It appears that typically, Scenes From A Multiverse’s weekly voting pulls in about 3000 – 3100 ballots, but this week’s (as of this writing) is nearly 1000 votes below that usual response point. Is everybody too busy heading to Baltimore Comic-Con or FanExpo Canada? Or would a certain presence on the ballot (as of this writing, leading by a mere 25 votes) actually be depressing the turnout? Much as I’m flattered by the attention, I’m horrified to think what Rosenberg might think up to do to “me” if “I” wind up this week’s “winner”.

• From internet über-meme to adorable plush: the LOL WUT pear (more properly, the Biting Pear of Salamanca, as dreamt up by Digger creator Ursula Vernon) is now squishy, adorable, and up for pre-order. Delight your friends and possibly horrify small children!
• Ever since the whiteboard resignation letter hoax (discussed here), I’ve been thinking about what constitutes comics and what doesn’t. Obviously, there’s got to be words and pictures, but sometimes the balance really tips one way or the other. Is there a magic point where there’s too few words or too few pictures to count? Or is it just a matter of Without even these few {words|pictures}, the meaning of this would be irreparably changed?

  In particular, I’ve been thinking about Hyperbole And A Half, which you might call a blog with spot illustrations, or might call comics. I’m leaning towards the latter, since the pictures are definitely structured to tell the story. I don’t know a dang thing about creator Allie Brosh except for what I read here, but dang if I don’t want to read more.

I’m starting to see why great swathes of people go on holiday for the entire month of August — nothing is happening. And by “happening”, of course I mean something mind-blowingly crazy-go-nuts in the world of webcomics, where everybody just seems to have their heads down gettin’ their work done. For a hack pseudo-journalist, it’s depressingly sane … even the Great Keenspot Reorg went by without a peep. Let’s see if the mailbag has anything cool.

• Cool Thing #1: Katie Sekelsky (last mentioned in the context of the Union of Concerned Scientists cartooning contest, where voting is still live) has unveiled a clever piece of merch; designed for con-going lady creators of things and ironic dudes, the I Am My Own Booth Babe t-shirt is now available for your babydoll shirt-wearing needs.
• Cool Thing #2: Curious about how to price originals? So was Jason Dobbins (who, in the interests of full disclosure, has sworn undying loyalty to my facial hair) of Tales of the Eighth Grade Nothing, so he let the market decide. This auction was too brief to follow (hitting the Buy It Now price well before it was scheduled to end), leading to a valuable lesson: Don’t undervalue your work with a too-modest strike price. No guarantee that this would have gone higher than the BIN price, but no guarantee that it wouldn’t have either.
• Cool Thing #3: Two years, two hundred comics, really awesome, cartoony style: Bear Nuts is right at the magic point where you can jump on and get a full, satisfying story without spending all week catching up. And to think that it all started with humping, humping hippos.
• Cool Things #4 and 5: New interview with :01 Books supremo Mark Siegel on Sailor Twain, conducted by John Walsh at the site of his historical webcomic, Go Home Paddy, with which I was not previously familiar and which is quite good. Bonus!

If there were such a thing as “Followup Friday” around here, that is.

• It’s been a long slog to get all the dies just right, but everybody that can’t afford a Chris Yates original Baffler! puzzle/object d’art just got a budget alternative. Fully a year after the deal was made and nine months after it went public, Ceaco’s first three licensed Baffler! designs have been announced for release this October. Everybody that has a grandma that loves doing puzzles? Your holiday shopping just got a little easier.
• Busy guy these days, Jim Zubkavich is; finished up that ninjariffic series o’ comics from the spring, and now has a new series from Image due next month. Given Zubkavich’s history of quality work, that alone would be worth a mention, but the fact that said new series is titled SKULLKICKERS and described as sword and sassery? Icing on the proverbial cake, my friends. Grab yourself a copy and revel in the kicking.
• Following up on the American Apparel story from the start of the month, there are two words you never want to hear about one of your vendors: going concern. This is because it’s pretty much a given that those two words only ever get used following the words it is not certain that [name of business] can continue as a. It’s rare that a company that uses the Two Words O’ Death avoids either ceasing business operations and/or bankruptcy, and thanks to a financial filing yesterday, those are pretty much the only choices AA has left. As is usual in these cases, Kai Ryssdal’s got the lowdown.
• Finally, a reminder that the Dallas Webcomics Expo number 2 (Electric Boogaloo) will be this weekend, and remember that there’s that art auction to benefit sick kids, so bring cash and lots of it.

Let’s start with the fun stuff.

• Do you like free booze? Sure, we all do.¹ Good news for you, Sparky — Dave Kellett has worked his magic and (yet again) lined up a free booze sponsor for his latest book launch party. Those of you lucky enough to be in the vicinity of Beverly Hills can check out the latest Sheldon and Drive collections, and pound down completely free tequila until the very fancy people eject you from the venue, and possibly the city limits. If you’re found two days later in a tub full o’ ice missing a kidney, don’t blame Dave; tequila must be treated with respect.
• Heard on the premiere business-information program of these shores on Monday afternoon: a story on policing internet behavior and a reference to the Greater Internet uh, Jerkwad, Theory. Heard on the same program Tuesday afternoon, a belated recognition of the authors of said theory. Dunno if Mike and Jerry listen to Marketplace or not, but this is as close as you can get to an official imprimatur from the business community that They Matter.
• Speaking of commerce, Andy Bell sold literally a thousand of his Android toys at San Diego, and only via careful rationing did they last to almost lunchtime on Saturday. For those of you not lucky enough to score some, the newest resupply is due up at the Dead Zebra site in the next week or two.
• Guess what I’m getting: Dr McNinja Boy Scout patches! The Potomac Council is selling its leftovers, details of which can be found here. If you’re interested I’d email sooner rather than later, but it’s one very nice woman named Susan that’s taking care of this sudden influx of attention, so be polite and patient with her. Also, she’s trying to keep track of order requests, addresses, and payment info, which is much simpler if you reply to her emails instead of starting new ones with each exchange.

Okay, time to get serious. Go read this piece at The Comics Journal on censorship in Sweden, then come back. For those of you who are contrary and don’t feel like reading, it concerns an established, long-respected manga translator who was convicted in June on the charge of possessing child pornography, for having on his computer a few dozen scanned manga pages related to translation projects. The pictures were deemed to be “of a sexual nature” and to depict “characters under the age of 18″. Woo, pedophile off the streets, we can all sleep better at night, forces of decency triumph.

Maybe.

Nobody knows how explicit the pictures (again, not photos, not anything that actually depicts any living person, much less a child) might be because it’s illegal for them to be seen by anybody, and therefore we have only the prosecutor’s word to go on. And here’s the kicker:

In Sweden, all images – be it photos, movies, animations or drawings – depicting what one can understand to be a child (i.e. under the age of 18) in a sexual situation, are regarded as child pornography, since the legislators agreed on using the word “image” instead of “photo” in the law. The ban does not apply to text, though, only images.

This law has been active for almost a decade, but this ruling is the first one ever in Sweden where drawn images have been deemed child pornography in a court of law, and it might thus create a precedent. This could have far-reaching consequences for comics, both for artists and readers. Serious depictions of abuse, autobiographical stories of sexual debut, or simply children without clothes on, may now be classified as child pornography. [emphasis added]

We’ll neglect for the moment the fact that the age of consent in Sweden is 15, and that it’s impossible to decide if a cartoon character that’s meant to be an adult is “too young-looking”. Instead, let’s concentrate on this:

One major problem is the fact that since it is illegal to even look at images like these, the images that were the grounds for the conviction cannot be shown anywhere. This leads to a Catch-22 situation where it is virtually impossible for anyone to decide whether something is illegal or not.

Until this gets settled? You probably shouldn’t read Rene Engström’s highly-regarded work within the geographical boundaries of Sweden, since Johan and Tina might have been underage, Little Shit might look too young, and diary comics of bathing your kids are obviously criminal in nature.

Those links don’t work, because as much as we know that none of those things described is wrong in any way, somebody out there is screaming Won’t you please think of the children? and might make things difficult for Rene and I won’t make it any easier for them to start their witch-hunt. The fact that I need to think in those terms really pisses me off.
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¹ For maximum impact, read that line in the voice of Informercial Sally Struthers.

Several interesting things in the past day or so.

• Firstly, happy stripperversary (that’s an anniversary for a strip, not an anniversary with strippers) to Jeph Jacques, seeing as how Questionable Content hit seven years yesterday. I’m sure that there’s nothing Jacques would rather have you do than look back to strip one and then comment on the art.¹
• Okay, so Jezebel has a bit of a viewpoint in its reporting of American Apparel’s uh, colorful CEO, Dov Charney (cf: such Jezebel search tags as americanappalling). They still did some pretty solid-looking business-type reportage in their story on how AA may be facing bankruptcy, which leaves a number of t-shirt mongers with business decisions to make:

  Stock up on AA shirts against a possible interruption or discontinuation? Look for alternate vendors? Discontinue AA orders immediately and/or renegotiate billing terms, on account of bankruptcy means you might not get shirts you paid for? I won’t pretend to know what course of action might be best for anybody, but it’s absolutely time to decide what questions need asking.

• Contest! Beard and moustache cartooning contest! Hosted by Phil McAndrew of Feral Pizza!
• Darryl Cunningham has been mentioned on this page previously, in conjunction with his webcomics in support of rationality (specifically, as regards the false beliefs vaccines cause autism and homeopathy works better than placebos); we’re glad to again mention his comics work (courtesy of a link by Scott McCloud, who found it courtesy of link from The Spurge; we’re all a bit late to the comic itself, which dropped on the eve of SDCC), this time on the topic of yes, we did land on the moon, dammit.

  Just please, don’t make the mistake I did and read the comments; they start off nice and normal, then go off the rails into CrazyTowne — and not the good CrazyTowne, full of fun times and wooo, the bad CrazyTowne where you back away from everybody you meet slowly, without making eye contact.

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¹ Actually, there’s probably about 6000 things he’d rather have you do, including four or five that involve urethra weasels.

By the time I get through all the stuff I brought home (purchased, given, and would have been given but Gina Gagliano told me it would be waiting for me when I got home and she was right)¹ from San Diego, webcomics will be over, done, a quaint form of amusement from Ye Olde Dayes. So in the meantime, here’s what’s going on:

• Box Brown is taking a creative leap and ending the comic that he’s best associated with; Bellen! is in the midst of breaking down the boundaries between the real Box and the thinly-disguised Ben, and when that’s done, it’s over. The good news is that this is so Brown can concentrate on the very interesting and creatively-fulfilling Everything Dies, which will become a webcomic in addition to a print series.

  This, I think, is what web/indy comics allow that print/corporate comics don’t — the ability to wrap up a story or strip, or turn it into something completely different, and let the creator not get subsumed by the creation. Look back at the early days of comic strips, and you’ll find creators that let one strip finish and another take its place all the time. Today, get into the papers with a big enough hit and that’s it — you’re locked in forever (I believe the legal term is in perpetuity) and long after you’re dead, something you thought might last for a decade is still be put together by the former assistants of former assistants or children and grandchildren.

  The ability to change direction, try an experiment on a whim, or get out on top and do something new? I think that flexibility is the unique characteristic that answers Valerie D’Orazio’s concern that webcomics might have come and gone. Les webcomics sont morts, vive les webcomics.

• Speaking of the web/indy vs print/corporate divide, the first question from the Webcomics Lightning Round Pseudo-Transcript has been getting a lot of attention, and it may be time for a clarification. Chris Eliopolous rightly comments:
  

  [T]here are a couple of us in print comics, also trying to make a go of web comics as well. Karl Kerschel, me, Skottie Young has given it a go. I’ve always been taught not to take one path-diversify. Web and print aren’t opposite ends, they are different venues.

  And I’ll have to say that this confusion is more on me than on Brad Guigar. I was typing as fast as I could, but answers were condensed and I’m pretty sure that if we asked Guigar for a clarification of his position, it would be that no one creation is both print- and webcomics; certainly a given creator can work in both worlds. Fleen apologizes for the confusion.

• Speaking of the flexibility to try something new — Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie collection provides a case in point. Covering more than 200 comics that ran over a period of a year and a half, the shift of tools and techniques is apparent, and it’s a delight to see Gran switch from pencil and pens to purely digital to her current arrangement of pencils on the Cintiq and final production with brush on Bristol. Providing a different example of flexibility, a year ago Gran decided to update Octopus Pie with whole story arcs in a massive update, but now has decided to go back to three times a week:
  

  In August, Octopus Pie is going back to a 3-a-week update schedule. …[M]ainly comes down to productivity. I know I can do way more pages on a self-imposed deadline.

• Speaking of August, one of my favorite webcomics, A Girl and Her Fed comes back from a short house-moving hiatus next week. The second part to the story kicks in then, and I’m hoping there are lots of opportunities for creator K Brooke “Otter” Spangler to use the word stabby. It’s a fun word.
• Following up on our story last week, here are the details on the new publishing ventures for Girl Genius: starting next year, three major new ventures with three publishers will spread the tale of madgirls and madboys further and wider than every before.
  
  1. Night Shade Books will publish prose novelizations of the series, starting with the first volume in Spring 2011 and subsequent volumes in 2012 and 2013. At the same time, Brilliance Audio will be releasing audio adaptations of each of these novels.
  2. TOR Books will launch their new graphic novel line in Fall 2011 with a color omnibus edition of the first three Girl Genius volumes even as Studio Foglio is publishing volumes 10 and 11, completing the first great arc of the Girl Genius saga.
  3. Finally, Alpha Entertainment (couldn’t find a link) of Copenhagen will begin publication of a Danish version of Girl Genius, in their new magazine, Comic Party in spring 2011.

  Finally, various game licenses are expected to be released in 2011: the Girl Genius ‘The Works’ card game is in for a reissue, and iPhone and Facebook games are in development.

Tomorrow: catching up with all the emails.

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¹ You can find these fine wares from the following cool people.

• Purchased: Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O’Malley; Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars in Brooklyn by Meredith Gran; Penny Arcade: The Halls Below by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik; Templar, AZ: Trouble Every Day by Spike; Flight 7 edited by Kazu Kibuishi; Much The Miller’s Son Books 1 & 2 by Steve LeCoulliard; Drive: A Hero Rises by Dave Kellett; Overcompensating: A Dangerous Obsession by Jeffrey Rowland; Chainsawsuit 3 and F-Chords by Kris Straub; Android toy by Andy Bell.

• Given: Shi Long Pang book 1 by Ben Costa; SMBC Theater DVD by various; Tent Sale by Ian Jones-Quartey.
• Would Have Been Given But: Brain Camp By Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan, and Faith Erin Hicks; Koko Be Good by Jen Wang
• Missed Them When I Took The Earlier Photo, Dammit: Super Stupor #3 by Randy Milholland (given in conjunction with original art purchase); Family Man volume 1 by Dylan Meconis (previously ordered, picked up in person).

Whew, I think I’ve finally caught up with everything that should have run yesterday. Onwards to things that didn’t crop up over the weekend tomorrow.

• Now available for your purchasing pleasure — Spacetrawler originals at the low, low price of $80, which is a damn bargain, especially considering that the originals are sepia-toned, not just black and white.
• Still running in Portland: Trek in the Park 2; while waiting for Khaaaaaan!! to overact, please enjoy some fanart from the always-interesting Bill Mudron and Mike Russell
• The good folks at the Cartoon Art Musuem wish to remind you that they will be at San Diego Comic Con, booth 1930 (Master List o’ Webcomickers amended to include this fact), and will be running the Fourth Annual CAM Sketch-a-thon Thursday, July 22 through Sunday, July 25, 2010. There’s a huge-ass list of highly skilled cartooners who will be taking part (including more than a few who make regular appearances on this page); for a $10 suggested donation, they will do their absolute best for YOU.
• The Dallas Webcomics Expo is back for a second year of fun come August (God willin’ an the creek don’t rise), and this year they’re adding a charitable component. To benefit the Texas Scottish Rite Hosptial for Children and Bryan’s House, DWEX will be conducting an art auction, and all are welcome to contribute originals within the show guidelines (at least 8″ x 10″, nothing R-rated, pleased). Submission form here, [PDF], and they’d like to physically receive the art by the 12th of next month (or bring it with you if you’re attending).
• Speaking of art auctions, as of time-of-writing, the Web-Comics Auction for the Gulf is sitting at a total of $3031.95, with a little less than two days to go on the first batch of art. Far be it from me to drive The Wedge of Envy between artists, but I am forced to note that at this time, Anthony Clark’s contribution is currently out-pacing that of Christopher Hastings by fifteen dollars.

  Clark, of course, is the colorist of Dr McNinja, which sort of makes Hastings his boss. Will keeping these bid amounts where they are affect their working relationship? It could! It could destroy their sense of mutual respect and a beloved webcomic at the same time. Somebody better start a bidding war if Dr McNinja is to continue!

• Below the cut is a list of SDCC programming sessions that may be of interest to those working (or seeking to) in webcomickry. Actually, everything tagged webcomics is available here, including some things that are only marginally related to Our Interests. What’s called out are sessions that either weren’t tagged as webcomics-related, or were and I wanted to make sure you saw them.

(more…)

A pair of followups for you all this Monday morning:

• Dale Zak, who you may remember from a fast-moving backlash against an iPhone webcomic-reading app that he released and then almost immediately withdrew, has come back for Try Two.

  This time, his app seems to be more explicitly designed (or perhaps just more accurately described) as an RSS reader, and doesn’t appear to be using the names of webcomics in his promotional blurbs (which had been one of the loudest points of protest last time).

  Given that I don’t have an iPhone/iPad and can’t test-drive the thing myself, it does appear from casual inspection to follow all of the ethical concerns one would want from such an endeavour. Thoughts?

• Also, there’s been a recurring discussion in the community about spec work, particularly a flavor where a “contest” harvests work from lots of creators but may or may not ever pay out. NPR’s On The Media considered the pros and cons of crowdsourcing in a story broadcast this past weekend that’s worth a listen.

In other news, lots of convention news.

• The run-up to San Diego Comic-Con continues apace — programming highlights will be discussed tomorrow, and there are a few more additions to the Webcomics Exhibitors List. In addition, Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson appear to be supplementing the (ridiculously underpriced) Tigerbuttah book with Tigerbuttah plushes. Hopefully, Customs doesn’t become so enchanted with these cute lil’ guys that they “confiscate” the entire supply for themselves.
• New Show On The Block Intervention scored a bit of a coup: Molly Crabapple will be bringing Dr Sketchy’s Anti-Art School to the show as both a discussion panel and a full-blown three-hour event with free admission for con attendees. Artists, however, are encouraged to reserve one of the limited (though free) slots at the front of the room, where sketching will be easiest.
• Baltimore Comic-Con will again host the Harvey Awards, with MC duties again provided by Scott Kurtz (who will have to work pretty hard to top his performance last year, which killed). The Harveys announced their nominees, and of interest to webcomics fans are certain names:
  Misery Loves Sherman creator Chris Eliopolous for Best Letterer (for his comic book work)

  Steve Hamaker (with lots of webcomics at his site) for Best Colorist (for his work on BONE)

  Longtime webcomicker Kazu Kibuishi for Best Original Graphic Publication For Younger Readers (for the second Amulet book)

  Flight 6 and ACT-I-VATE, both done by more webcomickers than one can reasonably count (for Best Anthology)

  A.D.: New Orleans After The Deluge (for Best Previously Published Graphic Album, the “previous” being online)

  Oh, yes, and the category for Best Online Comics Work:

  Kate Beaton’s Hark A Vagrant
  Steve Ellis, David Gallaher and Scott O. Brown’s High Moon
  Nathan Schreiber’s Power Out
  Scott Kurtz’s PvP
  Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo

Finally, some congratulations are in order:

• To Blank Label Comics for their spiffy new homepage
• To Angela Melick, engineer, webcomicker, and now no longer a planner of weddings

Whew! Is that everything? I think that’s everything. If I missed anything, promise I’ll get to it tomorrow.

Lotta stuff coming up in the immediate future. Let’s dig in.

• Waves of webcomickers are, even now, making their way toward ConnectiCon, including all the fine folks listed here. A pretty significant subset of them will be heading home after the weekend and then promptly u-turning their way cross-continent to San Diego in — urk — eleven days time. Before they do, though, keep an eye out for Super Art Fight, both in Hartford, and in SAF’s secret underground lair of Baltimore next weekend for SAF7.
• Speaking of San Diego, they’ve not only got booth numbers now attached to the exhibitor list (highlights below the cut), but the schedule of events is going up, and it’s personalizable this year. I’m going to be playing around with this a bit this weekend — I’m particularly interested to see if it detects schedule conflicts and lets me know that the BONE panel probably runs over the start of the Dumbrella panel (which I usually get drafted to moderate).
• Also: holy crap, TopatoCo got a new client, and it’s Jhonen freakin’ Vasquez.

Below the cut: as complete a list of webcomics-related folks as I could find. If there are any missing or incorrect entries (especially where people are sharing space), let me know. The small map previously posted fits into the big one here. (more…)

From time to time, this page notes the efforts and work of Ms Carly Monardo, animator on Venture Bros., illustrator, original Dr McNinja colorist, poster designer, superhero character (re-)designer, etc., etc. Well, she’s back, and this is a big one.

Spurred by various fundraisers from creative types to support cleanup and restoration efforts in the Gulf of Mexico, Carly has decided to organize an auction of originals from webcomickers, which was announced Saturday afternoon via Twitter and is just now ramping up. Ms Monardo took time from her busy charity efforts to talk with Fleen about it.

Yes, it’s true — while the interview was being transcribed, Ms Monardo was sending through updates, because creators keep pledging. We’ll wrap this up so she can get back to organizing things.

If you want to get in on the auction and support the best of causes, contact Carly, whose family name is Monardo, and who keeps an email account at the Google-run email service, which is a dot-com.