#75: Soapy Returns from Cyberspace

#74: If Frog Ate More Fiber, This Never Would Have Happened

Check out my new flash archive viewer... it makes it easy to browse the strip from the beginning and zip through it.

I also made Soapy Pong a little more user friendly... if you go here you can play soapy pong at the size of your browser window.

#73: Soapy in Cyberspace: Soapy Pong

Today's post uses the Macromedia Flash plugin, so if you can't view it, you'll need to download it here. Also, it is very likely not to show up in your newsreader... you'll probably have to view it directly on the soapythechicken.com website here.

THE SOAPY PONG CONTEST

The highest score in Soapy Pong in the next couple weeks wins a copy of the Soapy the Chicken mini-comic with hand screenprinted covers I mentioned the other day delivered to you by an actual employee of the United States Postal Service. Send me your address and a .jpg screen capture of your high score to me at mrmonkey23 at hotmail.com to enter. Deadline for entries is midnight on April 13th. No cheating please.

#72: Frog Could Really Use More Fiber in His Diet

#71: Soapy in Cyberspace: Pixel Soapy

#70: Frog Drowns His Sorrows

#69: Frog and Al Together Again

#68: Lutefisk Soapy

Pictured above is the cover to the first Soapy the Chicken mini-comic... I printed up around 230 of them, and the front cover and inside covers are all screen printed by hand.

150 of them went into boxes tonight for Lutefisk Sushi Volume B, which is premiering this Friday in Minneapolis.



PRESS RELEASE:
LUTEFISK SUSHI VOLUME B MARCH 24TH AT CREATIVE ELECTRIC STUDIOS

***Go to cartoonistconspiracy.com/sushi for more information***

Charles Schulz is dead, leaving many Minnesotans to believe their cartoon heritage lives on in lawyers squabbling over the rights to Camp Snoopy and hideously-painted giant-sized character figurines.

Chin up Minnesota! Our state's cartoonists labor on, without litigation! Without theme parks! Without money! Without dignity! Without pants! This is the cartoonist's way.

The International Cartoonist Conspiracy celebrates over 40 Minnesota cartoonists in a unique gallery show sequel entitled Lutefisk Sushi Vol B at Creative Electric Studios. The original Lutefisk Sushi Vol A show helped earn Creative Electric the City Pages' Best Art Gallery of 2005, and Vol B promises to be even better. The box is bigger, for one thing.

Each cartoonist will create a mini-comic of their work that will be collated into a limited edition hand-serigraphed bentobox-set sampler designed by political gadfly cartoonist Ken Avidor.

The box will debut at the gallery opening March 24th, at 7pm. The boxes will probably sell out fast, so get there early if you want one.

In addition, there will be walls full of original art, books, prints, and novelties by the artists- and a special side show:

THE WEINER ROAST



KEN AVIDOR, transit-obsessed, sensitive, tree-hugging environmentalist, political agitator and bicycle enthusiast is also KEN WEINER, former Screw art editor, party machine, devil may care ne'er-do-well and alcohol enthusiast.

The Weiner Roast will feature a wide variety of work from Avidor/Weiner's career and an exclusive 52 page comic honoring/roasting his work by 18 cartoonists from around the country including Pete Bagge, Dirty Danny Hellman, Mark Martin, and Big Time Attic.

Lutefisk Sushi Volume B is a collaborative project of The International Cartoonist Conspiracy, Big Time Attic and Creative Electric Studios.

Creative Electric Studios
2201 NE 2nd Street
Minneapolis, MN 55418
ph 612-706-7879

Please help spread the word about this excellent show! Here's a banner you can put on your site to make it easy...



Just link it to www.cartoonistconspiracy.com/sushi

----------------------------------------------

I'll be having some sort of contest soon to win a copy of the limited edition Soapy book, so you non-Minnesotans will have a chance to get a copy as well.

#67: Frog Comes Unwound

#66: Frog Decides to Hang Around a Bit Longer

#65: Frog the Frog is at the End of His Rope

#64: Frog The Frog Meets Ramblin' Al

#63: Frog Finds a Purpose

#62: Journey to the Bottom of Soapy the Chicken

GO HERE TO SEE MORE!



GO HERE TO PARTICIPATE!

We take a brief break from our current "storyline" to introduce a new part of Soapy the Chicken's Cartoonist Outreach Program.

Cartoonist Scott McCloud introduced the concept of the "infinite canvas" of the digital cartoon... the idea being that since you can scroll to areas off the screen for as long as an image exists, there is no limitation to the size of the individual comic strip. A big idea, indeed.

It was inevitable that soon the "infinite cartoon character" would come along.

Soapy the Chicken is presumed infinite... no one has seen what lies below Soapy's neck... or if they have they never returned to tell about it.

Could Soapy be truly infinite? Let us find out. This page is a journey down Soapy's neck to see what lies below. And you can help us in this quest.

Assistance is easy... download the template image here, edit it, and send it back to us to add to the journey below.

Perhaps someday, together, we can all reach Soapy's bottom.

A few guidelines...

1) Soapy's neck must be at the points indicated at the top and bottom of the template image.
2) Let us know your name, so you can be credited appropriately if your image is used.
3) If you include a website, we'll link your image to it.

Email completed images to mrmonkey23 at hotmail.com (replace the "at" with a @... I'm trying to avoid spam).

Contact us here to find out where to send images to.

And so our journey begins...

Downward...

Downward...

#61: Soapy the Toilet Plunger

#60: The Show Must Go On

#59: Soapy in Cyberspace: Fractal Soapy

Today's post uses the Macromedia Flash plugin, so if you can't view it, you'll need to download it here. Also, it is very likely not to show up in your newsreader... you'll probably have to view it directly on the soapythechicken.com website here.

#58: Frog's Lament

#57: Thanks Tech Toad!

#56: One Surefire Way to Get Rid of Spyware

Soapy made his fourth guest appearance yesterday in Fiddlestix by M.J. Click on the image below to go there (Soapy's near the bottom of the page, so you can read your way down & get to know Grizzle and Irving).



Thanks M.J.!

If you didn't know already, any cartoonist can put Soapy in their strip who wants to or just can't help themselves, and we'll promote the guest appearance here... for more information, read about Soapy's Cartoonist Outreach Program.

#55: Tech Toad to the Rescue

#54: Soapy the Chicken's Temporary Sidekick Frog the Frog Calls for Help

#53: Soapy in Cyberspace

For today's comic I used this handy ASCII art generator.

While I was there I also used their teriffic favicon maker. A favicon, if you don't know, is one of those little images that appears next to the URL of some sites who have them in the address bar and favorites listings of most browsers. These are a pain in the butt to make for various reasons, or at least they were until I found this site tonight... very cool thing to find.

Thanks for the inspiration to Dave Steinlicht for making the first Soapy ASCII art in the comments here, which is much funnier. Dave did his ASCII by hand, the old fashioned way, and I bet it isn't the first time, considering his other interests. Do yourself a favor and check out David's comics at allsmall.net and cornercomic.com.

My first computer was a TRS-80, back in the early 80's... here is what I used for a reference to go off of for what it looked like...

http://computermuseum.50megs.com/images/collection/trs80-III.jpg

It had no graphics. No internet. The only program I remember having for it was a haunted house text game that we had on a casette tape (the computer's only storage was a tape recorder hooked up to it). The TRS-80 was a Radio Shack computer, affectionately and appropriately referred to as the "Trash-80" by computer geeks.

Soapy is actually not the first cartoon character to own a TRS-80... that honor goes to Superman! Superman starred in some comics in the 80's with the TRS-80 Whiz Kids... they had piles of these for free in the front of every Radio Shack. And now you can read one for free online!

#52: Soapy Standing at the Portal to Cyberspace

My friend Max Konardy called my attention to this today:

http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/00_home/newsfeed.php#060224110555

It is "Call for Action to Prevent Orphan Works Amendment to U.S. Copyright Law"

I don't think I agree with what the Illustrator's Partnership is saying, but I don't know enough about the legislation to give a particularly educated view at this time.

However, I think copyright reform is essential. Much of our artistic history is being literally destroyed by the fact that no one has the right to legally reprint stuff when they can't find who owns the rights to it. This is particularly apparent with old films, where the prints are literally falling apart rather than getting restored because nobody can be found who has the legal right to reprint them. If things don't get kept in print, they get forgotten, or worse, they get destroyed. Same deal with old comics, as anyone who has pawed a crumbling golden age comic can attest to.

I tried at one point to find the rights holder to an old Fletcher Henderson song from 1932, "Take Me Away From the River," that I wanted to use in a cartoon... I actually looked up the records in the Library of Congress when I was in DC... I got the record, but it gave me no information on how to contact the legitimate rights holders, if there were any. I went ahead and used it anyhow, but theoretically I could be sued for doing so. Should I not have used it since I couldn't find the rights holders? Some of you may feel that way, but the way I see it, I'm doing a small part to rescue a great piece of music from utter obscurity.

However, that this could potentially be used as a loophole to steal work from legitimate copyright holders who are still around is troubling. As they point out, most people can not afford the legal fees (or the time) to potentially defend their works. I don't think that is the intent of the proposed legislation, but if it is a potential side-effect, I certainly think steps should be taken to avoid this problem. As I said, I don't know the details at this time... the Call to Action seems terribly one sided, though, and I definitely think the current system is deeply flawed.

Furthermore, the copyright extension legislation that has been persued by large corporations (such as the Sonny Bono Act, or "Mickey Mouse" law that extended copyright an additional 20 years and was basically purchased by Disney lobbyists to avoid having Mickey cartoons fall into the public domain) is theft of our culture from us to corporations. There is good reason for copyrights to expire... while an artist should have his work protected for a certain period of time, our artistic heritage should be owned by everyone...

otherwise it gets lost. Frankly, I'd rather have my art stick around than retain the rights to it forever... having copyright for a lifetime is plenty long, and it already extends for many (70?) years beyond that. Beyond death is too damn long I think... even if Disney is in cryrogenic suspension.

More info on this stuff here:

http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/pdf/cspdproposal.pdf

There is an interesting discussion on orphan works going on right now on the Comic Journal message board.

http://www.tcj.com/messboard/ubb/Forum1/HTML/011219.html