John Allison is no longer. Not only has his strip been replaced by the work of others, but the man himself is gone.

He’s been replaced by Simon Cowell.

He wants YOUR submissions for the newest, greatest thing to come out of England since the last time John left his native land (I’m pretty sure that was SPX last year…).

SCARY GO ROUND IDOL!

So don’t forget to remit by the 31st, cause you could win fabulous prizes.

We are approaching a dozen respondents to our recent call for contributors; there have been some questions about the gig, so we’ll address those here, in no particular order.

1. Did you get my submission? ‘Cause you haven’t written back yet.
   Yes, we did; we’re still going through and deciding which we like best. We’ll be contacting some of you for a second round of submissions.
2. Wait, “some of you”? You hate me, don’t you? I suck.
   No, no, nothing like that. It’s just that some of you have a style that’s a bit more in line with what we’re looking for, and some of you sound a little bit like you’re submitting an essay in English class. Part of what we’re looking for are writers that have their own voices and don’t sound 95% similar to the other applicants.
3. When’s the deadline?
   Well, let’s say that Fleen is on an open-admission plan. If you don’t think you have the time to commit now, but find you have the time in the future, feel free to drop us a line and we’ll consider you (I’m talking to you, Mr Math Guy). For this round of submissions, let’s say that getting something to us by the weekend would be good.
4. You said “compensation”. What’s up with that?
   Actually, what we said was, “The compensation is so small that you may not even notice it is there.” It involves a cut of the ad revenue (my share from inception to date comes to about US$0.20) and you get your beer bought for you when in the physical presence of the publisher, which is helped by a proximity to Manhattan (for me, fairly regular; for Jeff, not so much). There’s also the intangible benefits you get from sharing your opinion with the world, and occasionally annoying William G.
5. I’m thinking of submitting samples. What would make my writing better?
   Best damn question we’ve gotten! First of all, read through and make sure that what you’ve written is logically and grammatically solid. Check for spelling. I have poked some fun at Eric Burns for his … verbosity, but I can count on one hand the number of typos that he’s made in the past 100,000 words.

   We’re a blog, so show us that you can locate links that support your ideas, and include those in the body. Did we mention spelling? Check again. And so far, the front-running topics are Penny Arcade, Questionable Content, and PvP; you might want to address something a bit further afield so we can see your range. Also, that 15-paragraph opus looks nice, but remember the goal is to convince us that you can write something five days a week. Two to three hundred tight words a day will thrill us.

6. Can I be an asshole? Or write about what sucks and say that it sucks?
   Sure. We’re here to talk about the good and the bad in webcomics, but we’ve attracted something resembling a reputation for having well-written and well-thought-out stuff here, and don’t want to lose that just because you got a mad-on for the world. If you can channel Ambrose Bierce or Dorothy Parker, great. If the best you can do is THIS SUXXORS [name of creator] IS A FAG, don’t bother.
7. Can we work from home?
   You sure as hell aren’t going to be working from my home.
8. Seriously, you hated my very personal, soul-baring essay, didn’t you? I suck.
   Yeah, you suck. Everybody else is okay.
9. Tuesday Crimson sounds hot. Can I date her?
   You suck, even more than that last guy.

Little Dee, volume 1; first shipment sold out, refills shipping next week. Contains 16 months worth of strips. $12.00 post-paid to the US, Canada & Mexico ($20 for the rest of the world). Nothing more need be said except “Why haven’t you ordered yet?”

Bernie Hou’s Alien Loves Predator goes all word problem on our asses this week. Three generic bodyguards associated with Bill Clinton (yes, that Bill Clinton) decide to play with Preston’s head and give him a logic puzzle that’s woven into the strip. The caption at the bottom of the strip is familiar to anybody who grew up on Games magazine (which once published a puzzle by … T Campbell! Does his reach know no end?) or Encylopedia Brown books.

Of course, any answers you may come up with depend on all the agents telling the truth from panels four onwards, which I think we can assume, since Hou intends for us to solve. Very clever, Mr Hou, but answer me this:

If an Alien leaves the Lower East Side at 2:48pm walking north towards Central Park at an average rate of 3.8 mph, and a Predator grabs a cab outside Union Square, headed for Times Square at 3:04pm, what are the odds of getting an English-speaking cabbie, and how many times will be he told he “Should’ve hit it when you had the chance”?

Edit: Submissions are now closed.

So it’s been a couple weeks since Jeff was able to break radio silence; Tuesday‘s been pretty busy, as well. And as much as I enjoy blathering on here, Fleen’s really set up to provide more than one viewpoint. So if you’re opinionated about webcomics, today is your lucky day.

Jon made an appeal for contributors back when we started up, which was pretty much met with the sound of crickets. And honestly, who would bother applying to write for a brand-new blog with no track record? Well, Jeff and I did, sorta, but we we’re strange. But since today marks four months since we started writing in earnest (in advance of the announcement, actually), and since we seem to have attracted some mindshare, it seems like an opportune moment to re-solicit. To quote Jon:

If you’re interested in being a contributor, send us at least two webcomics-related sample posts and me and the writers will try and pick a couple of candidates from amongst the interested parties. The compensation is so small that you may not even notice it is there, but I promise you it will be a fun gig.

Now that we’re established, Jon’s not really into the day-to-day overseeing of the site; it’s pretty much me that you’ll have get past (although, a copy of your submission will be left for Jeff via a dead-letter drop; when he’s certain he’s not being watched, he’ll send us a coded reply via secure channels). The original criteria remain:

1. a post a day, barring major circumstances
2. has to be about webcomics (although perhaps tangentially so)
3. you have to be able to write in a clear and cogent manner (disciples of Strunk & White, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, and This American Life always appreciated)
4. you can’t be a webcomics creator; we’re looking for audience perspectives here

Extensive webcomics reading habits are not a prerequisite. In fact, if you’re relatively new to the scene, watching you discover things for the first time and reporting on it would be downright useful. And don’t feel that you have to know lots of people on the inside — trust me, you’ll be getting email from them soon enough, and finding out that they’re pretty much cool people to know. So fire up the text editor of your choice, send us some words — review, analysis, critique, interview, wildly inaccurate jokey piece that gets mistaken for serious — and let us see what you got. Who knows? You could be the next Eric Burns, and then fame, fortune, and Peeps are yours for the asking, my friend.

Alert reader Mr Hasselhoff informs us:

Seems like Dayfree Press is down again. I don’t know if it’s to celebrate the lost of the domain at the same time last year (1 year anniversary you know) or if someone didn’t renew it … or if the internets has gone crazy with forks.

This leads us to three thoughts:

1. Dayfree Press is indeed down
2. Damn, “the domain needs to be re-registered” pages are ugly
3. I don’t know what the internets has gone crazy with forks means, but somewhere in there is a pretty good band name

Fortunately, the individual members of Dayfree Press seem to be up and running normally (I think that’s everybody), so you can still get your fix from the individual pushers.

A short post today to give recognition to the un-thanked workhorses who make so much of webcomics work: the tech nerds. Ryan North, in addition to announcing yesterday that he’s been a full-time cartoonist for a year now (there’s no shame, Ryan, you can admit it, we’re all friends here), has been busily working on yet another nifty gadget to make webcomics better. Let’s hear from the man himself:

I just launched a new site, called RSSPECT. It makes generating RSS feeds easy for comic owners who don’t have RSS feeds automatically supplied by software.

It is at RSSPECT.com and it will hopefully be pretty useful! My friend Pat came up with the name. I was going to call it OMG-RSS or maybe WTF-RSS but his idea was way better.

David Hellman’s the dude responsible for the kickin’ logo! Just in case you thought I suddenly learnt how to draw or something. He did the logo for Oh No Robot too.

There must be something about blonde men with ponytails that screams “webcomics programmer”; how else to explain the (recently shorn) Phillip Karlsson of Goats/Dumbrella? We already know about his abilities regarding chairs & malefactors and server maintenance & criminals. What mighty engines of (webcomic) creation might these two cook up between them? And as we all know, engines of creation are the flip side of engines of destruction! Those fools at the Academy laughed at you, but will they still be laughing when the mob comes for them? Revenge will be sweet!

Okay, might be time for more DayQuil.

Another webcomic artist has made the jump from doing this after work to quitting the day job and living off comics. Everybody congratulate Goats creator (and Fleen publisher) Jon Rosenberg for taking the leap of faith. Buy Goats books and clothing so that Jon and his lovely wife aren’t reduced to fighting the cats for scraps of food. Also, so he can continue to buy me beer.

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.

Book announcements from Chris Baldwin and Howard Tayler. Baldwin first:

4/4/06 – I received the final proof for the Little Dee book today (meaning, I’m signing off on it). So yeah. very exciting, it looks really sharp. Hopefully it’ll be available sometime in April. :)

Anybody who’s read Fleen from the beginning (and goodness, that’s only about four months now) knows how much all right-thinking folk love Little Dee. The fact that this book should be available in mere week should either a) make you ecstatic; or b) reveal you to be a horrible person that nobody could ever love. Except Dee; she loves just about everybody. Tayler next:

I have held the press-match. It is beautiful. You are going to be very happy with your book. And if you pre-order it now, you can get it autographed for free.

If you’re quick, you can even get me to draw stuff in it.

Here’s the pre-order page. Have at it. There’s even a sneak-peek from the middle of the book there for you.

Tayler may be willing to go futher out on a tangent than just about anybody else to provide color commentary in his strip; looks like the book will have these asides in spades.