From the top:

• Round numbers: Diesel Sweeties #2000and five years of Wondermark.
• Speaking of those guys: Rich Stevens (and a mess of other cool people, including webcomickers) is at ROFLCon, at the once-prestigious Harvard University. David Malki ! (and a mess of other cool people, incuding webcomickers) is at the Stumptown Comics Festival, in the once-ignored Portland, Oregon. Both events kick off today and continue tomorrow.
• Again with the Malki !: He’s on the podcast of The Ethicist, via the once-respected New York Times.
• More broadcasting: Webcomickers will be invading the once-sedate world of public radio, as members of the North Carolina Web Comics Coffee Clatch descend on the studios of WUNC for an appearance on The State of Things. Tune in or listen to the stream on May 8th at about 12:40pm eastern time, and be sure to call 1.877.962.9862 with your questions. The show will be rebroadcast later that night, then released as a podcast on the site; members of the NCWCCCCCCCCC are also negotiating to have excerpts animated on their website.
• In the hot seat: By the time you read this, Rick Marshall will have his latest webcomic interview up at ComicMix. Paul Southworth of Ugly Hill answers your questions, and I have to note that Ol’ Rick still needs a name for this series; may I suggest Webcomics With Willenholly?
• Life imitates Dinosaur Comics: Ryan North should totally get a commission from that logo design shop.
• And last but certainly not least: Chris Yates of Reprographics has his first book up for pre-order. Titled SET IT TO AWESOME, it features a foreword by Colleen AF Venable and an afterword by David Malki !, which brings us full circle. Looks like I can tell what my first purchase at MoCCA’s gonna be.

Weekend now. Enjoy it.

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.

Ladies and Gentlemen, ________ _____ Kellett, daughter of Dave Kellett and Gloria Calderón Kellett. About that name:

I can already imagine a few of you will be e-mailing me to ask what her name is, so allow me to give you my take on that. Both my wife and I have chosen pretty public lives, and in general we’re happy to share a great deal with the world. But I want to give my children the chance to choose the path best suited to them … whether it be a public life or a private life or somewhere in the middle. So, while I have no qualms about posting a few cute, early baby pics — as she’ll look markedly different in a few months, anyway — I want to give her the gift of anonymity to become her own person in life. I know you’ll understand the value of that.

We at Fleen respect the decision of ________’s parents, but using our awesome investigatory skillz we can exclusively reveal that the little tyke has eight syllables in her full name — on those rare occasions when her parents are mad at her and have to escalate to the full name, eight syllables will be awesome. As an “eighter” myself, I can tell you that by the time your parents have spit the whole thing out, they’ve forgotten why they were mad at you!

This means that we’re looking at the first-ever Guest Week at Sheldon next week; Dave’s a pro and managed to put together a great, 13 day story to run around ________’ birth, but let’s give the guy some time to get caught up and recharge.

Well wishes, monetary gifts, and posters of Shakira for the happy family may be sent via Fleen.

Webcomics are represented in the following categories:

Best Publication For Teens

Best Humor Publication

Best Digital Comic

If I had to make a guess at this early stage, I’d say that Sugarshock! is a lock for the category that best matches “webcomics”, which is odd because it was a total of what? 15 pages? and the the criteria for the category read professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online. If Planet Karen got rejected for not being “long-form” (which it did), I’m not sure how Sugarshock! (which I enjoyed, but it’s essentially a one-shot) could possibly qualify. So okay — let the bitching begin!

The Eisners will be awarded at San Diego Comic-Con in July.

A time for Webcomics: Threat or Menace at NYCC has been set:

There’s a dizzying array of different models for delivering comics over the Web, from Webcomics, to PDFs for a fee, to ad-supported PDFs, to PDFs as promotional tool, and behind it all is the backdrop of illegal file sharing of comics. Are comics on the Web going to be a tool to increase the popularity of paper products, an alternate distribution channel that takes sales from retailers and circulation from libraries, or a threat to legitimate channels as illegal downloads grow? Hear from legacy publishers and cutting edge pioneers on this critical issue for the near future.

Two notes:

1. Although the description above lists the session on Friday, it’s actually on Saturday at 12:00 noon, in room 1E09 (it’s correct on the PDF session grid)
2. Big props to the organizers for fixing the name. Anybody that ever read Spider-Man knows that it’s “Threat or Menace”, not “Menace or Threat”.

Okay, going back to my planned lying in bed with a fever now. If I die, avenge my blood.

Lots of various news items to amuse you this weekend.

• From the ever-alert Christopher Baldwin, Stumptown has prompted Mayor Tom Potter of Portland to declare Portland Comics Month:
  

  The proclamation officially recognizes both the cultural importance and creative influence of this vibrant art form on the entire city.

  To champion and support Portland Comics Month, the Stumptown Comics Foundation has catalogued a staggering number of comics-related events in the Portland metro area for the entire month of April.

• Paul Southworth’s new-style guest week wrapped up with five entirely distinct Ugly Hill entries; look for the overflows to show up in Southworth’s fan art page.
• From the Webcomics Inspiring Big Things Department: Tiny Ghosts prompts a movement for a national peace memorial:
  

  One day while Stumbling on the Internet I came across a kind of photo blog. I found it here if you would like to check it out. The blog has two photos on a webpage which on the left picture of a Washington DC monument says “All the monuments they built were dedicated to war.” On the right on the 2nd photo of a peace sign spray painted on the side of an ordinary concrete wall it says “We had to make the monuments to peace ourselves.”

• After a few fits, starts, and attempts, Alien Loves Predator has returned to its weekly ways.
• And over at Unshelved, a question: is it product placement? Has the boundary between comic and commerce been breached? Bill Barnes responds to the controversy by explaining that it’s not an ethical violation here, then promises to be more careful about giving that impression here.

  To my eye, there wasn’t any kind of ethical lapse that went on, but kudos to Barnes & Ambaum for taking the criticism as a genuine expression of concern from faithful fans and not as an attack. It may not have been necessary, but it’s the sort of action that says the Unshelved lads know who they’re serving, and they’re willing to go out of their way to do it right. Good customer service never goes out of style.

Okay, let’s see: Mr Buffer claims to have a filler, the wordy trio are playing rotational games, Mr Pixel is drawing by hand, Mr Grumptacular is celebrating 11 years, the Swedish Reprobates have run afoul of the Motion Picture Ass. of America, the Dreamcrusher is also drawing by hand, and Ryan Estrada is nowhere to be seen. Yep, April Fool’s Day.

In serious news, the Guest Strip Project launched today, which ordinarily would not be reason to add it to the blogroll over there, but it’s got a few unique things going for it. For starters, there’s a roster of immense talent associated with it (starting with today’s first strip, courtesy of Christopher Baldwin), and the fact that it’s a limited-run strip. One year, and it’s gone. Keep an eye on the store for special merchandise offers during the next year, all for the benefit of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

And mark your calendars, everybody: May 22, Wigu returns with a hard reboot.

Contests! Want fame, acclaim, and the imprimatur of the most Mancunian of all known webcomickers? Then enter the 2008 Scary Go Round Feats of Strength competition. Alternately, if fancy words and skellingtons scare you, try this on for size, from Ben Lehman:

The Game Chef game design contest is a very large annual tabletop RPG design contest, with pretty deep roots in the small press / indepedent RPG design community. This year, for our contest, we’re holding an Artists First! contest. This means that we’re asking artists to draw illustrations for a game that doesn’t exist, then we’re going to ask designers to design those games based on the illustrations.

It’s a good opportunity for small time artists who want to make some business contacts for illustration, and I know that there’s a fair number of those out there in webcomicland.

In other news, I assume everybody’s seen the cover art for the forthcoming Great Outdoor Fight book over at Heidi’s place, right? Gotta say, it’s a little human-focused for my tastes. Perhaps our society is both hetero-normative and anthro-centric, but at least one cat would have been nice.

Finally, our discussion of webcomics and the economics of free is winding down, but it’s just heating up over at The Daily Cartoonist. My favorite part is where Wiley Miller (a cartoonist) tells David Willis (a cartoonist) to make his point “without the snark” (which is the stock-in-trade of … cartoonists). The best points are presently being made by Kris Straub, and it looks like it might not devolve into a vicious cycle of Get off my lawn, whippersnappers! vs. As soon as you stop making buggy whips, Old Guy!, but one can hope.