We are happy to announce that Mark Frauenfelder will be a guest at Intervention 2013. Mark is the founder of the incredibly popular online site BoingBoing as well as the founder of MAKE magazine. Mark is also a former editor-in-chief of Wired Online, and was an editor at Wired magazine and Wired Books from 1993-1998. He was Playboy magazine’s technology columnist for three years. He has appeared on The Colbert Report (twice) and the Martha Stewart Show, and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Popular Science, Business Week, The Hollywood Reporter, Wired, and other national publications.

Mark is also a published author of 6 books, with Made By Hand: My Adventures in the World of Do It Yourself being his latest.

In other news, Event registration (at our discounted $35 cost for a full weekend registration) and hotel room registration (for our discounted con rate of $114 a night) are now both available. (hint, hint, you’ll want to do that now before it gets too late….)

Intervention guest Christiann MacAuley is the creator of stickycomics.com and also a former zinester. Unlike many modern artists, she produces her work by hand as opposed to using Photoshop or other online tools. We chatted with her about her various projects and the transition from zinester to online personality.

Christiann MacAuley (right) poses with her twin sister Sheridan, who is responsible for tshirts and other stickycomics merchandise.

Can you describe your comic?

“It’s a humor webcomic that is usually one panel or very few panels long. There’s no storyline; it’s just a lot of random things. I try to update once a week or a few times a week and have been doing it for four years.”

What freedoms do you have by using paper and ink that others who use computers may not have?

“Mine has more of a human look to it, I think. There’s no perfectly straight lines or perfect circles or anything like that, and if there is, it’s something that I created. The hand lettering also makes a big difference. Plus you can always see the color of the paper I use.”

Have you noticed any crossover from the zine and webcomic/geek communities?

I thought there would be a lot of crossover, since I think that both groups have a lot of similarities, but there really hasn’t been. I actually never set out to do webcomics. Some people have done just that, but not me. I just wanted to express myself and create my work and started putting it on a blog to organize it, really.”

What advantages/disadvantages have you seen between zine and webcomic creation?

“With zines, it’s hard to get it out there to huge numbers of people. A lot of people don’t even know what a zine is. Online, I just think that there are so many more people who can see my stuff.

I still think it’s important to have a physical version, though, like a book. It’s just because it is something you have physically created, something you’ve personally made.”

While her work has yet to be published offline, Christiann is currently writing a proposal for a humor book which she hopes to release through traditional publishing.

In addition to Intervention, she has appeared at SPX (Small press Expo), SPACE (Small Press And Comic Exhibition), and Connecticon.

“I feel it’s important to have an offline presence,” Christtiann explained. “It makes you feel like you’re part of a community. I like meeting people and learning different techniques.”

The silver vehicle that piloted Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd to and from 1950s Los Angeles, the Wild West, and other locales has emerged at Intervention!

Owned by Joey (Falcon Volt), the 1982 DeLorean will be parked outside of the hotel’s front entrance during con hours. It comes complete with “88 MPH” license plates and even a flux capacitor. While the car you will see was itself not used in the actual movie trilogy, it was featured in a video produced by That Guy With the Glasses.

You are more than welcome to take photos of, with, or inside the car, free of charge. It’s asked that you try not to touch the stainless steel panels. Hopping inside and taking off at a high rate of speed down Rockville Pike is not permitted at all.

Definitely come by to see the car while we still have a need for roads.

UPDATE: Rob has posted the details on his site at the bottom of the page just below the comic update in Erfworld News, or can be read directly here.

We’ve been informed by one of our guests, Rob Balder–creator of the Erfworld webcomic, that he’s going to be topping all of his previous legendary Intervention con room parties this year. Rob is setting up on his own a special Erfworld related event to be held throughout the Washington/Rockville area on the Saturday night of Intervention: A chartered Party Bus.

While this isn’t an Intervention event, it’s still a neat idea, so we wanted to let all of his fans and attendees of Intervention know that it will be happening. Rob will be posting details on his site soon, (though I suspect it will be similar to his previous party bus set up) so keep checking there if you’d be up for a ride around town while partying down.

Conventions are of course a lot of fun…and also a lot of work.  As the weeks wind down to the third annual Intervention, we have been exceptionally busy behind the scenes to ensure that a great convention is pulled off.  Thus,  this week, we felt it was only appropriate to spotlight an Intervention guest who is no stranger to a busy lifestyle.

Intervention interviewed Shaenon Garrity, creator of no less than SIX comics.  In addition to her webcomic work, her writing and art has appeared in other venues as well.

As indicated on your site, Narbonic & Trunktown have been completed.  As an artist in an atmosphere where webcomics seem to keep going forever, even when it is clear they have run out of ideas, how important are definitive endings to comic series?  How do you know when it is time to end a series?  What signs of “this should end soon” should other creators look for and any advice on wrapping them up nicely?

I usually do comics with a set beginning, middle and ending.  I’ve never really done an open-ended strip that could conceivably go on forever, so I don’t have any advice there.  End it when you get bored with it, I guess?

That said, I still draw short Narbonic stories for the Couscous Collective anthologies, and Tom Hart and I have talked about doing another chapter of Trunktown sometime.  So even finite stories can keep going in some other form.

In your various series, you share both writing duties (Skin Horse) and drawing duties (Li’l Mel, Smithson).  What do you believe the keys to true collaboration are?  Is it easy for you to fully explain to artists your vision for characters and situations?

I enjoy collaborating specifically because I don’t want to fully explain my vision; I like seeing what another person brings to the comic.  I’ve done many different types of collaboration now: writing scripts for another artist to draw, drawing from another artist’s scripts, and the more involved kind of collaboration I did with Tom Hart on Trunktown and currently do with Jeff Wells on Skin Horse, where both parties toss ideas around and work out a story together before the drawing begins.  I like to experiment with different collaborations to see what comes out.  Right now I’m drawing a comic adaptation of a story my seven-year-old cousin Joselyn wrote.  It’s called “The Adventures of a Cat-Loving Girl.”

Are any of Li’l Mel‘s stories based on events from your own childhood?

Oh, awesome.  Nobody ever asks about Li’l Mell.

“The Horror of Rukavina Caverns” is based on a story my eighth-grade English teacher, Mr. Rukavina, used to tell about being trapped in Seneca Caverns on a field trip.  He used to spend an entire class period telling us stories like that, and then our assignment would be to write our own version of it: “Mr. Rukavina’s Class Goes to Seneca Caverns,” “Mr. Rukavina’s Class in the Middle Ages” (based on his experiences in the Society for Creative Anachronism), and so on.  So that’s where that came from.

“Brain Wars” is based on being in Odyssey of the Mind, a hard-to-describe creative problem-solving competition that seems to be endemic to Midwestern school gifted programs.  I’m sure anyone who was in OM as a kid recognized it in the story, because it’s exactly like that.  I was always joining or coaching very bad OM teams.  My husband Andrew, on the other hand, once earned the coveted Renatra Fusca award for individual creativity for using the word “bouillabaisse” in the Spontaneous section of the competition.  He plays the teacher, Mr. Willey, in that storyline.

The most personal storyline in Li’l Mell is “Adjustment.”  It’s also my favorite, although that’s largely because Neil Babra did such a spectacular job on the artwork.

Once you have completed recapping every X-Files episode in Monster of the Week, is there another TV series you would like to tackle?

Dude, I just started Monster of the Week, and “The X-Files” is nine seasons long! That said, I have been thinking about various Star Treks..

Anything you’d like to add?

I can’t wait for Intervention!  Jeff and I had an awesome time last year.