Thing about webcomics is, you can change how you do things. For instance, if you’re indy comics superstar/webcomicker/musician/creative powerhouse James Kochalka, and American Elf is a long-term subscription site with locked archives, you aren’t forced to keep to that model forever.

Especially given that since about 42 minutes ago, American Elf is no longer a subscription site with locked archives. This is a huge shift for Kochalka, so let’s quote him verbatim on it:

We’ve redesigned American Elf. One big important change is that the archives for American Elf the daily diary comic strip are now completely free. However, there’s still plenty of reason to subscribe. Subscribers will be getting tons of great bonus content, including Bonus Elf. (Some days I draw more than one diary strip, on those days the extra will appear in the Bonus Elfs section, for subscribers only.)

But that’s not all, no way. The new version of AmericanElf is called the American Elf Supersite for a reason. There’s gonna be lots more to it than just the American Elf strip itself. There’s the mp3 section filled with songs completely unavailable on my James Kochalka Superstar CDs. I’ve also got the first major Fancy Froglin comic up, with much much more Fancy to come. I’m going to start uploading my son Eli’s crazy monster drawings. Then I’ll probably start serializing a bunch of my old comics, like Deadbear Circus Detective, or maybe early issues of James Kochalka Superstar, or maybe some new series, or maybe all the various short pieces I did for anthologies over the years, or maybe the comics I drew when I was a little kid. Really, the possibilities are mind boggling.

What sort of bonus content are you subscribers most interested in seeing?

Personally, I’m happiest about the Fancy Froglin news, largely because I’m never going to forget the day at MoCCA a couple years ago when a recent purchaser of the CBLDF Fancy Froglin shirt got Kochalka to draw the genitals back in. Awesome.

Genitals aside, this is an opportunity for all and sundry to go do a nice deep crawl through the AES archives, to fall deeply in love with Kochalka’s work, and to reward him for this gift of free entertainment. Other creators have seen their readerships and incomes go up by opening their archives, and it’s up to you to make sure that Kochalka meets with similar fortune.

New son, new business model, new bonus content — I have a feeling that Kochalka is going to look at the end part of 2007 with some fondness.

Hey kids, it’s almost December 8th, and that means it’s time for this year’s Pretend To Be A Time Traveller Day, as dreamt up by Latin heartthrob Aaron Diaz.

Much like the zombie walks that pop up from time to time (although like all right-thinking individuals, I loathe the undead), the idea here is to engage in a bit of public theater, acting slightly anachronistic in your dress and choice of words. If you want the easy route, pretend to be from the past:

… dress in period clothing (preferably Victorian era) and stagger around amazed at everything. Since the culture’s set in place already, you have more of a template to work off of. Some pointers:

• Airplanes are terrifying. Also, carry on conversations with televisions for a while.
• Discover and become obsessed with one trivial aspect of technology, like automatic grocery doors. Stay there for hours playing with it.
• Be generally terrified of people who are dressed immodestly compared to your era. Tattoos and shorts on women are especially scary.

More advanced types will want to pretend to be from the future (either u- or dys-topian variations are fine), but be sure to have a skewed idea of what typical modern dress is like. Having a compatriot around to take photos for posting is also good.

Finally, try not to get punched out. Diaz has managed to pull of PtbaTTD in Alabama, so you ought to do fine, just don’t go overboard, ‘kay?

In other news, it’s not on my regular trawl so I missed this one until alert reader Michael Kinyon pointed it out, but Home On The Strange is wrapping up imminently. Fleen congratulates creators Veronica Pare and Ferrett Steinmetz on 300-odd installments, and look forward to jumping in on the next project from the beginning.

Longtime friend Brett “g” Porter just pointed me to the saddest [webcomics] story in the world at Gawker, of all places:

You know how you guys told me to check out Achewood? Well, I did and got my boyfriend totally hooked on it. For Christmas I ordered a signed strip for him. This one.

Right after I ordered it, I found out he has been sleeping with some 23-year-old whore waitress at his restaurant (he just got promoted from sous chef to head chef and it clearly went to both their heads).

I can’t return it because it is signed. I don’t want to give it to him anyway because he is a lying sack of shit and I want him and that skank to die.

Please help me find someone who wants this?

As of right now, the print is up for auction at eBay, has no bids, with an initial asking price of $10 and $6 shipping. As the Gawker story points out, there is something distinctly Achewoodian about this tale, and anybody with an interest in the human condition is urged to make a bid on this very historic piece.

A few announcements for you, some a little late. Enjoy ’em anyways.

• Brinkerhoff, featuring the least fluffy bunnies since Matt Groening’s Life In Hell, recently celebrated strip #501 with a quad-size extravaganza.
• Where do you stand on the Writers Guild strike? Brian Carroll of Instant Classic is doing a series on it at his other webcomic, Genrezvous Point, which starts here.
• Speaking of the strike, I understand it means that Dave Kellett‘s wife is now hanging around the house more. You know what might cheer her up, between long stints on the picket line hurling abuse (and hopefully rotten produce) at plutocrats? Helping Dave pack and ship merchandise that’s presently cluttering his garage.

  By the time you read this, he should be updating his store with the new Sheldon book and the Greatest Bumper Sticker In The World (not to be confused with the Greatest Answering Machine Message In The World).

• And in the “Safe Travels” department, Fleen wishes a fond farewell to Bang Barstal, who has found purpose and peace of a sort, both of which no longer involve him hitting things with a baseball bat. A little Mage, a little Mojo Nixon, a little road novel, a little philosophizin’, and a whole lotta hitting things until they explode finished up today at Graphic Smash, with a final epilogue due on Thursday. May the road rise to meet ya, Bang, and yer whiskey always be smooth.

We had a crash on the backend over the weekend, so if your comments got lost or your email didn’t get a reply, try again.

We understand that among those comments that got eaten was one by Dawn Douglass, founder of MyFridj, replying to our posting of last Friday. We’ve invited her to try again, and invite everybody to check out her response.

Updated to add: My mistake, Dawn Douglass’s comment was eaten by our spam filter, and has been restored. WordPress vagaries mean that it’s now in the middle of the comment thread, which is where it should have been, but which means that comments after it did not see Douglass’s reply.

Hey, guess who just made the jump into webcomickin’ full time? Bill Barnes, the artist/non-librarian half of the library-related Unshelved, that’s who:

So I’ve jumped off the proverbial cliff, and now I’m frantically trying to build a parachute. I’ll be doing programming jobs here and there to make ends meet, but obviously my goal is to spend more time cartooning. To this end I’d be grateful for your support. If you’ve been meaning to buy our books, please take the plunge. If you’ve been eyeing our merchandise as a holiday gift then you’ve got until December 9th to do something about it. And, of course, tell your friends/family/coworkers/customers/readers about our little comic strip. Because starting today, the closer I come to making a living from Unshelved, the more time I can spend on it.

For those of you not in the know (and really, no excuse for that, since it’s right in the first line of Barnes’s posting, if you bothered to follow the link), Barnes’s job was at Microsoft. In leaving the software behemoth, Barnes gives up a lot for the chance to make it as a webtooner. Little things like what is regarded as a very nice campus to work on, and the slim chance that Bill Gates might adopt him and make him his heir. Medium-large things like a regular salary at tech industry levels. Ginormous things like health insurance.

He gets stuff in return though — artistic satisfaction/dream-chasing would be pretty high on the list, I’d imagine. The pride of accomplishing something that so few get to … think about how many people there have been on the planet in the past century or so, then how many have been cartoonists; divide one into the other and the answer is near enough to zero that you may as well try to win the Powerball twice as become a professional strip cartoonist.

And if you’ve ever heard Howard Tayler talk about leaving behind his own tech-industry paycheck to become a fulltime webcomicker, don’t neglect the “give up a job, gain a family” aspect.

We at Fleen salute Bill Barnes, and by the wholly undeserved power we claim, do declare this to be Bill Barnes Day in Greater Webcomicstan, and instruct all and sundry to give him a high-five next time you see him. If you’ve ever bought Unshelved stuff, he might even give you a hug.

Confidential to Gene Ambaum: You’re awesome too, man.

So Randy Milholland tipped me off recently to a proposed internet startup called “MyFridj” (which may take the cake for the single stupidest name in the long history of stupid internet startup names), which proposes to … well, let’s copy the pitch from their site (and get your buzzword bingo cards ready):

MyFridj takes the classic behavior of posting cartoons to refrigerators and cubicles, and creates a cutting-edge web and mobile mashup of fun and exciting features and applications that support social media.

Our user-generated comics and animations may be embedded in blogs, Facebook, and so on, in order that you may

• gain attention
• increase reader engagement and comments
• showoff your personality, sense of humor or politics
• make your friends laugh

And that’s just the beginning.

MyFridj is the first cartoon syndicate designed for identity media. Our business model is virtual goods, an emerging multi-billion dollar space. [emphasis original]

So at a time when the very idea of syndicating cartoons is in crisis, and every person that can’t draw but secretly dreams of being a cartoonist already has a webcomic on one of the free hosting services, the solution will be to … according to Dawn Douglass, the founder of MyFridj, from her About page:

I’m creating the world’s first cartoon syndicate for Social Media.

Isn’t the point of social networking that it has a gathering point instead of a gatekeeper? Because that’s what the word “syndicate” means, and that’s what’s being proposed here — a means to gather up cartoons (apparently mostly single-panel gag strips) from creators, and then sell ’em to clients for display on the internet. Douglass’s contention is that cartooning in print is in trouble (I don’t think that anybody here would argue with that), and that there’s only one way to fix that situation: replicate online the same model that’s failing offline.

Lest you think I’m reading too much into her intent, check out the History page:

I decided to find a way beyond newspaper syndication to create a financially viable means for talented artists and writers to earn a decent living doing what they love, without the need for a day job. I had fed ideas to the syndicates for years, but they give new meaning to the word “intransigent.� I stubbornly – maybe even arrogantly – decided that if they weren’t going to do anything to expand cartooning and save the art form, I would.

Now this is where the idea just gets wacky. If it were possible that cartoons on a virtual fridge that we call the internet were going to organically evolve to the point that would enable creators to make a living at it, wouldn’t that have happened already?

Yes. And a bunch of people over to the right are already doing it. They don’t need somebody determined to conquer the social network space to come in and declare themselves THE site for cartoons on the web, and give up 50% of their revenue for the privilege of association. I didn’t pull that number out of the air, by the way — it’s in the VC pitch slides (PDF here). Any chance the VCs that get pitched will do some due diligence and see that MyFridj is proposing to spend a lot of money to do what’s already being done?

That’s exactly what MyFridj is proposing: going back to the History page, there’s a list of advantages to MyFridj — it distributes comics to niches instead of masses, it’s creator-driven, without deadlines, open … all the things that webcomics as we know them already do, only without the imprimateur of Web 2.0. Because after all, social networks can be forced to succeed, right?

MyFridj is going to be very successful. Photos = Flickr. Videos = You Tube. Songs = iTunes. Cartoons will equal MyFridj.

None of the accidental expansion from “small group using something” to “more people getting in on it” to “eventual mass explosion” that the dominant social networks have engaged in here. The plan is for MyFridj to have revenues of US$92 million in year three (with an expected launch in early 2008), and I still can’t see what it provides for creators other that the cachet of being on MyFridj and the ability to give up half their revenue.

Or am I just missing something?

The ongoing interview/discussion I’ve been having with two very patient artists (both folks I’ve written about in the past; I’ll write more once we finish) has lately turned to the question of length of webcomics. Specifically, we’re talking about the difference in reading a shortform piece online as opposed to a longform piece. Yes, we’ve been on this road before. Yes, we (by which I really mean I) keep coming back to it. I still think it’s an issue; it was something I’ve been thinking about particularly now that I work somewhere where I don’t have ready internet access at my desk.

Obviously these terms are open for discussion and of course there’s complications. For example, imagine a webcomic which is a daily updated strip (and here I mean ‘strip’ in the more classic sense, though it doesn’t have to adhere to the traditional design or pacing where there’s a punchline in the final panel). Each strip is self-contained. The characters, naturally, carry over from strip to strip, and while there’s no set overarching narrative these characters go about their lives, jobs, air hockey, whatever. Eventually there’s 500 or 1,000 of these things; sometimes collected into print versions, sometimes not. While not longform comics, that’s a pretty daunting archive; for a daily-updating strip, that number often represents years of work.

But what about the works out there which are kind of more like minicomics in their design? (more…)

I love it when I get to follow up on a good story. Longtime readers of Fleen may recall previous discussions of John Baird and his Create a Comic Project at the New Haven Free Public Library, and Baird has written to tell us that today:

… the Create a Comic Project will celebrate its one year anniversary. It has touched the lives of dozens of children, with over 2000 comics produced by kids from every walk of life. As a youth literacy activity, the project has had tremendous success in inspiring children to create their own stories — to shape their own worlds — using webcomics as the spark to kindle imagination’s torch.

In addition to the regular weekly sessions, the comic project has conducted workshops, a tournament, and even been tested in a university classroom. It has been sponsored by several organizations, including Yale University, the New Haven Public Library, and the Human Services Center Corporation. Its first tournament drew support from several local businesses in New Haven.

Most importantly, the Create a Comic Project has found support from numerous comic creators, including Shaenon Garrity, Kazu Kibuishi, T Campbell, and Phil Foglio. Special thanks goes to Yukihime, who provided inspiration with his Penny Arcade Remix Project; Emily Snodgrass, whose webcomic was the first used; Erin Ptah, who’s helped provide hi-res art; and Robert Anke, who brought the project into his own classroom. Over 50 different comics have pledged their support for the comic project. Without the permission of these creators to use their art for community outreach, none of these accomplishments would have been possible.

The next year promises to be even more edifying. The comic project will continue to orient youths to the creative medium of comics through workshops and sessions. It has been awarded a grant supporting a second Comic Making Tournament (coming March 8, 2008) from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. Also, a research study will examine the potential benefits of using the activity in education.

Awesome job there, John. If you’re interested in what else can be done with comics to do good in your corner of the world, Baird has written a series of essays on the theme of Comics and Community Service; please note that this is the good kind of community service, not the kind that misbehaving celebrities get sentenced to.

Editor’s note: I received the other day, out of the blue, a guest column submission from my favorite flightless bird that doesn’t sell shoe polish. And since I’m working on something that requires a bit of actual research and thus my own contributions have been a bit slight, it couldn’t have come at a better time. Please enjoy, and remember that I’m more than happy to run your guest column — email gary at this-here website for details.

If there’s one thing I love to do, its watch DVDs with the audio commentary running. And I mean I love it. You know that moment when the commentators invariably suggest that if you are watching the movie for the first time with the commentary on, you may want to turn it off, in case the events of the movie and the experience of the story are spoiled for you? That otherwise trite piece of advice is for me. I have nearly slipped up when putting in a new DVD many a time.

I love finding out the little tiny pieces of trivia that pop up. Those fragments of understanding as to why a particular word was used or a sign was painted just so. It’s not very often a reference to another piece of work or something designed to enhance the plot if you notice it (though the times when it is are really enjoyable, realising just how much work was put in to creating a coherent and rounded world inside the screen); more often it is some crew member’s nod to his own interests or life. And that’s good too, there’s something nice about getting to know the people who made something I enjoyed (or even didn’t enjoy. Watching the commentary on a piece of crap gives one the chance to discover just what went wrong or if the creators were idiots from the word go) in another way.

And it mirrors in so many ways the common setup in our wonderful world of web comics. Because, for some reason or another, comics appearing on the web has included creators keeping fairly well updated communication along with it. We DO know about the little things that pop up in some strips, because the creators will tell us. We DO know what they intend (maybe only in the broadest terms) and we DO know what’s working for them or not.

It’s this interaction, this means of adding webcomic creators to my FaceBook, of watching their lives unfold on LiveJournal, of seeing their reasons for being unable to keep updating (or not, as it were), that keeps me skimming through my favourites even though I have other things to occupy me at the moment.

Which leads me to the actual purpose of this random scrawling. I am absolutely loving the Director’s Cut of Narbonic.

I’m sure that comes as no surprise to anyone, it does after all, seem to be an involving and just plain clever comic. In the short time I’ve been following it so far the art has improved in leaps and bounds to become something iconic instead of cramped sketches like it appeared in the beginning. Running gags aplenty have established themselves, Heh. Heh. Heh. Characters have appeared and made their mark.

And through it all the readers have been privy to exactly the sorts of tidbits of information that I love about commentaries.

This was one of the times that I began watching the DVD with the commentary on. And so I have been spoiled about some aspects of what is to come through the comments and what Shaenon has said (Not a complaint mind you, I knew it was likely to happen when I started!). But recently I have grown impatient waiting for the commentary to get me to those places. And so I’m reading ahead now in my spare time. And looking forward to reading the commentary when it catches up.

You get me coming and going Shaenon.