Can you feel the America-ness?

• Melting pot: Tails has recently relaunched as a webcomic; written and illustrated by Ethan Young, it was a 3 issue print comic that originally debuted in late 2005, detailing the semi-autobiographical misadventures of Ethan, a young, quirky Asian vegan living with his parents while struggling to become a cartoonist. The web version features an updated and re-edited version of the original story, along with new stories.
• Freedom: Comico was one of the original upstart comics publishers back in the 80s; in its day, it published a lot of comics by creators that are today well-known talents (most notably, Matt Wagner’s MAGE and Grendel). Then they went away. But now former Comico partners and publishers, Bill Cucinotta and Gerry Giovinco are taking another shot at the whole crazy game, utilizing the free and open spaces of the web.

  CO2 Comics is structured less like a traditional webcomics collective, more like a dead-tree publisher, and appears to clearly treat updates as placeholders on the way to print publication but still — very interesting. And any website that can get me fresh Bernie Mirault? That’s worth a look.

• Commerce: Jimbo (I think I’m genetically predisposed to like anybody that actually goes by “Jimbo”) Hillin’s Wireheads is ramping up for San Diego, complete with a new book at Lulu and a promise of much swag available in return for your banknotes at the convention.
• Public service: J Baird of the Create A Comic Project is rolling into Otakon in a couple of weeks, and will be running sessions on Make A Manga! (room: Workshop 2). First session runs Friday the 17th from 4:00 to 6:00pm and the second on Saturday the 18th from noon to 2:00pm. Baird’s bringing along creators Kittyhawk and Erin Ptah, and would welcome the participation of any webcomickers who happen to be around.

Look, just nobody do anything important & time-sensitive today, okay? Okay.

• Report on the first meeting of the extension chapter of the North Carolina WebComics Coffee Clatch, via TS Holden in Boone, NC:
  

  It went well, we had a thin crowd (to be expected) but ended up moving from the coffee shop to Mellow Mushroom, where there was pizza and beer. We talked for a good four hours about all kinds of subjects, from the very practical to the extremely obscure.

  Evan [Dahm] and I will be sure to figure out the next meeting further in advance so that we can get the word out better. We’re also considering having the next meeting in a more centralized town (for Western NC) such as Asheville or Hickory.

• Joseph Hewitt is putting together a book for the sake of family togetherness:
  

  It’s been a long eleven months since the birth of my son, Sean. With the help of many great guest artists I’ve managed to keep Ataraxia Theatre going (mostly).

  I’ve just released a print collection of Voles of the Dusk. This is my first wide release print venture in well over ten years. The book contains three stories — Voles of the Dusk, Scum Hive, and The Vole that Dare Not Speak its Name. It’s 84 pages long, color cover, black and white inside. All proceeds from the book are going to my family to help them afford a trip to Korea to see Sean.

• Anthrocon kicks off this weekend (hi, Ursula!), so allow me to point you towards what may be the most stylishly designed furry webcomic/grpahic novel — Five Glasses of Absinthe. “Egypt Urnash” (that’s what the email return address says; it’s written by Nick Brienza and drawn by Spümcø escapee Margaret Trauth) promises:
  

  Five Glasses of Absinthe is an adult fantasy inspired by French New Wave films, 70s prog-rock album covers, and the simple joy of drawing lots of smart, sexy people in really happening boots.

  Be aware that some of the smart, sexy people will have animal ears and tails (and/or engage in sex, presumably of the smart variety). Not really into the whole “animal people get it on” genre, but the visual style is striking; give it a once-over if you’re not at work.

Okay, that’s gonna do it for now; gotta get busy with the whole “taking off early the day before a holiday” thing that is the god-given right — nay, the holy obligation — of all Americans who toil for The Man. There may be beer in the immediate future, beer and cupcakes.

Seriously, I’ve got email and story tips backing up because there’s timely stuff happening today. Where to start?

• Maybe with the relaunch of Webcomics.com and Brad Guigar’s promotion to Editor-in-Chief? I’ve been doing this gig for like three and a half years now and I’m still just “Editor” … if Brad gets a promotion, I think I deserve one too. Suggestions for a new editorial title welcome — something that conveys a bit of gravitas, like “Benevolent and Terrifying Philosopher-God-King-Editor”.
• Then we’ve got the latest from Brian Carroll, who updates the Natalie, Queen of the Scots fundraising page to let us know that the lawyers have done their lawyering and cash intake is once again cleared for launch. In addition to everybody else that’s come together to help Carroll, he’s got a very special assist from webcomics own wandering monk/utility pinch-hitter:
  

  Hey Gary-
  Reporting from on scene at Lobsterback down here in Florida, where I’ll be helping Brian Carroll make Natalie, Queen of Scots. It’s time to move my filmmaking career to the next level. Sure, I’ve been a Bollywood voiceover artist and a B-movie zombie extra, but I really wanna do is be a grip!

  We at Fleen believe by the time he moves onto his next far-flung destination, Estrada will have gripped everything on the film set that possibly could be gripped, and may also in fact have gaffed.

• Got a detail wrong on Monday — the Lookouts story continuation by Oliver Grigsby and Becky Dreistadt is not running Wednesdays at Penny Arcade. It’s running today, Friday, Monday, and next Wednesday, and to make it up to you for the mistake, please enjoy some of Dreistadt’s concept art. She’s made me tear up a little with what that vile basilisk did to that littlest Lookout, but man — she sure does draw monsters purty.

Lotta Weiner in this post — Zach Weiner that is, who has a new sketch comedy show thingy (teaser here). The show will debut with a new website that launches concurrent with an Amusement-o-Rama (some might say, “concert”) to run Saturday night at San Diego Comic Con. Said live extravaganza will feature Weiner, the Cyanide & Happiness dudes, MC Lars, MC Frontalot, and YTCracker. I’ll be there, will you? Tickets on sale now.

• Everybody see the Harvey nominations this morning? Others have commented in the past on the tendency of one title to dominate the nominations (cf: last year three Disney/duck titles from Gemstone took a total of 12 nominations out of a total of 21 categories … 20 if you consider they weren’t eligible for Best On-Line Comic), but it’s really odd that Buzzboy (an entirely worthy endeavour, to be sure) shows in five categories when it doesn’t appear to have been published in 2008, and the prominence of Zuda offerings in the Best New Series and Best Online Work categories.

  All the same, congrats to David Malki !, Ryan Sohmer & Lar DeSouza, and the Halfpixel crüë for their nominations. Plus, now Master of Ceremonies Scott Kurtz will have two separate occasions to either present an award to himself, or comment on how he didn’t win — I’m guessing that he’ll make either outcome pretty damn funny. The awards will be, uh, awarded at Baltimore Comic-Con on October 10th.

• Howard Tayler branches out from self-publishing to regular publishing tomorrow, with the launch of pre-orders for a non-Schlock offering. If you’re of the RPG-type of geek, XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery (by Tracy and Curtis Hickman) may be of interest to you. If you’re not that type of geek, you might still like Tayler’s pretty pictures. And if you prefer Tayler’s webcomic efforts to his publishing company mogul efforts, the first Schlock Mercenary book is going to a second printing, with the usual sketch edition available for pre-orderers. Have at it.
• So Miss Lutrinae¹ tipped me to a new academic journal (or book, the website appears to use both terms in different places) out of Monash University (which is mostly located in and around Melbourne, Victoria, Strailya) — Drawing The Line: Using Cartoons As Historical Evidence. It covers the full range of historical cartoons and how they document the times they live in (lots of stuff for you Punch fans, looks like), but the relevant part to this discussion is Chapter 11: ‘Teh futar’, in which author Marianne Hicks (Monash Johannesburg, South Africa) looks at comics of the webby variety.

  Your humble correspondent is cited in conjunction with the Matt Boyd: Terroristic Threatener incident and the Ted Rall: All Webcomics Should Be Taken Off The Web panel. There’s also discussion of what constitutes a webcomic, how the medium skews towards pale-complected North American voices (not sure I agree with that, but okay), and the achievements of Child’s Play. Oh, and as it’s an academic publication, slightly less than half the 25 pages are notes and references.

  I’ve managed a quick skim through ‘Teh Futar’ today, and so far I wish that Hicks had contacted me (or anybody in our community) for feedback and up-to-date information — for instance, a reference to women making webcomics misses out some prominent names and another states flatly that John Allison is the only person outside the United States to make a living from webcomics. Far more seriously, the references consistently identify a Mr Gary Tyrell (future wikifiddlers please note there are two Rs in my family name), but as we’re still a new field for academic examination we’ll let it slide this time.²

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¹ Previously, I have referenced the creator of A Girl And Her Fed by way of family Mustilidae, but I realize that this nomenclature properly identifies weasels, badgers, minks, and other critters besides the relevant otters. Thus, subfamily Lutrinae, which consists solely of otters.
² Seriously though. One of Australia’s premiere (and still family-owned) wineries was founded by (we figure) distant cousins who also spell “Tyrrell” with two Rs. Granted, the Hunter Valley is in NSW and not Victoria, and Hicks is from South Africa but still … two Rs, people. Although a free copy of the book might go a long way to soothing my aggrieved family pride.

I was sitting on the news until the anticipated Wednesday launch, but since it’s been announced over at Penny Arcade, I get to share. Your eyes are not deceiving you — that image up there tells you that Becky Dreistadt will be drawing an ongoing Lookouts story (written by the impressively-resuméd Oliver Grigsby) for your consumption starting the day after tomorrow. Now be kind and don’t completely wang the TKT server, hey? Space out your clicking over and revelling in the lush, painted-on-paper-and-every-damn-thing art in an orderly fashion, please.

Wasn’t sitting on the second big item, but man — sometimes the news cycle moves fast. Long story short — Brian Carroll of Instant Classic remains at heart a filmmaker, and faced with a sudden funding crunch for his indy feature, Natalie, Queen of Scots, he turned to the internet for help in raising the money to move forward with production. That was Saturday.

‘Bout twenty four hours later, nearly $20,000 had been raised. Three hours later, the ugly spectre of US securities law made itself known, and it became necessary to take down the fundraising appeal to consult with counsel. At this time, all indications are that N,QoS remains a priority for Carroll & Company, and all away the latest information with bated breath.

By the time you read this, Carroll may know what the proverbial deal is, and he will doubtless share with us at the first opportunity (which can probably be found at the Twitter hashtag #findaway.

Soooo … Scary Go Round has a storyline that’s been running for a few weeks (and will for some weeks more), with a suspiciously pale and noseless character who favors epaulets. Also, one glove. It’s a mighty peculiar corincidence that John Allison would choose this of all possible times to include what may or may not be Michael Jackson in his work, just as it was pretty unlikely for one of David Morgan-Mar’s Steve Irwin strips (wherein Steve narrowly survives a croc attack) to run the same day that the real Irwin died.

It’s just a coincidence, but if anything happens to Bill Cosby after today’s previously-announced Draw Cosby For Science! event, I’m going to be officially creeped out. Also, we wouldn’t want to make Ray even more miserable than he already is, so stay safe, Bill.

Oh man, I am sitting on some really cool stories right now — can’t spill the proverbial beans just yet, but at least one of these is gonna make those of you that love awesome things squeal with delight. Just sit tight ’til next week. Onto what we can talk about.

• Is there a more beautifully-drawn webcomic than Karl Kerschl’s The Abominable Charles Christopher? The gentle (if not overly bright) yeti hit two years of updates with a heartbreaking pair of parallel stories.
• So yesterday Jon Rosenberg announced that the launch party for his new color collection would be the day after tomorrow. Apparently, the timing didn’t work too well for a lot of people, so now it’s been pushed back, with best estimates centered on 11 July, 2pm, at the famed Peculier Pub. I’m personally hoping there will be a guest list, velvet rope, and big intimidating dude with a headset at the entrance. In any event, assuming the date doesn’t change, our ace reportorial staff will be there to cover the star-studded event.
• Plan B, a music/culture magazine from the UK, has apparently wrapped — the current issue is the last — which is a shame because they just discovered webcomics in a big way. They haven’t updated their website with the article (and mostly likely won’t get around to doing so), but Box Brown (featured in the writeup along with Rene Engström and Meredith Gran) has scanned it for your enjoyment.

Also, nothing to do with webcomics, but you will be the better for knowing:

• Tasmanian wallabies are getting high on opium and creating crop circles.
• The Mythbusters (minus the hugely pregnant Kari Byron) will have a session at San Diego Comic Con, to be moderated by Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer; this is what’s known as a localized nerd singularity inside the greatest concentration of geekery known to mankind. Somebody save me a seat.

Cat and Girl, the benevolent Philosopher-Queen of webcomics, is ten years old. Actually, it’s a bit more than ten years old, but Dorothy Gambrell is a modest sort, and only got around to mentioning it in a quiet little notice. From its humble anarchic and hellraising beginnings, Cat and Girl has been consistently funny, and never more so than in Gambrell’s ongoing act of webcomics diary-keeping, Donation Derby, wherein she shows you where your donation money gets spent.

• Speaking of webcomics characters named “Girl”, the eponymous heroine of A Girl and Her Fed (actual name subtly revealed, but if you didn’t find it, I ain’t ruining the surprise) tells us the unvarnished truth about time travel[lers] today. For me, the real treat is the voice I hear for her when reading panel one — it’s got that little-kid-saying-sorry-but-not-really intonation, and I like to think that she’s making circles on the floor with her toe. Also, the word “skullfucked” (Hey kids! Ask your parents what it means!) is inherently funny.
• T Campbell’s mysterious, unfathomable, and eerie powers of knowing when he is mentioned appear to be on the fritz. Nearly two weeks to respond? Gotta get back in shape, T.
• SDCC Preview Night is officially four weeks away, so this is a good time to start the clearinghouse of webcomics information that we at Fleen strive to provide every year. If you’re going, drop us a line with booth number and any special events or panels you want to highlight; we’ll start with the info transfer in two weeks or so, and update as appropriate.

Confidential to SEO scam artists that write emails featuring many correctly spelled words: We’re just fine with our Google ranking, thanks very much. Please stop offering to game the algorithms for us, or we’ll be forced to get the hose.

So here’s the deal: the new Goats book, Infinite Typewriters is available everywhere today. If you ordered a copy, it ships today. If Random House were kind enough to send you an advanced copy (as they were with me), you’ve had it in your hands for a few weeks now. And if you’re cheap, you can read the whole damn thing online starting about here. Simple process, right? Book, read, review, post.

But it’s not. Goats wasn’t the first webcomic I read, but it was pretty early on. It was the first webcomic that lead to me being involved in the medium and with the creators as I am. Many are the beers that I have had with Jon Rosenberg, many are the times that inadvertant physical contact has sent him recoiling in horror, and it is a factual matter that I sold him my soul about four years back (I got a dollar for it!). It’s in large part because of Jon’s prodding that Fleen exists today. There are gags in the book that spring more or less directly from conversations that I took part in. Hell, it’s pseduo-canonical that I’m a character in the strip, and Jon and I even share a birthday. Objectivity is not possible in these circumstances.

Which is a shame, really, because I love this book and want to be able to tell you objectively why you should buy it. But I can’t, so take everything with the requisite open-pit mine full of salt.

Faced with the very messy task of disposing of (depending how you want to count) either six and a half years (pre-reboot) or one and a half years (post reboot) of continuity, what took me 800 words to summarize Jon neatly pulled together in 8 pages (which I guess means the whole pictures/words things is off by a fact of ten). Faced with a jumping-on point to the story that was originally in black and white, he went back and recolored. Staring a rights-clearance issue in the face, he dug deep into his show tunes loving heart and rewrote lyrics and made them funnier. Realizing that every scene is better with Steven Cloud in it, he was added (Soviet historical photo style) where previously he had not been.

I’m saying that Jon Rosenberg is flexible. If it serves the joke, he’ll follow any slender thread of potential as far as it can possibly go, past the ridiculous, beyond the absurd, to the batshit insane.

And damn him, it all works. If you’ve grown up in a certain timeframe, if you voraciously consume science fiction and fantasy stories, and if you find yourself simultaneously engrossed within and repulsed by the conventions of those stories, this book may as well be the sacred tome of your tribe. If you’re not of that particular flavor of industrial-world 21st century geek, you can still marvel at the audacity of taking what had been a stellar example (and perhaps was the progenitor) of the two-guys-sitting-on-a-couch school of webcomics, and turning it into a dimension-spanning epic with all of reality at stake, and still making it funny.

Yet, somehow, Jon’s the same loveable, squisy-hearted guy he’s always been (for certain values of ‘loveable’). Regardless, he’s given us a tremendous story that’s still careening wildly out of control, and now I get to read a sustained high point again and again even when my mousing hand’s wrist-hurt disease is flaring up. And if that ain’t a great way to blow a Tuesday afternoon, I don’t know what is.

See, tomorrow is when the first of the Random House/modern-era Goats books releases, I aim to write about it, but I’m treading the line of being too close to the material to provide a useful writeup. So. Working angles. In the meantime, let me point you to some other items of note.

• Regular readers of this page will recall that I dig me some Templar, AZ, and possibly that I like to read it in great big months-long chunks at a time. But when Spike does short self-contained stories set in the Templar world, that’s just gravy, ’cause I ain’t got to wait whole season to see how it all plays out. Couple months back, we got the story of Reagan’s first communion (and a talk with her really annoying future self), but only after people ponied up to read it. Them’s the rules, kids — this is bonus material, and much like public radio, somebody’s got to pledge before everybody gets to read it. Awaiting your support now — the male cast talks chicks in a place where lies aren’t allowed; it’s about halfway to the donation goal … pony up a few bucks so I can read it, dammit.
• Along the same lines, Vincent LaBate & Braden Lamb have an 8-page Kitty Hawk mini that they’ve been selling at cons, but is available in electronic form as a donation thank-you. They were kind enough to toss a copy my way and oooh, is it pretty. Got three bucks? It’s a nice chunky PDF with a lot of gorgeous art.
• It’s a good nine months since we pointed y’all at One Swoop Fell, and creator Mike Dutton has found the strip’s traffic to justify a move to twice a week (Tue/Fri) from once (Wed). Considering that each update is full-page, full-color, that’s a lot of work that Dutton’s throwing out into the aether, and you should at least go take a look by way of saying thanks. He’ll also have a short story in next month’s Flight 6, which is pretty awesome in and of itself. Add to this the ongoing work towards a One Swoop Fell book, and Mr Dutton’s fairly burying us in quality comics work.
• Finally, a story of a big break. There’s little in the way of webcomics that I love as much as Ursula Vernon’s Digger, and I cannot wait for the next collection to come out. But today, Ms Vernon is recognized for some of her fine art work, viz., the Biting Pear of Salamanca (sometimes erroneously identified as the “LOL WUT” pear) has gone Marvel. With any luck, vinyl toys and/or plushes will be out by San Diego.

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Note for those that read too much between the lines: There will not be Biting Pear vinyl toys or plushes out by San Diego, or likely ever. If there were, I’d damn well buy one but in all likelihood? Not happening.