The Palace: Theatre of Crud begins tomorrow and concludes March 7

Why's it hard for people to call The Palace a webcomic? I've seen it referred to as a "skit"(*) and a "graphic novel," and it's neither. It just goes to show how new to the lexicon "webcomic" is, even though there's like millions of webcomics.

(*) A pet peeve of mine is the misuse of the word "skit." That's the most misused word outside of "socialist." A skit is some lame, amateurish thing kids perform at a summer camp or church. That's why that comedy festival in San Francisco is called SF Sketchfest, not SF Skitfest. Yet people still describe the sketches on shows like Python, Chappelle's Show, Mr. Show, Human Giant and HBO's new Funny or Die Presents as skits (as if the professional comedian/writers who crafted the sketches are still in fifth grade and eating their boogers). Those people are full of skit.

On Javiland, host Javier Hernandez asked me if I planned to compile all the Palace strips for a book. I told him that's always been my plan. I always approached The Palace as if I were drawing it for newspapers or print, except I'm tossing in some language that cartoonists can't get away with in newspaper strips. (I'd like to give the book a really absurd title like either The Palace: The Complete Jazillionth Season Box Set, The Palace: Let's Count How Many Times Bella Touches Her Hair--because if you tack "Bella" or "Edward" onto the name of anything these days, it'll likely make a dime--or The Palace: It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown, which I probably can't use because I don't want Charles M. Schulz's estate on my ass.)

After I took part in that Javiland roundtable, I've realized if you're going to put together a book full of preexisting content that readers can easily see for free on the Web, you ought to add to the book some extra content that's exclusive to the compilation and has never appeared before in your webcomic. This new content would either be the original blog posts that inspired some of the strips (like the post about the racist camera by "jozjozjoz," whom I'd ask permission to reprint), preliminary blue pencil drawings (personally, I think The Palace looks better in blue pencil, before I redraw it in ink on a tracing pad), strips that I scripted or drew but decided to toss into the trash bin or a never-before-posted strip that I'd like to get a special guest illustrator to draw.

I always wanted to get special guest artists to draw The Palace for me like how Greg Rucka enlists different artists to interpret Queen & Country (or how Harvey Pekar does the same thing with American Splendor). I never wanted to draw The Palace. (Sometimes I wish I never chose a movie palace as the webcomic's primary setting. I don't like putting much detail into the background on the panel--I prefer to make The Palace look as minimalist as the single-panel strips I grew up reading--and a movie palace is an ornate setting that calls for all sorts of details in the background.)

But because I don't know any cartoonists around my hood, and I wouldn't have enough coin to pay one to pencil and ink The Palace, I've had to draw the webcomic myself, even though I've had very little drawing experience, and the only art training I've had is some watercolor class that I took at an art supplies store when I was in sixth or seventh grade.

This is the longest and most exhausting arc I've worked on so far. All 14 strips of the Theatre of Crud arc, which would be included in the book if I go through with it, are single-panel. On Javiland, I was asked why I like the single-panel format. I said writing single-panel gags is difficult, yet I prefer that format because I have a habit of overwriting, and with single panels, I have to learn to be succinct. I wish I added to the Javiland discussion that multiple-panel strips are easy to write but hard to draw, while single-panel strips are hard to write but easy to draw.

As with all other arcs of The Palace, I'll be posting one strip per day here on this blog. I don't know how I'll be able to post a strip per day when my cable modem keeps cutting me off from the Internet every few minutes. That cable modem is the crappiest thing Comcast has concocted since Sunset Tan.

I'll be on the next episode of Javiland

Javier Hernandez--El Muerto comics creator, Javiland cartooning talk podcast host and Fistful of Soundtracks fan--invited me to be one of several guest webcomic creators on the phone during this Sunday's Javiland episode about webcomics at 6pm PST (Tyler James, whose Over online graphic novel I just started reading after Jav mentioned it to me, has confirmed he'll also be part of the ep). Javiland is a must-listen for anyone who's interested in creating self-published comics like Jav has done with El Muerto.

It's a great time to do Jav's show because I'm in the middle of writing and drawing another Palace arc. The targets in this arc will include right-wingers and craptastic movies, whether they're mainstream or art-house flicks (The Palace is based on the years I spent going to art-house theater screenings for local critics--art-house movies can often be as awful and hackneyed as mainstream ones, and man, I was subjected to a lot of awful ones). I'm constantly rewriting the gags. I don't want to turn into the crazy but brilliant Danny Arnold, who rewrote the gags in his scripts for Barney Miller so much that he caused afternoon tapings of the show to continue all the way into the early morning (what a nutso way to write comedy, and I bet the actors really enjoyed staying up all night at the studio).

Since the 2002 launch of my radio station (which Jav calls a podcast, but AFOS has never really been a podcast like Javiland because if it were, I'd be saddled with so many music clearance fees I'd end up standing around wearing nothing but a barrel), many of my most responsive listeners have been artists, graphic designers and cartoonists like Jav. I never thought I'd become one of them. But that's what happens when you need something to keep yourself busy when you're unemployed (or underemployed, to be exact).

So tune in to Javiland to hear me stammer and say "But, um" a lot.

APE city

Indie cartoonist Javier Hernandez is a fan of the Fistful of Soundtracks channel (I'm glad to have introduced him to the comedy of Paul Mooney) and is always great to chat with about 007 music, so I dropped by the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco on Sunday to say hello to Jav, as well as grab some comics by Rafael Navarro, Debbie Huey and Rina Ayuyang, whose new Whirlwind Wonderland collection I've been looking forward to picking up. I also introduced myself to Hellen Jo and Martin Hsu, two Secret Identities contributors whose work was brought to my attention by the project while I wrote my Secret Identities story.

Also at APE 2009, I had Brandon Bird sign a copy of his brilliant Law & Order coloring book that I bought from him at APE two years ago (he ought to be a script doctor after explaining to me why he thought Harvey Dent was unconvincingly written as a "white knight" in The Dark Knight), and I chatted about '70s movies with Michael Aushenker (I was surprised he hasn't seen The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which Criterion finally released on DVD this summer, so I recommended it to him).

Because of the lack of booth babes and cosplayers, APE isn't as photogenic to me as its sister cons WonderCon and San Diego Comic-Con. (The even smaller Asian American ComiCon, where I was given my very first con table, was a lot like APE, in terms of low-keyness. Speaking of my first table, what was funny about that experience was that outside of Secret Identities, I had nothing else to promote at my table because everything I've written and drawn has been published only online. That's what I get for being a webcomic blogger.)

Despite the minimal photogenicity, I enjoy the smaller and much less crowded APE way more than the other two Comic-Con International cons. I prefer being able to walk around without getting poked in the eye by someone's Hasbro lightsaber.