While I managed to finish Boxers and Saints last night, there’s no way I’m ready to write anything about them yet — they’re too big. China is too big¹ and these books contain within them the smallest fraction of The Middle Kingdom’s history, and that fraction is enormous and must be thought on carefully. However, I realized something this morning that I do want to share, which is virtually everything I know about Chinese history, I know because of comics.

Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe has more than 100 pages of history from before the common era, and I have a collection of three comics treatments of Chinese military classics (100 Strategies of War; Three Strategies of Huang Shi Gong; Six Strategies For War, all illustrated by Wang Xuanming). They’ve taught me about the Warring States, Lu Pu-Wei, Liu Bang, Cao Cao, Liu Bao, the Spring and Autumn Period, the Battle of Red Bluff, and a dozen other centuries worth of history. It’s still just the surface, but it’s more than I was ever taught in school².

• Ever wonder what 14,000 books looks like? Like this. Ever wonder what kind of man could sign all those books and not die? The Toronto Man-Mountain, also known as Ryan North, Cyborg King of Awesome Things. We at Fleen wish Ryan North good fortune and hope that those books — he is their creator, they owe him their lives — treat him kindly and don’t cause his hand to fall off.
• At MoCCA Fest last year, I was talking with Ananth Panagariya³ was talking about projects not involving his long partnership with Yuko Ota, which conversation was rather roundabout and coy because he couldn’t talk about everything yet. He gets to talk about it now, it being BUZZ, a fully-contained story with Tessa Stone which was previously described as a regularly-updating serial at Oni’s website.

  The plan had been for serials to launch in January and OniPress.com to be a daily-updating content hub, but I didn’t see any of that go live. Serious question here — did I just miss Oni’s version of the :01 Books preview books as webcomics sub-site, To Be Continued? Because I have no recollection of that happening. In any event, BUZZ will now be going to print in November, the story of one-on-one spelling bees as street-level contact sport. Looks sweet.

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¹ Back in college, my political science professor asked us what we wanted to write our first paper on and one guy in class said, China!. Thad (that was his name, Dr Thad “Call me Thad” Smith) looked at him and said, You’ve got eight pages, you might want to narrow that down a little.

² This would probably annoy Gonick to no end, who groused in the introduction to Volume 9 of CHOTU — the first concerning China — that San Fransisco, his hometown, with its huge Chinese population that were instrumental in building the city, had not one street with a Chinese name. This may have changed since it was published in 1994, but the sentiment is the same — we have an enormous collective blind spot in our culture, one big enough to hide a fifth of the people on the planet and everything they’ve ever done.

Another thing not taught to me in school: romanization methods for Chinese names; I’ve taken the names as they’re presented in the comics, which may or may not match the most popular methods today. I imagine you’ll make do somehow.

³ AKA Mr Eyeless, Aaah~~I hope Anath-sempai likes me!.

Gina Gagliano and Colleen AF Venable may be my two favorite people right now. Today’s mail brought pre-release copies of both Boxers and Saints by Gene Leun Yang, 500-odd pages of comic goodness from one of the finest creators of our times, with much of the logistics of :01 Books bringing these volumes to print (and to my hands) landing squarely on Gagliano’s skilled shoulders.

The cover design is by Venable, and as much as I’ve praised her work previously¹, she’s blown away all previous efforts with these handsome, matching volumes — the covers sit in opposition to each other: substituting red for blue, dark for white, male for female, left for right; the place where they match is in the rage expressed on the faces of their respective protagonists. I. Can’t. Wait.

• We spoke last week about Brad Guigar² and his Kickstarter for a sequel to How To Make Webcomics; he was playing coy at that time about stretch goals, but on Friday after we at Fleen went to press, he announced two of them:
  • At US$12,500 (original goal was $10K), a new podcast would be launched where Guigar interviews interesting people in Webcomicistan
  • At US$15,000, a new episode of Webcomics Weekly

  Those first goal got met before I could tell you that the first guest lined up for the interview podcast would be George³; a little while ago the second goal was met, so it looks like we’ll get another WW. And Guigar’s updated his stretch goals again:

  • At US$17,500 (original goal was $10K), Webcomics Confidential (the new podcast) gets Zach Weinersmith for episode #2
  • At US$20,000, a second new episode of Webcomics Weekly

  I see a pattern developing here. I can’t speak for Brad, but every person that ever said, When does Webcomics Weekly come back? now appears to have a clear pathway to ensure that it does: chuck Five Large into the pot and that’s another episode, plus an episode of Webcomics Confidential. You got three and a half weeks to see how many you can get in the bank.

• Bunch of things happening this summer at the Cartoon Arts Museum for those of you in San Francisco:
  • Summer classes in cartooning for parents and kids! Wednesday 3 July and 7 August, on four different topics for just ten bucks a head.
  • This Saturday, 29 June, a free all-ages workshop entitled Where Do Toons Come From? with Robert Gordon, a Chicago- and Paris-based architecture & design educator and avid cartoonist. Bring your sketchbook and favorite pens!

  Bay Area peeps, be sure to let the rest of us know how these sessions go; they look like a blast.

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¹ And I realize that it’s an unusual thing to have a favorite book designer, but there you go.

² The handsomest man in webcomics. Grrrrowl!

³ Rohac, that is, he of the single name and Plans.

It all comes back to comics:

Sometimes I stop and think about the fact that Homestuck is the 4th longest work in the English language and just kinda nod. — George Rohac

• Know who’s been making himself damn near indispensable to comics as a whole, constructing what may well be the definitive filmic history of the art form? Freddave Kellett-Schroeder, the hive mind that’s been toiling for pert-near four years to bring STRIPPED to a big screen near you. Last night, Fred and Dave released the first five minutes of the film to backers of their Kickstarters, and my friends — it was glorious. Somewhat less than 5300 people have had the opportunity to see that tease, and with any luck the entire world will be able to see the entire thing soon. It’s gonna be great.
• Know who’s been making himself damn near indispensable to an entire community of webcomickers? Brad Guigar, editor and everything-in-chief of Webcomics Dot Com. And in case five years back is fading from your recollection, Guigar was one of the authors of How To Make Webcomics, which tells you exactly what it says on the cover. The thing is, as good as HTMW is, it covers a medium that changes rapidly, and five years is a near-eternity in internet terms.

  There have been many requests for a sequel over the past half-decade, and Guigar has leveraged his writing for WDC to make that sequel, The Webcomics Handbook, now available for pre-order on Kickstarter. This one’s a no-brainer, folks, especially considering that all backer tiers come with — quoting here — Guigar’s “undying friendship”. Remember, the sooner you pledge, the sooner you can book a weekend for him to help you move.

• Strip Search — let’s face it, season one of Strip Search — wrapped up its finale last night which means you’ve had 16 hours (as of this writing) to have seen it, and if you don’t want to be spoiled on it, look away. I was conflicted watching Katie Rice get named the winner: zero surprise, as she’d utterly dominated the back half of the game; elation because her work was so very, very good; crushed because Abby Howard and Maki Naro didn’t win¹.

  In the end, it came down to what comics almost always comes down to — personal preference. Jerry and Mike had to decide what they personally most wanted to see:

  • A longform, horror-based, immersive-world graphic novel² from Abby, and one where they liked her off-the-cuff work better than her planned work
  • An almost anthropological personality study from Maki, not so dependent on your traditional-type punchlines
  • A loose-continuity, every-strip-has-a-punchline story that was the most comic-strippy of the finalists from Katie, and one where as strong as her final competition entries were, her pitch material was even better, giving confidence about how strong a work with plenty of time could be

  From the beginning, they showed a clear preference for work in the vein of what Katie presented, and you know what? That’s okay. Their show, their judgment, and it’s not like giving the nod to Camp Weedonwantcha means that The Last Halloween or Sufficiently Remarkable are erased from our collective memories. I will be reading (and more importantly, buying) all three of those projects because they all hit different pleasure centers in my comics brain³.

  Everybody associated with Strip Search is bound up into a web of professional and personal connections that will last and pay off for decades (Maki had some really gracious thoughts along the same lines today). As was determined back in January:

  Khoo stressed the responsibility that PA had towards the winner. We will do them right. People put their necks out there and trusted us; we didn’t tell them shit. They didn’t know what the show would be like or how we would make them look. For taking that risk, Khoo is determined that the reward is as good as he can make it.

  It’s pretty clear that the doing-right is extending to all the Artists; consider that Alex, who we didn’t get a chance to know, Alex has moved to Seattle, as has Amy, and also Monica (I half expect to hear that Ty and Nick are scoping out the U-Hauls). Add in the proximity of Mac and Erika, and it’s clear that whatever benefits accrue to Katie being in-office will spread fairly immediately to the others in the PNW, and only slightly later to those still scattered across the country. Being part of Strip Search surely helped the crowdfunding that Monica and Lexxy undertook to success, and Erika’s new comic, and the soon-to-be-announced Kickstarts from Maki and Abby. Also, is it a coincidence that since he was on the show, Tavis and his wife had a kid? Okay, yeah, probably, but you never know.

  Whatever else Strip Search achieved (and from everything that Khoo, Jerry Holkins, and Mike Krahulik have said, it wasn’t intended to achieve much beyond being entertaining), they’ve created a resonance cascade of skilled creators who are going to make each other better. Somewhere out there are people that either didn’t make the cut or want to be on a future iteration and are stepping up their own comics games; almost none of them will make it onto the show (whenever a new season might occur), but a nonzero number of them will share their comics with the world.

  Penny Arcade Industries has given us all far more than US$15,000 of comics that we will get to enjoy. Oh, and it’s entirely possible that they’ve created a competitor that will eventually challenge them for their position on the top of the webcomics heap, so it’s a good thing that they’ve still got Khoo on their side … for now.

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¹ Unlike virtually every reality competition ever, I was fully invested in all the finalists; there was no villain or obvious weak link there, meaning that it was guaranteed I would be happy and sad when it was all over.

² AKA, “filthy continuity”.

³ Although to be completely candid, of the three I think Sufficiently Remarkable spoke to me the most and I’m not sure if I can articulate why. In my perfect world, Sufficiently Remarkable has both “daily” and “Sunday” type strips, with the latter having the same feel as the first strip in Maki’s submission packet with Riti and her father.

Thanks very much Ryan North¹ I will never sleep again thanks to today’s Dinosaur Comics. As a quick hint, nobody wants to consider an afterlife full of parasites except for Kelly Weinersmith. Ick.

• Something weird happened today: Cyanide and Happiness appeared in the comics section of more than 650 newspapers worldwide, an occurrence which all reasonable persons would have figured to be damn near impossible. Okay, it’s just one panel, and it’s a pastiche by Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis, and covered by censor bars, but still — just imagine all the people that read newspaper comic strips deciding to do a Google search on Cyanide & Happiness because they figure it can’t be as bad as all that. I can hear the heads exploding from here.
• Well, that was fast — a few weeks back I mentioned that Digger² would be Kickstarting an omnibus edition, which went live after our update yesterday. Surprising absolutely nobody (except possibly Digger creator Ursula Vernon), it completely funded at approximately the thirteen hour mark, and is well on its way to (per the Fleen Rule of Kickstarter Projections) the US$100,000 — US$200,000 range. Yeah, got it, webcomics with built-in audiences overfund their Kickstarts all the time, what’s the big deal?

  The deal is that the Digger campaign may have the most unusual reward ever offered — hand-forged, wombat-sized pickaxes at the $US1000 (!) backer level. Yesterday I was wondering what could be cooler than Dante Shepherd’s mallets and I guess I have my answer, if only because the pickaxes will involve a forge and anvil and metalcrafting. However, somebody really should point John Scalzi toward’s Shepherd’s campaign, as I bet he’d love an even larger Mallet of Loving Correction.

• It’s been a good two months since Saveur has run any recipe comics, which means I guess I should be prodding people more to produce some of them things. I can put you in touch with their digital editor, and it’s my understanding that the checks she cuts for accepted comics cash without problems. In any event, Christopher Bird of Mighty God King (and the writerly half of the stellar Al’Rashad, which improbably keeps getting better) teamed up with Shelli Hay to present a family recipe on his own damn site.

  We’ve never met, but Bird’s always struck me as a reasonable man as well as being chock-full of good comics ideas (although probably the most intriguing comic idea he ever presented was a collaboration), but I have no doubt in my mind that he means it when he says in panel number eight that he will cut you for making unauthorized substitutions. Let the home cook beware.

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¹ Your status as Toronto Man-Mountain and one of the Three Ineffable Avatars of Webcomics (along with Shaenon Garrity and George Rohac) remains unimpeachable, but dang bro you brought the creepy today.

² I loves me some Digger.

There’s some really neat stuff for you today, kids. Let’s jump into it.

• More details on the Capture Creatures gallery show in June, which we teased two weeks back. First off, you may have noticed that said Creatures are appearing on the website at a furious pace, Becky Dreistadt having finished all 151 paintings some time ago; today’s installment is #121, meaning only 30 to go, meaning 17 creatures will still be unposted when the show/book pre-launch hits on 1 June:
  

  LA’s Gallery Nucleus will host the early book release and gallery show on June 1st at 7:00pm: all 151 creature paintings will be on display and available for purchase, along with a yet-to-be-announced resin ?gure, prints, and larger mystery pieces. Opening night features both Becky and Frank signing, as well as complementary drinks, snacks and secret musical guests; the show itself runs through June 23rd.

  That’s from a press release, so no link, but party details are at the Gallery Nucleus site. Unfortunately, the show was scheduled for a time when it was anticipated the book would be done but some delays hit and it’s not done. However, given the track record that Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson have on their books, not to mention the fact that it’s coming from the quality factory of Benign Kingdom¹, I’m not terribly concerned about anything other than the fact that I don’t already have the book in my hands right now.

  Also, Becky and Frank need to get one of their gallery shows to launch in New York already so I have a chance at purchasing paintings before they’re snapped up by other people; on the off chance that your favorite Creature isn’t snapped up by somebody else, chances are you can purchase it from Dreistadt’s artist page at Gallery Nucleus.

  In the meantime, Gibson was kind enough to share with Fleen readers an as-yet unseen Creature, Bechder, who may be spied at the top of the page. He’s all badgery, so I’m guessing he’s an Earth type, but with that smoke/steam coming from his mouth there might also be some Fire in his makeup. Am I doing this right? I never got into Pokémon so I’m new to all this lingo.

• Speaking of B9, it’s well known that lurking just behind the scenes is a tactical genius named George Rohac. As it happens, George² and I happened to be talking about ten days back under social circumstances; nothing formal, no notes taken, and we were having some excellent drinks, which is why I didn’t share with you the news he shared with me that night.

  However, Heidi Mac is all over the story today so you probably ought to know that George has left Oni Press (where he got a passel of webcomickers to do projects) for What Pumpkin Studios, aka Homestuck Intergalatic Headquarters. Just in case you were wondering how Andrew Hussie could conquer the internet even more than he already had, there’s your answer. Between WP and B9 and all the side advice that he hands out, George is practically synonymous with webcomic-related Kickstarts, with an estimated 30+ campaigns under his belt and (by my rough accounting) somewhere north of US$4.0 million in total funds raised.

• Two pieces of merch to point you towards, one real and one hypothetical. Firstly, let me point you towards the LympheDIVAs, which markets specialty clothing for survivors of breast cancer — a side effect of treatment can lead to swelling and chronic inflammation in the arms. There’s no treatment for lymphedema, but compression sleeves can help control the condition and help prevent it from progressing.

  Like a lot of medical clothing, compression sleeves tended to be uncomfortable and ugly, and there’s no reason to put up with that nonsense. Comfortable, fashionable sleeves and gauntlets are what LympheDIVAs set out to make, and the designs are visually stunning.

  They’ve just launched a new product family designs by mad pixelmancer R Stevens, with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network³ getting a portion of each sale of 8-Bit Owl, Pixel Hearts, Pixel Skulls, and Red Robot. It’s not easy to make a stretchy garment retain a blocky, pixel look when it can be pulled in various directions, but it appears that Stevens and LympheDIVAs have done so (not that I should have doubted — my Red Robot socks look great, even on my weirdly asymmetric feet). Here’s where I’d send you all to a store and tell you to buy, but I sincerely hope that you never need to.

  On the theoretical end of things, I think that Hurricane Erika simply must — must — make the smiley-face panties shown halfway down the latest entry⁴ at Oh Joy, Sex Toy [probably NSFW]. For those not willing to click the link, here’s a clip of the relevant panel [almost certainly SFW]. Just get the little Yay! speech balloon on the front and your sexytimes will get 37% sexier.

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¹ Unofficial motto: Makers of fine qualities since 2011.

² While the Fleen Manual of Style dictates that on second and subsequent references, individuals should be predominantly referred to by their family names, there are exceptions to every rule and George is one of them. It just doesn’t work to call him Rohac, or Mr Rohac, or even Éogeorge of the Riders of Rohac. He’s just George.

³ Pancreatic may be the most miserable, evil bastard in the cancer family, if I may be allowed a moment of unwarranted anthopomorphization. It has poor treatment options, fast progression, aggressive metastasizive tendencies, and it kills in amounts that even Red Robot #C-63 would find excessive. It’s not particularly linked to lymphedema, but if Stevens wants to take a chunk out of pancreatic cancer, I say more power to him; I hope he gives it a good curbstomping.

⁴ So to speak.

I’ve been wondering when the first really big Strip Search-related splash would be made and last night Lexxy Douglas launched a Kickstarter to get her webcomic started. In the order that they occur to me:

• Less than 90 minutes after launch (and about an hour after the first public tweet), Douglas had cleared her US$7500 goal.
• Reading the campaign pitch the money raised is to let Douglas turn down otherwise-paying work so she has the time to launch the comic; this stands in contrast to most [web]comics-related Kickstarters that are going to succeed, in that a request to make something that nobody’s seen yet generally doesn’t do as well as a request to merchandise something that already has an audience.
• Douglas, of course, has an audience (via social media) and is well integrated with webcomics creators, not to mention the fans she’s garnered in her time on Strip Search. Last night I thought she’d timed the launch of this KS campaign well, given that she was still seeing an uptick in attention from people that felt her elimination from the show was a travesty. #TeamLexxy will be all over this.
• This morning, I think that her timing is absolute fucking genius [A/V mixed with a liberal dose of holy crap!]; seriously Lexxy, that is some Khoo-level strategy you pulled right there. Bravo.
• As of this writing, Ms Douglas is on the cusp of just north of US$21,000 and the Gary’s First Law of Kicktraq Projections has her finishing in the US$50K – 100K range.
• Stretch goals are presently defined up to 50K; better think up a couple more and ones that don’t require physical production/shipping, on account of you’ve already got a couple hundred packages to mail.
• It appears that George helped Of course he did.

Speaking of Kickstarts, what may be the most logistically-challenging [web]comics Kickstart in history¹ is making progress, and dropped some references to a pledge-management system² called BackerKit, which you may as well get used to seeing, as I suspect it will be a standard part of Make That Thing campaigns.

I can’t give you a comparison with the previously-mentioned After The Crowd as I don’t have access yet, but the screencaps and video make it seem roughly equivalent. The one key differentiator that I noticed is that BackerKit appears to give you continuous access to manage your pledge/information, where After The Crowd gave you a time-limited, one-shot access (with the ability to request re-access later if needed).

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¹ Fulfillment will involve the wrangling of literal dozens of webcomickers, wood craftsmen, printers, translators, musicians, delicious adorable kittens, and more.

² It’s only a matter of time before the enterprise software industry reduces that to “PMS”.

I ain’t Elisabeth Kübler-Ross but I do know something about the stages of grief, such as when Achewood (the once-unstoppable behemoth of absurdist-realist philosophizing) sputters to a near-halt¹. As noted previously, Chris Onstad is not my bitch and however he may find joy in producing aspects of Achewood that I may then consume, it’s all good. I get to share that particular creation that he lets loose on the world whether it’s once a day or twice a year, and however much I may miss it, I cannot complain too much about not getting free entertainment on a my desired schedule rather than that which Onstad can accommodate given the shape of his life.

So it is with a mixture of excitement and don’t-get-too-excited-yet that I noted his first Achewood-related bloggance in more than a year:

Hi. I’m back. I have some good news for you. It’s been a long time coming. A lot has changed since I fell off the face of the earth.

First and foremost: I’ve been working with a team of artists, engineers, and producers to bring Achewood to life. To give it the voices, richness, and opportunities it never had as a comic strip.

I’m flying to Los Angeles today to begin a week of network pitch meetings. If things go well, we’ll find a home for our show. Please cross your fingers for us, send us your good energy. And please, share this clip with your world. I’m very proud of what we’ve done.

There are many other things I want to share with you. About Achewood, about this, about all the loose ends, and about my plans for it going forward. This is the tip and the bulk of the iceberg, but there is much more. It’s been a very busy couple years, full of life-size tragedies, manifold germinations of happiness, and surprising rebirths—just like Achewood.

The pitch meetings mentioned are to explore the possibility of an Achewood-related animated series? special? film? project of some sort, the teaser of which makes me smile. Because I’m totally in the tank for Achewood, I’ve been parsing through those 19 seconds of sound and motion² for any clues they might offer³. Because I’m a realist, I know that even properties with a constituency within an entertainment company can be optioned, paid for, and spend years or decades in development without ever coming to fruition. At this time, possibilities exist — which is more than was true last week.

• Poorcraft 2, on the topic of traveling on the cheap, is well in production and on Saturday Poorcraft bookrunner Spike dropped some news on it. While P2 will see Diana Nock returning for art duties, Spike herself will be stepping back from writing duties as Ryan Estrada — webcomics own Marco Polo — handles the script. Or handled, as the book is well into the gettin’ drawed stage, meaning that Estrada’s work is largely done. Can’t wait to see how Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here turns out.
• Updating our EmCity seating information, news comes this morning that a fairly substantial chunk of Artists Alley island F will be given over to Benign Kingdom. The official exhibitor’s list mentions B9 occupying seat F-16, which is also listed as the home of Johnny Wander. However, word is that B9 will actually occupy seats F12-F16, of which three seats are listed as occupied, and two not listed, which tells me that Grand Vizier George is probably planning to have people rotate into the space seats throughout the show, as well as giving the usual occupants a little more breathing room than is normally found in Artists Alley.
• Given that various Strip Search parties have said that the show will be launching this month, and that the Strip Search site lists the show as running Tuesdays and Fridays, and there’s only one of those weekdays left in the month, Im’a keep a browser window refreshing tomorrow. If nothing else, I’ve been very impressed with the Artist interviews that have run, and how well the Strip Search producers (possibly Khoo) are at stirring up shit in such a blatant fashion. If there’s a reunion show, we may see murder yet.

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¹ To wit: five strips in all of 2011, twelve in the first six months of 2012, and zero since.

² As opposed to Sound and Motion.

³ Such as the 0:11 mark, where it appears that Teodor has been retired in favor of Roast Beef as Ray tests his Whiskey á la Mood sampler. It also appears that Ray is the centerpiece of this teaser, which makes me wonder if he still sounds the same as when Onstad voiced him.

First, watch this.

Second, tell people you know to watch this.

Third, maybe drop a line to George Rohac and tell him he’s a goddamn hero.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that You Can Do Good has the potential to become the next It Gets Better, and it’s important for all the same reasons. You heard the man: I figured I’d go first. First in saying mental illness challenges me, but it’s not who I am; I’m more than what my mind tries to shoehorn me into being; I can prevail over this, and so can you.

It’s a cliche that greatly creative people have a touch of madness about them; it’s a truth-fact that in the eight or nine years I’ve spent getting to know webcomics creators, I’ve met more people with various diagnoses and medications to help control psychiatric conditions than I’d ever known in the first 35 years in my life. Could be because they’re mostly younger than I am, and were more likely to be diagnosed that people my age; could be they’re just more willing to talk about mental illness and a huge number of my contemporaries are in the psychiatric closet.

What I can tell you is, this move to destigmatize mental illness can only help things; I literally watched George’s video for the first time last night five seconds before my EMS pager summoned me to help the second patient in three hours having a psychiatric crisis. Undiagnosed, untreated, unacknowledged, these conditions eat away at lives and leave people damaged to the point of ruin. Getting help¹, not letting shame or contempt prevent that help — so many lives can be improved and saved.

Like I said — a goddamn hero, and all of his considerable contributions to comics aren’t as important as what he’s started. We can all do good; get doing.

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¹ Which in large part is going to require us all to demand that those who need help have realistic means of getting it.

So it’s approximately the Fleeniversary ’round these parts; the official announcement of my entrée into semi-abusive opinion-mongering occurred in the old Goats forums on 22 December 2005, but I’d been banking postings as far back as 5 December, and was really into the daily posting routine (even though nobody was reading yet) around the 15th or so. Which is a long way of saying — today is as close to seven years of what the masthead calls The webcomics blog about webcomics as you’re gonna get.

If I’ve got all my dates right, at this time seven years ago Jon Rosenberg¹ was not yet staring down 40 and had never changed a diaper. Seven years ago, people were somewhat more justified in thinking that Yuko Ota was in her early teens. Seven years ago, Jeff Rowland had proved himself unkillable by mere killer spiders and had started the great and vast TopatoCo Empire, even tangling with weird t-shirt company perverts.

So many of the tools and services we take for granted in webcomics were missing; at that time, there was no Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Kickstarter, Project Wonderful, or :01 Books. Seven years ago, George Rohac had not yet sprung fully formed from the forehead of Zeus.

Return to Sender had only been on hiatus for a year, TCAF had only started to conquer the world, Commissioner James Gordon Hastings had not been whelped, the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge had been going for less than a year, we had only just met Dan McNinja’s moustache, and the Great Outdoor Fight was still a month away from its stealthy beginnings, and further from its legendary majesty.

Rich Stevens was exactly the same, endless and unchanging, save only he is now married and likes dogs.

They say seven years in is when you get tired of things, but I have to say, I still enjoy the heck out all of this, so I hope you’ll join me as I start Year Eight of working out my thoughts on various matters — mostly webcomics, but no promises — where you can hear them. Also, if you happen to be in north/central New Jersey tomorrow, do drop by to see the webcomickers at Wild Pig Comics from noon to 4:00pm, won’t you?

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¹ Who, Svengali-like, planted the seeds in my head and made them bear the desired brainfruit that I should be writing all of this stuff.

Couple of quick notes for you before we get to the main discussion today. One, I’m on Pacific Time this week (and with intermittent internet access), so expect less-timely-than-usual postings. Two, congrats to webcomicky types Darryl Cunningham and John Allison for their nominations in the British Comics Awards (for Best Book and Best Comic, respectively), to be presented in a month’s time at Thought Bubble Festival in Leeds. Also thanks to the BCAs for pointing me towards Josceline Fenton, nominated for Best Comic for Hemlock, a webcomic with which I was not previously familiar. Fenton is also nominated as Emerging Talent for broader body of work, which is going to bear some examination in the very near future.

Okay: George (it is the general policy of this blog to refer to people by their full names on first reference, and to prefer family name thereafter, with first name used to make thing read well, but really — “George” is the only way to name this fine gentleman).

He doesn’t make himself the center of attention, but he’s a significant guy in the world of web/indy comics. When he’s not scouting for talent and finding people for projects at Oni, he’s the behind-the-scenes make-things-happen guy in the Benign Kingdom, and may understand Kickstarter better than Kickstarter does (I believe he may have been involved in more campaigns than anybody else on the planet at this point). But apart from the day job, the Kingdom appears to be his major avenue for world domination right now, so that’s what we talked about. With the second B9 collection getting ready to ship, I wanted to find out what the future directions for the Kingdom might be.

First of all, I have to change the terminology I’ve been using, because “B9.5” isn’t going to cut it much longer; it worked when there was an original book, then a second book, but plans are for two more artbook collections every year (Spring and Fall), so I’d be running out of decimals pretty quickly. Like the Fall 2012 collection, these new books will be:

• collections of four artists
• by invitation (please, no unsolicited submissions)
• ongoing for the forseeable future

That last one is pretty important — the original four creators (Ota/Green/Dreistadt/Dahm) won’t be returning until 2014, which means that the intervening 18-24 months are already planned out and the respective details are already being worked out¹. George wouldn’t spill as to who the contributors to the 2013 books would be “until pen’s on paper”, but he was quite interested in knowing who I would want to see included. I dropped some names² on him, carefully looking for tells that I’d guessed correctly, but he gave away nothing.

More than just having a beautiful book of your best/favorite work, being in one of the biannual collections means that a creator is now “part of the Kingdom”, with the ability to do other projects that strike your fancy; the Kingdom means having a structure to arrange for the logistics of production and fulfillment, as well as serving as a guarantee of quality. As the number of projects from the Kingdom increases, expect to see an ever-wider audience that was not familiar with the creators in question³ to dominate the purchasing, based on a string of previous projects, each successful and full of positive feedback from backers.

These projects can be solo or in combination with other creators (George allowed that there will be an Exquisite Beast/Capture Creatures tandem project), and I can think of a few other projects that I’d love to see — I’ve mentioned more than once that Aaron Diaz should do an artbook of dinosaurs, and I all but begged Anthony Clark over the weekend to revive his collaboration with Emmy Cicierega, Laserpony Studios. Heck, while casually talking with Evan Dahm and Frank Gibson, we accidentally came up with an idea for a Kingdom book that would be awesome and unique and I’m not sure I should talk too much about it.

So there you are — the Kingdom is an ongoing concern, it will continue to expand as makes sense, it’s got a plan for convention appearances, and a store is on the way. The foundations are solid, in part because nothing (not even more Big Gay Ice Cream than you could eat in a lifetime) can distract George when he has a goal in mind. Also, never forget that he has the power to end the world, so let’s all make sure that he meets those goals — it’s safer for all concerned.

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¹ One of the key things to realize about George: the man pays attention and has a plan at all times. The first B9 collection shipped a month early, and the only reason the second isn’t going out early is that a quality issue made the first printing unacceptable, causing a delay to merely “at the time we promised”. George is ready to go to press the day the Kickstarter ends, because he’s planned for submissions and layout before he announces the project.

² In no particular order (and keeping in mind that the goal of B9 is to provide a channel for creators to do artbooks separate from their usual work, so creators already working in an artbook mode like Scott C don’t really need the Kingdom): Carly Monardo, Dylan Meconis, Ursula Vernon, Erika Moen, Vera Brosgol, Emily Carroll, Karl Kerschl, Cameron Stewart, and man oh man I’d kill to see a book of Randy Milholland’s watercolors. I have no idea who on that list would have the time/inclination, but there you go — more than enough people for 2013 and beyond.

³ This is already occurring. The first B9 collection had about 20% of the backers come from Kickstarter itself rather than from the established audiences of the creators; for the second collection, it was over 60% from people searching out KS projects to back.