Okay, so it’s not Monday morning anymore. Bite me.

Sylvan Migdal got really scary in Ascent today (quick shot here of the last panel in case you don’t have a Graphic Smash subscription). For those who lived through the 80s, a Diff’rent Strokes reference is bad enough, but to bring up The Nancinator from the Very Special Episode about Drugs? Scary.

Second, if you haven’t seen the discussion about how Jeph Jacques threatens every webcomic and person you love, go read it quick. And thanks to Tropylium for informing us that there is a fairly comprehensive list of crossovers that can be easily referenced. When I wrote the crossover piece, I was actually thinking that we need something like that, but graphical (spurred, no doubt by Nic’s suggestion along the lines of the music map). And much like Nic, it should not be done by me, as I am a lazy, lazy man.

So, one of you talented programmers should get in touch with L.P. Hogan of the Crossover & Cameo Archive, mine through the data, and build a graphical display that shows crossovers between strips. Once that’s done, we’ll have a contest. First person to come up with a webcomic that existed with at least x (to be determined) number of strips on date y (ditto) that wouldn’t be affected by the QC/OCalypse gets a Fleen t-shirt.

(Contest void where prohibited by law, which probably includes wherever you are. Chances of winning highly dependent on there someday being Fleen shirts, but I wouldn’t hold your breath if I were you.)

Fleen had a recent opportunity to speak with Dale Beran, the writer for A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible, over beer and burgers.

We have edited out all of the extended and well-informed commentary from Dale about the quality and meaty essentiality of his burger and what the juice felt like as it washed across his tongue and slid down his throat, and what remains is a conversational interview about his comic and his process. We hope we’ve maintained the character of his conversation, but are saddened that we can’t convey the timbre of his deep manly voice.
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Aaron William‘s Full Frontal Nerdity is a weekly comic strip about three four role-playing gamers.

If, somehow, you’re geeky enough to be reading a daily (or mostly daily) blog about webcomics, but have never actually played any role-playing games, then Full Frontal Nerdity will give you the complete experience, from the friendships with your fellow gamers to the cameraderie you develop, and the pleasures of sharing food to the thrill of the games themselves.

If you have role-played before, then this may remind you of the good times

It’s a faithful rendition of a tedious experience.

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.

Object of geek affection Alyson Hannigan was seen sporting a copy of Dave Kellet’s Pure Ducky Goodness (first print collection from Sheldon). It’s probably overstating the case to assume that Hannigan is a fan of Sheldon or any of the other Blank Label Comics (although, maybe she picked up some tendencies from well-known geek Seth Green during their time on Buffy). More than likely it was a set dresser or prop monkey that provided the book, but it’s entirely possible that Ms Hannigan is a fan of our prefered artform.

However cool this is, Howard Tayler may have jumped the gun in declaring his collective as the first to get a webcomic on TV. Depending on how you stretch your terms, that honor may go to Dumbrella, thanks to one of Jeff Rowland’s Topatoco shirts appearing on VH1 (and previously in Overcompensating). But there’s no disputing that having Alyson Hannigan touch your product is the cooler of the two events, and if I were Kellet, I’d be claiming a close personal friendship with the flame-haired goddess about now.

Edit: Consensus is emerging that Alyson Hannigan is indeed a fan of Sheldon. It is now incumbent upon Dave Kellet to use this situation for the good of all. And by that, I mean influencing Ms Hannigan to read, love, and publicly promote many other webcomics and uh, webcomics blog contributors.

So Panda Express is a year old. It’s a story being told from multiple perspectives that involves a missing father, a possibly megalomanical goat, ninjas, an American roller-disco afficinado, a girl, and her (possibly nuclear-powered) panda. We’re not going to talk about it today.

We are going to talk about [Insert Title Here]; with PX reaching its first birthday and nearly 100 installments (click on “read the comic” to get the pop-up), the creators have decided to start a second strip, written entirely by their readers. As long as you adhere to the guidelines, you can contribute to this undertaking. So far, there are two pages up — the first sets an odd stage, with potential story hooks everywhere. The second (same page, just scroll down a little) was written by somebody named “Gore of Gorilla”, and has caromed off into even more random territory. The third will be up sometime after the next round of submissions closes, which will be the end of the day tomorrow.

This is an oddly interactive approach for creators, letting the audience have full collaborative rights (and it’ll cause lit-crit types to go even crazier than usual on the topic of authorial intent). Maybe not so weird, considering that [ITH] doesn’t let readers anywhere near the ongoing PX story or characters, but still … it’s hard to imagine an experiment like this being even possible (much less succeeding) in just about any other medium. The update schedule will necessarily be a bit random, and it’s going to be tough to evaluate or review the comic itself, with so many different hands in the effort. But for sheer, ballsy, let’s see what works effort? Hard to beat.

Edit: The creators don’t name themselves on the PX website, so I emailed asking who should be getting the credit and praise here. They replied that they keep their names to themselves so as not to overshadow the work, so all of us should be directing our love towards the individuals sometimes known as Art Monkey and Grammar Cowboy. Good job, guys!

This page has previously mentioned Ursula Vernon’s Digger, although so far only as an example of art that clearly expresses emotion. This means that this page has neglected to mention any other aspect of Digger, such as the fact that it has an exemplary update record, sharp writing, gorgeous art, and is all-around the best thing on Graphic Smash. Today, it does something more.

Today, Digger gives us the first true webcomics philosopher.

Sure, there are webcomics characters that plumb the really deep depths of thought and the meaning of existence. You got your Utahraptor, your Weedmaster P, Ray Smuckles, fish, and even saucy English lasses, but for a top-notch conceptualization of the nature of Good and Evil, you have to look to a hyena named Ed (click here for today’s strip if you don’t have a subscription). Let’s let Ed muse on the Big E:

Evil is having reason, always, many and many. If hunter beats mate, has reason, always. Mate is lazy, burning food, is stupid, is speaking on and on.

Evil always has some justification; the logic and worth of the argument don’t enter into it, because Evil always sees itself as reasonable. And good?

Is only good not having reason. Little one hugs, no reason. Digger-mousie is giving name to nameless, say “Ed”, no reason. Skin-painter paints skin of child, no reason. Just is.

Good just is. There it is, boiled down to its essence, by a societal outcast guilty of some crime beyond imagining. Get yourself a GS subscription and start reading the other strips of Ed’s worldview (especially the creation myth of the hyena people … it’s brilliant); while you’re at it, notice how well Ed’s speech patterns form an accent that’s not contrived or overblown. Ursula Vernon’s work here is top-notch. You could say that she’s just that good.

We previously mentioned Malfunction Junction when talking about an odd occurance of Trent Reznor.

Today’s comic brings up the ongoing American flag-waving impetus to “Support Our Troops!”. And it puts it in a pretty good perspective, too. Nobody knows what it really means to support our troops, and nobody really wants to write their Congressman to raise taxes to pay for more body armor either.

Malfunction Junction suffers from the same things that other journal webcomics suffer from – the comic is only as interesting as the (usually exaggerated) life of the person doing the comic. It’s a mixed bag with Matt Milby – sometimes this is interesting and sometimes not, but usually he manages to find something funny in everything (even if a bit juvenile).

In general, Malfunction Junction is a good read with decent art, and deserves some of your time.

Also, Matt Milby has a Sheriff Pony wallet.

Neil Gaiman gave a really nice talk a couple weeks ago at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. He’s funny, he’s engaging, the guy from Wired who moderated was good at his job (and brought free copies of the Snakes On A Plane issue for everybody). Neil spoke about lots of things, but what really stuck in my head was his description of being on the set for Beowulf (starring the motion-captures of Angelina Jolie and Crispin Glover). He spoke of what he hopes the film will look like when everything’s rendered in a year or two. Then he paused, and asked:

“How many of you here saw The Polar Express? Or saw a clip of it? Okay, now put your hands down if the eyes didn’t disturb you.”

Every hand in the room stayed up. He used that as an intro to talk about how for Beowulf, the actors essentially have brainwave-recording skullcaps on, which are measuring the muscle impulses that shift their eyes around, so that things won’t be so disturbing in this movie. I bring all this up because there have been a number of attempts to do webcomics with hyper-realistic 3D character models, and so far it’s all an interesting experiment. Each new iteration makes the character models a bit less stiff and more organic … but the eyes … brrrr.

Ben Adams is the latest to take a whack at 3D webcomics; he’s opted for an autobiographical story called Misfit’s Journey, the first chapter of which was recently released. If you don’t take a light hand to the story, autobiographical comics can quickly become an exercise in navel-gazing, but Adams channels enough Harvey Pekar that the writing isn’t the problem. He’s written comics before and contributed to an anthology by Joe Zabel (who’s been responsible for several 3D comics and has worked on several iterations of American Splendor, so there’s a nice circle closed) and knows how to keep a story moving. It’s a bit early to see how fully it will develop, but he seems like a guy willing to explore his flaws without glossing over them, so at the very least you get an honest look inside his head.

Ben has a few photos of himself on the site, so you can compare his actual self to the rendered version and they’re pretty close. But no matter how engaging the story, no matter how well Ben and Joe and other 3D artists create their models … the eyes. Everybody that does 3D comics should buy a beer for the first person to get the eyes to be not-disturbing.

Molly McCausland’s Tea For Three hasn’t quite hit it’s running legs yet. She’s not kept a strict update schedule, she hasn’t established a clear artistic style or voice, and her characters are a bit stereotypical. Yes, one of them has a French accent. It’s a little more plausible here, since the strip is set in England and the character is an international spy (which is a cheap writer’s trick in it’s own right, but…)

But as far as relatively new comics go, this is better than a lot of them. From the writing side of things, she is really trying to establish a coherent story, and trying to show different facets of her characters in the right situations for those facets to come out. She’s trying to tell her story, rather than someone else’s.

Her artwork is improving, and you can see the raw edges of her artistic voice coming out from the background as she gets more strips done. Just the amount of improvement already shows that there’s a good amount of talent underneath.

So spend an hour or two reading the archives – you might have trouble with the next & previous buttons, so use the archive view – and check back in with Tea For Three in a month or two to see where things are.