King Con, a new Brooklyn-themed convention, kicks off this weekend at the Lyceum, spotlighting the abundant cartooning talent of “America’s Fourth Largest City”. The guest list is very heavy on online folks — ComiXology, ACT-I-VATErs and Zudites — but that kind of points out where emerging and established cartoonists are hanging out these days. Other topliners include autiobio pioneer Harvey Pekar and author Jonathan Ames. Complete panel schedule is here.

The activities kick off tonight with a screening and party for THE ACT-I-VATE EXPERIENCE, a film about the web collective at the Lyceum. More info here.

We’ll be at the show tomorrow at least. We’re looking forward to a more relaxed gathering, and pound for pound, the guest lineup is a pretty exciting array of talent. Some peeps and their doings:

ACT-I-VATE
Becky Cloonan
Harvey Pekar
C.M.Butzer
Vanessa Satone
Eric Skillman
Raina Telgemeier
Alisa Harris
Brian Heater
Tim Hamilton
Seth Kushner
J.T. Yost

Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff has been much in the forefront of the acceptance of comics and graphic novels as part of the new dialog of ideas. He made a splash in comics with his Biblical deconstruction, TESTAMENT. Now he’s back with X, a graphic novel being serialized online by game studio Smoking Gun. The first episode — of four — can be read here, but a few pages were made available for preview, below. The story is illustrated by Smoking Gun’s lead concept artist, Cheoljoo Lee, and Younger Yang. Rushkoff has been working with Smoking Gun, whose founders worked on such games as Company of Heroes, and the GN is set in the universe of an upcoming but still undisclosed franchise — so yes, it’s all about transmedia, according to a press release:

“One of our main goals as a studio is to constantly innovate in how we tell our stories”, said Smoking Gun CEO and Creative Director John Johnson. “Our perspective is, if you can interact with it, then it can be part of the experience we deliver. And if you cannot interact with it, then we will evolve it to the point where it can be part of our universe. There are no boundaries to where we can go or what we can accomplish.”

“It has been insanely challenging and insanely fun to dive head-first into Smoking Gun’s universe,” explained Douglas Rushkoff. “And while I work on threading one narrative through this material, other artists are building it out on many other levels, all at once, for different people to engage with in so many different ways.  So for the audience this multi-faceted, multi-media approach brings new dimension to the epic struggle that we’re talking about here: nothing short of how humanity defines itself.” 

Rush over to Hark! A Vagrant to enjoy the rest of Beaton’s “Teen Hallowe’en.”

Harvey Awards Animation from Monkey and Tiger on Vimeo.

Written, voice acted, and BLAMIMATED by Kristofer Straub with art by Scott Kurtz. This video was played at the start of the 2009 Harvey Awards, and people seemed to laugh.

[Link via Journalista!]

§ If all profiles/travelogues were as good as Brian Heater’s account of a trip to Cleveland for Harvey Pekar’s 70th birthday, people wouldn’t wonder about the state of comics journalism.

In five days, Harvey Pekar will turn 70, a fact commemorated by the cake in the center of the room, shaped like a giant doughnut, with a dozen or so donught holes, powdered and glazed, erupting from its center. There will be a toast, too, before it’s all over, a crowd of people squeezed between the comics-covered walls, as the man himself attempts to blow out two candles on the massive white cake. Failing to do this, his wife Joyce happily steps in to put them both out.

With photos and video as well.

It was a busy weekend in socializing. Friday night was the Spectrum art opening at the Society of Illustrators, a who’s who of fantastic artists, from Donato Giancola to Kinuko Y Craft  to Phil Hale and beyond. James “Dinotopia” Gurney has a post, as does Eric Braddock. We even stole one of Gurney’s photos, above. The show is open to the public until October 17th and it’s quite inspiring.

The event was also a black diamond schmoozeathon. We caught up with Charles Vess, Jon Foster, Christian Gossett, Tom Fowler, Spectrum runners Arnold and Cathy Fenner and too many to mention really. If you like fantasy art, this is the place for you.

SATURDAY, it was the gala Drawn & Quarterly 20th Anniversary shindig at Rocketship! Who was there? Who was NOT there! For the evening, a secret back door into the speakeasy at the back of the Clover Club had been opened, allowing the dream of a classy bar attached to a comics shop to come true for many. Some of the folks we hobnobbed with (although we arrived late and missed many) Matt Madden, Charlie Oarr, Anne Bernstein, Dan Nadel, Tom Hart, Leela Corman, Abby Denson….you get the picture. Of course, the fab D&Q power team of Peggy Burns and Tom Devlin stole the show, along with Rocketship’s own dapper Alex Cox. We got to meet the incredibly talented Guy Delisle, who hobnobbed about the developing styles of comics in various European countries, and Gabrielle Bell, R. Sikoryak and R.O. Blechman also held court. We managed not to take a single usable picture, but we hear Peg or Alex may have some. SPILL.

SUNDAY, we managed to make it out to Brooklyn for the Brooklyn Book festival. It was a gorgeous day with late summer sunshine perhaps overheating those who had too quickly pulled out their fall woolens, but there seemed to be good sized crowds for both the regular book panels and the graphic novel area. We chatted briefly with the Topatoco crew, including Jonathan Rosenberg of Goats, who is very happy with how his first collection from Del Rey is doing. The webcomics crowd continues to be blissfully removed from all the direct market sturm und drang. We also caught a bit of the Act-i-vate panel and chatted with Ed Chavez from Vertical who managed to sell us three Japanese cookbooks! Yum yum!

The best part of the day was when a chat with Ed Catto at the Captain Action/Moonstone booth turned into an impromptu “Future of Comics Panel,” with the above folks.  (Front row: Bob Kahan, Paul Kupperberg, Denny O’Neil, MariFran O’Neil, Heidi MacDonald, Keith Williams; Second row: Ed Catto, Jim Salicrup, Tom DeFalco, Danny Fingeroth; Third row: Peter Sanderson.)

Can you guess what was talked about?

A few observations from weekend chatter…comics retailers reactions to 10 Days That Shook The World range from calm — those who sell more books in their stores — to blank faced shock and dismay — those who depend more on the Wednesday crowd. Also,  DeFalco, E-I-C- at Marvel from 1987 to 1994, gave out some advice hiring the next publisher at DC which he gave us permission to pass along.

“The new publisher should be a) someone from outside comics and b) should own a Kindle and an iPhone,” he said.

Not bad advice.

Tom Hart has just joined Act-i-Vate with a new strip called Barney Banks: Extra Life! Those of you who know how awesome Tom Hart is — we share your joy! Those of you who have yet to learn — we envy your journey.

K.G.B., the battle of the bands webcomic by Becky Cloonan and Hwan Cho, is now up and running, so check it out. You’ll even learn a little Korean along the way.

SMITH magazine has launched its newest online comics strip, and its The Pekar Project by guess who!

Pekar Project seeds were planted when Pekar discovered artist Tara Seibel, a fellow Clevelander. They began collaborating on stories for her blog, Rock City Comix. For The Pekar Project, Pekar has formed a band including editor Jeff Newelt and four artists: Seibel, Joseph Remnant, Rick Parker, and Sean Pryor. Just as Duke Ellington composed pieces with a particular featured soloist in mind, Pekar is tailoring each true-life tale to these artists’ individual strengths. Also, as the project progresses, guest artists will be called in to draw stories on a one-shot basis.

We’re fans of all involved, so this should be worth watching.

Technorati Tags: Harvey Pekar

Part 1
Part 2
Offered without explanation. None needed.

Someone Twittered us to check out Andrew Drilon’s THE LOVE EATERS, one of the Top Shelf 2.0 webcomics, and ya know what…we are suckers for any comic that features good pen and ink art of animals…mixed with dark fantasy and imagination. In the past, this would have been a mini-comic someone handed to us at a show. Now, it’s a webcomic.

Drilon is the artist of KARE-KARE KOMIKS, which ran on The Chemistry Set and, sadly, doesn’t seem to be online any more. He’s good!

Announcing:

ACT-I-VATE is proud to announce THE ACT-I-VATE PRIMER.

16 original stories by the premier webcomix collective, ACT-I-VATE, with a foreward by Warren Ellis, coming this October from IDW Publishing.

With its roster of renowned creators serializing webcomix for free since 2006, ACT-I-VATE, has reached a comicbook critical mass. Now this funnybook big bang has birthed The Act-i-vate Primer, the very first collection of stand alone, never-before-seen stories. This tome is a lot bigger than it seems. Each of these stories extend way beyond the boundaries of mere paper and cardboard out into ACT-I-VATE.com where you’ll already be initiated to the worlds greatest webcomix collective.

The Act-i-vate Primer boasts original art and stories by Roger Langridge, Mike Dawson, Nick Bertozzi, Tim Hamilton, Dean Haspiel, Simon Fraser, Molly Crabapple & John Leavitt, Joe infurnari Mike Cavallaro, Pedro Camargo, Jim Dougan & Hyeondo Park, Ulises Farinas, Michel Fiffe, Maurice Fontenot, Jennifer Hayden, and Leland Purvis.

“ACT-I-VATE makes comics better.”
–Warren Ellis [from the ACT-I-VATE PRIMER foreward].

Brigid Alverson talks to the new Girlamatic editor Diana McQueen< about the return of the girl-friendly webcomics site, with a new, free model, and lots of new and returning content.

But rumors of Girlamatic’s death were exaggerated, says editor-in-chief Diana McQueen. The comics have been updating regularly, and the entire site will get a facelift when it relaunches on July 31 with new content and a new business model: Subscription fees will be dropped, and bloggers and new creators will join the existing lineup.

[snip] She also holds out the possibility of a print edition. “I have a personal fantasy of being Shojo Beat, only without the epic failure at the end,” McQueen says. “We have the content now where we can design a really interesting, possibly quarterly, book, like Shojo Beat, where it has one chapter from each story and every time you buy it it accumulates, which we think is an interesting model for people who just want a flavor of everything. That would be subscription based. It’s a ways in the future. We are going to see how the launch goes and get our numbers back up, and then we are going to branch out. But I see print in our future.”

Much more on the webcomics economy in the piece.

As only he can do it…

The Couscous Comics collective is putting out their first trade paperback, a collection of SKIN HORSE by writer/artist Shaenon K. Garrity and co-writer, Jeffrey C. Wells. The 144-page book collects the first year of the strip — which follows an “overworked, underfunded secret agency dedicated to assisting America’s nonhuman citizens. The receptionist is a clockwork robot, the project head is a swarm of bees, the field team consists of Sweetheart the talking dog and her faithful zombie Unity, and Dr. Tip Wilkin, the lone human staffer, feels he can only do his job properly in high heels.” New features includ an exclusive bonus story by Garrity and Wells and additional previously unpublished artwork. It’s available via pre-order (an increasingly popular method to finance collections) here for $13.95.

Skin Horse won the 2008 Stumptown Trophy Award for Best Small Press and is the most popular comic strip on the WebComicsNation hosting site. It is syndicated online on its own site and on GoComics.com, the online arm of Andrews McMeel Universal. Garrity’s previous strip, Narbonic, was named one of the best comics of 2006 by The Comics Journal, earned Garrity the prestigious Lulu of the Year Award from the comics advocacy group Friends of Lulu, and spawned its own annual convention in Minnesota from 2003-2006. Wells is a writer and real-life government bureaucrat; Skin Horse is his first comics work.

Lost in all the excitement over Gilbert Hernandez’s new superhero Dreamstar last week, is the fact that Dark Horse Presents has left MySpace. Given the social networking site’s unfriending of hundred of employees — including those that ran the comics site — this is pretty low on the surprise meter. ICv2 caught up with editor Sierra Hahn for more info:

The new issue of Dark Horse Presents isn’t up on the Dark Horse My Space pages, which don’t seem to have changed in quite a while. Why did you elect to put it up on the Dark Horse site?

The issue currently on MySpace Dark Horse Presents is issue #23 and went live on June 3rd. Issue #24 was supposed to go live on MySpace on July 1st, but due to the unforeseen layoffs at MySpace, and the changes made with the department that we’ve worked closely with for the last two years, it was clear that we weren’t going to be able to post issue #24 on time. The artists on these projects have worked hard these last months to generate great content for the newest issue, and I didn’t want readers to miss their Dark Horse Presents fix. So when we realized that it was too soon to sort out the changes with MySpace, we decided to host the newest issue on our site.

The latest issue contains the almost greatest yaoi moment ever, in a Buffy story by Joss Whedon and Jo Chen, new Matt Kindt and Mike Lawrence, as well.

Artist Mitch Breitweiser and writer Patrick Stiles have a new webcomic called The Futurists — it’s a science fiction comic set during the Raj (English rule) in India in the 19th century — we hear that’s the hot new comics genre. And it’s purty as hell.

Blog@ has more and an interview:

DP: Another question I had was regarding the format. Mitch, I know you do a lot of work with Marvel, and so I’m curious what made you guys decide that a webcomic was the best format for this particular story.

MB: Given our current obligations, the internet is the most convenient and hassle-free way for us to publish. Plus, everyone likes FREE, and if we really want The Futurists to grow wings then why not give it away. If it fails, it’s a labor of love, no regrets.

Worth a moment.

Via pr:

Join Doug Rushkoff, SMITH Magazine, ARTHUR Magazine, & WFMU for a double-feature doozie celebrating the launch of Rushkoff’s new book LIFE INC. - How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back, + toasting the wrap of SMITH’s NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR Truelife Webcomix Anthology edited by Dean Haspiel.

THURSDAY 6/18
7pm @ Bluestockings Bookstore (172 Allen St).- DOUG RUSHKOFF leads a “thinkaloud.” He’ll discuss topics in LIFE INC., answer questions, and sign books.

9pm @ SUTRA Lounge, (16 1st Ave b/w 1st & 2nd St) Doug joins forces with the creators of NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR to celebrate both the launch of LIFE INC. and the wrap of NDN. Hang with Doug, NDN editor Dean Haspiel + NDN creators, as well as the crew from Arthur and WFMU.
Also, a live performance by the legendary Cedric IM Brooks, Kevin Batchelor, + members of the Skatalites doing a unique combo of Ska, Nyahbhinghi, & Jazz. wikkidvibes. +JahFurry guest ditty in effect.

As reported widely yesterday, MySpace, the once ascendant social networking site, laid off over 400 people yesterday — a third of its workforce — in the same month that it announced that rival Facebook had surpassed the Fox-owned site in number of users.

According to Comics Alliance, the layoffs included the people running MySpace Comics, a once lively site that had presented regular original content, including Cup O’ Joe (now moved to CBR) and MySpace Dark Horse Presents, an online anthology series by top name creators. That feature’s fate has long been the topic of much speculation given MySpace’s stagnating fortunes, and the departure in an earlier round of layoffs of Sam Humphries, who spearheaded the comics effort. Dark Horse is still deciding what to do with the feature,

According to a Dark Horse spokesman, “We are currently gathering information on the future and direction of the site to determine whether or not this kind of program will continue to make sense there. However, even before yesterday’s news, we had already begun discussions on the future of Dark Horse Presents, and are working on ideas on what will now be the appropriate venue to continue what has been a very successful program for Dark Horse and all of the creators who have participated thus far.”

MySpace DHP gave rise to several well-received print collections and an Eisner win for Best Digital Comic for Sugarshock by Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon, so continuing the anthology somewhere would seem to make a lot of sense.

Meanwhile, The LA Times had a lengthy analysis of MySpace’s business stumblings. The perceived missteps are numerous. Some observers say it clung too long to a “portal strategy,” in which it sought to amass an audience around entertainment content.

By contrast, Facebook maintained its focus on features that enhance the social-networking experience, such as the “News Feed” that matches the immediacy of Twitter’s staccato updates. “The speed with which a company like Facebook is able to innovate and keep things fresh is the key to survival in this space,” said Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group, a research firm specializing in social networking. “There are new things like Twitter that come along. What does Facebook do? It does Twitter . . . and it does it better.”

With Myspace ditching the “portal” concept, it sounds like Myspace Comicbooks was already on the way out. See also this Crain’s piece. It’s hard to believe Fox head Rupert Murdoch was once seen as a visionary for buying MySpace, isn’t it now?

Meanwhile, new social web darling, Twitter, has yet to show a way of earning any money, and YouTube’s losses are a party game:

Technology consultants RampRate Inc. projects YouTube’s operating losses this year at $174.2 million — far below the $470.6 million estimated by Credit Suisse analysts Spencer Wang and Kenneth Sena in an April research report that became a hot topic on Wall Street and the Internet.

The dueling forecasts are the latest twist in a guessing game that has intrigued investors since Google bought YouTube for $1.76 billion in late 2006.

Although YouTube has become an even more popular diversion since the Google deal, it still hasn’t proven it can make money.

Mountain View-based Google has acknowledged YouTube isn’t profitable, but has refused to provide any specifics, leaving it to outsiders to figure out

Unstoppable Fort Thunder alum cf is at it again in Vice Magazine with the indescribable VOLLENWEIDER’S CAVE. Warning: Extreme violence!

NEWS NOTE: Vice Comics “guru” or something Nick Gazin informs us that a “Vice Guide To Comics” has been put together and will be given away at a large comic book convention that is coming soon. He told us some of the features and it sounds excellent, so look for it.

Over on his LJ, Drew Weing announced that his long lost webcomic, SET TO SEA, will be returning in twice-weekly format.

Raina Telgemeier reveals the cover for SMILE! her webcomic of dental drama. Deets:

Current street date is the beginning of February, 2010. It’ll clock in at 224 full-color pages. My production schedule takes me through the end of this month, so I’ll have my nose to the grindstone for the next 3 weeks–see you in July!

See Becky Cloonan’s blog for the rest of this struggle.

Also check out the announcements for K.G.B. an upcoming webcomic by Cloonan and Hwan Cho.

We’ve been longing for some tasty ’90s nostalgia, and this should fit the bill just right.

Warren Pleece, of INVISIBLES, INCOGNEGRO, and LIFE SUCKS fame, now has a webcomic called MONTAGUE TERRACE that’s been running over at ACT-I-VATE for a while now.