes up for pre-order today. Remember: everybody that orders a sketched-in edition will directly contribute to Howard Tayler’s crippling hand and wrist pain, so let’s try to find a happy medium that balances Tayler’s health against his financial interests.
• Speaking of books, the mailman just now delivered my copy of Pugs: God’s Little Weirdos, which I will have to enjoy later because the postal service has bound up the package in so much of their industrial-strength tape that I’m presently unable to open the damn thing.
• So it’s reptiles now, Mr Malki !? Verrrrry interesting. Or perverse. One of those two.
• New website for You’ll Have That, as creator Wes Molebash has left publisher Viper Comics. Other projects for the coming year include an amped-up con schedule, a new YHT collection, and a graphic novel. Everybody congratulate Wes!
• In today’s Good Start deparment: Jovian Luck; it’s starting slow, but there’s a definite feel that creator Kyle Sanders has the full story mapped out. This is sci-fi in the Serenity mode, where space is just another place for hard-luck types to try and get by (although what it really reminds me of is an old BBC show called Star Cops, which you have never seen but was quite good).
• Finally, I have neglected the most recent Top Shelf 2.0 offerings, so let me fix that by pointing you towards contributions by Joe Decie (autobio and fiction with “a whole heap of ink wash”) and Kagan MacLeod (a bonus chapter to the self-published Infinite Kung Fu comic book).

Scott McCloud has produced a comic-book introduction to Google’s new open-source browser and you. Apparently some special people in Europe have received these in printed form, but we can make do with the Creative Commonsed online version. Beware: the hosting site seems to be getting hammered pretty hard, leading to somewhat spastic page loading (I still haven’t gotten through all 40-odd pages), and it contains words and phrases like Object Heap, Cryptographic Hash, Class Transitions, and Execution Stack. Civilians, you have been warned.

Anyway, it’s called Google Chrome, the website will apparently be live on Wednesday, and it’s all pretty readable if you’re a nerd. McCloud’s done his usual bang-up job making BIG COMPLICATED IDEAS into small, digestible chunks. In a couple days, I imagine we’ll see if Chrome has built-in webcomics hooks, but the different-processes-for-different-tabs thing sounds promising, as do the Opera Speed Dial-like Tab Page and the completely secretive porn mode (that’s not the official name, but let’s be honest) for when you don’t want anybody to know you were reading Wizard (and one could hardly blame you).

In the meantime, pray that somebody mirrors this thing, because when America gets back to work/school tomorrow, there ain’t gonna be no reading it.

Labor Day is when the presidential campaign traditionally kicks into high gear, and that’s what we find in webcomics today. Check out Shortpacked!, Diesel Sweeties, Sinfest, Overcompensating,
and especially Ugly Hill for a lesson in what American politics is really like. Also possibly Starslip, but who the hell know when it comes to Zillion.

• Speaking of politics (although not webcomics per se), how can I fail to point you towards Matt Boyd‘s interview with James “Rusty Venture” Urbaniek when he (Boyd) teases it with:
  

  This is the first time in the history of the Internet that someone has typed the sentence “It seemed like a good idea at the time, but before I knew it, a pedophile was getting my replacement offspring shot full of holes/I’d chosen a relatively untried governor from Alaska as a running mate.”

• Thirty one days. Thirty one comics. The Guest Strip Project finishes up the August donationaramathon with a beauty from curator extraordinaire Jen Babcock. If there’s ever a commissioner of webcomics that’s got to wrangle all of the creators, I nominate Mike Rouse-Deane.
• And finally, we note with some relief that Gunnerkrigg Court is back up and running. Near as I can tell, getting shut down by your host for using too much bandwidth/CPU/whatever is pretty much a badge of honor. Fleen welcomes Tom Siddell to the premier league.

Back to college season is in full swing in the States, which is when a webcomicker’s thoughts turn to new (and returning readers). Along those lines, a mess of webcomickers appear to be linking the snot out of stuff today — pretty much you can pick a a comic over there to the right, and then follow the trails of recommendations.

Some names keep recurring, like Gastro~Phobia, but I found the most interesting (ie: never would have found them on my own) links over at Indigo Kelleigh’s Ellie Connelly. And the link from Rich Stevens to Kinokofry is the most dangerous — one click and I realized I can’t go there until I have three hours with no other demands on my time. College kids, your homework for this weekend is to grab a link, start exploring, then get good and lost. Allow me to help get you started: One Swoop Fell.

Updated to add: Looks like Gunnerkrigg Court took a few too many high-value links; since the main site is presently down, look to the mirror at Modern Tales for your fix.

• DAMMIT JEPH I TOLD YOU — NO PICTURES.
• PAX kicks off today, and have you seen the pictures of the cake done by Scott Kurtz‘s brother, Brian? What is it with the Dallas/Ft Worth area and insane-talented cakers? I have a colleague who does stuff like this in her spare time and she lives in Dallas. Also, I am very scared to ask this, but I have to: what does Gabe taste like?
• Friend o’ Fleen Rick Marshall has landed at Viacom, where he’ll be an editor for their MTV Splash Page (comics, movies, and that side of the pop culture coin). Okay, cool, he’ll be eating, but there’s better news — he’ll be continuing his series of webcomicker interviews, this time on the pages of his personal blog, so nobody can ever take them away from us again. Everybody feel good for Rick!
• Mr T in the pages of The Beat on waiting for WOWIO to cough up monies owed. For the record, have any WOWIO creators gotten paid for Q2 yet? I ask because we’re 2/3 of the way through Q3 and I haven’t heard of anybody getting paid since Platinum took over the checkbook.