Thanks to everybody for trying to gin up some conflict on my behalf; you’ll never know how much it touches me to know that webcomics were willing to start a riot on my behalf.

We’ll start with a little something for our readers in the northeastern corner of the US: looks like they won’t be digging up Tom Carvel after all, and I think we all know the reason: zombies.

Megatokyo Volume 5 dropped yesterday; gotta say, it reads much better in bulk than on a per-installment basis. I’d pretty much given up reading MT except in three- to four-week chunks because I’d lose the thread of the story. Of great interest are the timeline and reader’s guide in the back of the book:

• the former puts the whole plot into perspective — from strip 1 to the present day is roughly two months of story time, and everything from June 2001 forward represents a week
• the latter includes character bios so you can remember just who the heck everyone is

Now I’m starting to wonder just how big a story Fred Gallagher intends to make out of Megatokyo; at this point, I think I’d be surprised if we’ve reached the halfway point yet.

I’ve been thinking a fair piece lately about how experience can sometimes alter our understandings of things. One of the first, most important, and basic pieces of advice you’ll hear offered to new webcomics folks, more than just about anything else, is to stick to your updating schedule.

It’s a lesson I’ve taken to heart with posting here, and I only update once a week. I don’t know how you thrice-weekly updaters do it, let alone those who update daily, but I have a whole new kind of respect for you. This year’s been a little nuts for me, and this week is no exception. I’m in the middle of moving, and I was thinking in the car on the last trip to the new house that one major advantage of online comics that I had completely failed to consider is that I don’t have boxes of them stacked up in my kitchen waiting to be transported down the highway.

So I got home and instead of packing, I got online and Googled “webcomics” and “moving” since lately I’m all meta about my reading and my life. I landed at Venus Envy by Erin Lindsey (I’m very, very late to this party, apparently, given the amount of other press I found on this webcomic!). Right now the webcomic is kind of on hold, for a number of different and difficult reasons, but the hiatus also presents the chance for those of us (by which I mean me) not familiar with the site to get caught up on the archives.

There are sections of the webcomic which are autobio, including strips about stress and school, not updating, and getting engaged, all of which are in addition to the regular strip. There’s also a good About page, which I enjoyed reading, plus the Links page is an interesting combination of other trans webcomics out there plus resources about transsexuality, as well as an interesting interview on Comixpedia.

There’s a lot of archives and I’m reading through them in fits and starts in between all this moving and packing and painting. But I like the strip a lot, and not only because it’s adding another voice to an under-represented demographic in webcomics. I feel like these characters are pretty compelling, and that’s significant. It’s something that keeps readers coming back, and judging by the message boards, there’s an exceptionally strong (and vocal) readership at work here.

I’m not sure I can help, though, with Gary’s request from yesterday (this one: somebody please make somebody else cranky so that we have something for tomorrow ). Other than, of course, opening the floor to suggestions for that right-hand margin over there…

Slow, slow, slow slow slooooow. Slow. Um, yeah.

Closest thing to actual news right now is the unfortunate word that Digger is going to a three-week filler break due to creator Ursula Vernon having some tough personal times just now (and just at a nice dramatic ponit in the story, too). Best of luck to Vernon, and we’ll be waiting when she gets back. Plus, any excuse to run pictures of Ed is cool by me.

From the mailbag:

• Alien, creator of Chasing the Sunset, has 400+ strips that (s)he would like some feedback on. That’s a bit much for me to plow through and provide constructive criticism in a timely fashion, so you’re all deputized. Pick a 10 — 20 strip block of strips and drop some comments over there.
• I like short and to the point, as when Paul Meehan wrote (verbatim, in its entirety):
  

  Check it.

  Not sure it really qualifies as a webcomic, but it’s got Nazis. Whoops, Godwined it right out of the gate.

• Oh, wait, here’s some news: Steve Napierski informs us that his Dueling Analogs (by my count, gaming webcomic #3628, out of a total 17493) is now appearing monthly in Hardcore Gamers Magazine. I’m not familiar with the magazine in question, but I don’t think it’s using the word hardcore in the sense of Intensely loyal; die-hard.

Okay, that’s it. Somebody please make somebody else cranky so that we have something for tomorrow.

Steve Troop is offering a deal: more webcomic in return for some vote-related love at the MTV Movie Awards for his Snakes On A Plane/Shatner On A Plane/puppet mashup. In other news, it’s your last chance to get a SOAP shirt from Jeff Rowland, who has declared them newly ironic.

Help Liz Greenfield win stuff for having awesome hair.

Don’t forget: xkcd is daily this week, with an actual story (but don’t worry, still plenty of math, at least today).

Karen Ellis reminds us that there’s never a bad time to say nuuuuucleeeear … WESSELS.

And finally, as it’s now been officially a month since we were threatened with a lawsuit (or, more precisely, a month since we asked exactly what was actionable in our coverage of the Dave Kelly/Todd Goldman story … that chirping of crickets you hear is all the reply we’ve gotten), we at Fleen are now forced to conclude that Goldman’s lawyer believes there never was anything defamatory in our writing.

To commemorate the occasion, we have one (1) Dear God Make Everyone Die t-shirt (size medium) up for grabs; with the AwfulMart down at the moment due to postal rate retooling, this could be your only chance to get one. Anybody that emails to the contact link up and to the right by midnight, 31 May 2007 (EST) with the word “shirt” in the subject line gets entered into the random draw.

The thing to understand about Off-Off Broadway shows, in those little theaters with about 100 seats and something new every night of the week? It’s never quite assured what you’re going to get. Could be the next great playwright (in about 20 years); could be five friends on a lark; could be fairies on a string or a naked guy slapping meat on his head.

Or it could be Gloria Calderón Kellett — wife of Sheldon creator Dave Kellett, actress, screenwriter, sketch comedienne, and all-around creative genius — leading a cast of really talented movie & TV regulars in a monologue show about love, relationships, and doing your best to get it right.

Ms Calderón Kellett’s show, Skirts & Flirts, had its New York premiere last week, running five shows in the East Village. Thirteen characters monolgoued their way through their intricately interwoven stories, featuring everybody from a sports-crazed straight guy (and closet knitter) to the best female friend a man could ever have (she’ll help you get laid) to a 22-times bridesmaid who really wishes the bride (Becky! Beckyyyyy … Becky) all the best in a boozy, funny/tragic reflection on loneliness.

Other standout characters included a personal trainer who used to be a fat guy, an entrepenuer interviewing boyfriend candidates, and a musician who totally rocks the Journey (and sometimes — Air Supply) but is having a teensy bit of heartache just now. Keep your eyes on Calderón Kellett’s website and go check out any show she’s involved in if it’s within three states of you. I hear that there may be such a show in Los Angeles in the next three or four months.

Now here’s where I’m torn — the other Kellett in the show, Dave Kellett, did a bang-up job as groom on the verge of marriage that could have come off like just a stand-up routine of my wedding was such a pain in the ass and instead became a funny-sad meditation on how the process became more important than the people. I want the world to know that he was just as strong and nuanced a performer as the professional actors in the cast.

But on the other hand, I don’t want the one person in the cast without an IMDB profile to think that this acting thing is more important than the cartooning thing. So: Dave Kellett, don’t quit your day job. Please?

So this email showed up the other day:

Alright, you probably get hit with this kind of question a lot, but I’ve got kind of a new comic and I was wondering if you had and tips/tricks/tactics for getting the word out? I’m not much on the whole promoting yourself thing.

Several possibilities, actually, and today offers some good examples of each. Up first, we have Brad Guigar, Master Of The Press Release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 18, 2007

‘PHABLES’ AWARDED BEST LOCAL COLUMN IN PHILADELPHIA AREA

Brad Guigar’s weekly comic about life in Philadelphia, Phables (www.phables.com), has been awarded Best Local Column by the Greater Philadelphia chapter of the Society of Prefessional Journalists.

“This is a really big step in broadening the acceptance of the comics as more than just ‘kids’ stuff,'” said Guigar. “Seeing ‘Phables’ honored as a newspaper column is a significant achievement for me.”

Phables tells stories about ordinary Philadelphians living their extraordinary lives. Readers often submit stories to Guigar, who then interviews them and creates a full-page comic based on the results. Sometimes Guigar tells his own stories or shares opinions about city life from a first-person perspective.

Earlier in the year, “Phables” was nominated for an Eisner Award, which is considered the highest honor in the comic-book industry. That award will be announced in July.

See how it’s done? Timely; strong prose; quote in the second graf (written in the third person); short, punchy grafs with one idea each; URL provided for quick linking in the story; easily editable by somebody (like me) anxious to fill column-inches, but wanting to feel like they actually contributed something to the final copy. Guigar’s an expert at these things (but then, he’s been in the newz biz for years), so anybody want to write their own — I strongly urge you to steal from the best. Take the text above, replace with your info, and off you go.

Second, the low-key announcement on the social networking site, which can work surprisingly well. Of course, Mer Gran has a couple of things going for her that you might not:

• She’s spent more than a third of her life webcomicking;
• The right couple hundred people already read her LJ;
• She’s got a proven track record to go on

If you don’t have those things, start with the network you do have; if your work’s good (and here good means better than what’s required to make your existing friends say it’s good just to humor you), they’ll push the word out for you. Doesn’t hurt if you did what Mer did, which was send me the first seven episodes of her new webcomic a few weeks ago as a sneak peek. Got my interest, made me feel like I’m in a secret, cool-kids club, made me want to pimp the hell out of it.

(Obligatory disclaimer: Mer’s a personal friend, and she did our masthead illustration up there.)
(Obligatory disclaimer to the disclaimer: This doesn’t negate the fact that Octopus Pie is twelve kinds of ass-kicking awesome.)

And third possibility: have a connection to a previous story; this particularly works if the new story is good news, everyone.

Not really related to the promotion, but I feel obligated to mention it anyway: make sure your project is worth promoting. Various creators have made various suggestions over the years, but several have stuck with me:

• Do the first six months without telling anybody
• After six months, if you can stand to look at your earlier work, feel free to post it (and you have a hell of a buffer)
• If you can’t, redo it the way you’d do it now
• Don’t suck
• And if you have sucked in the past, please stop sucking

‘Cause I gotta warn you, there’s a zillion crappy webcomics out there already, and if yours sucks, I ain’t gonna mention it, just as a kindness to my readers. Fortunately in this case, I dig squid. Two pieces of advice:

1. The archive is counterintuitive, and I stopped reading after about three strips
2. S-Q-U-I-D; misspelling the name of your own comic doesn’t make me hopeful

Still — squid.

Good: Holy crap, 3000 strips at Superosity? Words are not sufficient.

Bad: Behind the times on this one: via ¡Journalista! and Glenn Hauman, news that Kaja Foglio is ailing:

The bottom line is SHE WILL BE FINE … eventually, but could easily be in the hospital for several weeks.

We will do our best to continue posting Girl Genius, but as Kaja has to walk me through everything on the phone at this point, if she does have to go in for surgery or if the drugs convince her that she can only converse in Venusian, we may be out of luck.

This was Kaja’s idea, by the way, I was quite prepared to put up a “We are experiencing Technical Difficulties” banner, but she insisted we try to work through it, so I hope you appreciate it.

Nothing would make her happier than to receive a ‘get-well’ card or two. These can be sent to Studio Foglio. The kids and I will visit her every day.

For reference, the address for Studio Foglio is:

Studio Foglio, LLC
2400 NW 80th St. #129
Seattle, WA
98117-4449 USA

Good: Over at Graphic Smash and/or Broken Voice, David A J Berner informs us:

Want your own version of Shades to read while on the move? Well, thanks to those nice people at ROK Comics, now you can!

To make it more mobile-friendly BVC has pared the text down to a minimum to leave just the core story elements and all the action.

Visit the ROK Comics website and you’ll find the first few episodes of “Shades” in the Adventure Comics section.

But, if you want to try it for free first (and who doesn’t?!), visit the Freefall Comics area and you can test the system by downloading a FREE TRAILER for the mobile phone version of Shades.

Bad: Also from Graphic Smash, specifically today’s installment of Bang Barstal, The William G says:

Hey guys. This is a pretty important post here, and I hope you all can understand where I’m coming from after reading it.

Bang Barstal will be ending with the Red, White, Blue storyline. It’ll take us close to the end of the year (maybe longer) to get it all finished, so there’ll be plenty more for you to read.

And when I finish writing It’s About Girls for Sahsha, that’ll be the end of that series as well.

Let me explain: Comics are intensely time-consuming things. And while I enjoy making them, it’s coming at the cost of things that I’m finding more important as I grow older: Health, love, happiness. You need to have a balance in your life, a center, and spending a goodly amount of my weekend working on comics is making it too difficult for me to find them.

So, the comics have to go.

I won’t say that I’ll never draw again, or that there won’t be more of Bang’s bat-swinging adventures in the future. And hell, I’ll always be blogging. But as it’s been said: A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And if I’m going to find a centered, balanced life, I got to do it now before all of those opportunities I’ve been ignoring stop knocking at my door.

Big thanks to all of my friends here in the Modern Tales family, and big thanks to all of you for reading the comic over the last year and a half. You’re the best audience a guy could ever have, and I hope that by the end this story you’ll have had an enjoyable reading experience. Which, you know, is what every creator’s goal is when we pick up the pencil.

That kind of sucks. How about we end on …

Good: pandaxpress! was picked up for distribution by Image Comics:

Following in the footsteps of LIONS, TIGERS AND BEARS, LEAVE IT TO CHANCE and other graphic novels enjoyed by both children and adults comes Shadowline’s latest offering; PX! BOOK ONE: A GIRL AND HER PANDA.

This full color, 168-page landscape format graphic novel tells the story of Dahlia, a young girl who, with the help of her Giant Panda sidekick, sets off on an epic journey around the globe to rescue her missing father.

PX! BOOK ONE: A GIRL AND HER PANDA goes on sale August 1, 2007. ISBN:978-1-58240-820-0 Diamond Order Code #MAR078287

Big claim, invoking Leave It To Chance around me, ’cause I loved that book. But I also think that PX! is some damn fine work, and I don’t think that Trembley and Anderson are gonna leave me hanging on a cliffhanger for four freakin’ years. Pre-order this one, it’s gonna be good.

Lately I’ve been wondering about some of the less tangible elements of webcomics. I’ve thought a fair bit about how webcomics appear in different contexts; what happens, for example, when webcomics surface at academic conferences, in classrooms, as coloring books, or printed out and taped to your computer monitor (weird, maybe, but it happens) or your fridge. What happens when the webcomics you follow go on holiday or hiatus (for whatever reason, but having kids is a really good one–congrats, folks!) and so you get guest strips (over 18 on that last link please, though I know you’re all gonna click it now)—which I kind of adore—instead? I’ve been thinking about fair use and copyright, in part due to the idea of printing webcomics for later use (be that reading or for the classroom or whatever), and the relative advantages and disadvantages of publishing online and offline.

I had to laugh a little when someone recently described me as “old school� in my publishing tastes; he was right, of course, but it got me thinking about, basically, why do I like what I like in webcomics? What qualities, if any, do these works share with each other? Do they share those qualities with comics that I enjoy offline? (Shouldn’t they?)

Because while my enjoyment of these works isn’t solely due to the context in which I encounter them, or experiencing the works in question, or even hobnobbing, in the archaic verb sense, with the folks who create them (though, embarrassingly, I quite literally squealed with delight recently at seeing new pages of this work-in-progress) those things are each in their own ways a bit of a factor. If someone goes to the effort of putting a book in my hand, it’s way more likely I’m going to look at the website they’re promoting and spend some time, you know, reading it. It’s actually how I got into at least one of the webcomics I now follow (smart marketing, you!). But, in truth, since the only thing I’m losing is a little time, clicking on a link isn’t really all that difficult. It seems more to be A) what keeps me reading that day and B) what hooks me enough to click on it again and again (lather, rinse, repeat).

So, to this end I tried a little experiment this week.
(more…)

Before you get your hopes up about the return of a long–dormant favorite-of-the-masses webcomic, be aware of two things:

1. It’s previously-published material, not the resumption of the story.
2. The creator is on record as saying, “Every time I get an email that tells me I have to finish RPG World, I push back the date that I’m gonna bring it back by a month.”

As of this morning, Fleen estimates that RPG World will return no later than September, 2057.

I hadn’t really done more than skim the Wapsi Girl Project since it launched ’bout two months back, but something about this young lady caught my eye; can’t imagine what it might have been. A quick stop by her artblog led to her webcomic, The Monsters’ Republic of Monstairia, which is proving to be pretty damn good. Starts here, and I’m enjoying my read-through.

And finally, It’s apparently Webcomics Baby Week (what did you expect with all the webcomics boning last year?). Congrats to Chicklike Godhead Pete on the birth of baby Sarah Abrams, and to Jon Rosenberg on the birth of baby To Be Announced (maybe … we don’t have a definite report yet, but I have 6:12pm yesterday in the pool) Norah Hayden Rosenberg. And naturally, condolences to their wives for the traumatic experiencing of birthing webcomics spawn.

Okay, so on the one hand you’ve got Wondermark, by David Malki !, hitting 300 strips old today (although he also wonders if guest strips count):

Due to last year’s Guest Month it is really only the 281st regular comic by me, so maybe we will have a party around comic #319 or so.

Similarly, the venerable Megatokyo is at strip #999 right now (again, counting guest strips). We at Fleen hope that when #1000 shows up (maybe tomorrow, but the progress bar shows 0% done as of this writing), that Fred Gallagher enjoys the accomplishment. Maybe with some cake?

It seems to me that people often take significant milestones as an opportunity to reassess and recharge the ol’ creative batteries. Vacations are also good for that: lotsa of verbage from Josh Lesnick, on vacation in Mexico, about not really enjoying how a webcomics hobby became a webcomics career. Maybe?

There’s a crab, and some metaphorical crap flung at Tim Buckley and the no-talent kids of newspaper comic artists, and he says he feels like kind of a dong before thanking people who have helped him. All in all, looks pretty damn therapeutic for Lesnick, and we at Fleen hope he’s feeling better, and remind him to be careful about eating the worm.