New Jess Fink site! She said “poop”!

• Okay, this is the sort of story that changes quickly, so by the time you read this it may no longer be an issue. There’s a new webcomic-reading application over in the iPhone/iPad apps store, by one Mr or Ms Reilly Watson. Unlike the last one of these that made a splash in the community, this app does not appear to be a simple RSS feed aggregator — it appears to pull comics from the creator’s site, present it outside of their preferred context, costing the creators bandwidth and advertising revenue (I don’t have an iPhone or iPad, so my apologies if I’m wrong on this one). One more time for those in the back: RSS readers = cool, scrapers = not cool.

  Mr or Ms Watson might particularly want to pay attention to a bit from Robert Khoo at the SDCC Webcomics Lightning Round, as it bears repeating:

  Question: Going back to people taking your content, were you aware of how you have to protect your work always, and is that likely to change?
  Khoo: It’s very complicated, and would take a lot more than twenty seconds to answer properly; we aggressively protect ourselves from people trying to make money off our marks, otherwise we see it as a form of community enabling.[emphasis original]

  And lookee there — Mr or Ms Watson mentions Penny Arcade as one of the ‘popular comics’ included (although I must point out in the service of snark that Mr or Ms Watson seems to have farmed support for the app out to Canadian Google), which means that Mr or Ms Watson is indeed making money off that mark.

  Quick hint to Mr or Ms Watson and all who might follow in his or her footsteps: the Patent and Trademark Office maintains a simple trademark search which shows exactly who owns what. I’ll also point out that trademark owners have an obligation to defend their marks, and that registration means that violators are subject to treble damages. That would be the case here even if the app is just an RSS aggregator, since it’s advertising on a name and identity owned by somebody else. If the app in question is a scraper, Mr or Ms Watson should prepare to share out revenue to the creators who are going to be demanding compensation.

• Oh hecka yeah — Angela Melick, aka Jam, aka Spike Without Dreads, aka my right hand rule homie, has done the crazy and redrawn a bunch of her Wasted Talent college-era strips in order to put her first book together. We Are The Engineers debuts at Anime Evolution this weekend, and goes up for pre-order on the 13th for artists editions, with actual online sales on 18 September.

  For everybody that ever wondered what the crap was going on in the head of the engineers that they know and (let’s be honest — only sometimes) love, Melick is your translator. We’re definitely a breed apart, and she’s our ambassador to the world of people that don’t subscribe to the notion If it ain’t broke, break it and see if you can make it better! We are an oft-misunderstood people, and may consider WATE as a field guide to our mysterious ways.

• Finally, because a few people have been asking — I’m not going to be able to make it to SPX and/or Intervention next month; unfortunately, I’ve got a little too much going on this autumn, and will save my away from home time for NEWW. On the upside, most everybody I would see in Bethesda will be in Easthampton in November, so that’s all right.

  For those of you that are heading to Maryland, Casey Roberson wants you to know that there are hotel bargains o’plenty in the immediate area of the two shows, including a place called Legacy Hotel in Rockville (less than 2 miles from SPX) with single-bed rooms for $68/night. Please note that we at Fleen are not travel service and make no claims about the quality of accommodations. Then again, you could probably get cut by a murderous drifter just as easily at an expensive hotel as a cheap one, so may as well save a few bucks.

Friday. Last day off work of vacation, weekend a-comin’. Let’s do this.

• Re: Penny Arcade’s PATV season one finale. Wow. Just watch it.
• Re: Skin Horse book2 pre-order on Kickstarter ends in 23 hours (as of this writing). Hint: the minimum pledge that will get you a physical book (which includes a sketch) actually works out about the same as what you’d pay for a non-sketch edition of the book once you take shipping and handling into account.
• Re: The unique ability of comics to reach audiences (particularly those underserved by traditional media); sometimes this approach provokes a WHAT reaction that may undermine the intended message, but sometimes it works really well. For an example of the latter, may I refer you to Adrean Clark’s Eight Ways To Be Deaf?

  Originally run as a B&W webcomic, 8 Ways is now fully colored and available as an e-book, with print coming next month. This is how you teach somebody about your culture, cause, or goal — organically, with a bit of humor, and remembering that people are people. Over-the-top cliched demonization? That just gets you laughed at. Not “with”. At.

• Re: Missed it entirely. Blank It, the webcomic forced to be creative by trapping its only characters in an infinite, featureless plane, has shaken things up first by constraining the characters, then by transferring the cast to the opposite of the infinite, featureless plane: the interior of a box. Interesting.

For example, there’s this, which is totally not related to San Diego — Marvel (yep, that Marvel) is looking for a web software architect, with the relevant description being:

As a Web Software Architect, you will help define the architecture for Marvel’s interactive digital products, consisting primarily of the Marvel.com collection of Web sites and various mobile offerings. You will be involved in the design and development of cutting-edge Web applications, defining system architecture to achieve scalability and reliability goals, and researching new technologies for our evolving business systems.

Which, once translated from jobpostingese (subdialect: I know a bunch of different business phrases and think I can translate that into IT-speak) sounds somewhere between “you just have to overhaul our main site” and “we’re a year or more behind comiXology and LongBox Digital, and you have to catch us up”. Combined with the recent de-Zudafication over at DC, it looks like the big publishers are trying to figure out what they want webcomics to be (which isn’t necessarily what webcomics are). Many thanks to Friend o’ Fleen Brett “Small g, no period dammit” Porter for the story tip.

• Updates to the SDCC Webcomics Locate-o-Tron continue apace, particularly concerning the news that Doug TenNapel tweeted that his booth will be hosting a certain officer of the law with a stick-mounted cleaver.
• Speaking of tweeting, Christopher Hastings mentioned that Some kid named Malachai sent me a story to draw?, which led to much speculation confirmed by Ethan Nicolle: Axe Cop and Dr McNinja team-up!
• Speaking of San Diego, Scott Kurtz promo’ed his show merch debuts, and much as the vinyl figures look awesome, the line that jumped out at me was:
  

  PvP book 8 will be debuting at the show. This is your first chance to pick up the latest volume of PvP and I’m very proud of this collection. It collects all the strips from 2008 and is the first PvP collection I’ve self published since 2001 (more on that at a later date). [emphasis mine]

  That “later date” turns out to be today, as the press release has been seen all over the comics blogosphere today (for example, with Brigid Alverson). Somewhere in my stacks, I still have Kurtz’s previous self-published work, and I always wondered in the back of my head how long it would be before he returned to the world of DIY.

  With a wealth of experience and advice from his studiomates to call on, I imagine that the mechanical presentation will be better than we’ve seen in the past, and since it’s all on him, I suspect that he’ll push himself to a schedule that’s both regular and on a short delay from on-line presentation. Self-publishing can be a headache, no doubt, but every self-publisher I’ve spoken to is pretty glad to have that control.

• Oh, yeah, and there’s the return of The Webcomics Section, this year coordinated by Jorge Cham, who’s so dedicated to the idea of a webcomics-themed giveaway that he did the wrangling work despite the fact that he won’t even be at San Diego. Four pages of four-color goodness on genuine newsprint, yours for the grabbing pretty much anywhere in webcomicland for the duration of the show, or until we run out.

Sad news broke this morning: Harvey Pekar, jazz scholar, literary analyst of rare insight, and famously cranky bastard — in the best sense of those words — died in the early morning hours at his home in Cleveland. Harvey paved the way for a hell of a lot of people in comics, and was particularly an inspiration for those who wanted to tell their own stories. It seems hard to believe that there could be a Bellen, DAR!, SMILE, Conversations With My Younger Self, or any of a hundred other These Things Happened To Me kind of comics without Harvey’s example.

Although it’s in the Fleen Manual of Style that people are referred to by last name after their initial introduction, I can’t help but use his given name. I was only privileged to meet him once (Harvey himself was gracious, friendly, patient, and erudite, and in that half an hour I learned more about jazz than I had in the prior 35 years), but having shared so much of himself and his life, I think that we all felt like we knew Harvey personally. He was the sometimes grumpy, always fascinating guy that lived a block or two over, even if “a block or two” was on the other side of the world. Now that we have lost Harvey and Studs Terkel, I wonder who will be the next chronicler of ordinary lives.

To his widow, Joyce, and daughter, Danielle, our deepest sympathies; you’ll never read these words and they would likely be only slight comfort, but please know that Harvey made all of our lives richer with his stories, his insight, and his honesty.

For everybody else, there’s a good collection of some of Harvey’s best moments at The AV Club. When you’re done watching those, go out and have an ordinary day that becomes an adventure.

It’s absolutely gorgeous out, why am I at work? Wherever you are, take a peek outside and if it’s nice, close out the browser and go enjoy it for a half hour or so. I’ll still be here.

• Following up on the previously-reported screening of Sita Sings The Blues sponsored by our friends at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francicso, some additional information. As previously announced, the movie screens on Tuesday, 20 July (aka the day before Preview Night in San Diego); now we can share that the screening will be at 7pm (doors open at 6:30) at the Delancey Street Foundation Screening Room, located at 600 The Embarcadero; tickets are $25 in advance from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, $30 at the door. Tell Nina I said hi.
• The first ever “Feel Free To Say Hi If I’m Wearing A Dinosaur Comics Shirt Day, Woooooo!” apparently had some success, so Nexus of All Webcomics Realities (Canadian edition) Ryan North is declaring a second such day, this time with a bit more lead time and on the weekend so more people can find romance. Saturday, July 17th will be what is now officially named the annual “July Dinosaur Comics Check Out My Sweet Shirt, And Then Talk To Me Because I’m Awesome Day”.
• Another webcomic has crossed the decade mark; Darrell M. Stark wrote to remind us that today, June 30th, makes ten years of Breakpoint City by Brian Emling. I think you can count the number of webcomics that have managed such on two hands and zero feet, so well done Brian, and thanks for the reminder, Darrell.
• Not quite anniversaries, but two epic stories will be wrapping up next week: on Monday, 5 July Evan Dahm will be finishing Order of Tales with an update of 60-odd pages. Add it to the previously-completed Rice Boy, and Dahm has a couple zillion pages of affecting, weird, compelling story for you to enjoy.

  To make the day extra special, KC Green will on the same day post the final chapter of The Anime Club. For those of you that find Monday to be a holiday, you should find plenty of free time to read both sagas over in their entirety.

• Finally, nothing to do with webcomics, but I wanted to share this: from the TEDx conference held in Princeton earlier this year, the guys who provide me with drinks: Francis Schott and Mark Pascal on the value of old style social networks. Anybody passing through central New Jersey, I am always available to have a drink with you at their bars.

(Skipping a bunch of links — you’ll thank me later)

So WOWIO went and bought itself Drunk Duck a few days ago; formerly purchased by Platinum (which also previously owned Drunk Duck), WOWIO was apparently spun off some time ago, although it appears to still be owned by the same people that own Platinum. From my perspective, it appears that Platinum sold off a portion of itself to a portion of itself that it previously sold to itself? Insert obligatory incest reference here.

If you want to actually understand less of the deal than I do, you can watch to WOWIO/Platinum (remember — they’re different companies now) honcho Brian Altounian talk with MoneyTV on the acquisitions (thanks to Rob Tracy for pointing me to the video). But first, a disclaimer about MoneyTV …

Self-described as The longest running business television program of its kind, MoneyTV interviews CEOs of companies, having first agreed on the parameters of the interview:

We will research your company and create the questions to be asked during the 11-minute interview, providing them to you in advance for your review and approval. [emphasis mine]

This puff piece hard-hitting news investigation of your company can be yours for the low, low cost of $11,500. Presumably if you throw them enough money, they’ll get the Slap Chop guy to talk about how awesome your company is.

There are some great partnerships in creative life, and sometimes a great one gives way to a greater one. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were an unstoppable combo platter in the world of musical entertainment that would never be topped — until Rodgers partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II re-invented entertainment in their first collaboration and kept surpassing themselves for almost twenty years.

What I’m trying to say is, just as Rodgers & Hart led to Rodgers & Hammerstein, Straub & Malki ! have inevitably given way to Straub & Malki, the latter being David Malki !’s mom, who filled in for her absent son on episode 47 of Tweet Me Harder and demonstrated a fundamental truth about parents: they shape who we are by teaching us what we know, but they don’t necessarily teach us everything they know. In this case, Mrs Malki knows about the Dewey Decimal System, ninjas, cats, ninja cats, and stinging insects. Maybe if she’s not available for some future podblast, Kris can have David back as a sub.

• Out today: How I Made It To Eighteen. My thoughts on the book are here. My question to you: Do you have a better use for seventeen bucks? Food, rent, stuff like that, you get a pass. Otherwise, this is your next purchase.
• Or maybe The Blood Cloud should be your next purchase, featuring KC Green’s own brand of special thoughts and guest strippers galore. Pre-orders up now.
• He was talking about making radio, but Ira Glass’s thoughts on wrongness are worthy of your consideration:
  

  Totally. One of the reasons I was interested in doing this interview is because I feel like being wrong is really important to doing decent work. To do any kind of creative work well, you have to run at stuff knowing that it’s usually going to fail. You have to take that into account and you have to make peace with it. We spend a lot of money and time on stuff that goes nowhere. It’s not unusual for us to go through 25 or 30 ideas and then go into production on eight or 10 and then kill everything but three or four. In my experience, most stuff that you start is mediocre for a really long time before it actually gets good. And you can’t tell if it’s going to be good until you’re really late in the process. So the only thing you can do is have faith that if you do enough stuff, something will turn out great and really surprise you.

Most days, the stories, news, and emails suggest a sort of commonality, but it’s not working too well at the moment. Let’s see if something pops up as we go along.

• Winning the Best Title of 2010 award in the prestigious “Fleenies”, Vepo Studios presents Whazamo! State of the Art: Webcomics, a profile of webcomickers at this year’s TCAF. Ramón Pérez, Hurricane Erika, and The Toronto Man-Mountain are featured in the five-minute mini-edudrama.
• The Best Creator’s Pitch Fleenie goes to Chris Eliopolous for the best possible reason to read Misery Loves Sherman:
  

  Just go read my damn strip already. It don’t come any cheaper.

Nope, haven’t got any more of those, and we all know you need at least three things to make a theme. But we do have some comings and goings to note:

• Dirk Tiede’s Paradigm Shift is due to return from hiatus on Tuesday, 1 June, as Part 4 kicks off the start of Act II. Considering that Act I took more than ten years (including the self-publishing of three books) to complete, a half-year hiatus ain’t so bad.
• Over at Hello With Cheese, it appears that co-creator and artist-half Bryan Prindiville has moved on; thanks to the extensive buffer, Prindiville actually stopped drawing two weeks ago, but the new artist doesn’t start for a few weeks yet. Prindiville will bow out on Almost A Big Round Number strip #250, on 4 June.
• Having wrapped up Act I of Operation: 3-Ring Bound, the mysterious creators of the spy-themed webcomic Eben07 (of whom no photographs are known to exist, and who are believed to sport modified finger- and iris-prints) will be on break for a month or so.

  Signals intelligence has them taking time to put their report of proceedings through review and classification before distribution to the appropriate departments. It is imperative that copies be obtained and decoded — you are authorized to sacrifice your own life (as well as those of your teammates and any friendly assets) if necessary to meet this objective. Do not fail, or the world may never recover from the consequences.

It’s just one of those days, you know? Pretty miscellaneous.

• The next Erfworld volume is up for pre-order, and a break of two weeks or so to regroup before diving into the next section of story. I’ll give Rob Balder this — when he says “this story will be about 25 pages” and delivers “more than 30 comic pages and an equal number of text updates”, it’s hard to get annoyed that he might need some downtime.

  Also on the pre-order block: the newest Schlock Mercenary book from Howard Tayler (which I managed to spell correctly this time). As is usual, both books will feature signatures (and Tayler’s will included sketches) in return for the upfronting of cash, saving you potentially thousands of dollars to travel to a show that features the creators to get the same degree of personalization. Now don’t they look like bargains?

• Back in the news as the movie approaches completion: Gene Yang on whitewashing in The Last Airbender, this time in comic form. Confession time: I never watched Avatar when it was on, and I generally dislike Shyamalan movies, so I’ve got no dog in this fight; but it surely does seem like Hollywood went out of their way to honor the Asian aspects of the original stories in every respect except the characters. Feel free to quibble over how this is true or not true in the comments.
• Wait — did they just fly through the drive ring (00:14) when leaving the Denny’s? SCAD student Dave Taubert takes designs from Dave Kellett’s Drive and makes a little rendered fly-by movie out of it. I found the second half (showing some of the construction effort) to be as interesting as the first half; Taubert’s notes may be found here.
• Emergency sale at Box Brown’s place! Okay, not an emergency, but very exciting nonetheless.
• Finally, I’ve seen some papercraft models of various webcomics characters — Wigu Tinkle, Hawk, Truck-Ra (can’t find the model right now — anybody know where it is?), but after seeing these anime papercraft models, I’m starting to wonder what might be possible. Dan McNinja on fire? Cartilage Head? Fuschia and Baby Blue? Model Erika? Squatting Matthew Henson? The mind boggles.

This is where that influence that the Penny Arcade guys have makes a difference in a lot of lives. The latest episode of PATV is live, and it’s not an easy thing. Messers Holkins and Krahulik talk about their histories of anxiety, depression, coping, and the effects drugs (illicit and licit) have had on them.

They’re sharing stuff that mostly doesn’t get talked about, and that alone could help a lot of people. This is a must-watch.