Probably the final followup on Monster Alphabet, whose tally hit US$25,078 or 5015.6% of goal as fundraising closed. Project creator Darren Gendron did tweet the worst-case clawback:

Looking over the numbers, at the most I lost 30 backers and $408. SD¹ lost 1/$50, but there’s almost 5x the backers for MA.

So, at absolute worst, Monster Alphabet raised US$24,670 (a mere 4934% of goal), which probably still sets some kind of record. There doesn’t appear to be an easy to to find the most over-funded projects on Kickstarter, but after a bit of poking around I unearthed only one that exceed Gendron’s approximately-5000% success: a 15,454% funded sculptural skulls project. If anybody has data to support other projects with a high percentage of success please let us know, but for now I’m willing to declare Gendron the holder of the #2 slot in the Overkill category.

One last thought — in case anybody is getting sick of Kickstarter stories, you might want to skip Monday’s update, on account of I’ve gotten a heads-up on a campaign that will possibly melt your brain in a good way. Just sayin’.
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¹ Scurvy Dogs, a boardgame and an earlier successful Kickstarter campaign.

In which some various things are elevated.

• What could possibly validate your nerdy idea as being Entirely Worthy more than to have fan-fiction written about it? David Malki !, Ryan North, and Matthew Bennardo have an idea:
  

  OMG Kirk/Spock #MachineofDeath fanfic. It’s … it’s beautiful. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7752812/1/Machine_of_Death

  bucket list several entries shorter, not even joking

  If that story gets SOPAed out of existence someday, I will chisel it myself in the marble of the Capitol steps.

  To be completely clear, the fanfic in question is legitimately Kirk slash Spock in the traditional sense, but is rather restrained on that point. Take a few minutes and revel in what is (as near as I can determine) the second MoD crossover story — the first would appear to be a MoD/House crossover from November 2010, which you may read here (it’s very short).

  All of which merely begs the question: what is the most bizarre, inappropriate MoD crossover possible? I’m betting there’s a brony out there ready to rise to the challenge.

• Guys, I have a confession to make: although I appreciate things like the Capture Creatures project, I have no real knowledge of Pokémon. Oh, sure, I’m familiar enough with the concept — one can’t have lived in Western culture for the past twenty years and not be — but I’m of an age where the initial videogame, card game, and animation weren’t pitched at my age cohort, resulting in me never having really gotten on the Pokétrain at the beginning. I have never caught one of them, much less “them all”, don’t know what evolves into what, and have no opinion on how Snorlax is or is not awesome¹.

  I am, however, familiar with the basic idea of Pokémon — having been away in Western culture for the past two decades pretty much guarantees that — and understand that any attempt to present artistic interpretations means coming up with potentially hundreds of images. To move beyond this is my favorite to a comprehensive treatment of merely the first tranche of 151 Pokémon² is a serious undertaking. Trying to put together a group show of 151 artists each portraying one critter is certifiably insane.

  So naturally, that’s what’s happening in April. The Light Grey Art Gallery in Minneapolis isn’t even open yet, but for the second show they are wrangling 151 artists to each produce an 8×8 inch representation of a Pokémon (presumably, their favorite, or close to it) and calling the whole thing Pokémon Battle Royale. The list of participating creators features plenty of well-known veterans of web- and indy comics³, 150 of whom were somehow convinced not to pick Charizard⁴. Watch the PBR page for news, and check back in April for your chance to to purchase one of the originals.

• As of this writing, just over 60 minutes remain to get in on the Monster Alphabet Kickstarter. Also as of this writing, the fundraising total is less than US$200 from US$25,000; the original $US500 goal has managed a mindboggling 4967% success. I cannot speak for Darren Gendron, but I’d imagine that if you were the person that put him over 5000%/US$25K, he might slip a little extra something in your fulfillment package.

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¹ Although I imagine that some of you have opinions on the matter.

² Is the plural the same as the singular? Is it Pokémons? Pokémen? Surely it’s not Pokémans.

³ Note: it’s Chris Eliopolous, not Chris Eliopolous. They get that a lot.

⁴ Even I know that Charizard is super-popular.

It’s the passing of an era, as Pizza Island — bastion of crush walls and ladygossip¹ — announced its imminent closure. This is because either every member of the studio is the Yoko or because the demands of travel and expense make this the logical move, your choice.

While it lasted, the members of Pizza Island pushed themselves and each other to ever-better work, and one could argue that — shared space in the future or no — their artistic growth cannot be lost, and whatever pushes them (individually and collectively) in the future will be a different stressor (in the best sense of the word) and cause them to develop in ways that the studio couldn’t, merely because it’s a new source of change rather than that established over the past two years².

In other words, I don’t think that the Pizza Islanders are all broken up about it (although I’d imagine they’ll look back on their studio time with fond remembrance), and are busy enough with What Comes Next. Case in point: within half a day of the closure announcement, Meredith Gran produced an Octopus Pie strip that’s beautiful to look at and hilarious in about twelve different ways. It’s no exaggeration to say it’s maybe her best yet — a distinction that’s shared with about 85% of her updates because she just keeps getting better.

I have every confidence that the same will be true for the art that is next shared with us by Domitille Collardey, Deana Sobel, Sarah Glidden, Julia Wertz, Lisa Hanawalt, and Kate Beaton. In fact, I’ve got some American cash money right here — set aside for purchasing the next projects from these incredibly talented creators — to back up my words. Let’s let that be the takeaway here: if you love somebody’s creation, support it and then more cool stuff will be created.

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¹ I repeat: Jesus Tapdancing Christ.

² I’m not exactly certain, but I think that’s the longest sentence I’ve ever produced that vaguely made some sort of sense.

Despite a lack of support from the White House, and an indefinite shelving in the House, the US Senate is still due to consider Roll Over And Play Nice For The Music And Movie Industries legislation¹ in the immediate future; as a result, tomorrow is set to be a wide-ranging day of protest with many of the internet’s largest sites going dark. One may reasonably conclude that especially geek-related webcomics² may be motivated to do likewise (see how many you can find in this list, which was the most comprehensive I could find).

• In fact, the one webcomicker I’ve found that publicly stated he won’t be going dark (Darren “Dern” Gendron of Hello With Cheese) is only doing so because he can’t reasonably black out his site for 24 of the last 30 hours of his Kickstarter campgain. We at Fleen would be remiss if we didn’t point out that said campaign, for a children’s alphabet primer featuring woo scary monsters is currently at 4260% of goal (no missing decimal, that’s more than 40× the original US$500 goal) and 990 backers with just over two days to go.

  I do not mean to imply that Gendron could easily coast on his Kickstart because he’s obliterated the goal; I want to congratulate him because holy crap that is one monster-sized³ success. Also, future Kickstart campaigns should study what Gendron did very, very closely⁴ because dag, he might actually clear 5000% of goal by the time things are done. Tune in Thursday and we’ll find out together if it happened.

• Pointed out to me by Box “Box” Brown: Study Group, the online presence of Study Group magazine, an “anthology/criticism hybrid”, featuring a pretty substantial webcomics section. I’m still going through all the ongoing stories and one-shots, which come from a wide and impressively talented group (Xeric winner and indy-comics luminary Farel Dalrymple is merely the name most well known to me from the list of contributors).

  In all, it strikes me like a constantly-updating version of what Brown’s doing with his Retrofit Comics, bringing indy creators together under a common banner for the increased mindshare that a single branding can provide. You’re pretty much guaranteed to find something here that you like.

• Finally, it appears that I was not alone in my response to Heidi MacDonald’s annual comics survey, at least with respect to Person of the Year. Kate Beaton had a stellar 2011, and I can only imagine what she does from here on out⁵.

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¹ Also known as the Stop Internet Online Piracy Act (House) and Protect IP Act (Senate). Edited to correct typo.

² That is, all of them.

³ So to speak.

⁴ My guess is it’s driven by the uniqueness of the item in question and the low buy-in point — $US12 — to get a copy of that item.

⁵ I’ve pretty much given up hope that I can ever convince her to sell me the original of either strip #40 or #208, but one never knows. In this case, one never knows when Beaton will draw a comic that I want to own even more than those two.

In a land not quite so far from here sore lacking in etiquette, many did wander from poor behavior to poor behavior, wandering until they had worn out three pairs of iron-bound shoes, wandering until their eyes grew dim with none to instruct them in the ways of interpersonal interactions. In this land was a prophecy, hidden in a gem, the gem hidden in a duck, the duck locked away in a great wooden chest, a prophecy that contained all the secrets of Please and Thanks-You.

A pair of wise queens proposed to find the chest and in the chest the duck and in the duck the gem, and to share the knowledge with all the land, and the wise queens found among the people those willing to aid them in their quest, and they set out to let people know to Stop Doing That Were You Raised In A Barn Or Something¹. They cast their knowings to all who were smart enough to desire them, and that is how Nerddom became just a bit less rude and more considerate.

Okay, that’s harder than it looks. How about something a little less grandiloquent for the rest of today’s news?

• Appearing tomorrow, live and in person, the Ryan ‘n’ Joey Occasional Roadshow² hits Trinity College at UToronto from 7:00 to 10:00pm with fun and excitement and really wild things. Those of you in the GTA, do drop in.
• Jeff Zugale takes a break from both shouting Woo! in inappropriate circumstances and painting Wil Wheaton in awesome circumstances to draw some webcomics for Bill Barnes & Paul Southworth featuring Desmond in pantless circumstances. Smart move making this the first strip of Zugale’s stint on Not Invented Here, as poor Desmond is so freaked out by this memento mori that he doesn’t even notice that he looks different now.
• I recall a conversation with Robert Khoo wherein he denied that Penny Arcade was a webcomic endeavour at all; rather, it was a content-creating company focused on the videogame industry, with the webcomic just one part of it. Granted, the comic is the dominant part, but he didn’t commit to that always being true. Today, PA takes another step towards the comic being just another item in the content portfolio, as Ben Kuchera (formerly of Ars Technica) makes the jump to Penny Arcade with a publicly-described brief of:
  

  [W]riting about the gaming industry for Penny Arcade

  So that’s multiple comics, publishing, tie-in games, a charity, multiple internet TV series, a merch-design house, exposition services, custom branded content service, a scholarship, and now generalized editorial content. While we’ll never see PA challenging, say, Disney for pan-media dominance, I fully believe that’s only because Khoo wouldn’t be able to keep his hands in all aspects of such a broad enterprise. I also fully believe we’re within two years of PA going fully international, most likely with PAXEurope and/or PAXAsia, but I wouldn’t count out satellite offices creating original content in other languages for local consumption.

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¹ This was a somewhat unusual land for such tales, as it turned out that none of the people had, in fact, been raised in a barn and thus had no excuse.

² Occasional in the sense that they occasionally put on a show, not that they are occasionally Ryan and Joey, which they are pretty much all of the time.

In the meantime, please enjoy the numbers that Ryan Estrada shared with the world regarding his income as a full-time cartoonist since 2007. Much like Dorothy Gambrell’s occasional infoshares, it’s a valuable tool for injecting reality into the discussion of what it means to make it in cartooning, and the degree to which you have to learn and adapt in order to succeed.

R Stevens 3, of course. He’s following the tradition of hobbits and giving you presents today, the day of his birth. Also, he has now met the legal requirements to be President of the United States of America.

• Remember how I talked about all the stuff Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson were doing, and how not all of it had been revealed yet? Two more pieces have been, with a gorgeous, limited edition two-piece Adventure Time screen print coming out sometime tomorrow from Mondo Tees (watch their blog and/or twitterfeed for the exact on-sale time, and expect the 185 sets to go quickly). Mere hours later, the Adult Swim themed show at Gallery 1988 opens with a reception¹ from 7:00 to 10:00pm at the Melrose branch; Becky’s contribution pays homage to The Venture Bros².
• Welcome return, or cruel toying with our affections? Tweet Me Harder drops episode #76 nearly ten months after the purported series finale [MP3]. Dare we hope that this marks a return to TMH glory?³
• Eisner nominations are now open, with the criteria for Best Digital Comic not looking significantly different from prior years:
  

  The best digital comic category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2011. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to Eisner Awards administrator Jackie Estrada: jackie@comic-con.org.

• Finally, the sad, sorry history of webcomics scrapers has hit a new low, as some bozo on Facebook is scraping content, redelivering without permission, and soliciting donations of cash which will totally be given back to the original creators, no really, promise it’s totally not a scam⁴. Randy Milholland has the details, and after a little preliminary digging at Facebook (I don’t have an account, so I could be wrong on this), it appears the category those getting hosed sideways can file a complaint under would be Intellectual Property Rights Infringement.

  Or it might be on grounds of Impersonation (since the app leaves the impression it’s associated with the comics in question) or Scams & Spam (since funds are being sought). Hopefully, Facebook doesn’t make each creator jump through these hoops and brings down the wrath of Zuckerberg quickly. In the meantime, I’m pretty sure the dipshit pulling this little game is thinking exactly like the person who recently plagued Jamie Smart so.

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¹ Read: booze and snacks.

² Unrelated, but last night in Providence, Rhode Island, while on my way to enjoy a quiet evening¹ with Fleen publisher (and Dumbrella Hosting impressario) Phillip Karlsson, I passed an industrial-looking building for rent with what looked exactly like the Venture Industries logo. I tried to get a picture, but it was too dark.

³ Probably not.

⁴ It’s a scam.

Once again, I’m assuming that most of you have seen this by now, but there’s been an amendment to the requirements of the new NCS award in the Online Comic Strip Division. Namely, the requirement:

5. Creator must earn the greater part of their living directly from the strip/property

has been altered to:

5. Creator must earn the greater part of their living directly from cartooning in order to adhere to the NCS criteria that creators under consideration must be either full members or eligible for full membership

It wasn’t the intent that nominees in this new division be required to meet more stringent requirements than in the others; I don’t think any of us on the committee were reading the old #5 as meaning anything other than the new #5, but in situations like this it’s important to make sure that what you write is as unambiguous as possible. Thanks to Tom Richmond for clarifying, and don’t be surprised if other clarifications become necessary¹.

• As long as we’re on the topic, I feel it useful to point out a couple of thinky pieces written since yesterday’s post on this award and the focus of this blog; thanks to Dave Kellett and Holly Post, respectively, for their wise words. Dave and Holly both opine that the use of “webcomics” as a word that distinguishes from “comics” is silly², as it distinguishes a model of distribution as being distinct from medium itself³. I fully expect that I will continue to use The W Word well past its generally-accepted sell-by date, turning into a latter-day example of your embarrassing great-uncle whose vernacular is stuck 50 years in the past; I apologize for any future offense I may give.
• In fact, let’s broaden out from “webcomics” by pointing out that Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum has an interesting show opening next week, one whose press release scared the crap out of me because the subject line read
  

  Funky Turns 40 at the ToonSeum

  which immediately made me think it was an exhibit of Funky CancerCancer. In fact, it’s about the first wave of positive black animated characters in the 1970s, which means one thing: Fat Albert, possibly including the early episodes which borrowed heavily from Cosby’s standup routines⁴. Funky Turns 40 is co-curated by Pamela Thomas of the Museum of Uncut Funk, which is the greatest name for a museum ever; the show opens 18 January and runs until 10 March.

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¹ But please do spare me any See? They’re just making it up as they go along in order to screw over [insert grievance here]! We’re doing our best to work out kinks (cf: yesterday’s post, the part about perfect and done), and you can bet that every other NCS division award went through these stumbles, but it was so long ago that nobody remembers.

² A opinion I have expressed myself in the past and am entirely sympathetic to, if only I could come up with a short, obvious word that identifies the things that I write about here. I love all kinds of comics, but this page concerns itself almost exclusively with independent, creator-owned, self-distributed examples of such, and a signifier is just useful. I swear, come up with a term (or even an acronym) that’s brief, and I’ll use it.

³ Not that such distinctions are always worthless; I listen to a fair number of radio shows as podcasts.

⁴ Rousing game of Buck Buck, anyone?

So I’m guessing you’ve seen this by now:

[T]he National Cartoonists Society will have a web-comics division for the Reuben Awards this year….

There are many challenges involved, the crux of which is separating those web-comics creators who are doing truly professional work from those who are just enthusiastic hobbyists.

To this end, we are introducing a purposefully narrow-focused new division this year, which will be called “Best Online Comic Strip”, and will be judged by the NCS board in anticipation of being done by an NCS chapter in the future.

Key words there, which I’ll come back to in a moment: purposefully narrow-focused.

The tricky part is the definition of “professional” with regards to web-comics/self-published work. The NCS awards are industry awards, not art awards…. We need an independent “screening committee” to review the creators whose work is being considered to give us their opinion on if they meet the definition of “professional”, and this is what we have put together. Our screening committee will be made up of six experts on webcomics who are deeply involved/knowledgeable in the world of online comics including journalists and professors from major art colleges who are very enthusiastic about participating.

There follows a list of some damn impressive people with some damn impressive credentials and, against all logic, me¹. Onwards:

This is our first stab at this kind of thing. It is bound to have some bugs which we will learn from and hopefully improve the process next year. The important thing is that efforts are being made to include work being done on-line in the NCS’s recognition of excellence in professional cartooning.

And that’s what I wanted to talk about. You can read the list of very impressive people on the screening committee with me, you can read the list of criteria; I want to talk progress.

Because I think there’s going to be some criticism of this new award; I hope it’s reasoned and considered, but on the other hand — internet. It’s limited, yes, and it excludes much of the type of work that one finds in webcomics that simply couldn’t exist elsewhere, and it’s baby steps that don’t get us near where many people would like this sort of thing to be.

And that’s okay.

This is how institutions and groups change — in increments, stepping away from the familiar by only a small amount, then further as the comfort level and resistance to the change meets the reality that the world didn’t actually end. The NCS has more than six decades of Ways of Doing Things, along with members that remember and cherish those Ways and that’s exactly the sort of system that’s tends towards inertia². The recognition that things change comes slow under any circumstances, and just recognizing a possibility of change, much less the need for it, requires a shift in those Ways.

Is this a perfect way for the NCS to integrate webcomics? No. But holding out for perfect, no matter how much the officers of the NCS might push for change, would have meant never seeing progress — holding out for perfect is the enemy of getting something done — and incremental change is still change. I can only speak for myself when I say that I’m going to do my damnedest to see that all the work that can be forwarded under the criteria is; I am also confident that the sole motivation of my fellow committee members (and the judges who will actually make the award decision) is a love of comics and a desire to recognize the best work possible.

It’s a certainty that next year’s awards will be different as a result of the process of this year’s, and in bits and pieces both form and process will improve. That’s why I was so very honored by NCS President Tom Richmond’s request for my participation, and why I hope that nobody will look down on this new thing that we — all of us — are making. It’s limited, it’s unfinished, and before it’s done it’ll probably get messy as all hell, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

• Know what else involves awards, nominations, and comics work? The Hugos, at least with respect to the Best Graphic Story category. Since the Foglios swept the category in its first three years of existence with Girl Genius, they’ve graciously announced that they will not accept a nomination, meaning that it’s open season for [web]comics that are sci-fi-ish and debuted in 2011.

  Off the top of my head, I’m guessing that Schlock Mercenary, Starslip, Spacetrawler, and Drive would fit the criteria, with an outside chance for things like SS Myra (it’s pretty new) or Scenes from a Multiverse (it’s not really a continuing story, but there just might be enough repeat characters — it’s a shame that the bulk of the Sciencemaster Adler, Cornelius Snarlington, and bunnies stories took place before 2011; maybe there’s enough of Duck Thompson, News Duck?).

• Getting into a juried show is kind of like nominating yourself for an award, right? TCAF acceptances started going out last night, and while the TCAF site isn’t updated with the exhibitor list, a search of the twitterverse would seem to indicate that this could be the Best TCAF Ever You Guys.
• Finally, nothing to do with awards or nominations or anything, but I had to point out this comment from Rod Salm where he shares a poster he did on the floor at the 2011 Central Canada Comic Convention in Winnipeg, which depicts every cosplayer to visit his table for the duration of the con. Mr Salm, you crazy.

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¹ Now you know what I was talking about back in November and December about a Potentially Very Cool Thing.

² Think it’s tough to overcome six decades of We’ve Always Done It This Way? The college that I attended didn’t admit women into the undergraduate program until 1995, and the change that finally came was because the number of alumni with the We’ve Always Done It This Way beliefs were finally outnumbered (and out-donated) by alumni with the The World Is Different Now beliefs. It took more than a decade of sustained effort to get there, with a four year lead time once the decision was made before it took effect. All the fuss and effort is now an historical footnote and fewer people remember each year, and it all turned out okay.

I have a feeling that I’m getting in trouble for today’s opinion-mongering.

• So there was a piece written today regarding a fairly famous slinger of words, how those words fit into a webcomic, and the insight one may gain into the workings of that writer’s mind. There was also an interview with Chris Onstad about the Achewood hiatus. As informative as I found the Onstad interview by Laura Hudson¹, it seemed familiar — Onstad wants to work in prose, the short panel comic format doesn’t interest him as it once did, burnout is a terrible thing, merchandise fulfillment brings him no joy.

  By contrast, I found Jerry Holkins conveyed his feelings on having his brain chemistry [un]regulated in a way that I hadn’t seen before; this may be more due to my aggressively searching out news of Onstad when he went on hiatus last year, and not having seen Holkins talk on this topic so much previously (although I do recall a particularly incisive episode of PATV on the topic).

  None of which should be construed as criticism of Onstad, who is not my bitch; I simply cannot conceive of a life where my email resembles Onstad’s:

  Actually, I just recently got my first hate mail since I got back to work. I was like, what took you so long? …
  I don’t know, I almost don’t want to bother dissecting why people do this. This guy writes me and is like, “I don’t see why you bothered coming back. You’re just trying to be as cool as you used to be, and it’s not working. Why do you hate your readers?”

  In general, the back third of the interview was the most interesting, as Hudson and Onstad got specifically into the economics webcomics, and that’s a good read.

• Hey, Sparky, where will you be on Friday evening? If your answer isn’t On an airplane from Rhode Island to New Jersey², it should be At the Johnny Wander 2 book release party in Brooklyn. Bergen Street Comics has a justly-deserved reputation as one of the best stores in the Northeast, and given the sheer density of webcomickin’ talent in and around Brooklyn, I’d say there’s an excellent chance of meeting some quality creators above and beyond the evening’s headliners. Fun starts at 8:00pm, and includes a live delivery of advice from John. I’d like to tell you that John is much less scary in person than he appears to be in the comic, but I’m afraid it’s only marginally true.

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¹ Who may have been induced to drink Chartreuse, which if you have not had it is sort of the monastic version of Jägermeister, or possibly Malört, in that there’s a million herbals and botanicals in there. Unlike the others, however, Chartreuse can be made to play nice with others in a cocktail. My theory is that mixability is negatively correlated with umlauts.

² As mine is, dammit.