If you didn’t make it to the Dumbrella session at SDCC, it’s on YouTube. If you don’t have time for the full hour, check out part 6 (featuring Scott McCloud’s question about The Magic Number, and the discussion of how the webcomic model can apply to politics) and part 7 (featuring mad rhymes and webcomicker dance moves).

In other news, webcomic raises the dead:

Last week, Edward Gorey contributed a guest strip to my webcomic, Herman the Manatee. The week before it was George Herriman! Herman has only been around for six months but it’s already attracting the attention of legendary, albeit deceased, cartoonists.

We at Fleen are glad to see Gorey and Herriman getting work again.

In other news, new webstrip The System is doing some interesting stuff with a highly restricted visual vocabulary — it’s done entirely in the icons that make up informational/warning signs. As a platform for pure writing, it’s half a notch below Dinosaur Comics, but weirdly enough what it really reminds me of is a Lolcat.

Those things have a syntax and grammar all their own, and so do sign icons … you can’t just slap ‘em up there and have it automatically work. We at Fleen will be keeping our eye on The System and seeing how long creator “Rosscott” can keep up this very precise exercise.

Big thing, via community servant extraordinaire John Baird:

On June 24, 2008, the Create a Comic Project was awarded a Small Neighborhood Grant from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven (CFGNH). The award will go toward sponsoring the Comic Making Tournament III, the CCP’s major annual event where children wield their imaginations to create their sequential art masterpieces.
The Comic Making Tournament III is planned to take place in either March or May 2009. Like the previous tournaments, it is aimed at the population of disadvantaged children in New Haven. The tournament hands out prizes that these children would not normally be able to afford, such as art books and supplies, as well as graphic novels and webcomic apparel.

The tournament will feature a number of events for the kids to compete in, such as creating single page comics, multi-page comics, and arranging panels in nonlinear fashion. The tournament, like the comic project, will use two types of templates for its events: blank comics for children to draw their own and those with art but without words for children to provide the dialogue.

Small things:

• Been following and Chris Baldwin’s diary comic since well before my dog showed up as a bit player. Not visible in this drawing: the blissed-out look on her face from Baldwin’s attentive ear-scritching.
• For some reason, I don’t feel like shouting AAAAAAH EYES because the color is so pretty; as A Girl and Her Fed careens towards strip number 500, the plot just keeps drawing me further in.
• First “bork”, now “snailing”. Sweden is full of linguistically-creative perverts.
• So my wife calls down the stairs to me on Saturday evening, “Turn on the radio! Lore’s on All Things Considered!” This was supposed to happen about six weeks ago, but better late than never.
• Finally, Only 939 views (as of this writing)? C’mon, people, it’s the Clango & Granulac show! RS3 asking the collected brainpower of Google how to make webcomics more easily content-searchable? That’s him doing all of you a solid.

But I’d still like to welcome Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw as he steps up from a one-off print-review of webcomics to his more usual video-review style. Usually, it’s videogames that bestir his wrath at Zero Punctuation, but this time it’s videogame-themed webcomics.

As fun as it was reading his earlier dissection, this is better because you can hear the contempt in his voice. Sadly, Croshaw has pretty much said everything that needs to be said about videogaming webcomics, so we probably won’t see any more of these directed towards our community’s … lesser efforts. Nevertheless, plenty to keep us busy, as we try to puzzle out what this “Bontrol-Bolt-Belete” of which he speaks is.

In other webcomicky news, check out Rick Marshall’s totally awesome interview with (the usually reliably-cranky) Warren Ellis on Freak Angels and more.

That’s it for today — tomorrow’s meat and beer won’t grill and drink (repsectively) themselves, you know … so much to prep. Haven’t decided if I’m actually going to take tomorrow’s holiday (for those of you in ‘Merica), but check back anyway … it may rain.

Maybe late postings next week, depends on net access. In the meantime, please to enjoy the philantropic stylings of Haley Joel Osment.

And that’s just about everything happening; half of webcomicdom is at HeroesCon this weekend, and the other half is laying low right now. A few stragglers are gonna be drinking in San Francisco tonight, and everybody but me is out enjoying the sunshine right now.

Those three of you reading now that couldn’t get it before — it was due to an actual threat of fire. Awesome. But we’re back online after the timely action of those that supply our parent corporation with bandwidth.

• Hey remember the North Carolina Web Comics Coffee Clatch on the radio thing? The podcast is up, if you missed it earlier.
• Speaking of No’th Ca’olina, Heroes Con will be there in about a month; check out Indie Island for the webcomickin’ contingent, ranging from vets like Malki !, Corsetto, and Kurtz, through to newcomers like Chris Flick. There’s actually quite a list over at the HCII page, so peruse away.
• Speaking of cons, there will be a new one next Tuesday — to celebrate the 500th strip of The Ego and The Squid (and really, aren’t all things better with squid?), creator Chris Andersen is throwing Ego And The Squid-Con 2008. All are welcome to convene in Daddy’s bar in Brooklyn after work (nearest subway: Graham Ave on the L).
• Finally, Mike Russell (the guy is a story-tip machine) wants you to know he’s interviewed Brandon Bolt of Nobody Scores! in The Oregonian. It’s a fun read.

New podcast debuts tonight!

As part of the revitialization of Boxcar Comics and the group’s continuing effort to promote themselves publicly in a cross-functional manner, we have created a brand new podcast at TalkShoe called the Boxcar Comics Hobo Jamboree!

What is our podcast about? Good question — one that we will be answering tonight during our first broadcast recording TONIGHT at 8:00 PM CST! The goal moving forward is to talk about the world of webcomics from the creator’s perspective. We’ll cover everything about the creative process — including how we come up with ideas for jokes and storylines, artistic technique, promotion, planning, audience reaction and criticism.

If you are a fan of HalfPixel’s Webcomics Weekly, you’ll find a lot to enjoy here, but Boxcar Comics Hobo Jamboree won’t be weekly right out of the gate. We plan on hosting our show once a month. If there is greater demand or we have more topics we want to discuss, we might bump that up to two a month.

Tom Brazelton will be the moderator for each show and various members of the collective will rotate in and out as their schedules permit. If you can’t join us live, remember that you can download the show from TalkShoe. We’ll be adding it to iTunes in the near future.

Kris Straub conquers the world!

In a week or two, my contract at my day job is drawing to a close, and I’m going to be looking for part-time or other contract work so I can pay rent. But … I think Starslip Crisis is already enough to bring in a full-time wage — at least if it’s cultivated. Right now we really don’t spend much time together, and eight hours of my day are occupied elsewhere, so I’m either at work, or we’re shipping, and not growing Starslip into the bastion of sci-fi humor it should be.

I’m looking forward to having a couple weeks to regroup and refocus, and I’ve been planning out the year.

If I can come back to webcomics full-time — if you help me come back to webcomics full-time (!) — then I will not do Starslip Crisis, or Chainsawsuit, or a twice-weekly pop culture strip, or a thrice-weekly brand-new strip.

No, friends — I will do all of the above. I have concrete plans for four concurrent strips. I just need the time to give to them.

Not content to conquer the Gervaisian webcomic mindspace, Owen Dunne’s running a banner ad promising the return of You Damn Kid … sort of.

And for those of you that need to point friends or family to a compact What are these webcomics, anyway? primer, Lea Hernandez has you covered.

A major addition to the American Elf archives just hit; let’s let James Kochalka tell us all about it:

In May 2002 I started posting my daily diary comic strip online. However, the strip actually began several years earlier than that, in October 1998. The early years were collected in book form by Top Shelf, but they were never included in the online version of American Elf … until now!

The archives at American Elf now go all the way back to October 26, 1998. The early strips are black & white, and then when I began putting them online I decided to try a 2-tone color system. However, that two-tone system very quickly expanded into a full and vibrant exploration of color. I’ve tried to use it to enhance the emotional power of the work.

But the early black & white strips have a special power of their own. Both are good, powerful in their own way. Now the readers can see the full evolution of my grand diary experiment, which is really turning into my “life’s work” it seems. The first color strip appears May 12, 2002.

The reader should note that the main American Elf archives are free, but that Kochalka has a ton of subscriber-only bonus stuffs: Bonus Elfs, and stories about Fancy Froglin. Also be sure to check out tracks by James Kochalka Superstar, and Eli Kochalka’s comic blog, Monster Attack.

It should be no surprise to any regular reader of this here blog that I’m a fantastically huge Ursula Vernon fan, so it should also be no surprise that I’m telling you all to give her a hand while simultaneously obtaining a fabulous piece of art. You really don’t want to know what the tax code for freelance artists looks like, but even with pre-payments every quarter, Vernon’s getting smacked hard come the 15th. So she’s doing a limited edition print in honor of the bill she’s got to pay, and you can pick one up for just 25 smackers plus shipping. Details at Vernon’s DeviantArt page or LiveJournal.

Okay, at this point, you should just be assuming that somewhere around Friday afternoon, Rick Marshall is putting up a new webcomics interview, generally about five minutes after my Friday post goes live. This time: Nick Gurewitch on life after hiatus. Also, it looks like the good Marshall will be joining me in haunting panels at NYCC, so come see us hopefully not act like complete doofuses.

For those keeping track, it’s been at least 37 hours since Ryan Estrada had a flash of major inspiration, so we’re due. Saturday the 12th he’s declared to be 12 Hour Comic Day at the Commune. As he put it, it’s the “quick creative kick in the nuts” that you’ve been needing.

Stephanie McMillan and Ted Rall will be hosting a multimedia extravaganza (that’s Web 2.0 speak for “slide show”) of their latest editorial cartooning work — Bluesotckings Bookstore on the 14th, and Idlewild Books on the 21st (both in New York) are the locations. As an added bonus, Fleen will pay a dollar to the first attendee to get Rall to admit he’s wrong about it being impossible that a webcomicker could ever become a millionaire. C’mon, getting one of the most opinionated people in comics to change his mind? How hard could it be? I’ve got the dollar right heeeeeeere!

Finally, Greg Carter and Gina Biggs did a panel on webcomics and business at the Atlanta Comics Expo back in February, and they’ve now got a recording that you can check out. Why are you still here? Go listen.

To Fool or Not to Fool? Chris Crosby pointed us all towards an April Fool’s gag that wasn’t, with the announcement that his brother, the loquacious Bobby Crosby, scored a Hollywood deal. Check it:

Benderspink is adapting Last Blood, based on Bobby Crosby’s comicbook centered on a band of vampires protecting the Earth’s last human survivors of a zombie apocalypse.

Last Blood was co-created by siblings Bobby Crosby and Chris Crosby but Bobby penned the comicbook alone.

Benderspink has a variety of comicbook properties set up including “Power and Glory” and “Y: The Last Man” at New Line.

Now before you run out to buy tickets, be aware that the road from option to actual movie is long, twisted, and madness-making (cf: the excellent Fortune and Glory by Brian Bendis for a primer of the non-logic that is Hollywood). But for now, Fleen congratulates Los Bros Crosby on their achievement.

While terms of the deal have not been announced, it looks like Ted Rall’s assertion that There is no chance of any webcartoonist becoming a millionaire is on shakier ground than it was just five days ago.

Like all good souls, I was looking forward to today’s release of David Malki !’s long-awaited movie, Expendable. Unfortunately, it looks like the release will be pushed back a week, so mark your calendars for 23 January when it debuts as part of the Now Film Festival. Now all we need is a Wondermark movie (score by Kris Straub), and all will be well.

Also! If you didn’t make it to MoCCA for Infinite Canvas: The Art of Webcomics, you’ve officially missed your chance. But you still have time to get your ass to the Cartoon Art Museum in San Fransisco for Shaenon Garrity’s Cartoonist-in-Residence gig this Saturday.