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Fleen

the webcomics blog about webcomics


On Hosting, With Your Host, Kris StraubToday

You may have heard about hosting difficulties that beset webcomics and and around Thanksgiving. Meredith Gran found herself cut off at the knees and having to shift sites on pretty much zero notice (not the first time this has happened to her, if memory serves — curse her ever-increasing readership!).

Then the PvP forums (hosted by Kris Straub under the umbrella of the Halfpixel hosting) found themselves on the chopping block for the crime of consuming too many CPU cycles (and secondarily, containing too exemplars of John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory), with some discussions migrating to other fora, and others finding their own home.

It’s never pretty when these kinds of crises require a site owner/creator to scramble to find alternate solutions, so Straub has a handy primer on getting ahead of the CPU curve over at

A Few Links For YouNovember 28

So my niece Colleen attends the Savannah College of Art & Design, where she studies art history and is busy with her thesis (I keep telling her she needs to do a thesis in the form of a daguerreotype fumetti, but she keeps going on about not wanting to die from exposure to dangerous chemicals). We got to talking comics during the run-up to Thanksgiving.

I introduced her to the finest in sci-fi art criticism, and she complained that she burned three hours trawling the Starslip Crisis archives before having to leave to enjoy food with the rest of us whiteys. In return, she pointed me to three friends whose work I now share with you:

The portfolio of Jon Chadurjanijhadistan … to be honest I’ve known the guy for four years and I have no idea how to spell his last name. His longest running project is “Robot Dave”.

I’m Thankful I’m Not On List 3ANovember 27

If I don’t miss my count, this makes a total of two Team Force Alpha strips in two years. Ironically, this is not the worst update schedule in webcomics.

  • News from across the Atlantic: pre-orders soon on the new Planet Karen book. Karen Ellis has put herself out there in her autobio journal, and the strip is one of the really good new voices of the past year or so. You’re not working tomorrow, so take a trawl through the archives; if you like what you see, watch this space for news of the orders opening.
  • Speaking of books and preorders, Danielle Corsetto’s Girls With Slingshots vol 2 is now available. Buy with vol 1 and get a discount! Hey, Danielle, next time you’re in New Jersey, I got an awesome bar to share with you — they make drinks interesting and strong.
Baking. Also, Thankful.November 26

I’ve mentioned previously how Freakangels, by Internet Jesus (with illustrator Paul Duffield), reads better by running several weekly installments (each six pages long) together. Know how it reads even better? As a book. Picked up the trade paperback recently, and damn, but Warren Ellis can write. He’s a master of the show-don’t-tell skillset, giving us bits and pieces of a ruined world without every coming straight out and giving us the whole exposition (not that he doesn’t know how to do exposition up a treat).

And in print, some pages work better than on the screen; check out this four page sequence from the story; in the book, the first two images face each other, as does the second pair. Now consider a few additional facts:

  • Freakangels follows a near-total four-p
Get Your Applications In NowNovember 25

Now this is how I know the economy isn’t really imploding: independent webcomic creator Meredith Gran’s business is too successful to handle herself:

It’s difficult for me to delegate tasks to others, but I believe the time has come to find an intern.

I am looking for someone who is hard-working, reliable, knowledgeable with computers, and is near/can travel to Easthampton, Massachusetts.

My ideal intern would be either an art student or a budding artist, who’d like a hands-on look at the business of webcomics and self-publishing.

This is not a paid internship, as much as I’d like to be able to afford that right now. I’m happy to do the necessary paperwork to give you college credit, and I will gladly buy my interns lunch and take them out for drinks once in a while. But if you need a salary to live, I’d like to be quite clear that I am not your gal.

Honestly, this is a situation that I’m surprised I don’t see more often in webcomics. Sure, there was The Great Halfpixe