Big pictures ahead — only click if you want to see webcomickers up close.

• The Comics Bakery Crew: an apparently baco-vegetarian Kean Soo (L) and Dave Roman (R).
• The Ladies of the Bakery: a between-sessions Raina Telgemeier (L) and Johanne Matte (R).
• Next year, there’ll be a giant inflatable rat outside his table: Brad Guigar (L) defied the forces of stupidity, and Ryan Sohmer (R) defied a union guy that wanted 85 bucks to plug in a lamp.
• My camera was accidentally set on ‘sepia’: An old-timey Scott McCloud. Ask him about the Mayor of Rhode Island sometime.
• Man, that banner behind her is like a perfect (if square) halo: Jennifer Babcock, enjoying the show before teaching kids about webcomics.
• He’s really less mean than he looks: Andy Bell, in a moment of glaring. But he set me up with some sweet vinyl toys without me having to go through blind-box hell, so he can glower all he wants.
• On the other hand, this guy is exactly as serious as he looks: Jon Rosenberg, calculating how much cuter his daughter is getting while he’s away.
• Giant foam horror, or mockery of life?: At least it wasn’t Fat Skeletor. You people seriously owe me one.
• Don’t tell anybody, but I think it may be a trap: Admiral Ackbar chillin’ at the Dumbrella booth.
• Some day, he’ll beg me to use the Sleestak pictures again: A show-weary Rick Marshall, sporting the required facial adornment of journalists on the webcomics beat.

Final tidbit from the weekend: Of the many flyers and givewaways I was handed over the course of the weekend, one particularly caught my eye: Pigtails & Potbellies. It’s a little Calvin & Hobbes, a little Little Dee, and a little bit limited since it’s written as “little girl spends the summer at grandma’s farm” which only allows for so many lazy afternoons with your talking pig. Did I forget to mention there’s a talking pig? Also a pig of an uncle.

There’s fewer than 20 installments so far, and the only complaint I’ve got is that the presentation is a bit weird — click on an update title and it will take you there, but the current strip always dominates the screen space above the fold. The trick is to click on the image itself to isolate it. In any event, this one’s got potential.

But check out Rick Marshall’s writeup of Webcomics: Threat or Menace? from NYCC. I didn’t remember half that stuff.

Lots of stuff happened over the weekend, which is largely still a blur to me. As mentioned last week, I moderated Webcomics: Threat or Menace? on Saturday, during which I was so intent on not sucking that I didn’t really store any of it in long-term memory. Rick Marshall from ComicMix was in the audience and has promised a write-up, but if anybody happened to record it, let us know. For the record, The Frontingest Man Alive said that I didn’t suck, so yay.

The panel consisted of Rich Stevens, Robert Khoo, Richard Brunning (Senior VP — Creative Director for DC) and Jeremy Ross (Director, New Product Development for Tokyopop); Brunning and Ross were very nice guys, not taking the “webcomics are evil” tack that the session description promised (found here), and Rich and Robert were very good about not claiming that webcomics would eat the firstborn children of the dead-tree publishers. We never did get a consensus on threat or menace, but seemed to agree that media are all shifting towards a long-tail, some-degree-of-free, and the old and new schools are going to have to meet in the middle. For more on this topic, come back tomorrow for an interview I did with Joey Manley and John Boeck on where ComicSpace is headed, six months after the big merge.

And on the off change that Jeremy Ross is reading this: you guys really need to get the rights to Kimagure Orange Road.

Others seen around the con: Brian Warmoth, Scott McCloud, Jennifer Babcock (who did a terrific job with the How to Make Webcomics panel on Kids Day), DJ Coffman, Brad Guigar, Ryan Sohmer (who risked a savage beating by defying the convention center union guys who wanted like 85 friggin’ dollars to plug in a light fixture), Chris Hastings, Raina Telgemeier, a healthy-looking Dave Roman, (Dave and Raina did about 83 sessions between the two of them, including a very noisy Avatar:The Last Airbender session that sounded really good through the walls and totally didn’t drown out my session, not that I am bitter), and the Jellabalicious Keen Soo. I was pleased beyond measure to finally make the acquaintance of Amy Kim Ganter and Kazu Kibuishi, and I understand that the inimitable Jonathan Coulton was at the show, but I missed him. If anybody knows JoCo, kindly ask him this for me — What’s Soterios Johnson really like? Besides dreamy, of course.

Finally, Fleen announces the Webcomics Partner of the Year Award to Caroline Guigar, who figured out that Brad was running out of books, and wrangled two toddlers and several boxes, sending replenisment stock on a Greyhound so that Brad would have something to sell on Sunday. If you want to succeed in webcomics, I strongly advise you to find somebody that supportive to help you.

Want interviews? You got ’em!

• First up, world adventurer and Boy On A Stick And Slither creator Steven “Cloud” Cloud, talking with Rick Marshall (who released a day early this week, damn his sneaky eyes). If you haven’t come up with a sponsorship for Cloud’s brush with death, now’s the time! As an official sponsor, you can ask the lads of Best Intentions Tea & Travel to perform a service; I’m still pondering what to ask of them.
• Next up, David Malki ! talks with a large angry cat about the forthcoming Beards of our Forefathers and what it’s like to crush dreams into freshly stomped dream juice (thanks to Randy Milholland for that metaphor). Fun!
• Finally, Stephen Notley of Bob The Angry Flower (paradoxically, he’s not very angry this week) notes how a likely swipe of one of his old drawings (above) got used as the logo for a burger place in Michigan, and promptly embroiled (ha, ha!) itself in a controversy over the objectification of women. Notley was micro-interviewed (quotes are like interviews, right?) in a followup story.

  Weirdly, this is not the first time I’ve seen a cartoonist’s work swiped to serve as a business logo, having personally witnessed a series of not-at-all-disguised J Scott Campbell drawings serving as the logo dress for a building in Montreal. Curiously, there was no outcry about the art objectifying women, probably because it adorned a local peeler joint.

It should be no surprise to any regular reader of this here blog that I’m a fantastically huge Ursula Vernon fan, so it should also be no surprise that I’m telling you all to give her a hand while simultaneously obtaining a fabulous piece of art. You really don’t want to know what the tax code for freelance artists looks like, but even with pre-payments every quarter, Vernon’s getting smacked hard come the 15th. So she’s doing a limited edition print in honor of the bill she’s got to pay, and you can pick one up for just 25 smackers plus shipping. Details at Vernon’s DeviantArt page or LiveJournal.

Okay, at this point, you should just be assuming that somewhere around Friday afternoon, Rick Marshall is putting up a new webcomics interview, generally about five minutes after my Friday post goes live. This time: Nick Gurewitch on life after hiatus. Also, it looks like the good Marshall will be joining me in haunting panels at NYCC, so come see us hopefully not act like complete doofuses.

For those keeping track, it’s been at least 37 hours since Ryan Estrada had a flash of major inspiration, so we’re due. Saturday the 12th he’s declared to be 12 Hour Comic Day at the Commune. As he put it, it’s the “quick creative kick in the nuts” that you’ve been needing.

Stephanie McMillan and Ted Rall will be hosting a multimedia extravaganza (that’s Web 2.0 speak for “slide show”) of their latest editorial cartooning work — Bluesotckings Bookstore on the 14th, and Idlewild Books on the 21st (both in New York) are the locations. As an added bonus, Fleen will pay a dollar to the first attendee to get Rall to admit he’s wrong about it being impossible that a webcomicker could ever become a millionaire. C’mon, getting one of the most opinionated people in comics to change his mind? How hard could it be? I’ve got the dollar right heeeeeeere!

Finally, Greg Carter and Gina Biggs did a panel on webcomics and business at the Atlanta Comics Expo back in February, and they’ve now got a recording that you can check out. Why are you still here? Go listen.

Okay, so I got this email in my inbox yesterday, from no less a personage than Robert Khoo … it seems that the upcoming New York Comic Con is interested in a webcomics vs. traditional comics panel, with Khoo and Rich Stevens representing webcomics:

NYCC got back to me. We’re all good for a Saturday or Sunday panel with Gary [editor’s note: Yeah, I’m a little shocked they want me, too] moderating. Someone from Tokyopop and another from DC will also be representing I believe. Their suggestion for the name of the panel is, I shit you not:

WEBCOMICS: MENACE OR THREAT?

Guys, I want that to be the title so bad. Anyway, the full NYCC programming schedule will be here in the next few days, and we’ll let you know as soon as time, location, and participants are set.

In other news, ComicMix continues its webcomickers interview series with bizarre man-child Jeff Rowland; it’s about time that Rick Marshall came up with a name for these interviews, since he’s cranking them out every week.

Spotted on the shelves (and at the AV Club): Flight Explorer by the Kazu Kibuishi Crew, and Lars Brown’s North World (been waiting for that ever since Brown introduced himself to me at SDCC last summer). Spotted in my mailbox: Chris Hastings’s Dr McNinja — Surgical Strike. Reviews on all three (and How To Make Webcomics) just as soon as I can plow through ’em.

And better late than never, from Mr T:

This news is a bit old, but I was a bit sick last week. To celebrate the ninth anniversary of Fans on St. Patrick’s Day, we’ve repeated the offer we gave in our very first comic book before going digital: giving readers the opportunity to guest-star in the series. You can see the results in our ninth anniversary installment here.

Edited to fix missing link the second item.

Heya. Some good comments coming out of yesterday’s musings on angels; I was particularly glad of Chris Baldwin‘s story of his experience with capital-raising. I hope that with the current credit crunch, such bank loans are still available for deserving creators. Several more items related to webcomics bid’ness today:

• Von Allan wrote an extensive analysis of his readership growth over the first three months of the road to god knows. New strip creators, pay attention.
• Dawn Douglass writes with an appeal; her comic-aggregation venture is looking for VC backing, and she’s looking for input. For the record (and I told her this), I think she’s got a logical flaw in her argument that free “alienates creators from their art” (for views that nicely parallel my own, see Kevin Kelly again: free is a means to an end). But the point is, she’s looking for cartoonists — specifically editorial cartoonists — to take a look at her ideas.

  And now that I’ve typed out the words “editorial cartoonists”, I think that I see the source of the disconnect between her ideas and mine; most cartoonists (and with the arguable exception of maybe Penny Arcade pretty much all webcartoonists) are not editorial cartoonists. They’ve got their own concerns that can contrast deeply with the average (aspiring?) webcomicker.

Announcements!

• Darren J. Gendron writes to let you know that The Expert’s Guide on How to Kill Things That Go Bump in the Night recently wrapped its first major story arc. It started with an army of vampire cheerleaders, took on The Shat, and wrapped with the help of the Dozen Dead Elvises and Dead Monkey Elvis. It that doesn’t get you to read the damn thing, I don’t know what will.
• Quick two-fer from Wes Molebash:

  Boxcar Comics is redesigning its site, launching creator-hosted podcasts, building up the jam comics, and going to be hitting the conventions with vigor previously unknown to western science. And Molebash’s The Litterbox Chronicles has scratched out (see, it’s about cats, so that joke is funny) a number one position on the Zuda hit parade, but needs your love to stay there. Like Tinkerbelle.

• And finally, Rick Marshall informs me that a new interview with Fleen Fave Rene Engstrom is due to go live at ComicMix in about … now-ish. Get clicking.

Catching up first with a friend of webcomics in general, and Fleen in particular: Rick Marshall — who along with Brian Warmoth successfully de-suckified Wizard‘s website and was dejobbed for his trouble — has landed at ComicMix, where he is contributing up a storm and taking on the position of Online Managing Editor. Heidi’s got the press release, we’ve got the good wishes, and Esbat apparently got the Marshall genetic legacy. I think that’s what they call win-win-win-win.

Catching up with other news:

• Greg Carter reminds all and sundry that Atlanta Comix Expo is this weekend, and he and Gina Biggs will be representin’ webcomics there, and conjunction with Dark Horse releasing the second graphic novel of Biggs’s Red String. And in a rather generous act, Carter also reminds us that also this weekend, two states to the north, Jennie Breeden and a mess of other webcomickers will be at What the Hell? Con this weekend with a ton of other webcomickers; look for strips including Carter, Biggs & Breeden doing con prep to show up at the site of Satanic Porn soon.
• Lori Henderson of the Manga Village portion of Comics Village would like you to know that there’s a competition on. You (yes, you!) could see your manga-style webcomic published online and in print, including distribution to UK bookstores, and through Diamond. Details here.
• I’ve been seeing lots of links around webcomicdom pointing back to The Scienteers in the past month or so. There’s a reason for this: the people that do the scienting have decided to merge the idea of webcomics collective with the idea of webcomics news site, with a particular emphasis on exposing little-known creations. Want some exposure? Send ’em announcements & news, and submit comics to be run on their website. Details on submitting news and comics here and here. Bonus points for especially good scientication.

Stories are starting to drop off as everybody staggers from eggnog bender to eggnog bender. But hey, we’re still gonna be here for the duration; we’ve kept up the whole “at least five days a week” thang for the past two years, why stop now?

From the We Come To Honor Caesar, Not Bury Him department, the exodus at Wizard magazine has been getting some press, as we can add one more name to it: Brian Warmoth, who originated the Cursory Conversations series of interviews with webcomickers, has given notice and wrapped up his contributions to Wizard‘s website. His last interview, with James Kochalka, is due to run today but isn’t up as of this writing.

Back in April, I wrote:

Hey, ever wonder why Wizard’s online site is so much better (and webcomics-acknowledging) than the print magazine? It’s because there’s two guys that pretty much run it by themselves, and they like webcomics.

Back then, my emphasis was on the “webcomics” part of that statement, but it quickly became apparent that the real story was the “better” bit. To my mind, the contributions of Warmoth and fomer online editor Rick Marshall were what made the difference between Wizard the magazine (and since FHM and Stuff have both ceased publication, it looks like the publishers have decided to try to fill the void on the newstands next to Maxim) and Wizard the website.

But Warmoth and Marshall aren’t just good [web]comics writers and editors, they’re damn good writers and editors period, and I fully expect really interesting stuff from both of them in the future. Guys, thanks for the good work, and if ever either of you got a hankering to write something about this crazy phenomenon we call webcomics, you have a ready soapbox here at Fleen.

Editor’s note: I’ll be away on Thursday and Friday for the American version of Thanksgiving, with no internet access. So as to have enough content pre-written to cover those two days, I’m gonna be stingy on news items now. Also, don’t count on Thursday & Friday being topical.

I’ve been emailing back and forth with Rick Marshall since April or so; right after I met him, I wrote:

Hey, ever wonder why Wizard’s online site is so much better (and webcomics-acknowledging) than the print magazine?

in tribute to Marshall’s (and cohort Brian Warmoth‘s) efforts to make the website more than just Maxim with slightly more comic book content. Well, he’s not at Wizard anymore, and we at Fleen are still trying to wrap our minds around that one.

He’s spoken to The Spurge about his recent experiences, and you ought to go check out what’s on the mind of this friend of webcomics.

And if you happen to run any kind of publishing enterprise, Rick is an extremely capable editor, fast, dedicated, able to produce as much work as any three people you have now, and a fun guy to have beers with. Hell, in less than two years he took Wizard‘s monthly pageviews up by two and half orders of magnitude, and that was with a site saddled with clueless management and crap content. With luck, we’ll be running some of his stellar prose here in the coming weeks.