Gettin’ back into the swing of webcomics, blogging, all that. I’ll have some things to say about a preview of Machine of Death 2 which I’ve been reading, and also Faith Erin Hicks’s Friends With Boys, the print version of which the good folks at :01 Books were kind enough to send me a preview copy. The delays in all of these things were caused by family, merriment, and bread. So much bread¹.

• Yesterday’s webcomic news was pretty much dominated by Penny Arcade and The Story of There Is So Bad PR, which was fascinating to watch. It’s been chronicled throughout the gaming press, discussed pretty thoroughly by Webcomics Dot Com, and just keeps on giving. For my money, though, the best expression of the meme came from, of all places, Geico Insurance’s twitterfeed.

  The lesson here is not Don’t screw with the customer, the lesson is not even Whoever runs Geico’s twitter account is a genius. The lesson is Actions have consequences, whether it’s threatening to unleash your PR smear machine (who may be too busy to create their own website), or the fact that Mike Krahulik is willing to adopt scorched earth policies on your ass, even at the cost of wanging his own server.

• Speaking of actions vis-a-vis consequences, there are some to be found in Vera Brosgol’s tragic, haunting, beautiful, wordless, did I say haunting?, and more than slightly creepy What Were You Raised By Wolves?, which if you haven’t seen you need to stop everything right now and go read it. I would read a whole book about this feral girl so hard.
• I so want to believe that today’s xkcd is true because damn, having a sense of humo[u]r about such things is so very, very badass. Seriously, fuck cancer.
• Finally, the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle is doing an exhibition on webcomics, but only if you help. Sarra Scherb, guest curator for the upcoming (March – June 2012) Morning Serial: Webcomics Come to the Table needs input to decide exactly what to include in the digital portion of the event, which is where you come in. There’s a survey, see, and it’s open until 5 January, which means you get to make with the clicking and suggest three favorites that should be included.

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¹ Guigar.

Okay, I’m done now.

Basically, everybody¹ has something that they celebrate at this time of year, and it’s likely that I’m the only one reading this because everybody else² is on their way to some gathering or other, possibly one that involves pie.

And booze. Sweet, sweet, drama-erasing and -inducing booze.

So as you make your way to your celebration, let the spirit of webcomics (as manifested in the Holy Trinity of North The Strong, Garrity The Tikiac, and Rohac The Destroyer) accompany you. Stay safe, and see you³ next week.

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¹ And Guigar.

² And Guigar.

³ And that’s about beaten that joke into the ground. What can I say? If there’s one person who appreciates a running gag, it’s Brad⁴.

⁴ Guigar.

Warning to readers with younger children: this post features hot, hot footnote action⁰.

• The discussion in comment threads (plural) regarding the offer of Kurtz¹ consult with syndicates, syndicated cartoonists, or anybody that wants his² wisdom in applying an online bid’ness strategy remains mostly productive. Some of the discussion has spilled over to Webcomics Dot Com today (subscription required), the substantial gist of which can be read here at Fleen. For me, it’s just a pleasure to see Kurtz Guigar insist that their actions are not “dick-waving”. I think you might be overlooking another consulting opportunity for the ladies, Brad.

  In any event, the tone of the conversation seems to have settled again on what the “proper way of doing things” might be, vis-a-vis consulting. To which one might point out that while Kurtz³ makes no bones about being an actual consultant-type guy, he⁴ does have an office down the hall from an actual consultant-type guy. One that we can probably all agree is a supervillain-level genius with a track record and a sharp suit and every-damn-thing.

  The other issue I see being raised is whether or not small-scale solutions can scale upwards. The only real experiment we have of an individual attempting to do so continues to scale way the heck up. True, Mr CK is a comic, not a maker of comics, but I’d suggest that he has more in common with comickers than different. The model of the individual creative producer applies equally well in both cases. Now, may I suggest that we see what Kurtz⁵ can actually deliver before deciding it’s fruitless endeavour? I promise you, there will be ample opportunity for you to take him⁶ to task if it doesn’t work. Let’s let him⁷ actually fail before declaring the effort a failure.⁸

• In other news:
  

  Child’s Play has reached our 2011 fundraising goal!!! $2.2mil and counting thanks to you, the community.

  Excellent work but don’t slack off, people. A year may come when Child’s Play will hit some kind of structural limit and not exceed the prior year’s fundraising, but it is not this year. Some US$95,000 will see to that, and I maintain that US$2.5 million is an attractively round number. Go. Give.

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⁰ Also the words “Brad Guigar” in close proximity to the words “dick-waving”; you have been warned.

¹ And Guigar. Brad, you should just get Scott to change his name to have the footnote, it’d save me a lot of trouble.

² And Guigar’s.

³ And Guigar.

⁴ And, for once, not Guigar.

⁵ And Guigar.

⁶ And Guigar.

⁷ And Guigar.

⁸ This is not to say that I assume the effort will be a failure, only that pre-emptive declarations that failure is inevitable therefore the effort is pointless don’t actually accomplish anything.

Creators heading tither and yon to be with their families and loved ones, updates cued for delivery, newsmaking announcements back-burnered until the new year … just saying, things could get pretty quiet over the next week or so.

• Okay, so the assorted SMBC Enterprises projects are gonna hit 500% of funding goal whenever they put something up for support, but is there anybody that can beat that on a percentage basis? Glad you asked. Allow me to point out that the board book project by Dern and O Abnormal is (as of this writing) sitting at more than 1350% of goal with a mere 29 days to go.

  One might attribute the massive oversuccess to several factors, including (but not limited to):

  • The relatively sparse number of kid-targeted offerings among webcomicker Kickstarts
  • The relative scarcity of independent board books in general (cf: inquiries as to where to find a board book printer)
  • The relatively low point for funding (a mere US$500)
  • The objectively awesome subject of the funding — a kid’s alphabet primer based around monster-type critters, with iambic heptameter rhymes to ease your little replicants to sleep

  In any event, you still have time to get your own copy of The Monster Alphabet for as little as US$12 (which is a bargain for board books, especially considering the wee one will probably try to eat it at the first opportunity).

• Speaking of Kickstarter successes, about 240 people will have to clear space on their bookshelves, as the massive one-volume version of Order of Tales completed its funding round (with a comfortable 50% to spare). Order of Tales creator Evan Dahm will also have to clear some prodigious space in his apartment to store the print run, and hopefully included in his US$12,000 budget some money to hire Strong Men to cart all the boxes around. My back twinges in sympathy for whomever has to move that print run from place to place.
• Still on the Kickstarter front, Kel McDonald’s fairy tale anthology has three weeks and 29% to go to reach full funding. If it keeps up present trends, it ought to clear goal with a bit of a cushion, but don’t let it get caught in the end-of-year rush — hardback copy of a 200 page book from comics superstars, for delivery in March? This is a woman who has her publishing plan together, and in a creative field that regularly blows deadlines and pays creators late, that is sufficient reason by itself to lend support.
• Finally, today marks the 500th update for Octopus Pie. That’s 1682 days, or less than four days between updates, all of which were full pages, showed ever-growing artistic and storytelling mastery, and some of which were goddamn masterpieces. Meredith, you keep getting better and better, and it almost hurts me to think how good your work will be in another 500 updates. Brava.

Also, a few things that are Not Books.

• Books: Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya do one of my favorite webcomics (to the point that I know how to spell “Panagariya” without looking it up), and they were kind enough to send me a copy of Johnny Wander vol 2: Escape to New York, for which I was pleased to provide a blurb (it involved Archie). Let’s see if I can repay their kindness with another well-chosen phrase for volume 3, whenever that may come out.

  What struck me on my reading (and re-reading) of EtNY was its sense of generosity; this is, after all, an autobio strip, and one might well assume that the focus would be on Panagariya and Ota to the point that the rest of the city becomes a mere setting for them to live out their lives, and people that they encounter to be bit players and extras. Far from it, though, as they’ve gone out of their way to share the spotlight, even to minimize their own presence in the story of their lives, and let their cast of friends and co-conspirators have their chances to shine. Many of the best strips feature John, Aaron, Evan or George¹.

  Ultimately it’s about capturing the moment and whoever that may entail (I have had this epiphany at the AMNH, as well as by the Q. northropi, the A. excelsus, and especially the T. rex), and nobody recognizes that moment, nobody captures its essence, in quiet and in enthusiasm like Yuko and Ananth. Also, there are adorable critters, and Garies. So many Garies.

• Books: If you haven’t seen it yet, the new collection of comics inspired by Jim Henson’s The Storyteller is quite good. It might be my webcomicky preferences showing, but I most liked the story by Chris Eliopolous and Mike Maihack (inverting the normal order of things as the Storyteller’s dog — who is named Dog — tells an old Romanian tale of why dogs and cats and mice dislike each other, making more sense than a more modern version where it just don’t add up); the Aesop story by Colleen Coover; and a Japanese tale by Katie Cook. In fact, of the nine stories in the book, three were from China and Japan, and one from Appalachia, which marks a welcome broadening of the basis of the tales (entirely European in the first Storyteller series, and obviously Greek for the Greek Myths sequel series). Terrific work, start to finish.
• Books: End of the year, time to confirm or recant my strong words regarding Anya’s Ghost back in April:
  

  It is 224 pages long, was written and drawn by Vera Brosgol, and is the best comics work of 2011.

  From the perspective of time, I stand by my opinion. I will draw an arbitrary line between the “comics” of Anya’s Ghost and the “cartoons” of Hark! A Vagrant, and say that Vera Brosgol’s story of a moody teen learning uncomfortable truths was the best comic story of 2011. That is all.

• Not Books: In contravention of conventional wisdom, there’s a comment thread on the internet that’s useful and reasonably polite. Well, until the end when it goes off the rails a little, but I’d like to commend to your attention a back-and-forth from Friday’s posting between Ben (no last name given) and Scott Kurtz, which starts here. In particular, I’d commend this part of the discussion, from Mr Kurtz:
  

  [W]hat’s not known is that I’ve already approached some syndicates about consulting the “proper way” and got told that they really, by policy don’t hire consultants.

  I agree that the way it was presented was out there and a little crazy, but at this point, It’s the best way to target the “crazy” person at any of these syndicates that’s willing to buck the system and say “fuck he’s right.”

  So it’s not like we didn’t try other ways first.

  Cross-reference the criticisms of Kurtz² for not going about things properly, say, here. In all sincerity, I ask those that took issue with “how Kurtz³ said it” if this revelation changes their minds. Answers, as usual, on a postcard, and let’s try to keep things polite?

• Not Books: Randy Milholland reached a milestone yesterday, having spent ten years drawing comics of horrible, dysfunctional people (although I really like Fred and consider him a much less horrible person than most of the cast, despite having more than his share of sorrow). But, and this is a thing I’ve noted about Milholland’s work, a thing that I think he does better than anybody else in webcomics, his horrible dysfunctional people are trying.

  At the same time they wallow in their respective psychoses, they’re trying to be there for each other, trying to be better people (even when they don’t admit it), and it’s why I regard S*P (which is so deeply wrong and cynical and vicious on the surface) to be innately hopeful and optimistic. Milholland may not always ‘fess up to all of the sweetness and sincerity he’s capable of (particularly because he seems to have a higher-than-normal quotient of humorless, angry, rage-quit inclined readers), but it’s there all the same.

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¹ Especially George; you might try to convince me that John has the punchline, but it’s all about the vibe that George is projecting. His simple, iconic, almost hermaic representation will follow him all the days of his life and beyond.

² And Guigar! Let’s not leave him out of the equation. Poor Brad, always laboring in the shadows … like a ninja poised to strike.

³ And Guigar, ibid.

I think it says something (not sure what exactly, but something for sure) that I did a Google search on cavortment to make sure I got the Zappa quote right, and the first hit was a four and a half year old post from this very blog. Another man might take this as a sign that he needed to not throw so many semi-oblique references to Thing-Fish into his writing, but I am not that man. Onwards to the void.

• Uplift: One may have noticed a comic that Tony Piro did about a year ago that homages a familiar scene to make a point about religion and such. This particular cartoon has been appropriated numerous times by people that don’t understand the difference between Draw something that references Sparky while making my own point and Just erase Piro’s name and pretend I did it. Piro himself has come to accept that there’s no point in trying to police jerks:
  

  It’s probably one of the best received things I’ve ever drawn. But its success has also resulted in many people altering it for their own purposes, erasing my URL and replacing it with their own, and ruining what I think was originally a positive statement.

  I could attempt to police these copies, but ultimately this is impossible to do on the internet, especially once images start spreading on social sites like Facebook.

  But there is an upside:

  Even if I cannot eliminate these other copies, together we can drown them out by spreading a superior message.

  Please help me by sharing this comic anyway you can. Post it to your blog, on Twitter, on Facebook page, or even email it to friends and family. In keeping with the spirit of the season, for every 500 page views the comic gets between now and the end of the year, I will donate $1 to Doctors Without Borders. Thank you for your continued support!

  Spreading an original to drown out inferior shadows, and supporting a worthy charity at the same time? It’s a deal.

• Frolic: Today is the second (pre-zumnably¹ annual) Feel Free To Talk To Me If I’m Wearing A Dinosaur Comics Shirt Day, so get out there and make some friends, dammit. One place you might be sure to make those friends is at the Dinosaur Comics Combo-Platter Book Launch/Holiday Party at Pauper’s Pub in Toronto. Word has it that Ryan North² has a brother who is a professional brewer and he will be bringing special beers so you really want to be there.
• Cavortment: We at Fleen have run many a story tying to San Fransisco’s Cartoon Art Museum and Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum, but never have we had cause to bring both into a single story until now. In approximately six hours, Pittsburgh and San Fransisco will meet in some kind of Monday Night Sportball contest³, and the respective honchos of CAM and TS (Andrew Farago and Joe Wos); have tied their sacred honor to whichever team manages to do the most points:
  

  As the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers face off on the football field, the cities’ cartoon museums are getting in on the gridiron action too. The San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum’s Curator Andrew Farago and Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum Director Joe Wos have issued a friendly wager based on the outcome of the December 19th Monday night game. The losing team’s fan will visit the other city’s museum and conduct a cartooning workshop while wearing the opposing team’s jersey. Will Joe Wos don Joe Montana’s colors? Will Farago suit up like Franco?

  Andrew Farago, author of the The Looney Tunes Treasury and curator of the San Francisco-based Cartoon Art Museum has outlined specific directions that he will only wear a classic 1970s Steelers jersey in the event of a 49ers loss. Joe Wos, director of the ToonSeum, has not outlined any specific jersey requirements as up until the bet he hadn’t realized San Francisco even had a football team.

  Okay! Smack talk between cartoon nerds! I think we can all agree, whoever wins in this contest⁴, I think we can all agree that the loser is just begging for a wedgie.

Editor’s note: I was going to have something here about Howard “Evil Twin” Tayler’s amazing Kickstarter campaign for the Schlock Mercenary boardgame — #2 slot for boardgames in Kickstarter history, over US$82,000 raised on a goal of US$25,000, having to come up with new over-goal rewards, etc., but unfortunately I just couldn’t make it fit in the three-part theme for today’s post. So I didn’t bring it up. Sorry, Howard.

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¹ Prologue, Zappa, Willis⁵, et. al.

² He’s dreamy.

³ Possibly foobaw.

⁴ Which may involve a place called The frozen tundra of Lambeau Field, which sounds like there should be some Nazgûl guarding it.

⁵ Ike, not David.

Short form — Cartoonist Studio (for all intents and purposes a syndicated cartoonists collective in the mutual non-aggression pact model¹) has a contest for up-and-comers. The details are thin on the ground at their website, but Alan Gardner filled in some of the gaps. What caught the eye of a lot of people was this bit:

The grand prize this year is being sponsored by Universal Uclick who will run the winner’s work on GoComics.com and the winner will be paid any money advertising money generated on their GoComics.com page. The Cartoonist Studio is also offering an electronic book publishing contract.

Which prompted more than one person to note that nobody needs to win a contest to achieve ad money from a webpage (just run some ads on your own page) or to publish and electronic book (if you need help, David Malki ! practically wrote a how-to on formats and readers via his Machine of Death blogging). All this this left me wondering if the value of disintermediation and individual publishing that we discussed on this page two days ago was really much less universally understood that I had thought.

Others had similar, but more directly expressed thoughts. Two of them are named Brad and Scott, and much like the Cylons, they have a plan:

[W]e are both clearing time in our 2012 schedule to act as paid consultants to the highest bidder. We have over 30 years of combined experience in monetizing comic strips online. But most importantly, we have built a well-deserved trust with not only the audience but also the talent pool you’re targeting.

We have what you want.

Wait, I’m sorry, let me rephrase that.

We have what you NEED. And we are willing to sell it to you, for the right price.

You think I’m joking and you might feel insulted right now. But in about ten minutes you’re going to be reviewing a memo about layoffs or some newspaper circulation chart that’s pointing down (still) and it’s going to sink in. You got nothing to lose and everything to gain. And we are deadly serious about this offer.

In response, Alan Gardner called Scott Kurtz an a-hole before allowing that Kurtz and Guigar² probably have something worthwhile to say, but that it’s not worth talking about.

Which leaves me wondering if there’s a way that Kurtz & Guigar could have pitched their consulting idea in a way that would have satisfied Gardner; at least part of what’s involved in getting people considering the need for outside consultation is having this discussion put the issue front and center. Once it cools down (in the time it would take to put together a formal proposal, go through the channels to find the right people to pitch to), the momentum and interest are lost. Which only really leaves the legitimate question, Do Guigar³ and Kurtz have the expertise to say anything worthwhile to syndicates or anybody else that might engage them? Ryan Sohmer played devil’s advocate with Guigar on that question, without a specific conclusion.

The thing is, I think they are a legitimate source of consultation. Last I checked, in order to consult you needed to have enough experience in a field that you’d likely accumulated some specific knowledge that others were willing to pay you for. You don’t have to be the biggest, the most successful, or the most famous. You do have to show up every day, do the work consistently, and walk the fine line between serving your client’s interests and giving away all your secrets (add in the fact that Guigar has worked his entire career in the editorial offices of newspapers, giving a unique insight into that side of the business).

I draw this from my own experience in tech consultation, but more directly from the owners of my favorite restaurant & cocktail bar, who spend a lot of time sharing their experience in beverage programs — which when they are successful, makes their own world-class bar less special by comparison (and much like Kurtz, Guigar, et. al., they also drop knowledge for free via podcast).

So the thing to do now is wait, see how the consultations go (presuming that clients bite at the offer), and treat the whole thing as a not-entirely-double-blind experiment. Does a syndicate taking advice from K&G Associates (or possibly Dunning-Kruger Solutions) last longer or succeed more than one that doesn’t? At this point, a day after Gardner ran a report predicting the end of newspapers in five years (i.e.: the major customer of the comics syndicates), Kurtz’s take on the situation:

What do you have to lose? You’re all out of work in five years anyway. Pull the pin and count to three. We can’t put you in a position that’s worse than you’re in now.

… might actually, sadly, be the most true thing in this entire discussion.

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¹ Although it’s probably a stretch to describe anybody in a group that includes Jeff Keane as “lowlife”, “emo-candyraver”, or “drug-addled”.

² I wonder if Brad ever gets his feelings hurt that people don’t call him an a-hole.

³ I figured it was time for Brad to get top billing.

There’s certain things that make you feel good, like being solicited for your opinion on the year in comics by Heidi Mac or having The Spurge say something nice about something you wrote. No resting on laurels, though — got to keep moving forward.

• If I were interested in saving significant figures for some other purpose, I’d point out that 1.95 is practically 2.0, and therefore 1.95 million is almost exactly the same as 2.0 million. Which, if expressed in US dollars, is the amount raised by Child’s Play 2011 to date, making the US$2 million threshold pretty much a mathematical certainty. Heck, a full US$351,000 was raised on Monday night alone via the annual charity dinner/auction; there’s still some distance to go to continue the Child’s Play tradition of raising more every year, and since 2010 brought in US$2.29 million, I’m thinking that US$2.5 million makes for a nice, round number to shoot for. There’s still two weeks to go, so get to it.
• Lot of talk about comics going day-and-date with electronic publishing, but from what I gather the big publishers aren’t doing much to get their enormous back catalogs (especially out-of-print material) into the Kindles and Nooks of the world, or at least not at a realistic price point. Enter Howard Tayler, who’s put the first four Schlock Mercenary books into e-form. Further, it seems he’s wrangled a deal where he doesn’t have to host the transfers, as they’re being sold through the Baen e-books storefront (cf: our discussion yesterday about deciding what it’s better to get somebody else to do, without giving up ownership).

  I’m sure you’ve seen the same analyses of digital pricing I have, how publishers are leaving money on the table by not providing a compelling economic reason to go digital, and it seems that Tayler read them too. The first two SM volumes cost US$25 each in print, and vols 3 & 4 US$15 each or US$20 for the pair. E-version costs:

  • Volume 1: US$16
  • Volume 2: US$16
  • Volume 3: US$9
  • Volume 4: US$9
  • Four book bundle: US$45

  That’s a discount of 36% to 40% for single books or the four book bundle (the already-discounted two-book deal “only” gets a 10% further discount in digital). That’s how you do it.

• You guys remember when I teased you that there was something potentially very cool on the horizon that I’d been invited to participate in? Look, just pretend you remember, it was only two weeks ago. In any event, said PVCT is now definitely happening (barring unfortunate world-ending disasters or me walking in front of a bus). That’ll have to do on details until the middle of February or so.

Then again, who’s to say? At least one person involved in each of these stories think they’re pretty important events, but you aren’t here for a philosophical discussion as to what constitutes “breaking news”.

• Steve Wolfhard is somebody that you can never talk about too much; his Cat Rackham comics are beautiful and revelatory and sometimes surprisingly intimate. In the latter category is the comic that went up yesterday, referring to the events of Monday, to which only one thing can be said — congratulations to Steven and Leslie, and big ups to MaxFunCon for the assist.
• God DAMN, Chris Onstad has gone from total Achewood stasis to the sort of weird, crazy-go-nuts stories he produces when at the top of his game in three strips. Ray In Rehab (tentative title) may only be updating every ten days or so, but it’s already showing the potential to be another New Kings of Sapphic Erotica/Lash of Thanatos or North Korean Magical Realism. Well done, mysterious sir.
• I’ve been waiting to mention the much-discussed experiment in downloadable comedy because I wanted to see raw data on how it all worked; yesterday Mr CK gave us that information. Short version: the disintermediation and lack of DRM surrounding the Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater is a success, and bears some instructive lessons for independent creators that seek to make their living by trusting their audience. I found this bit to be particularly telling:
  

  The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of [13 December], we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

  I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn’t many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I’m really glad I put this out here this way and I’ll certainly do it again. If the trend continues with sales on this video, my goal is that i can reach the point where when I sell anything, be it videos, CDs or tickets to my tours, I’ll do it here and I’ll continue to follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not overmarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in the transaction.

  Much has been made in the many (sometimes quite loud) discussion about webcomics business models (and the viability of same) about whether or not any money can be made via variations of the 1000 True Fans model. It’s been loudly declared that only working with a publisher can possibly pay, or that transitioning from a major-media publisher model to an independent producer model couldn’t possibly scale.

  Truth be told, the dozens of webcomickers making their living aren’t a large enough sample to be statistically valid (not have they been at it long enough to draw conclusions from duration), and what was really lacking was any evidence as to how far the model could scale up.

  Louis CK would seem to indicate: pretty damn far. Again, one datum may be an outlier, but I’m pretty confident that Louis CK can turn another show into a similar-sized success — which could provide the impetus to scale further up into funding the production of a feature film:

  Keep in mind, however, that it’s not sales of Beacon that would fund the film: He says that if Beacon “really tears an asshole into the money monster who then shits dollars into my mouth,” he would then use those shit-dollars to “buy a home and get some security which I NEVER have had in my life and have certainly not gotten from my low-budget show.” However, if he sells enough downloaded copies of this one to justify trying the experiment again, then the proceeds from his second special will all go toward making a movie.

  Crowdsourcing a motion picture has been bandied about a couple of times (hello, Browncoats), but this is a little different. This isn’t asking a lot of people to donate/finance/invest for the costs of the movie, it’s following a traditional production model, using the proceeds of a success to bankroll the next, hopefully more successful, project. It’s the sort of thing that has, in the past, been pretty much the exclusive province of large corporations. It’s the sort of thing that every webcomicker that rolls the profits of a book into a run of shirts has been doing, on a smaller scale. It has the potential to change how lots of independent artists¹ do things for the forseeable future.

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¹ Who need to have drive, ambition, and damn good business instincts — maybe not the skills to do all the business things themselves, but the self-awareness to figure out what they can do versus what they need to farm out (without giving up ownership), and the bullshit detector to figure out who’s trying to screw them.

Fleen has learned exclusively what this mysterious tweet from Bill Barnes actually means. As we all know, Barnes does not believe in webcomics monogamy, partnering with Gene Ambaum on Unshelved for going on a decade, and with Paul Southworth on Not Invented Here for two years, two major storylines, and two books¹.

But Barnes has never been a one-partner guy and has been recently seen canoodling with Jeff Zugale. “Zugs”, as he is sometimes known, has been doing a lot of painting for things as varied as Little Fuzzy books and fanfic-inspiring Wil Wheatons. It’s been a while since he was able to update his own webcomic, but what the heck — you never forget how to ride a bicycle. While webcomicking. Or something.

Those worrying that Zugale’s style and Southworth’s are very, very different, well, that’s where you’re right. But Southworth is just relinquishing the art duties, and will continue on as co-writer of Not Invented Here, making NIH the second major three-way² partnership to launch this year.

And yeah, the news is actually up at NIH now, but when I got the tip³ it wasn’t, so that totally counts, right? Hey, you got an extra post today, so no whining.

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¹ Okay, just one book so far, but there’s material sufficient for a second and no good webcomicker leaves a potential source of money untapped, so I expect a second in the future.

² Yes, yes, “He said ‘three-way’.”

³ It came in while I was asleep — damn time zones.