Hopping on a plane to Austin in just a few hours!  I'll be there, along with some of my best webcomic buddies.  It's gonna be crazy awesome.  Get more information on Dragon's Lair's website!

I will have a bunch of Shortpacked! Book 4s with me and... three Dumbing of Age Dina hats.  Just three.  Perhaps their owners will be determined by brutal gladiator sport.

Dragons Lair is hosting the 3rd AnnualWebcomic Rampage at their Austin, TX, location on December 10 and 11! If you want to get into the Q&A panels, yougotta RSVP, as theres limited room. There is unlimited room for the buyings and signings.

Who else besides me will be there?

Danielle Corsetto ofGirls with Slingshots
Randy Milholland ofSomething Positive
Joel Watson ofHijinks Ensue
Bill Williams ofSide Chicks
Jeph Jacques ofQuestionable Content
Rob DenBleyker ofCyanide and Happiness
Nicholas Gurewitch ofPerry Bible Fellowship
Josh Lesnick ofGirly

It will be fantastic.

If you need fodder for questions, know that Joel and I will be sharing a hotel room.

Once again, you can find me this weekend at Mid-Ohio Con!  I'm going to be somewhere in the Columbus Convention Center on Saturday and Sunday.  It's weird having a convention that's just a few miles downtown.  I swear, I'm gonna leave the convention hall late Saturday and be confused when I step outside and it's not Hartford or Seattle out there.  I will approach the first local I see and ask what a good local joint is, and they will respond "Donatos Pizza."  And there will be this great tumult in my brain.

Tomorrow morning Maggie and I are driving back to Indiana for my grandfather's funeral, and will be returning Thursday afternoon, hopefully in time for Maggie's mom to arrive, for she is visiting!  It is a busy week for us, apparently.   We may or may not still have one hamster left when we return.  Gnngh.

Today I watched the new DC animated direct-to-video thing, Batman: Year One.  Since I've read the comic itself enough times, and this cartoon adaptation was extremely faithful, I was actually pretty damn bored with it.  That story needs a beginning, middle, and an end, am I right?  Bryan Cranston was excellent as James Gordon, but I feel like he was starring in a calendar, not a movie.  But, tell you what, if you like your Frank Millerspeak, this is the movie for you.  And I know some of you do, so that's not intended to be an indictment.  Plus it's very beautifully animated.

Thankfully, Arkham City is here to pick up any batslack.

This here is Fractyl!  His only real toy was from BotCon 1997, the year before I started attending them, so I've never owned a Fractyl.  Now I own a fake Fractyl!  He's the last 3H Wreckers guy I intend to make.  I'm technically missing the Alpha Trion repaint of Beast Machines Snarl, but if I'm gonna waste time and money painting something, I kind of want to direct that effort towards a character appearance that actually has a character appearance.  No, the one blurry two-panel fly-by silhouette doesn't count.

I like Fractyl.  He's a scientist.  He's a nice scientist.  The Botcon 1997 toy theme seemed to be "sympathetic bad guy and a jerky good guy."  Y'know, to mix stuff up a little.  And so he's this awkward antisocial creature who just wants to study some rocks, dammit.  Stop shoving him into his locker, Inferno!  Oh, what a geek.

And the Transmetal toy that they never made would have been beautiful.  Too bad.  My attempt at recreating it kind of sidestepped some of the beauty.  I wasn't able to find the proper greens.  My Fractyl is a reasonable approximation, but it falls short of the ideal.

Yay, Fractyl.

Boo, funerals.

First of all, yay!  Mid-Ohio Con is this coming weekend.  Saturday and Sunday, I believe?  October 22-23rd! That is good news!  The bad news is Book 4 won't be in the States quite yet.  The big pile o' books isn't expected to reach Columbus until the first week of November... if customs doesn't flag it for being terrorism, that is.  We'll see.  But I will have Roomies! book 1 and Shortpacked! books 2 and 3, as always.  I will have an extremely limited number of Dina hats.  And finally more Dinobot "Honor" posters came in, so phew.

The bummer part is I have a big pile of deaths to announce!  Two hamsters within the past week (mommy ham and "Pirate" ham), and on Friday my grandfather passed away after suffering from Alzheimer's for a very long while.  His body finally caught up with his mind.  You'd think, since he hasn't recognized me in about over a year, that this would be easier to handle, but it still stings surprisingly.  So this Wednesday and Thursday I'll be off in Indiana for the visitation and funeral.

We have one remaining hamster from our current batch.  She used to be the most skittish and wild one, but once mommy disappeared from her cage she just sits there, depressed.  We can even pet her now, which was a near impossibility before.  She just takes it, like she's given up.  This is definitely not helping my mood.

Anyway, enjoy this image of two Nightbeats powerlinxing incestuously.

Eeeeeeearly tomorrow morning I'm out the door on my way to Wizard World Chicago! I have to admit here that this is probably the least prepared I've ever been for a convention.  I have been living and breathing nothing more than moving, sorting, arranging, furnituring, and comic stripping for the past month or so.  I am really out of it.  (And I've been really crappy at getting store orders out the door.  I apologize.  I continue to apologize.)

Seriously, I am going to arrive without pants.  I will forget my pants.  That is my state of mind.

Regardless, please come see me.  I packed books in the trunk already!  I'll have those at least!  And I found my posters, which I had to tear the entire new house apart to locate.  And, hey, guess what, I have like half a day's worth of free bookmarks to pass out.  Just Shortpacked!.  No Dumbing of Age bookmarks at all.  I was in serious need of a reorder following ConnectiCon, but that was just one of those many things that fell through the cracks.

So, I am totally slumming Wizard World Chicago.  Which is too bad.  I was really really excited for it, back when moving my everything wasn't my world.  It's a pretty swank show.  And they even put me on their frontpage!  As if I were important!

UPDATE: I has a table. Look for Bumblebee!

So I'm not gonna have a table at BotCon.  I sent in my California sales permit form weeks ago, and it never came in the mail.  So after getting turned away at registration, I figger, okay, after putting together my customization class figure, I'll travel all the way across LA to Van Nuys to get the form in person.  No big.  Well, SORT of a big.  The trip requires three trains and a bus and then half an hour of walking to get to the office.  So of course after undertaking this FOUR HOUR TRIP, you get to the office and they laugh at you because the place is only open for a half hour more and they require ten more minutes than that to process your form!

I also asked about the form I faxed in weeks ago, wondering, hey, it might already be processed and I can just pick it up.  Ha ha ha, no.  It is not processed yet.  Obviously, California does not want my sales tax money.  I wonder why this state is friggin' broke.

So you go home, time wasted.

And I sure as hell ain't doing it again tomorrow morning.  I got crap I gotta do!

So, I guess, I am not meant to have a table at BotCon.  Things will apparently proceed as they have in years past.  You find me, obvious luau-shirt-wearing self that I am (it's red this year, not orange), and then if you want a book or a poster, I'll have them on me.  In my backpack.  It is the Shortpacked! booth express! I will also be happy to just say hello.

I apologize for the last minute switcheroo.  But unless Fun Pub says "ha ha just kidding you can have your table without the bullcrap form that the state doesn't want to give you ever ever," I'm not gonna be at a table.  (And judging by the sheer number of artist alley folks who ALSO don't have the form, it's going to be a very friggin' empty artist alley indeed.)

Sitting at an airport and everything!

I have a table for a limited portion of the convention, since there are things at BotCon that I want to do, but even when I'm not at my table I'm pretty easy to spot.  I'll be the guy in the red and yellow luau shirt!  (Not the old orange-and-blue, that's been retired.)  I will even be able to process credit cards from my backpack.  That is how much the future this is.

It will be marvelous.

First off, I will not be attending San Diego Comic-Con this year.  I apologize!  But we're moving out of our house to a new apartment across town that same week, so also doing a convention on the other side of the country is kind of a non starter.  Some time after we move into our new apartment at the beginning of August, Shortpacked! Book 4 will arrive.   You don't want to have to move a ton of books twice, that's for sure!  So they're arriving after our move and not before.  Meaning, most importantly to us all, that they wouldn't have been there to buy at SDCC anyway.

Of course, my Blank Label Compatriots, Spike and Kel, will still be there, and will be happy to sell you their things.

(Anybody want to pick me up a 20-inch Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?)

Next, BotCon!  They've just put their schedule up, so now I have a general idea of when I will be at my table: