T Campbell's Blog

Check out that toothy grin and ladykiller squint.

There's a new version of Clickwheel out, and it's got RSS feeds, a fairer, more randomized homepage (so you don't get penalized for being at the end of the alphabet any more-- free at last, You'll Have That is FREE AT LAST!!!) and it makes certain parts of my job (like approving cartoonist accounts) much, MUCH easier. The default order for the comics is now from most recently uploaded to "most classic." And, oh yes, we've added RSS feeds, which I am given to understand are somewhat popular.

In this case when I say "we" I really mean "Kenny Grant," who's frankly earned a place in my personal Programmer Valhalla this month. I suspect this blog will mention him more often in times to come.

William and I and Kenny have been rattling around ideas for the next wave of improvements... and I wouldn't mind hearing some of yours.

You've seen a comments link before, right? You know what to do...

Less than 12 hours after I announced OhNoRobot for Google Toolbar, Nathaniel Payne got in touch with Ryan and me and came back with a Firefox version. So. COOL.

I'm just going to quote Nathaniel directly:

Click on the link that says "Oh No Robot" (while in Firefox, that is). A box will popup. Click 'OK', and it's installed! Then, just select it from the dropdown (see attached screengrab), put in a search term, and TA-DA!

Thanks, man. I thank you, and your country thanks you. Assuming you live in a country with Internet access. Which seems a safe bet.

I know, I know... toolbars are emphatically Not For Everyone. But if you like your Google Toolbar, wouldn't you like a Google/OHNOROBOT Toolbar even better??

Ryan devised this thing for the toolbar where you can type the search term into the usual place, then mouseclick a tiny "robot" button, and it'll take you straight to ONR's search results for the term. To get it to work you have to upload Google Toolbar Version 4, but hey, FREE COMICS SEARCH IN YOUR BROWSER.

Click here to do the Robot.

Awesome, Ryan. (Links found by Robotics!)

Here's what I want to do with my life:

Help make better comics.

And help make comics better.

I'm doing all right with the first of these, I'm pretty confident. My writing's shed a lot of the too-clever-by-half feel of my early work; the plots are feeling more organic and less contrived; the dialogue's more down-to-earth, the use of artists and the dance of collaboration are more skillful, the stories are more worth telling.

Goal #2 is a wee bit more ambitious.

It's why I'm with OhNoRobot, why I wrote the History and why I edit Graphic Smash, and it's on the back of my mind in the Meanwhile podcasts. And it's why I'm with Clickwheel.

How can I make comics better?

How can we make comics better?

My official title at Clickwheel is "Commissioning Editor." I've been given a budget and a goal. The goal, translated out of business-speak, boils down to: commission things to make Clickwheel AWESOME. I see two major ways to use that power. One: there are specific comics I want to make happen, comics that I think will be good for the art form in general... comics I'm sometimes not qualified to write myself, much less draw. Two: create the kinds of tools that make cartooning itself easier... which draws in the cartoonists who care.

The iPod is only the beginning for this company. I see that more clearly now. Ultimately it's about the intersection between comics and technology, the kind of peanut-butter-chocolate combo that leads to better art. More efficient art.

More. I want us to be doing more. I want better advances in the genres we web-folk explore regularly (gaming comics, techie fantasy) and the genres we don't (I'm looking at you, instructional comics). I want there to be a good place to find quality children's comics (I'm years past trusting the newspaper for that). I want people to be able to import comics scripts directly into word balloons. I want an excellent webcomic-- at least one-- that accurately portrays the Muslim experience in America (Applegeeks throws me a bone but only every once in a blue moon). I want cartoonists to understand better how to use digital tools to enhance their art. I want cartoonists to have more power. More. Better. More.

How do I make this happen? The money helps, but as Randy points out, money isn't always power. Not too many people get into cartooning for the money, which gives them the ability to refuse it as necessary. Besides which, I am acquainted with the notion that Clickwheel is a business and expects to make a profit on most of its investments.

Leadership helps, but I don't flatter myself that people are going to do things specifically because I think they're a good idea.

Appealing to self-interest helps, but that's not always enough, and some of the things that need to happen won't happen out of short-term self-interest.

Discussion. I think discussion helps.

There's no shortage of talk on the Web, but with this post and others I'll make over the rest of '06 at least, I'll be trying to focus and channel the discussion to positive ends. I'm asking the people I know to lend their brains to these questions as they come up.

So let's start with this one. I have some money, I have some limited influence, I have the desire, and I have some time. And I see a lot of things that I think need doing.

How can I help?

I wasn't really in an ideal mood for this, but it's definitely the best single page of comic I've read today. And there was some tough competition...

Thanks to those who suggested titles for the comic shop visit-- I looked for most, found some and bought one or two, but my best discovery was the utterly delightful My Faith In Frankie, a romantic comedy about the last living believer in a powerful pagan god, and what happens when she starts seeing other people. Give it ten pages to hook you. The grace and charm of the ending makes me jealous, frankly, for reasons I'm sure I won't need to explain if you read both it and my work. And that's as much as I can tell without spoiling.

Daisy is not doing well.

As you can see, she doesn't so much lie down as collapse like a house of toothpicks. A dog's fur coat conceals some of the effects of aging, but all you have to do is pet her to feel the difference. There's not much meat on her spine any more.

She hasn't had much appetite. And for THIS dog not to have much appetite is an event worth noting.

She'd be 14 next month. Depending on which system you learned as a child, that's either 72 or 98 in dog years.

The family has had Daisy since I was in high school and since Graham was 6 years old. When she was little, I used to run around with her in the backyard till I accidentally stepped on her foot. She seemed fine after a little TLC, but I was too nervous after that, and I'll always wonder if that misstep led to the limp she developed later in life. She used to get SO EXCITED whenever she heard a drawer opening, because she knew it meant someone was getting out her leash for a walk on the beach. A shameless beggar, she licks dirty dishes on their way into the dishwasher like it is her God-given duty. Her guileless eyes could melt the heart of the Grinch.

I'm not ready for her to go.

She's better today, at least. Back to eating dog food instead of chicken and peanut butter crusts. She may have a year... another two years... another six months. Hope and realism make bitter sparring partners.

So last Saturday, Greg Eatroff, Sara Cole and I went down to Marscon, a lovely, low-key convention which seems to be one of very few things that gets the Waltrip brothers out of the house. We all had a nice dinner together, the old Fans crew. I hadn't seen Sara in a while and was a bit uncertain about what parts of the evening she enjoyed-- she's left a lot of the scene behind-- but they had a dance room that went on for hours, and she loved to dance. Greg spent the same wee hours of the morning in the Rocky Horror showing, and I spent 'em chatting up an amusingly drunken Rob Balder and an e-paper enthusiast who's spoken to me at two conventions now and whose name COMPLETELY slips my mind even though I jotted down his name and e-mail address on a piece of paper which I've now lost. If you're reading this, please don't take it personal: I would like to pick up where we left off. You have my e-dress: feel free to use it.

My relationship with Sara has been, shall we say, a storied one. It briefly seemed as though she and I might become more-than-friends in 1999, and the breakup of what was never exactly a relationship in the first place narrowly edged out my comic book's financial failure as the worst thing to happen in the worst year of my life. (To date.) It's not THAT it didn't happen, it's the specific WAY it didn't happen. I'm not going to get into details except to say that everyone agrees I got hurt a lot worse than Sara did. Granted, the aforementioned business failure put me in a vulnerable place.

Greg would really like for Sara and me to put the whole thing behind us; Dave Belmore doesn't understand why I spend any time with her, and between those two extremes she and I have tried to restore some of the friendship we had, while acknowledging that we can't trust one another as much as we once did.

I don't do well with ambiguous relationships. I don't generally spend much time with people who make me uncomfortable. But there are times when it's worth it. She's a good person; she has a good perspective; we just want very different things, and I tried to get closer to her just as we were beginning to go in different directions.

I think there will always be a little pang.

But I still want her to be part of my life.

What should I buy?

I'm tiring of some old standbys and I'd like to get something like Off Road or the Runaways hardback, something I can sink my teeth into. I'm a fairly adventurous reader and will try almost anything once.

Suggestions in the comments line below.

I'm way behind on blogging. Look for multiple posts this weekend.

...can be a great source of story ideas.

...make it this one, the one about dealing with stalker fans.

Times like these I miss having Fans as a regular series. This is exactly the kind of issue we tried to confront in fiction: on the one hand, fandom has genuine wonders, but on the other...

Haha! I remember that conversation. My cell phone reception was lousy so I had to walk around the extremely hilly roads near my landlord's house, hoping the battery would hold out long enough. "Superhero reality show" sounds like one of those schlocky premises that only Stan Lee could make work, but Jason Martin sold me on his genuine affection for both genres and so far, he's justified my faith. Check his stuff out on Graphic Smash while you can.

I'm especially glad that this Penny and Aggie found a receptive reader, because panels 1, 4 and 5 contain actual BS that *I* had to listen to in high school. (#2 is Tom Cruise, of course. #3 is a more recent brand of idiocy, gleaned from-- where else?-- the Internet.)

Busy weekend. I'll catch the blog up later. Right now, here comes another lengthy Penny and Aggie story!

After the slightly Shakespearean feeling of "Celebrity Poker Showdown," I kinda let down my hair with this one, and the "trail" took a few characters into places I wasn't expecting. Hope you enjoy it.

Today's Word Spy cites "egocasting," one of my big worries about media in the digital age. Egocasting is, essentially, hand-crafting a smorgasbord of media to encourage your current tastes instead of going out and finding new things. It's a form of intellectual laziness, and while you don't need technology to ONLY read detective novels and nothing else, tech makes it easier to FEEL like you're getting a wide variety of perspectives when you're actually just patting yourself on the back for already knowing everything.

I recognize this habit in myself (not least because this blog obsessively tracks almost any mention of my name elsewhere on the Web, time I could be using to finish reading the Koran and the Dhammapada-- hey, I'm being quoted in Italian! OMG!)

This is my big problem with the political blogosphere-- liberal and conservative. I'm a liberal, so clearly I have no time for Little Green Footballs except to find out what "those idiots think" (and no, I'm not going to link them). But sticking to the liberal blogs left me completely unprepared for the 2004 U.S. election results. I was convinced, CONVINCED, that the pollsters' methods were outmoded and that John Kerry was going to take this country back by a 60% majority, at least. Because, you know, EVERYONE I LISTENED TO believed that. Since then I've switched to The Daily Show, which at least invites a conservative guest more than once in a blue moon. Props to Sore Thumbs and Winger for at least TRYING to reinvent the political cartoon from a non-liberal, non-conservative perspective.

This is the kind of thinking that gets me as I read The Assassin's Gate. It's a pretty thorough account of how we got into Iraq, filled with names I was barely aware of and exploding certain myths that had crept up in my own thinking about the subject. I try not to place too much trust in any one work, but I'm certainly better-informed for reading this one... and I doubt I would have picked it up if it hadn't been listed as one of the ten best of the year.

Which brings me to the ongoing awards ceremony debate. Kristofer Straub has skillfully poked at some of the hubris of your standard award ceremony, but I think lurking in his illogical extreme is a rational argument: awards do matter, because often they are the incentive that certain people need to try new things. (I probably wouldn't have gotten off my duff and gone to see Brokeback Mountain without the hoopla. It was worth it.)

I'm a bit preoccupied with search-- with matching comics to readers as closely as possible. And one of the big problems with search is that searchers are often seekers of we know not what. If the WCCAs manage to force a few readers to read a comic they wouldn't have considered otherwise, and if the comic goes on to delight and enrich them, then they have performed a service.

Anything that encourages us to stand outside ourselves for a few minutes is a useful counterweight. Because we spend too much time navel-gazing as it is. We're all in this world together and should spend more time exploring one another.

In my humble and correct opinion, anyway.

This Saturday afternoon, I'll be at Marscon, especially to attend one of the rare sightings of the Waltrip brothers in the wild.

Before I get there, I'll be dropping the last of the CD orders into the mail (still need to address some of 'em).

But now, must dash to Navy Federal and deposit a couple checks, so that certain people can get paid...

I love it! More! More!

frustratedpilot: Fandom Meme.

Running late as usual with the FANS CD mail-orders but today I bought the last CDs I need to fill out the last-minute requests. I'm burning them now.

Well, sort of.

I don't want to turn this blog into a "friendslist" kind of thing, but this is too cool to pass up.

A couple of my cartoonist friends have probably wanted to strangle me at some point because of my desire for phone conversations. I communicate via e-mail far more than by phone, but when the talk is really important, I want the immediacy of a voice-to-voice interface. I want to be able to hear pauses, respond to concerns, interact thought-by-thought instead of three-paragraph-e-mail-by-three-paragraph-e-mail.

Mind, I'm not anxious to start talking on the phone 14 hours a day, running up a huge long-distance tab or Skyping my ears off. But when something is important, there's just something about voice-to-voice that seems to command GETTING THINGS DONE.

I seem to be almost alone in this desire within the cartooning community. Joey Manley, Ryan North and Xaviar Xerexes are only some of the people whom I've talked with by e-mail when I would have greatly preferred a phone chat. (Joey and Ryan have accommodated me to some degree, Ryan with particularly saintly patience, but they're often difficult to reach, and Xaviar-- sorry, dude-- is just impossible.)

I guess the usual theories explain it. The reclusiveness of cartoonists. Dude, phone so last century. And when you're communicating, you have to compromise. Still. I wish more people saw this my way. Which is pretty much how I feel about everything else.

Got a couple podcasts done on the subject of convention war stories, or possibly convention horror stories. Dave and I haven't quite decided yet.

Right now I'm working on another long-overdue matter: long-term performance reviews for Graphic Smashers.

Thanks to those who wrote in with concern about the previous post, but trust me, I'm okay. The below is a reflection on how and why an experience rattled me, but it's an experience that seems to be behind me now.

For naming it will give it less power over me.

My greatest fear is that I will wake up one gray morning, unaware that I've sold out the things I believe in. The rights of artists. Giving credit where credit is due. Making my own comics the best they can be. Making the comics medium the best I can make it. The idea that we're put on this Earth, whether by biology or by the Divine, to help people.

(Mr. Incredible, to his boss: "We're supposed to help people." If I had to replace all our religious texts with five words...)

I go along, too distracted and too multitasking to notice that I'm dead inside, until someone points out that I've done something terrible-- something that would have no justification if I still believed in my principles.

From there, the end is swift. News of the betrayal spreads, and my awkward self-defense seals the deal. Former associates cold-shoulder me, those who could have taken me or left me emerge as enemies, and soon I stand alone, without a friend in the world, not even myself.

An event in the last couple of days-- a quick decision I made which I thought would be helpful, while I was seriously multitasking-- was taken badly by one of my associates. His reaction brought me face-to-face with that fear. And clearly, it still gets to me.

Ultimately, it's the friendlessness that's the root of it. For I know I will make mistakes, I know I will do wrong things that seem right at the time. But I don't believe that your opinion of yourself makes you a good or bad person. Society is the best judge we have, on Earth at least.

And there is a more selfish, less high-minded reason. Writing is a lonely enough occupation. To be bereft of friends AND purpose...

(Although I never pushed this ultimate scenario in Fans, shadows of it are all over that series. I think Penny and Aggie, being about high school, confronts it more directly.)

If you are my friend, and you see me doing something that seems selfish, short-sighted, stupid or wrong...

Let me know, okay? And please, give me the benefit of the doubt.

The theme of this weekend is "making things right, wherever I can."

Things are about as tense as they've ever been on all fronts, right now. We wait to hear some important decisions about Clickwheel's future and Ryan and I are trying to hash out an important agreement between us concerning OhNoRobot. A cartoonist I respect is mad at me right now over a couple of foolish actions on my part; I'm trying my best to make things right there.

I need to finish up paperwork and get the relaunch wave of Clickwheel cartoonists their agreed-upon advances this coming week, or D.J. Coffman will have my hide. And rightly so.

And somebody reminded me that certain FANS CDs have not been sent, after far, far too long a wait.

GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE. If you want a FANS CD, order it BEFORE MONDAY, MIDNIGHT EST.

If you've ordered or pre-ordered a FANS CD by then (or, um, significantly earlier), I'll be sending it to you in the mail TUESDAY MORNING (and I will report to you on this blog when it is sent). I will also send you fresh ones if I have any doubt at all about whether you received them. For a variety of reasons, I need to settle accounts on this and then close them out for good.

Yes, this started as a litany of worries and guilty tooth-grinding, and ended up as a sales pitch. No, I'm not entirely sure how that happened, either.

Had a nice dinner with Art Webb, the new CEO of my dad's advertising agency, and took in a nice performance of the Brandenburg Concertos at my old high school's new auditorium (not performed by high school students).

Got to meet up with my old English teacher Ms. McColley, who's Mrs. Somebody Else these days (didn't catch the name). She's looking well, which is reassuring because she's had a rough time of it. And I caught up with Richard Oberdorfer, my all-time favorite history teacher, for whom Rikk Oberf is named. Like Rikk, he's a zealot in the best possible way, but he doesn't have Rikk's siege mentality. He's a burbling optimist-- we got him talking about his new Latin American History course and the man seemed about to fly apart from the force of his own enthusiasm. Good times.

EDITED: Jeff Lowrey asked, and it occurs to me that I really don't know, and that I'd like to know in time to revise The History. Does anyone know what the earliest guest strip in webcomics was? If not, what's the earliest you can remember? Please e-mail me privately rather than using the comments line.

My old friend and occasional Fans collaborator Charles G. now has a blog of his own. It's a lot like catching up with him in person, and he's a neat guy, so check it out.

The critics are raving!

Gahhhh. I really don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but I do think it's worth noting that we had to prepare against the possibility of clickfraud at Clickwheel recently, and v2.0 is not even a week old. It's going to be an issue that dogs all the Internet's heels, and webcomics are no exception.

This photo will at least give you the general idea...

I dunno, but the fact is the guy who created this is a millionaire.

A millionaire.

We other Web-based entrepreneurs should take note.

The Artists Gallery - William T. Campbell, Pastel Artist.

OhNoRobot's latest improvement.

It's come to my attention that there's a certain amount of misunderstanding about Clickwheel contracts.

Here's the skinny:

Before Clickwheel launched, a number of cartoonists were offered a contract which included an advance to put their work (and keep their work, and add new work) onto the service. The advance was an extra incentive for them to get this service started on the right foot.

If your work is in the top 50 downloads for a particular month, Clickwheel will also offer you a contract. The pay rates involved are $100 for top ten strips and $30 for all other strips in the top fifty.

Right now, I'm busy rounding up the contracts from people who are entitled to an advance, yet haven't gotten the contracts in yet. If this is you, send a signed contract to my e-mail address as an image file and we'll go from there.

Stephen Crowley posts some thoughts about his role in the process of my latest short, in case you were curious.

William Simons and I did an interview with Al Schroder about the launch of Clickwheel. Go read.

Fleen writers have a tendency to get their facts off a bit. (*I* ain't the one running Clickwheel! I'm just part of the team...)

I hope I'm handling this right. I really like the idea of Fleen (webcomics review by actual non-webcartoonists) and I'm glad somebody's raising a skeptical voice to Clickwheel and OhNoRobot, or at least my personal visions of each (surprised? I think they need critical feedback as much as any strip). But when details like this get fudged, it makes me worry about the theory behind the site-- is this field really too twisty for an outsider to get it straight?

But then, that kind of thinking leads me close to criticizing the critics, which is one short step from "everyone who disagrees with me is wrong." And that treacherous loop is exactly why I feel we need something like Fleen in the first place.

It's a challenge.

After watching the results and tinkering with the system, I'm inclined to believe that podcomics may soon evolve toward being presented in batches, that instead of 4 panels the default may be 20 or 30. It seems like a more rewarding experience for the reader to be able to flick right from strip to strip to strip. We're starting to think of ways on our end to make this easier.

Also of note: Clickwheel cartoonists can link directly to their download pages from anywhere else on the Web. 'Strue!

Yes, Graveyard Greg did ask my permission before he brought back this talisman from Fans...

Narbonic, featuring the misadventures of a brilliant mad scientist and her hapless minions, has consistently been one of the funniest strips on the Internet, so naturally I've written a horror story for it. Not appropriate for all ages. Rejected subtitle: "The Hidden DARK SIDE of Evil."

Many thanks to Shaenon K. Garrity, Stephen Crowley and Joe Zabel.

At this point I've lost count of how many stories I've written. I got to thinking about closing lines after seeing King Kong, which is scrupulously faithful to the original final line. Though I think it suffers a bit by having Jack Black deliver it rather than Fay Wray, as was Peter Jackson's original plan. Better to have Jack listen solemnly as someone else uses his showman's language. But I digress.

At this point I've published a LOT of stories. Depends a little on how you count (some of FANS's stories blurred together into big meta-stories and some are in the process of being published). If you're charitable, it's 60 for FANS (including the KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE crossover), 12 for PENNY AND AGGIE, 6 for RIP & TERI, 5 for COOL CAT STUDIO (not counting the unfinished ART & LOVE), 4 for GAMING GUARDIANS/GUARDIANS (often in collaboration with Graveyard Greg) and 6 others (let's just call SEARCH ENGINE FUNNIES 1.0 all one story-ish thing). And there's one more "other" coming tomorrow, so make it 6 others. So... 93. Wow.

To those of you who follow my work closely, how many of these last lines from those stories (my favorites) can you identify?

Let me know how you like this. It might inspire a Clickwheel feature, albeit one a bit less egocentric.

"...crawling back to me someday. And then... I'll make him feel pain like no one ever has... or l-love him forever. I could go either way."

"...the final frontier..."

"Actions speak more loudly."

"Anybody up for some Tenshi DVDs? Just askin'..."

"Be afraid of me."

"Be one."

"Besides us."

"Doesn't she know what she's missing?"

"Dreaming never dies."

"Gotta go... this reunion’s a few people short. I gotta call my mom, and my bro... and my boyfriend. "

"He confiscated my dice."

"I hoped I would find explorers here, people who wondered at life's latest offerings, people who broke out of the boxes assigned to them... people who liked to play... 'outside.'"

"I made his lame script work and I can do the same for yours!"

"I would like the same, please."

"It just pinches a little."

"It's been us ever since Adam and Eve."

"It's only a 'question' in the grammatical sense."

"Liar."

"Now get out, I've got work to do."

"Oh, sorry. Did I step on your line?"

"She got that from you."

"Talk dirty t'me?"

"That's just gay."

"That's just your jogger's dumbbell to bear."

"The flowers are all dead."

"The keys on the board feel like a kiss on the cheek. It's morning."

"We all have our secrets."

"With people, you're never sure."

"You did, son. You did."

"You're pregnant."

Little Brother made some observations on search on our way to see King Kong which struck me as so good I had to jot them down here so I didn't forget. If you take them and run with them and make lots of money off them, be sure to give all credit to Graham Campbell. :-)

What if Google never makes money its primary goal? "They don't seem to care about money. They're just after power." (The two often go hand in hand, of course, but Google seems remarkably unconcerned with monetization compared to its closest competitors.)

"What about a science-fiction story where Google has already taken over the world just because it's so convenient? Convenience really seems to be the ultimate power. Most people just do what's easiest."

I couldn't have said it better, and it's not like I haven't tried. :-)

What I've been doing when NOT doing comics stuff...

Wednesday was tiring but fun. We spent the day getting Daddy's old advertising work out of his old agency and into storage or into his new home office.

There was a bit of a sad moment when we came upon a 1995 poster he did for the World Trade Center.

We left that one behind.

My favorite piece of his: a poster called "Water Lilies," advertising a Claude Monet showing in the area. It shows Monet's Lilies painting from behind, mounted on an easel, and being reviewed and enjoyed by four frogs (actual frogs, not cartoon walking frogs).

Apparently Daddy has a thing for Monet, because he worked up two faux Monets in time for a special "forgery showing" that opened tonight. A Salvador Dali impersonator announced the winners, and Daddy was clearly in his element in this artist's clique. He's always been a cheerful, easygoing guy but I don't know if I've ever seen him so happy.

Also, saw King Kong today with little brother. Good stuff. He and I quibbled over how long it *felt* like but agreed the time was well spent... and we hope Jack Black goes on to great things from here: his performance was spectacular. So was Naomi's and Andy Serkis'. Adrien Brody seemed a bit lost at times but came through nicely in the final act.

Entertainment Weekly calls Peter Jackson "the new Steven Spielberg." I like that because Jackson has the guts to do what the Spielberg of old never would: make dizzying adventures with a tragic edge. Big-budget Hollywood traditionally shies from tragedy, but Jackson doesn't. For all the triumph of good over evil in Lord of the Rings, Frodo's post-traumatic stress syndrome is what stays with me about the ending: his innocence is lost and he'll never get it back. And Kong, well, almost everyone knows how it ends.

Full Story: Science Fiction.

Dani Atkinson points out that I currently have written 33% of Full Story's "Science Fiction Section." Could go up to 40% if Alexander allows "The Sluggite Koan..." which is very loosely SF, but so is "S**theap."

Now you know why I've been too busy to blog.

I've been determined not to use the word "launch" in relation to this move. After all, it's really the second time around for Clickwheel, and I don't want people calling me a big old hypocrite. But I grudgingly admit I understand a bit better why some execs at Marvel called Digital Comics a "launch," because this FEELS like a launch. It feels entirely new.

The last version of Clickwheel had a relatively few features and was aimed a bit more at the art-house crowd, with the exception of Penny and Aggie. (That's me, always breaking the barriers for the less highfalutin.) Now, I love me my art-house comics and you should all download Lama right now, but one of the first things I did as editor was widen the lens.

Here's the crazy thing: everyone at the company freely admits that WE DON'T KNOW which kinds of comics are going to be most successful on the iPod. So go ahead and apply for an account now, while the applying's good!

(PS: If you did apply for an account and haven't heard back in a day, let me know at tcampbell(at)tcampbell.net. The e-mail system should notify me quickly, but we haven't been able to test how it performs with dozens and hundreds of applications at once, because, well, you know.)

(PPS: An editor is nothing without stuff to look at and claim a disproportionate share of the credit for. Thanks to all the cartoonists who have signed up already who are making this thing special.)

MSN employee Robert Scoble learns the limits of company loyalty.

The short version: Chinese authorities have decided it's no longer enough to force MSN Spaces to deny bloggers the ability to TYPE certain WORDS (note to new readers: I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP) and has whole-hog deleted a blog that China seems to think is worthy of censorship.

Scoble's post on the new developments is here.

Longtime readers know that I've commented on MSN Spaces' word-by-word censorship before.

Retrievr - Search by Sketch.

I could see cartoonists wanting a service like this, after it gets well-developed enough. Maybe by 2008. Meantime, it's fun to play with.

My iPod Video just arrived, just in time for me to run some tests for le Wheel du Click...

This is why infinite canvas exists.

Hope everybody had a great New Year's. I had a great time totally skipping the whole party-drinking-Dick Clark scene. I'm pretty much a teetotaler and not good in large crowds anyway, so why force things? That morning I played Super Scrabble with my father and brother (and won-- 50-point bingo on AWAITED!), and read a little in The Assassin's Gate.

And the rest of the time I've spent in elaborate plots and plans concerning the projects set to dominate my 2006. (OhNoRobot alone has taken hours... and CLICKWHEEL, hoo boy...)

Because of that, I've been horribly lax in telling everyone HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So if you're a friend of mine, you know, see above. :-)