WCCA Reactions III: The Search For Schlock

Continuing reactions...

4. Speaking of RPG-based comics, Matt Summers is an interesting new contender; most of his work is RPG-based fantasy, played straight and well-executed. I'm just not into that as much as I used to be, especially when it's played straight, but I probably would have dug his stuff ten years ago.

Even back when I was editor of Graphic Smash, I would've stalked him with a harpoon gun, if only for his potential. If he makes the traditions of White Wolf and TSR his tools instead of the other way around, he could go interesting places.

That's always a big "if." I've said the same sort of thing about other people, and been disappointed when their twentieth stories looked a lot like their first ones. RPG-based comics, like superhero comics, contain an awful lot of storytelling conventions that make it easy to fall into laziness and rote. But a writer really dedicated to self-improvement can resist the pull. Exhibit A.

5. A few artists have rumbled about the ability to refuse nominations or wins. Doesn't work that way, guys, at least not any more: it's outstanding comics as determined by voters, not as determined by willingness to be honored. You can always refuse to acknowledge them, just as people refuse to accept Oscars or any other award.

I'm aware that the more popular webcartoonists also sometimes want to duck the awards because they take crap for winning, but a popular webcartoonist should not waste his life worrying about what idiots think.

6. Between Two Worlds is another interesting discovery. JJ and EL seem to be building a "color-world" the way musicians build "sound-worlds." It's an effect I've seen before, even in my own stuff (thank David Willis). It deserves an essay. I can't find such an essay on Google in five minutes, so it must not exist yet.

Tomorrow: Who wuz robbed.

WCCA Reactions, Part 2

In keeping with the WCCAs' approach to announcing the nominees, I'm going to dribble out my responses to the awards over the week.

1. Strong batch for Outstanding Comic, if a bit predictable (with the exception of last year's Outstanding Newcomer, Gunnerkrigg Court). Naturally, I want this to be Narbonic's year, and I think it has a shot, if only because it won't get another one.

2. If I had to delete every category in the awards but one, I wouldn't keep Outstanding Comic. I'd keep Outstanding Newcomer. Six great strips I hadn't read before, and four I hadn't even heard of! The discovery of new, exciting work is one of the best things the WCCAs have to offer the world.

3. My own favorite discoveries via the WCCAs: Lackadaisy by Tracey J. Butler and Dresden Codak by Aaron Diaz.

Tracey, here's your pull quote: a well-researched, jaw-droppingly drawn, side-splitting romp through a Prohibition-era St. Louis populated by talking cats. Talking cats. And Tracey Butler makes it look easy.

And Aaron, here's yours: I took one look at the latest Dresden Codak, and... I think I'm in love.

Tomorrow: But can these crazy kids make it work?

Divalicious Progress: Thumbnails

Thumbnails from Amy, based on the "Grrl's Got The Goods" sequence from volume 2:



More to come...

Penny and Aggie Nominated For A WCCA

The Web Cartoonists' Choice Award nominees started going up last Monday, with a misspelled logo (seen here) and asterisked code in place of an ad banner (geez, guys, are you trying not to be taken seriously?). One of the nominees for "Outstanding Romantic Comic" was Penny and Aggie.

I want this award. I admit that freely. Do Gisele and I deserve one?

I never really thought of Penny and Aggie as a "romantic comic," exactly-- it covers all the emotions of adolescence, not just the romantic ones. But you can make a case that it is, and the category is as close to what P&A is as any of the categories in the WCCA.

Last year, I was a member of the WCCA committee, and we discussed, sometimes energetically, what did and didn't qualify as a romantic comic. All agreed that except in extraordinary cases, the WCCAs should reflect the will of the voters. This year, there are no extraordinary cases of which I'm aware, and so the decision is up to all webcartoonists. So, webcartoonists, please consider Penny and Aggie, as well as all of the other nominees for Best Romantic Comic. And vote responsibly.

UPDATE: To register, follow the instructions at this link.

Penny and Aggie: Academic Troubles

Here's the highlight of my day:

Some folks on the forum noticed that Nick, Aggie's father, was listed on the cast page as teaching at Aggie's school. Oops! This was a detail Gisele and I thought of when we created the series, but we changed it as we began actually putting stories together. Somehow we forgot to edit this. No harm, no foul: I changed the cast page and figured that was the end of it.

Except we have two printed books which both feature the error.

Noooooooo...

So, yeah, Gisele and I've been putting corrected editions together. Which requires Gisele uploading about a gig of files and possibly crashing her computer a time or two.

Because we care about our readers THAT MUCH, is why.

Divalicious: Funny...

I didn't really expect to find myself writing these characters again.

Divalicious: Resources

Do you remember this old thing?

The International Lyrics Server was the first site to show me the potential of the Internet. It's long gone now, early prey to the same kind of legal predators who later cut out the soul of Napster. Ten years later, writers still face obstacles to quoting song lyrics directly in their fiction-- even their fan fiction! Aggie's outrage over this situation mirrors my own, and I still grind my teeth over this compromise (at least it's in character: we established Katy-Ann as the sort who might make up her own lyrics. But still... argh).

But... today, you can find lyrics for almost any song with a simple Google search... from many, many sites that seem able to post the lyrics without fear.

All of which helps a lot in the making of Divalicious 2, which is taking inspiration not only from the "pop tart" stylings of Britney and Lindsay but the sultry beats of Shakira and the brutal poetry of the Wu-Tang Clan (and just a little Beatles and Monkees). Also helpful is the Spanish lyrics translation forum, which finally allowed me to get my head around the themes of Latin music.

It's an exciting time to be writing, with all this information at your fingertips. Even if you have to be a little careful how you use it.

Penny and Aggie Cast Page

Revised for the first time since 2005. Special thanks to Gisele and Olivera T. for their special effort on frikkin' THIRTY CHARACTER CLOSE-UPS.

Finance Day...

Some genius thought it would be a good idea to schedule my most difficult class on a Monday, starting the second week of the year, so that we'd have to skip our second class and do a double batch of homework before we'd gotten a chance to do a single batch of homework. I've been tunneling through my finance book since Sunday morning and still have three chapters to do in the next eight hours.

So I'm likely to be dead to the world today. Check out Saturday's entries instead.

Scooped!

About a month ago, I talked about how I intended to write webcomics coverage for a site (Broken Frontier) that was owned by a webcomics publisher (Platinum). The gist was that I knew it wouldn't be easy.

In the last few weeks it got a bit harder than I expected, as an apparent scandal broke out, with Platinum in the center of it, before Broken Frontier Webcomics was ready to launch. BF's publisher, Frederik Hautain, and I decided to cover it anyway, but I had a distracting schedule built up, which made me slow.

Too slow! Pretty much everything I unearthed about the story (except for a little trivial color) can be found here (scroll to Cowboys and Aliens logo), here and here (scroll to "Cowboys and Agendas"). It's recommended reading for the human interest of entertainment cultures clashing, but in the final analysis the story amounts to a typo that got out of hand.

No scandal for Platinum! Not today, anyway! Check back next week!

Breaking: Bitpass, Too, Shall Pass

This is the journalistic equivalent of a pencil sketch. I'd love to supplement this piece with more recent quotes from Michael Graves, Scott McCloud, Patrick Farley, Jon Rosenberg and Clay Shirky, or as many of them as I could get, but until the Broken Frontier webcomics thing gets underway I just don't have the time.

An era of e-commerce may have ended yesterday with the loss of the most prominent provider of micropayments, Bitpass.

On Friday, Bitpass COO Michael Graves mass-mailed Bitpass account holders, informing them that the company was discontinuing service. This is a complete shutdown. Bitpass account holders have seven days to spend any cash in their account.

The word "micropayments" literally means "small payments," but the micropayments concept is that those small payments will come from many hands to make up a significant total. Finance charges made small payments difficult in the early days of the Web, but companies like Bitpass have made them much more feasible. Attracting the many hands has proven a tougher problem.

Micropayments have been a much-discussed commercial option for online cartoonists. Bitpass in particular became a rallying point, thanks largely to its endorsement by the influential Scott McCloud, who had already become one of micropayments' most prominent enthusiasts after the publication of his Reinventing Comics (excerpted here). Bitpass' own site lists numerous cartoonists as clients today.

However, its comics client list has changed little since June 2004. More significantly, Bitpass' most commercially successful clients besides McCloud himself, R. Stevens and Jonathan Rosenberg, soon abandoned the model. McCloud's own reported sales of his Bitpass-enabled, 25-cent comic were less than impressive, too [scroll to final item]. In more recent interviews, McCloud has been more guarded about micropayments and Bitpass:

[Advertising and merchandise] have worked well for some people. [They're] part of the solution, and there are some who insist [they're] the only solution. Until I have a good answer to that, I’m going to devote myself to more constructive things. I’m watching and I’m waiting and we’ll see how things evolve. I gave it my shot; I assume I’m one of thousands of people who have ideas for how the industry can evolve online.

Bitpass' direct competitors, ClickandBuy and Peppercoin, continue to operate, but have never attracted an indie-cartoonist clientele like Bitpass'. And the company was far from a small-business-only venture: it also enabled United Media, Disney, Time Warner and Microsoft.

The news for micropayments isn't all bad. Apple's iTunes Music Store has broken the old pricing structure for music down from the 15-dollar CD to the 99-cent song, and its success has changed the nature of the music industry. The East has proven friendlier to the concept than the West: Japanese video game portal Hangame has also succeeded with micropayments. But Apple and Hangame have integrated micropayments into a large infrastructure with huge resources. Small business owners, such as independent cartoonists, are unlikely to replicate this success any time soon. McCloud's vision of a "micropayments economy" for independent comics has never looked further away.

Updated: Thanks to Erik for the correction and Stuart for the clarification.

Divalicious Progress: "Grrl's Got The Goods" Lyrics

Usually the songs are the hardest part of scripting Divalicious, but not this time.

She’s got poise
She’s got toys
She’s got all life’s pretty joys
She’s got fun
She’s got unh!
She’s got mon-ay

She’s got style
She’s got guile
Got a trillion-dollar smile
Damn, she’s taut
Got a hawt
Little hon-ay

She’s got fame
She’s got game
She’s got all the world’s acclaim
And you know
She’s a pro

How you know?
Yo yo yo

GRRL’S GOT THE GOODS
And everything you desi-errr
GRRL’S GOT THE GOODS
You know she’s dancin’ on fi-errr
Owns the charts
Owns your hearts
She’s a mistress of pop aaaaaaaaarts...
...
GRRL’S GOT THE GOODS.

If it's mindless, I've done my job...

Bits and Pieces

Couldn't get this out of my head today: a preview for Narbonic, the motion picture, set completely to Oingo Boingo's "Weird Science." (Lyrics -- Video) Lots of shots of Helen Narbon's handiwork, and the main characters in various mad-sciencey adventures. Very jumpcutty, very fast. Ends with Helen's maniacal laughter, then living letters assembling themselves into the word "Narbon." The last "n" gives birth to an "i" and a "c," which grow to full size, and the dot over the "I" begins to glow pink, then explodes into a shower of hearts.

Biggest accomplishment today: beefed up the P&A forums. I restored the "view newest post" feature and enabled IP blocking. Just in time, too, because we're currently under a serious spampost attack. I've blocked four IPs already and it may get worse before it gets better.

Gisele and I have been looking into a variety of auto-update programs; I've been testing some. Your suggestions are always appreciated.

The new Penny and Aggie book has hit the proofing stage.

Beyond that, today was pretty much just odds and ends and dull financial stuff. Still not getting done: any serious scripting for Divalicious 2. Let's see how tomorrow goes.

Google Checkout...

Gonna give this a try on Penny and Aggie. Kind of surprised that more webcomickers aren't looking into it. No service charges for a year, and no commitment? Yeah, I'll go along with that.

Old Friends...

David Willis made me laugh for a full minute tonight with the third in a series of drawings of his girlfriend and pop culture-- this time out, Maggie does Smallville. Shortpacked shows him at his very best: freely stirring in lively slapstick humor, topical pop-culture references and rock-solid characterization. It'll be tricky to reconcile the grounded sitcom he's built up in the toy store with his more fantastic and metafictional story ambitions, but if anyone can make it work, Willis is the man.

Maritza's also having a really good run lately.

Divalicious -- Last News of the Day

The Divalicious news is flying in thick and fast today. I've just learned that Amy will ALSO be at New York Comic Con, meaning that Tina's "parents" will actually be in the same room for the first time ever.

And you can pre-order the book on Amazon! Even though its Amazon page currently has no description and mis-parses both my name AND Amy's. Yeah, I'll ask the Tokyopop folks if theys can fix dat.

Divalicious on MySpace

All the credit for this awesome thing belongs to Amy Mebberson. It's just so... MySpace!

NYCC.

I'll be attending the New York Comic Con this year, where I'll have a table to represent Meanwhile and sign some early copies of Divalicious at the Tokyopop booth. And I'm sure there'll be a few other things to do. Hope to see you there.

I Finished That Other Thing!

The one I refused to tell you anything about here. No, not Project Y, the other one.

Yeah, this comedy device has pretty much run its course. I post better soon.

Mobile Discontent, Discontinued...

I've got to discontinue Mobile Discontent while the start date of the other mobile blog is up in the air. I was really looking forward to an unbroken string of mobile content coverage, but sometimes commercial gravity pulls in another direction. Still, it was fun while it lasted!

My New Digs.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for a complex with a cartoonist-designed homepage.

Don't be fooled by the word "luxury." My earnings have improved, but I'm still lucky to be able to move into the smallest accomodations this place has to offer:





Still, I'm excited. It's a chance to make a space fully my own, which you just don't get with live-in landlords from Oxford or Washington, D.C. And cozy though it is, I'll be happy to entertain visitors, as long as you call first. :-)

The Most Beautiful Collaboration Webcomics Have Ever Produced.

If you haven't caught the MP4 that is the crowning achievement of Eric Burns' life to date, there's really nothing better you can do with the next few minutes. (Warning: music.)

If you've caught it, see it again, because there's really nothing better you can do with the next few minutes.

Eric says today has been a good day.

UPDATED: When I first posted this, the non-animated version of the mp4 had a bug. It's fixed now, and it features an important postscript. :-)

Progress Report...

Project Y outline and Chapter 1 breakdown completed and ready for my partners' review. One of them has a lot goin' on right now, so that'll probably rest there for the weekend at least.

Next up: the other project whose name I can't tell you. It's ten pages long, so I should probably be able to wrap it up Sunday.

After that: things I can tell you!

Busy And MySTEEERious.

The last two days have been good days, career-wise. I got outline approval on two projects I've been waiting to hear about for a long time now. One of them is Divalicious Volume 2, and the other is not.

I'll be working on those in the next week, but first order of business now is finishing the outline for something I'm working on involving some medium and a couple of writers whose names you might know if you're the sort of person who reads webcomics. I'm officially code-naming this "Project Y," and I really can't tell you any more than that.

HEY, LOOK BEHIND YOU, IT'S A SPACESHIP!

[runs away]

More Cartoony Jobs

For full-time job-seekers:

If you know to hyphenate "super-breath" but not "Superdog," DC Comics has an opening for a proofreader.

Could be long shots for beginners, but if you've got training: Storyboard artist wanted for feature film. From the same source: animator position and head of story position, matte painter and editor.

Adult Swim wants a Web development manager.

Disney wants a director of character art.

Star Farm (who works with Nickelodeon, Mattel and Simon and Schuster) seeks an animation concept artist/illustrator.

Sandman Studios Animation wants an animator/modeler. Immediate position, $30-50K per year.

Blizzard Entertainment wants a story artist.

For Freelancers:

Draw the Realteer, a superhero designed to represent a company.

Design a complete ecommerce website with cartoon characters.

In shape? Comics fan? Want to break into acting? Be a Marvel superhero for $100.

This guy wants ten caricatures of himself for his business, including one as a cowboy.

This one wants some art for a career fair poster and brochures.

Draw "Lucky Luke."

How about a bird conducting music to promote a new invention?

This one wants a fun and mildly non-PC cartoon logo.

Freelancers should also be looking at Digital Webbing's talent pages and Comic Jobz.

I'm toying with the idea of making this a regular feature (relying less heavily on eLance). Would you support it? Is there more you'd like to see, or should I narrow the focus? Write in and let me know.

Reading Checkerboard Nightmare: A Brief History of Webcomics

Kristofer Straub is one clever dude. Y'all know I've raved about his Time Friends lately, but really, his whole body of work shows off a rare and roving mind.

I've been reading and re-reading and re-re-reading the first book collection of his memorable meta-character's antics. Surprisingly, for all the strip's focus on the Web, it reads better in print. Straub has a strong literary bent, and this retrospective shows his storytelling abilities blossoming almost in spite of him.

There's also some new, yet familiar-feeling, material where Straub aims his satire at the field of webcomics history. Straub asked me, some time back, how I would feel if his collection were subtitled "A Brief History of Webcomics."

I told him I'd be delighted, and I am. Straub's perceptiveness is the sort that even his targets should appreciate. If they know what's good for 'em.

Busy and Boring.

Some stuff I can't talk about yet on the journalistic front, reviewing the Penny and Aggie TPB, and preparing for my Intro to Business class. Yeah, not much I can show the Internet today, except have you seen the new Penny and Aggie site design? It's verrrry bluuuue.

We've got a few more changes to make before it's all done, though. I think our Google Ads may be on the way out-- unless YOU can figure out what any of this has to do with teenage comedy:



Quick! Are you a comics fan AND a restaurant franchise manager who makes life-altering business decisions based on your reading preferences? Then for God's sake, SECURE YOUR MARKET TERRITORY TODAY!

Finance Terms I'm Supposed To Learn For Class This Week:

Pray for me.

Real asset
Financial asset
Common equity
Common stock
Par value
Retained earnings
Additional paid-in capital
Debt
Debt priority
Principal value
Face value
Maturity value
Discounted securities
Maturity date
Voting rights
Treasury bills (T-bills)
Repurchase agreement (repo)
Federal Funds (fed funds)
Banker's acceptance
Commercial paper
Certificate of deposit (CD)
Eurodollar deposit
Money market mutual funds
Term loan
Issuance cost
Bond
Coupon rate
Government bonds
Treasury notes (Treasury bonds)
Muncipal bonds
Revenue bonds
General obligation bonds
Corporate bonds
Mortgage bonds
Debenture
Subordinated debenture
Income bonds
Putable bonds
Indexed bonds (purchasing power bonds)
Floating-rate bonds
Conversion feature
Original issue discount bonds (OIDs, zero coupon bonds)
Junk bonds
Indenture
Trustee
Restrictive covenants
Call provision
Call premium
Call protection
Deferred call
Recall
Sinking funds
Conversion feature
Investment-grade bonds
Bond ratings (Moody's: Aaa, Aa, A, Baa, Ba, B, Caa, C; S&P: AAA, AA, A, BBB, BB, B, CCC, D)
Preferred stock
Cumulative dividends
Call premium
Income stocks
Growth stocks
Proxy
Proxy fight
Takeover
Poison pill
Preemptive right
Classified stock
Founders' shares
Closely held corporations
Closely held stock
Publicly owned corporations
Publicly owned stock
Derivatives
Option
Call option
Put option
Striking price
Exercise price
Convertible securities
Futures contracts (futures)
Swaps
Plain vanilla swap
American depository receipts (ADRs)
Foreign debt
Yankee bonds
Samurai bonds
Bulldog bonds
Eurodebt
Eurobonds
Eurocredits
LIBOR
Euro-commercial paper (Euro-CP)
Euronotes
Euro stock
Yankee stock

Operation: Comix Relief

I'm moving soon, and I had a surplus of copies in stock of Faans comics from way, way back in the day.

So this Christmas, I sent them to the troops. Despite Will's anti-military stance, I've seen a lot of troops in my native Virginia Beach that get a big kick out of the series.

If you have a similar surplus, or want to find out more about Comix Relief, the organization that helped me get them overseas, click here.

You may also be interested in Heroes4Heroes, a less comics-specific organization but no less worthy.

Call For Help With Autokeen Lite

Psssst!

If anybody has recent experience with, or a working copy of, Autokeen Lite as available here, please get in touch with me. I'm tryin' to set it up for Penny & Aggie and it's drivin' me crazy.

(I'm aware there are lots of other auto-update tools for comics, but Gisele and I want something that'll change our existing URLs as little as possible, at least for now.)

Behind The Scenes...

Sorry, I know this is kind of a last-minute-of-the-weekday post. A lot's going on. I'm gearing up to take a set of small-business classes over the next six months. I'm also trying to beef up my knowledge of programming languages and basic accounting. I'm essentially my own boss again, and so I want to be the best boss I can be.

Working on a lot of invisible stuff to prepare Penny and Aggie for the coming year. I'll share some of it when it becomes visible, which won't be long now.

I'm spending as much time as I can with Little Brother, who's set to head back to Duke University in a few more days.

Talkin' with artists about projects. Talkin' with clients about contracts.

And I'm looking for a new place in Hampton Roads. Today was mostly apartment-hunting. I drove around with Mom and Kaye Taylor, an old family friend who used to live in the area and who's quite the font of information about it. I saw a pricey place I really loved, which means the weekend will probably be crunch time. I want to have all the information I need to make a move before that place vanishes, and there are a lot of places to see!

Hey, Job Seekers...

Want to work at United Media alongside Ted Rall?

This could be your shot.

Now You See It, Now You Don't...

Penny and Aggie is changing hosts, and there is something different about our main page right now. I wonder if you can guess what it is? (Update: new version of the homepage frozen here, in case we figure out Autokeen sooner than I think we will.)

The Family Wiki

One of my Christmas gifts this year: a little wiki to help my closely related family members keep track of one another. Definitely still a work in progress, but what wiki isn't?

One Simple Ad, Post-Beta.

In the space of a few short months, my experiment in a minimalist Web advertising venue, One Simple Ad, has gone through many a change, but I think the current version is much improved, not least because of the Project Wonderful factor. And now I'm ready to sit back and let natural forces guide the site's future development. Essentially, it's time for this idea to leave the nest. I expect it'll grow very slowly for a while, but we'll see if it learns to fly.

Of course, if you'd like to look in on it, you're more than welcome! Of special interest is the "God of Graphic Design" section, which could use some votes. And if you like the general idea, or aren't sure you've got the general idea, take a stroll through the brand-new archives.