Backlogged stuff down below, but first, a fresh email that’s just so ridiculous that I have to share:

Just back from a major book tour to promote his new memoir “Zig-zagging: Loving Madly, Losing Badly – How Ziggy Saved My Life” (HCI Books), Tom Wilson, Internationally Syndicated Ziggy™ Cartoonist, joins Jeanette Smith, the powerhouse behind the DILBERT™ brand and former Vice President of Licensing at United Media/United Feature Syndicate to teach a vital new online course called “Cartooning Into the Marketplace.”

Learn from these pros how to give your cartoons a substantial advantage to gaining success! This program will bridge the gap between your creativity and reaching your audience, providing the essential elements that every emerging cartoonist, humorous illustrator and character animator must know to leverage their talents and take their creativity to the national and global markets.

Date: April 22, 2009
Time: 11:00 am – 2:00 pm PST
Price: $90.00/USD

To reserve your place, you can REGISTER NOW FOR THIS EVENT

Wow, all those secrets to success in only three hours. Cartooning must be easier than I thought.

Okay, onto more useful missives.

• From Tony Piro:

  Calamities of Nature is having its first ever caption contest. Whoever thinks of the funniest punchline to [30 March]’s comic will win a book or t-shirt along with the original art.

  Missed this when the contest was first announced, but the voting is underway; head over and help choose the winner.

• From Adam York Gregory, news of another competition of sorts:
  

  TNP Press (The Noir Project) are looking for a new member… it’s an open call to any comics wanting to join. Details can be found here. We will take every application seriously.

  Some pretty good talent over there at TNP; if you’re looking for an association of like-minded cartoonists, be sure to check it out.

• Story followup, courtesy of Tom Mason :
  

  In response to your post on infinite potential, here are some stats on WGA employment in Hollywood. Yeah, some screenwriters do significantly better than others, but it’s still not a pretty picture.

  The post in the link was put together during last year’s writer’s strike. The WGA has 4,434 registered members (as of last year).

  The money quote in the article: “The median income of screen and television writers from their guild-covered employment is $5,000 a year, in part because almost half our members don’t work in any given year.”

  So, for every 2200 that work, another 2200 don’t, at least as writers on projects covered by the Guild.

  PS: I remember reading similar stats about the Screen Actor’s Guild, but can’t find the link yet. All I have now is anecdotal evidence rolling around my head.

• And finally, one of the funniest guys blogging in the comic-ish world is Chris Sims, proprietor of The Invincible Super-Blog (now with even more weekly kicks to the face). One of his own comic projects is now available for your reading online, which based solely on his writing about comics I recommend to you unreservedly:
  

  Click [here] to read the first chapter of the all-new, all-awesome Chronicles of Solomon Stone #1, by me, Matthew Allen Smith, and Benjamin Birdie! Thrill to Solomon and Minxy’s latest case and the revelation of the newest–and deadliest–foe to face the World’s Greatest Half-Vampire Private Detective! I’ll be putting up a new chapter every Wednesday for the next three weeks until the whole 24-page story’s available.

Finally, the blogroll over thataway has just had its semi-whenever the hell I remember to redo; items no longer updating have been pruned, stuff that I’m liking and had inexplicably omitted has been added, and I won’t be doing it again for a while, but if you think you should be there, the criteria remain the same — do a comic that grabs me enough that I keep reading it when you update.