From David Malki !, an announcement:

The following announcement is only for people who write short stories and would like to get paid for it! Everyone else please close your eyes.

This is an open call for entries for a book that Ryan and Matt and I are publishing. It’s called Machine of Death and the premise is basically “What if everyone knew how they were going to die?”

Details on this coolness at machineofdeath.net!

Webcomickers will be found at opposite ends of Massachusetts starting today, what with Jephy McJacquespants, the Applegeeks crüe and Rob Balder holding forth at Genericon, on the campus of RPI, in Troy, NY (and rumor has it that at least one more long-time webcomic guy lives ’round those parts). Meanwhile, look for Paul Southworth, R Stevens 3, J-Ro, and Shaenon Garrity bringin’ the love and panel wisdom to Vericon, on the campus of Hahvahd in Cambridge, MA. If you bring Southworth some lube, I will give you a dollar. Update: And some Charmin! And yes, I know that Troy, NY is not technically in Massachusetts, but I did my graduate work at Rensselaer, and trust me, it’s bloody close enough. And, given the cold snap in the Northeast this weekend, coolness will be in extra-abundance.

I’ve felt like this on occasion. Don’t tell my wife, but it’s really cool.

Ever wonder what it’s like to be Liz Cusack Greenfield? She is very polite about penises, and exudes cool even in a steam room.

Update: What’s cooler than a new Winterview? How about one that a) takes place in Halifax; and b) features Bryan Lee O’Malley and Hope Larson? Five bucks says that somebody gets a powerup during the interview.

News roundup from the world of webcomics, kiddies! Keep those press releases, announcements, and suchlike coming through the contact page.

Item! Fleen fave Alien Loves Predator celebrates 200 strips by switching to a twice a week schedule. Bernie Hou, chronicler of the soul of New York City, tells all:

Here we are, episode #200, and what better way to mark the occasion by announcing something crazy that I’m unprepared to do. Starting this week I’ll be posting two new comics per week instead of one. This week, the next update will be on Friday, and then Tuesdays and Fridays thereafter. I figure most of the new comics will be the old-school, shorter 3-panellers that you enjoyed through the first year for about 130 episodes, but for those of you who dig the full-page pieces of the last year, I’ll probably do some o’ those once in a while. All depends on what mood I’m in.

We at Fleen sincerely hope that Hou is frequently in a good mood, ’cause those full-page pieces rock. Especially when he channels Chuck Jones.

Item! Alex [redacted: see posting from 17 March 2010] informs us:

I’m not sure if you do this kind of thing, it is definitely a “shameless press release.” I just started a webcomic, Monkeys In Orbit. It’s about two monkeys that get stranded in space during the space race of the 50’s and 60’s. It’s in the prologue stage right now, but it would be really cool if you checked it out. I hope you like it!

Alex, it’s most definitely the sort of thing we do, at least since we rededicated ourselves to it last week. We’re a bit late running your release, but that just means that people will have more strips to enjoy when they click over. The story starts in the depths of WWII, and the art reminds me of Wang Xuanming (which, as far as I’m concerned, is a very good thing). Alex has had a few delays, but will be kicking the strip back into production this week, which can only mean more monkeys. If you can’t get enough of space, monkeys, space monkeys, or backwards “R”s and “N”s, check out Monkeys In Orbit!

Item! Speaking of those space monkeys, Alex Jeffries fills us in more about its collective:

The Chameleon Collective is now fortified with even more essential webcomics, welcoming newcomer Steamed Carrot and Running in the Halls to an already hilarious line-up of Awesome Burger (a new project from the creator of the Sordid Affairs), It’s Not Abuse It’s Love and from the creator of Hell Ain’t So Bad, Monkeys in Orbit.

This former-triumvirate now pentarchy plans to flex its newfound power and return to its roots! That’s right. We aim, once again, to connect more fully with the fans and provide a greater experience. Expect an overload of contests and collaborations.

The doors are definitely open to other eager artists who wish to join up! We look forward to the future (it’s rather hard to look back on the future…) and what it will bring our members. I imagine it’ll be pretty fun.

Item! Darren J. Gendron likes pirates!

To properly celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day, Dear Pirate is running a special double issue today, featuring the secret Pirate Alphabet.

Item! David Willis is takin’ care of his Blank Label-mate, Paul Taylor in style. Bid on a piece of webcomics history and help out a little guy that needs it all at the same time.

Item! Speaking of Blank Label, {K|Ch}risto{ph|f}er Straub reports that next week you should be able to grab a Starslip Crisis mini-book.

And Item! Fleen congratulates Christopher Wright on beating the unemployment bugaboo. Today he goes back to work, stickin’ it to The Man. As we all know, The Man is very stickable.

From the Department of Corrections: Per Campbell’s response, this post has been edited to reflect the correct title of the book; Fleen regrets the error.

Editor’s note: Hoo boy, could this one devolve quickly. I’ve spent a month now very carefully reading and re-reading, very carefully making and cross-checking notes, very carefully writing what you’re about to read. As we discuss the book, please bear in mind that we’re not going to argue opinion on this one; whether or not Campbell is correct is for others to fight over. We will be looking at only whether or not Campbell has effectively made and advanced his points.

The redoubtable T Campbell began The A History of Webcomics as a series of articles over at Comixpedia, later expanding it into a book via Antarctic Press. This book is for me: I’ve been into webcomics since nearly the beginning, I have a lengthy “regular reading” list, I know a lot of the people who make ’em, and I know their history.

And it still turns out that this book really only comes together if you live in Campbell’s brain. Allow me to explain.
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Christopher B. Wright continues to triumph over adversity. Today sees the return of his second strip, Kernel Panic, after too long an absence. The archiving is still a bit wonky, but that will presumably be fixed up as the site continues its redesign.

Welcome back to Alan and his crew, and please — only one Binky at a time.

Some few items you may have missed …

Over at Something*Positive, it’s question time as Randy Milholland looks for seven reader questions that he can answer in-strip (as seen previously here). If you have something that’s been burning a hole in your brain about S*P, drop him a line. As an added bonus, Milholland has added links for the previous five installments, which helps to keep storylines accessible.

Christopher B. Wright is overcoming recent Job-like travails that have beset him to kick said travails square in the ‘nads. Or at lest, update Help Desk regularly, which is almost as good.

John Allison is making me fall in love with Scary Go Round all over again today. You have a clash of good vs. evil, a girlfight, Scott Pilgrim-esque videogame visual shorthand (similarly seen in PvP recently), and a punch that’s a total justification for why Esther is my new favorite character. PLUS a panty shot! It’s like fan service just for me.

And if that weren’t more fun than humans should be allowed to have (and my goodness, don’t you think it should be?), Allison informs us that although he will not be in attendance at SDCC next week, copies of SGR Book 4, The Retribution Index, will. Note to self: bring another $20 to Comic Con.

MoCCA final notes and photos to come in a separate post, so let’s get back to the wider world of webcomics. Lotta stuff going on, kids.

In the Back From Hiatus Department, please enjoy both Help Desk and the song stylings of Eric Snark.

Little Dee has begun reruns to acclimate the comics.com readers with its general awesomeness. I must confess, I have a touch of trepidation about a) the now-to-be-locked archives; and b) the two-week delay in strips showing up at Chris Baldwin’s site. Yes, I could just view them at comics.com, but that site is a) slow as shit; b) allergic to my browser; and c) full of pop-ups when accessed with IE, which I hate using. But it’s still Little Dee, so I’ll be there every day because I’m that adorable girl’s bitch.

The WCCA nominations are out, and there are some tough categories this year. Achewood vs. Scary Go Round vs. Perry Bible Fellowship? Copper vs. A Lesson Is Learned vs. Applegeeks? We talked about their process earlier in the year, but a question has occurred to me just now as I’m typing this. I want to know — even more than the size of the electorate on these things, about which I’m curious — “Outstanding Comedic Comic”? Isn’t that a tad redundant? Mark Mekkes, if you’re reading this, fill us on on the decision to use that wording.

Speaking of Scary Go Round, the SGR Idol results continue to stream in; I’ve particularly enjoyed runners-up #1 (it takes some serious art chops to have as wide a range as Tyler Martin has) and #4, which features a totally awesome badger omnibus, and nicely captures the speech patterns of Tackleford’s goblins.

And in one of those occurrences that may be most accurately described as ‘explosive’, Narbonic is abandoning the subscription model, and its full archives are opening up. Given that we’re talking about what’s likely the most successful sbuscription-locked strip on Modern Tales (and possibly the most successful subscription-locked strip, period), does this mean that that particular business model is officially dead? Comments from Colonel Joey here, and your thoughts welcome.

Finally, in response to reader requests, we’re in the process of tagging articles (there are a lot of them) with searchable labels, and will be making those visible in (hopefully) the near future.

In what can only be a manifestation of the bird flu jumping from my lungs to webcomics, Graphic Smash, Modern Tales, and Help Desk all are unresponsive at this time. Sorry about that.

More on this important story as it develops.

Edit: Well, that was quick. GS and MT are back, seemingly spurred to resume service by the mindless bitching above. Back to sleep now.

Not one, but two webcomickers are celebrating a significant anniversary, oh, now-ish.

Today marks 10 years of Help Desk (although not all online; it started in a now-defunct magazine); Christopher Wright sent a nice summary of what 10 years with Ubersoft have been like:

Over the years it has parodied Microsoft‘s incomprehensible release schedule, the Microsoft antitrust trial, the Y2K bug, unreasonably restrictive software licenses, online privacy and user tracking, identity theft, ridiculous software patents, software patent lawsuits, copyright infringement lawsuits, and the insidious communist plot to destabilize the free market with the PNG graphics format. It has taken broadsides at Microsoft, IBM, Apple, SCO, Iomega, Sun, Oracle, Diebold, the Federal Government, the RIAA, the MPAA, and even — on occasion — Richard Stallman.

The cartoonist would like to take this moment to thank the computer industry for its tireless efforts to keep him inundated with new material.

On behalf of the computer industry, you’re welcome.

And tomorrow marks 9 years of Goats; Jon Rosenberg didn’t send along a quote, but did note the event on his front page. In the meantime, let’s reflect on exactly how long 10 (or 9) years is … it’s a hell of a long time to continue any creative endeavor. And consider how long 9 (or 10) years is in internet time … that’s practically geological-scale time. Time enough to see an entire medium create itself, grow, develop, and devolve into family spats (no links; today’s a happy day). Goats may have been the first “two guys sitting around” webcomic, which makes it the Platonic Ideal of an entire genre. If you see Rosenberg on the street, thank him and buy him a beer. But don’t touch him; he’s not big on touching.

Since Goats has become increasingly story-driven, you’ll find a cheat sheet I wrote a while back behind the cut; it’ll get you caught up on nine years of fabulously twisted backstory. Someday, there may even be more links in there, but in the meantime, Goats features an easily-searched archive and character guide.

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Jeph Jacques continues his quest to feature cameos from every webcomic in existence. Helen and Dave appear in the background of panel 1 in yesterday’s Questionable Content. This is an incredibly dangerous trend … stick with me here.

QC is fast becoming the Kevin Bacon of webcomics; if Dwayne McDuffie’s theory of TV crossovers applies to webcomics as well, this means webcomcis as we know them don’t really exist. Counting cameos and explicit crossovers, you can play Six Degrees of Marten and Faye with Punks and Nerds, Something Positive, Midnight Macabre, New Gold Dreams, Queen of Wands, Bobbin, Scandal Sheet, Scary Go Round, Bobbins, Goats, Worlds of Peril (subscription needed, links through Fineas), megaGAMERZ 3133T, The Creatures In My Head, Nukees (which gives us Schlock Mercenary), Mystic for Hire, Buzzboy, Narbonic, Lil’ Mel, Picture Story Theatre, Fans (subscription needed, links through Dr Narbon), College Roomies From Hell, Roomies/It’s Walky/Joyce and Walky, Shortpacked, Melonpool (iteration 1), Cool Cat Studio (reference in Fans to Evil Mike), Lethal Doses, Winter, Mac Hall, Megatokyo, Applegeeks, Angry Zen Master, Little Gamers, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, Waiting for Bob, User Friendly, When I Grow Up, Wigu, Magical Adventures in Space, The TV Network Channel, Overcompensating, PvP, Penny Arcade, Diesel Sweeties, and Sluggy Freelance all sharing a reality.

If the guest strips from when Pete Abram’s daughter was born are considered canon, you can work in Bruno the Bandit, Kevin and Kell and GPF (which leads to Newshounds, Help Desk and Kernel Panic). Actually, allowing guest strips is probably a bad idea, as it permits the Jacques/Logan rivalry further space to spread its poison. Finally, if you consider content not explicitly designed for the web, you can even link in Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield! And that’s just off the top of my head. Now considering that Melonpool rebooted, and Jeff Rowland has a tendency to delete universes, this means that Jacques may have managed to invalidate the existence of most of webcomics.

For the love of God, Jeph … stop hurting webcomics.

Note: Whatever else this series may or may not have accomplished, it certainly got some feedback. Read through the comments for parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. If you haven’t done so previously, check out the work of Lucas TDS, Paul Southworth, Sylvan Migdal, Shaenon Garrity, Jeph Jacques, Christopher Livingston, Sam Logan, and Christopher B. Wright. That’s a lot of webcomics experience talking, and well worth listening to, especially when they agree with me. Okay, onto Part The Last!

Whew! And it all sounded so easy, didn’t it? Some paper, some pencils, a scanner, and a Webcomics Nation account was all that you needed. Hopefully, the past week has given you a few ideas to chew on, and it should be all downhill from here, right?

Right?

Well, sure. Once you figure out where to place word balloons and decide on hand-lettering or a typeface. Oh, and how you’re going to place panels. Plus, characters and story, they have to be interesting. There’s a zillion other things to figure out as you go along, including the part where you decide when to break every single one of these rules o’ readability to fit the story that you’re trying to tell.

And most of all, you have to practice. Let’s revisit the master again, shall we?

… my first instructor at Chouinard Art Institute … greeted his students with the following grim edict: “All of you here have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them, the better it will be for everyone.” This was not a discouraging statement to me, because I was already well into my third hundred thousand.
— Chuck Jones, Chuck Amuck

Almost no matter what you do, you’re going to look back on early efforts and see stuff you would do differently. And with any luck, one hundred thousand drawings later you’ll find that you’re doing things are much, much better. You start drawing, and we’ll start reading. Deal?