I’m actually really excited about MoCCA, now that I’ve actually gotten my head around going (I kind of forgot that I’d agreed to go…). Part of what turned the tide from freaking out to looking forward to it was actually taking some time to sit down and look through the list of attendees, which ranges from a number of folks I already know, including the amazing Cathy Leamy , to folks whose work I know but have never met (like Pat Lewis). It’s a little bit of ‘zines, a little bit of minicomics, larger publishers, smaller publishers, and a bunch in between. It’s also exciting because every year I say I’m going to go and I never quite make it there.

Not this year!

One of the folks I’m most looking forward to catching up with, since it’s been too long since I’ve seen any of his recent work, is Mark Burrier. He publishes a number of print-only works, like Noose, and some sketchbook collections, and has a really interesting gallery of his different comic and illustration works (including a fabulous skateboard design. I was first introduced to his work at SPX and was kind of captivated by his website, which I find uses color in evocative ways. There’s something about the combination of the delicate linework and the way he uses color that I find very compelling.

While he’s perhaps not technically a webcomics artist, you can see little bits of his comics through his website. He’s certainly one of those artists who I wish did publish online more frequently, but it’s also one of those cases where I’m totally smitten with the print-only works as well; they have amazing covers and are absolutely worth checking out in person.

Watch for some more of my MoCCA picks for next week’s column…

Good news, everybody! Digger returns tomorrow.

I’m a day late to this one: Good natured snarkery or fannish entitlement? T Campbell takes on For Better Or For Worse. Kinda mixed on this issue — on the one hand, FBOFW remains Lynn Johnston’s story to tell (or screw up) as she wishes, but it remains the critic’s perogative to take the creator to task if that story isn’t done well.

On the other hand, making those criticisms by putting words into the mouths of analogues of the creator’s family — there’s some kind of logical flaw there, but I don’t know the Latin term for it.

And on the other-other hand, I’m intensely glad that Anthony shaved the moustache, as there’s less competition for me.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel; soon I will have reliable internet during the day again. In the meantime, please enjoy the following slight amusements.

• Surprisingly touching, considering it’s a) stick figures; and b) a character that I’ve really grown to hate on a visceral level.
• Seven years without missing a day, and a buffer of nearly seven weeks built up. Must be the desert air and lack of drunken stupors that are otherwise so common in the cartooning classes.
• Speaking of drunken stupors (gotta be related somehow): ladies & gentlemen: Lieutenant Junior Grade Crunch (context here).
• And, from the mailbag:
  

  On June 12th of last year, Ben Heaton and Lewis Powell started a webcomic to answer the question “How long can you draw out a story whose plot consists, primarily, in characters refraining from purchasing groceries?”

  While the answer is not yet definitive, we can now safely say that it takes longer than a year.

  Clocking in with a momentous 157th strip on Wednesday, June 13th, Terror Island is not only the first gamepiece photocomic on the web, it is also the longest continuously updating gamepiece photocomic on the web.

  I first met those guys last year at San Diego when they came up with one of the more amusing webcomic sketch memes I’ve seen (latest example: here). Happy 157th Stripaversary.

Received from a one Mister Richard Stevens III, Esq.:

Looks like that bit I heard about Cathy being handed off was wrong, I am recanting as hard as possible.

Where, under the headline Aaack! My Mistake- Cathy is NOT Quitting one may read:

Sorry, Cathy! I blogged on LJ that I’d heard that Cathy Guisewite was giving the reins of her comic to another artist, but found out today that this is definitely not the case. She’s one of the good ones, a cartoonist who does their own work.

We at Fleen apologize to Ms Guisewite for helping our part in the misinformation, but still think that Cathy would look better with a nose.

Apparently, without realizing it, I may have scooped the world and lucked upon unreleased news concerning a superstar of the newspaper comics page.

If so, I wholeheartedly apologize for this inadvertent act of journalism, and promise not to journalise again in the future. On the other hand, I haven’t been able to confirm the story at all with the syndicate, which would put me back on the more familiar ground of unsubstantiated rumormongering.

But because I feel I owe you people at least one bit of factual reportage today, how about this: Darren J. Gendron mails to say

Dear Pirate has reached Strip No. 50.

Plasticine figures and better advice than Dear Abby’s idiot daughter? What are you waiting for?

Looks like one last two month reprieve for Little Dee‘s syndication hopes, Chris Baldwin reports:

The current situation is (and it is in writing to this effect) that I will continue running Little Dee at comics.com until the last day of July. They have requested this as further “development” time.

So Dee will be back to littledee.net on August 1st unless they make an actual offer of syndication.

I wish this gray area of what’s happening wasn’t continuing, but I am still tempted by the carrot they’re dangling.

Okay, here’s where you can help get something good onto the comics pages. It seems that (although curiously, it has not been widely reported) that Cathy Guisewite is handing off writing and/or art duties to a collaborator. From what I can tell, her strip has always metered high in the dump it category of newspaper comic strip polls.

This affords the perfect opportunity to write a polite letter to your local paper’s features editor, asking them to a) move away from a strip that’s gone zombie (that is, moved away from original creator to substitute hacks, a fate recently shared by B.C.), and suggest one that’s both all-ages friendly and amazingly good. Get writin’.

At the AV Club. Man, I love that photo where they look like Dr Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker.

Advance convention circuit news in the mailbag from Mike Russell today, regarding the 4th Annual Stumptown Comics Fest. Want a table? They’re on discount for another week or so:

The Stumptown Comics Fest is preparing for its 4th-annual celebration of comics and cartooning — to be held Saturday and Sunday, September 29 and 30, at the Exhibit Hall of the Lloyd Center Doubletree Hotel in Portland.

The exhibitors’ hall is larger than last year — allowing the Comics Fest to offer 8-foot tables to exhibitors rather than the 6-foot tables of previous years.

Tables are available at discounted early-bird rates of $90 for a full table, $50 for a half table, through June 15.

After June 15, tables will be available at $110 for a full table and $70 for a half table.

Stumptown’s always been webcomics-friendly, so go check out everybody that can’t make it out East for MoCCA, and tell Guest of Honor Shaenon Garrity, that I said hi if you see her.

Lately I’ve been thinking about webcomics sites, specifically how they’re being hosted. What’s really caught my eye are the very basic, DIY kinds of hosting. Of these, I’ve of late been transfixed with webcomics that are available through Livejournal (or those to which I’ve been introduced through Livejournal). Many webcomics have RSS feeds, so updates and new comics and such appear more or less automatically. I’m a major fan of this technology, in part because I have a job which requires me to be online a fair amount as it is (which means when I’m home getting online’s less attractive as an option).

And there’s always the question of remembering to click; there’s a small handful of webcomics that I click to on a daily basis, but it’s becoming more and more common for me to just get them through my friends page if they aren’t ones I read regularly (and some of those are ones I read regularly because they pop up over there). In my defense, I’m getting settled at the new place: I can’t find my flash drive and I’m still painting over the paneling. It’s all making me a little crazy–I’m really ready to be done with it all–and has caused me to space out a bit on important things (for starters, I’ll be at MoCCA later this month; stop by the Trees and Hills table…!)

So things like “simple” and “sweet” are even more so given the state of disrepair, boxes, and so forth in my immediate surroundings. Lately I’ve been really into the totally compelling Normal Life by Natasha Allegri. This site was one of those suggested way back in the beginning when I first started posting here, and it was one I’d always meant to name-check. When I first looked at it, I found that her color work was so breathtaking and her linework so crisp that I immediately wanted to try color work to see if I could capture some of that same emotion, the easy, evocative grace of her images. They remind me a little of Hope Larson‘s work and Leela Corman’s as well. It’s amazing stuff, and I feel like I ought to have mentioned it earlier. I’m not sure how much other work she has out there–or if it’s somewhere other than Livejournal–but what I’ve seen basically just makes me want to see more of her work. It’s gorgeous, and sweet, and straightforward in a way that’s, weirdly, exactly what I want to see.

Three fast things:

1. First seen at ¡Journalista!, since seen elsewhere: 10 Wicked Awesome Webcomics, from something resembling a mainstream publisher.
2. The winner of the DGMED shirt contest is John Riggs, who would like all his adoring fans to know that he’ll do his very best to live up to the vestigal virgin-saint standards expected of a pageant winner in the modern age. Oh, also that he wears a size medium.
3. Today marks almost exactly one year since Ryan North dropped some hints to me that he was working on something extremely cool, and at long last we at Fleen have gotten our act together to offer Project Wonderful ads for your purchase — right now they are a freakin’ bargain.