Editor’s note: We at Fleen are still getting some reports that comments are delayed or getting doubled up; if you’re having difficulty, please let us know on the contact page.

News leaking from the Wikiworld is that there’s an internal debate brewing about the Great Wikipedia Webcomics Purge(s) of Aught-Seven; reporters from Wikinews have been pursuing the story and there may be stern talkings-to in the future. We’ll let you know if we hear anything definitive.

Do you like Wes Molebash’s You’ll Have That? Of course you do! Are you able to set foot inside a church without catching fire? Got plans for Sunday evening?

This Sunday, October 28, I’ll be speaking at Trinity United Methodist Church during an evening event called Between the Lines. The event runs from 6 to 8 PM, and I’ll be speaking at some point in between those times.

Between the Lines is a monthly gathering hosted by Trinity Church that features local artists talking about their work and their faith. So if you’re in the area you should spin by and listen to me talk about YHT, how it’s created, and why I create it.

WARNING: I’m going to be talking about God and stuff. Sooooo . . . don’t say I didn’t warn ya. Also, I’m gonna talk about why I believe Christian creators should stop making Christian content. Should be exciting!

If any of you are interested in coming to the church on Sunday, feel free to drop me an e-mail and I’ll give you directions.

Per Wes’s website, that email would be the bold-faces portions of wesfillermolebashfiller@gmailfiller.comfiller. Be sure to ask which Trinity United Methodist Church, as there’s more than one.

Things noted today:

• If you are unfamiliar with Norton I, Emperor of the United States, may I suggest you browse through Neil Gaiman’s excellent Three Septembers and a January?
• Might be sold out by the time you read this — Ugly Hill merch to stave off the starvation of a child. Buy a sketch while you’re there.
• Speaking of merch, John Campbell (coinhabitant with Ryan Estrada of the Mexican [web]comics commune) is dipping his toe into those waters; this follows up a recently-wrapped three-week story and a 24 hour comic which has left him tired. Preordering his shirts so he has the money for caffeine and to keep cartooning would be a nice thing for you to do.

And we promised you naked yesterday, so please note that webcomics charity project coordinator extraordinaire Michael Rouse-Deane announces this year’s Tastefully Done calendar:

Last year Tastefully Done showed the world what it would be like if their favourite webcomic characters bared all in aid of Cancer Research. This year the tables have turned and webcomic artists have bared all in aid of Cancer Research.

With the talents of Corey Marie Parkhill at the helm with the cover and along with Whitney Robinson, Jon Scrivens, Kristofer Straub, Ryan Estrada, Fred Grisolm, James Turner, the crew from Digital Strips, Ben Stirling, Meghan Murphy, Chris Thomas and James Walker, Jared von Hindman, and Jodie Azhar baring all for a great cause.

Webcomic artists at their finest, with their clothes off, is hopefully gonna be an utterly delightful success like last year. For the price of $15 and through the www.lulu.com website, Tastefully Done warns you to bare witness to the outstanding artwork that can only be contained in one calendar, we give you Tastefully Done 2008! (emphasis mine)

I think I have to get two — one for getting autographs, and one to seal hermetically until the day that Kris Straub runs for high political office.

So I was going to try to write some more about what US copyright law actually says (since there seems to be a large number of misconceptions on the subject), but the comment thread on the latest webcomics vs. Fair Use incident has devolved to the now it’s personal stage pretty rapidly, so screw that. My thanks to Shane Mitrovic, with whom I had a nice, civil email exchange — you made some good points and though I still think my analysis was correct, you’ve made me see that I could have buttressed my points more thoroughly; email me if you’re curious. Everybody else, read Title 17 yourself, as I’m done getting beat up on this one.

News:

• An article! With/about Bill Barnes! At Comic Book Resources! It’s gripping.
• For those who missed our writeup when it was new last year, or when it joined Lunchbox Funnies earlier this year, Trade Loeffler’s got a really good comic called Zip and Lil’ Bit. It’s now onto its second storyline, The Sky Kayak. I have to admit that I missed this one until Loeffler emailed me — I read Z&LB about about 2 – 3 month intervals so I can get big gooey chunks of story/art all at once. For this one, an installment at a time is too little to savor.
• One of the coolest things I picked up at SPX was a new not-quite-mini, but not quite regular comic from Alex Robinson, called Lower Regions; I particularly liked that it worked purely visually, because there’s no dialogue, no captions, no words whatsoever, yet it tells a coherent story. In a similar vein, Girl Wonder has a new, wordless comic:
  

  In textless format, their new work The Tower tells the story of a princess who escapes her intended role in search of adventure. Completely scripted, penciled, and inked, The Tower will be updated at a rate of one chapter per week over ten weeks.

  Writer Brendon Bennets is currently employed as an actor in Christchurch, New Zealand. He maintains a blog on improv theater as well as several
  other comics he has written here. This is artist Saki Miyamoto’s first published work, and she hopes to one day publish a hand-bound picture book or comic on handmade paper.

  The Tower joins Planet Karen and Goodbye Chains as regularly-updating comics at Girl Wonder; thanks to The X-Man for forwarding me the announcement on this one.

Come back tomorrow, when we will feature nudity.

So Jeff Rowland got what could be considered a nastygram from somebody claiming to be John White, the man credited with taking the original photo of what’s now known as the O RLY owl. He’s demanding that Rowland take down some of his merchandise for including a design referencing said owl, or he’ll rat Jeff out to The Feds. To the best of my knowledge, the claimant has not been proved to be John White, but for the purposes of this this discussion, we’ll assume it is really John White.

Rowland’s LJ thread has already referenced TGTGDKCOAS¹, and that’s the line of logic I wanted to talk about. John White took the photo of the now-ubiquitous owl, and he does in fact hold both legal and moral rights to that image (we’ll leave aside the question of whether selectively asserting those rights a half-decade after the original posting has created an easement or not). We at Fleen believe strongly in creators rights, so why does this situation not make us want to side immediately with White?

Fair Use [via the Wayback Macihne; the new Fair Use Index may also be consulted]:

Section 107 [of Title 17 of the US Code] contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,� such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

It’s comment that’s most important here. Rowland isn’t just dropping the White’s photo of an owl into his design; he’s altered it and placed it in the context of a comment on internet culture (such as it is). As such, he isn’t really incorporating or referencing White’s photo at all … he’s referencing the meme of photo macros.

Let’s take an analogous situation: once upon a time there was a photo of Marilyn Monroe that Andy Warhol then transformed, which David Willis then referenced in his delightful Finger Quotin’ Margo design. The relationship to the original Monroe photo is present, but entirely abstracted by reference to the Warhol transformation, via the filter of Margo (but not Margo as owned by the syndicators of Apartment 3-G). In the same way, Rowland’s Oujia-esque desgin (woodcut look, color scheme, but not a Parker Brothers branded Ouija board by any stretch) has referenced not the original, but rather the original artistic alteration. That’s Fair Use.

And the denial of Fair Use is why White’s claim is annoying all of us at Fleen; claims like this assert that no amount of transformation can ever be sufficient, and that any resemblance is enough to trigger copyright protection. It’s the same logic that led Ira Glass to note that pancakes he witnessed were existing in violation of intellectual property laws, because Disney has made a habit of asserting ownership over every possible permutation of one large circle with two smaller, intersecting circles at the 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock positions. It’s flawed logic on the part of the Disney corporation and similarly flawed on White’s part. The O RLY owl is something different from the original photo, and comment on that cultural artifact (even on — gasp — merchandise for sale) is allowed.

_______________
¹ The Great Todd Goldman/Dave Kelly Contretemps Of Aught-Seven.

What with the SPX roundups, a number of other stories have gone unremarked here in the past couple of days. Let’s catch up, shall we?

Early reports indicate that PETA tactical squads are preparing to move against several webcomickers:

• Jennie Breeden, for monkey spanking;
• Randy Milholland, for threats against koalas;
• And while a pooch has been referred to in less-than-loving terms (no permalink), since the comments came from an Otter, debate rages as to whether or not action is warranted.

More on these as the situations develop.

Speaking of Randy Milholland, even when he’s making up fake ads for the top of S*P 1937, they’ve got a terrific period feel. Well done, sir!

As has been noted many places, Yirmumah‘s reached a maybe-permanent end. DJ Coffman’s the kind of guy who’s always got lots of ideas on tap, so I don’t think we have to contemplate what the intertrons would look like without him. I also think that we’ll probably see more Yirmumah in some form or other before he’s done; like the majestic shark that must swim or drown, I believe that Coffman must eventually return to his signature work or die. (Note to self: look into booking Coffman Week on the Discovery Channel.)

Because he loves you and wants you to be happy, Chris MacNeil of Rooby Moon is cranking up production — in the past month he’s gone from one full-page Sunday style strip at random intervals to one per week, and now will be producing five B&W daily-style strips between Sundays. The only downside to this is that he’ll only be updating every other day, so look for five dailies and a Sunday over each fortnight. Still, this represents a massive uptick in delivered comics and I’m glad of it.

Speaking of anniversaries (we were so, dammit!) the next 24 hours or so will see two: Kathy Peterson’s Kidnapped By Gnomes turns over the odometer on strip number 100 today, and Sheldon hits the big 2000 tomorrow (hopefully without any computer crashes and general downfalls of society; just in case, I’m holed up in a bunker adjacent to the Fleenplex with all the necessities).

Yeah, we’re back here again. Bear with me, okay?

I’m gearing up to revisit the question of Webcomics/Not Webcomics? with which I started all those months ago. In truth, revisiting this question’s been inspired by a few things. First, I’ve been conversing with folks I’d been thinking of as “webcomics artists” who, as it turns out, don’t really self-define as such. They see themselves more as minicomics artists who also share their work online. While having comics online is a way to reach a wider audience, it isn’t what they consider their primary delivery system and these artists don’t do anything particularly hypertexty. I empathize: I certainly do not consider myself a webcomics artist even though comics I’ve done are available online. I didn’t put them there, but they’re findable. (It’s the Internet. Everything is findable.)

It’s also been spurred on by looking at pictures of SPX this past weekend. It was a lot easier to get there when I was living in Delaware and presenting with ICAF (back when ICAF ran at the same time and place as SPX; it’s actually starting tomorrow in the Madison Building in the Library of Congress in Washington DC), but it makes me wonder a little. One of the things I liked so much about SPX (and MoCCA, to a lesser extent) was the amount of non-comics items made by people who do comics. Like fabric robots, for example. It’s something I’m more familiar with from zine fairs, but it’s that same “Hey, check out this cool thing I made!” vibe (Gary also mentioned this point in his SPX recap post). You get to meet in person the people behind the work. That’s something I don’t feel like I get in quite the same way with webcomics. (Not to say it isn’t there; it’s just different in that it’s mediated by technology—emails, blogs, comments, etc.—rather than a face to face conversation.)
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Editor’s note: We understand that some of you have been having difficulty posting comments — hopefully the new WordPress update will resolve the situation.

Timely mentions: A Girl and Her Fed are bustin’ out the bwow-chicka-wow soundtrack, and Paul Southworth’s Ugly Hill is still pining away for your wholesome love. Won’t you go take a look, please? Guy just had a kid, you owe him for doing his part to populate the planet with cool kids.

So, final notes from SPX — it’s not a webcomics specific show (really, what is?), but it’s got the same aesthetic as webcomics: lots of creative people, each one saying I made this, and other people responding with emotional and financial support. Witness, if you will, this entirely typical verbal exchange from Saturday afternoon:

This sort of thing was going on all weekend, and while not every exhibitor in the hall is as cool and talented as I hold Raina and Dave to be (not to mention lovely people — we’d been introduced previously, but this was the first time we’d had a chance to talk), every exhibitor in the hall was held in that regard by somebody. And chances are, that somebody came to buy.

What they tend to buy is on some form of wood — prints, art, books, Chris Yates’s incredible jigsaw puzzles — rather than t-shirts, which makes this an unusual audience for the webcomics creator. Although there were shirts to be had, and I did purchase one from Leah Riley (in the past my CBLDF boothmate, once one of the Lovely Ladies of Lulu, currently half of the husband-and-wife creative team behind Robohobo and Willrad, and always one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet). Not because my wife needed another t-shirt mind you, but because the design of a squid forming a heart with its tentacles was just so damn good. Missed my chance for her fabric sculpture robots because they sold out too quickly, dammit. But my point being, if it’s fabric and it’s good enough, it’ll still sell.

I’ll also note that those are just starting out in webcomics would find SPX an attractive place to get the word out. Case in point, I met a couple of guys named Doc and Todd walking around and dropping the business card for their new collective, Killjoy Comics. Five years ago, they probably would have spent most of the year producing minis and hitting two or three shows with cheap tables, trying to get the word out. Today, you can still do those minis, but you don’t have to wait to pull your readers in, because you can continuously post your work to the web while accumulating enough material for print.

We’ve really reached that happy point where the distinction between indy/small press comics and webcomics is largely academic. So if you read this, if you love webcomics like I do, make your plans for Bethesda next year — there’s a mountain of talent and it’s all deserving of your support.

Photos below the cut.
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Hey, Ugly Hill is back. Why yes, we did mention this yesterday, but every one of you not reading Ugly Hill is taking food directly from the mouth of Paul Southworth’s infant son, you heartless jerks. Click over there now. Read the archives, too.

Speaking of guys with young sons, there’s BLC-mate Paul Taylor who has a new limited-run print up in his store. Buy it or heartless jerk, etc. And no infant sons, but check out the scene on my toy shelf now that Ananth & Hawk got the reorders in. It’s like that Zlik wants to watch Eve kick Diablo‘s ass as soon as he sets foot out of his little house.

Back to SPX — there are webcomickers with plans. Schemes, even. Shall we examine some?

• Aaron Diaz tells us that his Hob storyline in Dresden Codak will be wrapping up around year’s end, and then he’s getting to work on a Dresden Codak book. But Gary, I hear you cry, with the large layouts and detailed visuals, how will he manage to reproduce all that sweet art in a book? Two words for you my friend:

  Coffee.
  Table.

  Diaz is planning on an oversize trim, and that immediately propels this book to the top of the Pre-emptive Must-Buy List for 2008 (tied for second: Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet, Kean Soo’s Jellaby, and Scott McCloud’s ZOT! omnibus). Diaz said he hoped to have the book out in time for APE, but I see this morning that the Spurge has confirmed that APE will be shifting from its traditional April date to November. Hey Aaron I still want your book in the Spring okay thanks.

• Singular-named mckenzee is going to be very, very busy. By this time next year, look for him to have no fewer than four separate projects going:
  1. Sinister Bedfellows will continue
  2. He’s recruiting artists for Bearcats of Mandu — an exploration of the recent travails of Nepal and the Nepalese royal family, depicted as furries
  3. He’s busy absorbing the lessons of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way to produce The Adventures of Maintenance Man — in a city where all the capes live in the same apartment building, why shouldn’t the super to the supers be based on Warren Ellis?
  4. Plus a series of one-offs like the achingly beautiful C∂ulhuvi∂a, which he hopes to print into hand-made books. Depending on the cost, these could be printed on Japanese seaweed paper, with hand-sewn bindings. The Pre-emptive Must-Buy List for 2008 is about to get another addition.
• Bernie Hou has plans, oh so many plans. Awesome plans ready to bust open the whole Web 2.0 deal and kick that number to to 3.0, maybe 3.2. But as some of them are still in development, we’ll have to tell you about them later, but here’s a hint — there exists a mathematical possibility of an Alien Loves Predator book.
• He told me at the show, but I didn’t realize how close the time frame was. Jinxlets are nigh. And there’s this whole season coming up when stockings need to be stuffed.

More tomorrow, and photos maybe.

Quickly now: an outstanding use of the Dinosaur Comics template (via Dirk Deppey), the welcome return of Ugly Hill, and the Octopus Pie book on pre-order.

Okay, Small Press Expo, 2007. Fleen was proud to meet with a wide variety of webcomickers exhibiting at the show, including (in no particular order) Colleen Venable, who I forgot earlier, sorry!, Chris Yates, Aaron Diaz, David Malki !, Bernie Hou, Box Brown, Joe Sayers, Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman, Leah & Chris Riley, Kris Straub, Dave Kellett, Howard Tayler, David Willis, and Brad Guigar. Achewood won what I believe is its first major award, the Ignatz for Outstanding Online Comic (more on that later). Webcomics journalism was represented by Xaviar Xerexes and Mister T, and I had a nice conversation with Heidi MacDonald as well. Interesting tidbits & photos over the next couple of posts … for now, I want to talk about a session that took place on Saturday afternoon.

At the moderator’s mic was the able and amiable Josh Fruhlinger, who wrangled Bill Griffith, Nick Gurewitch, Keith Knight, and Ted Rall. The conversation ranged widely across the various experiences of the four creators in the world of print comic single panels/strips, but towards the end took a turn towards issues of the web. Asked about their use of the web as a medium for interacting with their audiences, Griffith replied,

If you have a website, the logical thing is to put your strip there for free … I have that little niche [online] and print, and at this point, I need both of them. My online sales account for half of my income.

Which sentiments ought to be familiar to all reading this. But following up the point later, Rall took a decidedly different tack:

If every cartoonist would agree to take their work offline forever, we would all make fifteen times as much money. We’ve done a really stupid thing [by putting content online].

Now let’s be clear about two things: one, Rall was not speaking in direct reply to Griffith’s point. And two, he’d just been talking about the history of specifically editorial cartoonists (of which he is one), and the rapid decline in their numbers (specifically cited: in 1960, there were more editorial cartoonists in New York City alone than there are now in the whole of the United States).

Still, this struck me as a monumentally absurd statement — from our researches here at the Fleenplex, it appears that only new cartoonists in this country that are able to make a living from their cartooning are the ones that do the exact opposite of what Rall proposes. Seeking reaction from webcomickers in attendence elicited a uniform disagreement with Rall, but I’d like to open the question more broadly. If you’re a webcomics creator that makes a significant portion of your living from your creation, can you see a set of circumstances where Rall’s assertion makes sense, or is it just crazy talk?

Memorable Quotes:

Tayler, in reaction to the Rall quote — We’re about to do a really stupid thing if we pay attention to Ted Rall.
Willis, ditto — I can’t hear him through my big wad of cash.

On the indoor front: what could be better than opening up the just-arrived Little Dee Volume 2 and finding a strip that you own? Finding another one. Plus nearly 18 months of daily strips (Jan 2006 to June 2007), packed full of the sweet awesome that drips from Chris Baldwin’s pen. If you haven’t obtained this yet, we can’t be friends.

On the outdoor front: a surprising number of webcomickers apparently believe in the ancestral game of the Scots. From Chris VanGompel:

What started as a conversation in the Something Awful forums has become comicalized. When discussing conventions, the idea of a Webcomics Open golf outing was proposed. Open to all webcomic creators, what could be better than boozing it up on a golf course to meet and greet fellow artists in the medium?

Well, KC Green of Horribleville implemented the idea and I continued it.

Really, wouldn’t a webcomic golf outing be splendid? Knickers, carts and booze, in a mutant get-together spawned of the intertrons?

Indeed it would, Chris. I forsee a side-trip at San Diego next year. Okay, off to SPX, see you there.