The way Exploding Dog is created has always been a point of interest for me. A reader simply sends in to Sam Brown a title for a piece, and then he creates a picture based on how he interprets the title. This method is a simply innovative way to create a web comic while interacting first hand with fans of the strip.

The comics that come from this system are hilarious, poignant, and relates something human with every title. This comic captures humor, but also the sorrow and oddities that make up life. The mix of emotions that these comics create is what makes this strip unique.

The site offers plenty of merchandise to please any web comic shopper’s heart, and I am most definitely going to break my bank for these wonderful tees. Brown is also offering high-quality prints of almost any of his comics as well.

Exploding Dog is a worthy, notable comic that taps into everything wonderful and everything horrible about life, while making snazzy tees simultaneously. Do you really want to miss out on that? I didn’t think so.

If it seems a bit quiet in the world of webcomics today, it’s because all the creators are sleeping off their time at MoCCA ’06, and we at Fleen were there to report on all the happenings.

Ryan North is poised to take over the world. The man has ideas, ideas which are crafty, and which make webcomics cooler. The new idea — which will have an impact on the ability of creators to control parts of webcomics-as-business (shhhh, it’s a secret so far) — is one of those things that have the potential to redo all the rules of webcomics. He is also very tall, and was a gentleman towards my wife.

The Toronto contingent, upon driving across the George Washington Bridge, was confronted with the sight of a naked man masturbating in front of a homeless guy. It is possible that this was part of a financial transaction, and that one or the other was paying to watch/be watched. Welcome to New York, Canadians!

(speaking of New York, ask John Allison to do his Mayor Bloomberg impersonation sometime)

Big News! Ian Jones-Quartey dropped by with DVD copies of his thesis film, Unfair, which has been accepted into several festivals, including Animation Block Party and the Super Shorts Festival. Additionally, he informs us that his days as an intern at Noodle Soup (working on season 2 of The Venture Brothers) has come to an end … because he’s now working for them as a director. We’re talking 26 episodes of half-hour animated goodness, folks! Everybody congratulate Ian!

Jeff Rowland does not want dressing on his sandwich. Any kind of meat, cheese, or vegetable is fine, though.

Jon Rosenberg was seen selling stickers bearing the URL www.teamforcealpha.com on them, stickers that featured a skull with an eyepatch. With his studio nest partly empty (so to speak) now that megaGAMERZ has left us, could this augur a new project? Only time will tell!

Be sure to come back tomorrow for more on MoCCA ’06! There may even be pictures!

My Livejournal account has turned into a hub of RSS feeds and something I almost never post on. Sunday morning at work I was catching up on my feeds and was delightedly surprised by Sunday’s Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller. More often than I’d care to admit I’ll read Non Sequitur and the comic goes right over my head. I always feel like there is something profound or at least clever that someone more cultured than I would recognize. Still I am compelled to read it daily.

Sunday’s comic was in this wonderful soft pastel coloring as if it were lifted straight from a children’s book. The comic, however, is serious and dark and hopeful and painful which feels unlike any emotion I’ve ever spent on Non Sequitur before now.

Danae is speaking to a man about the numbers tattooed on his arm. He answers her pushy questions but the answers bring her to tears. There’s a lesson here, or a memory maybe that our world has collectively forgotten and Miller almost touches it. This was a great comic.

Chili’s World is a quaint little distraction. That is the impression I was left with after reading it’s (admittedly short) archive. This doesn’t mean it’s bad – far from it – but, for now, it’s lacking that certain something that really sucks a reader in.

Santiago Casares has some decent ideas for his comic. The lemming that doesn’t jump over the cliff and Alice’s refusal to go down the rabbit hole are two of my favorites. The titular character Chili is slightly more problematic. It’s not that he’s an annoying character, but his loved up antics with the unnamed girl and her father are just not as entertaining as Mac’s intervention in the tortoise and hare race or the various reasons for the lemmings to go over the cliff. This might have something to do with the art style of the comic. Casares can draw great talking animals. Some of Mac’s facial expressions are priceless. Chili’s crush, her father and, to an extent, Alice just don’t look as good as the other characters. Some of the dialog also feels flat, though I wonder if this is the work of the evil language barrier.

It’s early days for Chili and the gang, and they do have some serious potential. Tighter dialog, better humans and a less clichéd love story would do wonders for the strip.

I GUESS THE ANSWER TO THE ETERNAL QUESTION IS, “YES. YES, YOU CAN SPEAK EVEN WHEN YOUR HEAD HAS BEEN RIPPED FROM YOUR BODY BY YOUR BOON COMPANION SLASH GREATEST NEMESIS AND IS SLOWLY SINKING INTO A MIRE OF BLOOD THAT IS THE REMAINDER OF THE TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF YOUR SMALL, SELF-CENTERED UNIVERSE.” JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING.

GOODBYE, GAMER1 AND GAMER2, FOUL-MOUTHED, SEMISENSICAL AVATARS OF THE DIGITAL AGE, POST-MODERN SUCCESSORS TO AKBAR AND JEFF. GOODBYE, SCOTT. YOU WERE ALWAYS A GOOD ELEPHANT. GOODBYE, MARTY. YOU WERE ALWAYS A GOOD MIDGET CLONE. GOODBYE, SPHERE OF SMARTNESS, GLAIVE OF KRULL, SQUIRRELS, CHRISTMAS ELVES, DEMON FERRETS, BONO, JERRY FALWELL, AND YOUR MOM. GOODBYE TO BENTAR THE MAGNIFICENT, AND MONKEY DIDDLERS, THE MOST AWESOME GAME EVER, BANE OF REPETITIVENESS VULTURES EVERYWHERE.

WE AT FLEEN EAGERLY AWAIT WHATEVER PROJECT DIABLO THE CHICKEN ENGAGES IN NEXT.

When I was a kid, like most kids I imagine, I spent something like 6 hours in front of the television on Saturday mornings watching cartoon after cartoon until the sports commentators came on. Cartoons these days disappoint me in such profound ways because of how I remember my generation’s treasure chest of animations. The reason I mention this little corner of my childhood is because the comic Chili’s World by Santiago Casares reminds me of cartoons that I used to watch. Characters and story snippets that used to leave me in stitches.

It’s partly the coloring and partly the character concepts that ring nostalgia in my head. See there’s this penguin Chili who is in love and has all the wonderful goofball characteristics of a boy in love and he has a friend name Lenny who is a Lemming who apparently missed the great cliff run-off so Lenny hangs out with Chili and contemplates life. There’s also this cat who kind of scares me and yet I’m pretty sure he’s my favorite character, his name is Mac and he’s magically insane. There’s also a determined turtle and a head strong hare and a white rabbit and Alice who has abandoned wonderland for Chili’s World where it’s not quite as crazy and she can just be her tomboyish self. It’s like the Hundred Acre Wood if everyone just did a little bit of acid first.

I love storytelling. Characters make me squeal, I love seeing how a storyline works out. But there is a certain part of me that is really drawn to one-shot comic strips. They remind me of koans.

A koan is an unanswerable question or a meaningless statement, which you often have to find an answer to or find meaning in. The most famous koan is, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?�

A Softer World is a koan to me. They always give me something to think about, even when the thoughts aren’t particularly comforting or comfortable.

There’s a place for webcomics that make you think, just a little bit, to get the joke. Thinking is sometimes in short supply on the internet.

So the word on the street is that there is going to be a rumble between Dumbrella and Dayfree Press. Man, that rocks. If I could take bets on that, then all you Americans would totally get busted since that’s illegal where (most of) you are from. Actually, that’s illegal for me too since I don’t have a license, but no matter. I’m going to weigh up the various contenders, since that is a fun thing to do.

Jeffery has the Oozinator on his side, I’ll give him that. Not to mention the English. The English did quite a number on my country, (and the laws of probability state that they probably did one on your country too at one stage) yet the opposition is still fierce.

Ninjas, Dinosaurs and Indie Kids are formidable foes, and Dayfree have two ninjas, which hardly seems fair. Hardly, that is, until we remind ourselves that Dumbrella have robots who are controlled by a monster. A monster of poop. Then things get interesting.

After things get interesting, they get crazy. Both sides have their secret crazy weapon in the form of Dr Vampire (Dumbrella) and Double D (Dayfree – which might actually be completely sane, but I have no idea what’s going on). I feel sorry for the MoCCA organisers. Those folk just have no idea what they’re letting themselves in for. Good thing New York has SWAT teams, because Dumblrella are bringing guns.

So after a long day at work, I like to come home and read some web comics. I mean, who doesn’t? I stopped by Questionable Content, and today’s strip raised an interesting question. If you had a dating business card, what would it say?

I think mine would say “Allison Cook: Professional Stone Fox”

Also, I know there is no pic today. Why, you ask? Well because the web-comic bloggin’ gods have refused me one.

Edit: One pic, added for your viewing convenience by Gary.

Consider:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monestary in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

— Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

Also:

Every man believes that, given the right provocations, his innate skills will emerge and he will be capable of tremendous feats.

The directive of the Badass Games is to place you in the very situations which test those abilities.

— unknown, presumably Ray and/or Roast Beef, Achewood

Assuming Ray and Beef are behind this, my money’s on Pat — he’s got that primal rage simmering just below the surface. Ordinarily I’d give it to Lyle, but he’s pretty unconscious right now and has been throwing up spaghetti pretty hard of late. Of course, we know not who else has been invited to participate in THE BADASS GAMES, so it could go to anybody; note (as Stephenson did in The Cryptonomicon) that stupendous badassery is the natural inheritance of every living thing (even Philippe and Mr Bear), on the grounds that every day is trying to kill you and everything that isn’t a stupendous badass is dead.

And I’ll further put money on the notion that by this time tomorrow, THE BADASS GAMES will have a well-populated wiki devoted to it. In the meantime, prepare for Chris Onstad to kick your ass … with awesome.