Hey, some of you may know Josh Fruhlinger from his daily newspaper comic strip commentary at Comics Curmudgeon.  Well, now you can also know him from his United States President Slash Fic Blog, Hail to the Slash.  Josh commissioned art from me for the title!  I have provided the too-hot-for-blog extra slobber version to the left.  The full and final version of the graphic can be seen at the site itself, of course, as well as lots of stories about Presidents sodomizing each other.

I am still cranking out the 100 "Crisis" poster orders!  I have approximately 75 of them in the mail.  What complicates things is that this is also the week that my three literal tons of Dumbing of Age book 1 and Shortpacked! book 1 reprints arrived!  (See top image!) And so I'm also working on those at an equally furious pace.  I will probably have... 100 of them ready to go out the door to the post office on Monday?  That is out of roughly 600 orders, so please bear with me.  Those first 100 are from the folks who didn't ask for any extras, since I wanted to get a huge chunk of them ready to be mailed as soon as possible -- you know, to get some feeling of immediate accomplishment.  Just throwing books in postage pre-paid envelopes and slapping labels on.  It'll be much slower going once I hit the international orders and folks who pledged for sketches.

So I'll be keeping busy for a while.  And probably be rewatching a lot of DVDs while creating more stacks of enveloped books like the ones on the right.

I got a two copies each of Dumbing of Age Book 1 and the Shortpacked! Book 1 reprint from my publisher today.  THEY ARE FANTASTIC OH MY GOD.  It's so nice to see a new printing of SP!B1, y'know?  I had a case of the very last of the first printing at Comic-Con this past weekend, and I couldn't sell half of them because they were all busted to hell from being mailed across the country fifty times.  It's great to have a fresh, glossy batch.  (I also had grown to hate the cover of the first printing, too, so bonus.)

I can’t wait until I get the full shipment of these in about a month or so, so you can have them, too.

Man, you guys are super awesome.  We had an original goal of $11,000 to print DoA Book 1, passed that in a few days, passed our stretch goal of $20k to reprint Shortpacked! Book 1, and within a second of the end of the Kickstarter, we'd hit $30k.

Originally I'd set another stretch goal for $30k, promising to print Roomies! Book 2 if that happened, but a few days ago I realized I'd gotten soooo many pledges I needed to print more books, and would have to cannibalize some of those funds to print more.  But since we passed $30 anyway, I'll see how much money I have after the dust settles (you know, Kickstarter fees, Amazon payment fees, taxes) and see if we can't do it anyway.  I'll keep you posted.

There was a very sweet moment, like 4 minutes until the end of the Kickstarter period, where we had 666 backers.  And then some jerks had to ruin it by giving me more money!  Oh well.

But wow.  670 backers.  Last year's Kickstarter for Shortpacked! Book 4 only had about 250 backers.  This, uh, kind of triples the amount of books I've ever sent out, ever.  This will be daunting.  Please have patience with me once these books arrive in my possession, for I am but one dude, and you are legion.

Time to gather your names and submit the final DoA book PDF for printing!  We have done good.

Folk who bought Joyce & Walky! subscription-only comics (available in the store), there are now more comics!  I have drawn some more and put them up on the final page.  If you've got 'em, refresh 'em!

I got the inspiration and drive to draw more J&W! strips shortly after committing to drawing this week's Shortpacked! storyline.  ...so, with Dumbing of Age, I've been doing three comic strips with three separate storylines every day all week, with competing versions of the same characters all over the place.  I don't know how my brain manages it.  There's got to be some leakage somewhere, I'm sure.

So this is prooobably not sustainable, but I thought you folks who bought the pages would appreciate the heads-up regardless.

It's kinda dumb to wear your own shirt design, but I wanted to wear this to BotCon anyway, because it's hilarious.  Everyone else will be slummin' it with their Megatron Club Shirt while I'll be hipstering it up with this "Three Wolf Moon" parody.  Plus I hadn't actually seen any of my new shirts in person, since they're all print-to-order and handled by other folks, so this was as good an opportunity as any to try one out for myself.

Spoilers: It's a quality shirt!  I'm not selling you bum merchandise!

So, woo.  Pretty sweet.  This may be the first t-shirt ever with ... any of these guys.

When I've not been reassembling my site from its sudden shambles, I've been sending out the "The Shortpacked!: The Movie" posters!  Here's a photo of a few posters underneath one of the character sketches some lucky dude ended up with.  There's more where that came from!

But not too much more.  These things are limited.

The "The Shortpacked!: The Movie" posters arrived in the mail this very morning, on Shortpacked!'s seventh anniversary!  Pretty damn sweet!  I tried a million times to get the colors to show up correctly on my camera, but this is the best I could do.  Imagine it looking roughly 400% prettier.

Though they are limited, there are still some of these left! You can even splurge and get a piece of original character artwork from me as well!  All proceeds go to the "David and Maggie need to get the hell out of the house for once" fund.

I will start putting some of these in the mail to those who ordered them just as soon as it stops being The Deluge out there.

Back before Christmas I mentioned that I was attempting to save up for a boat trip with Joel Watson (and our wives I guess), and so created some posters.  First I did one for Dumbing of Age, where I learned that posting news in the week between finals and Christmas is probably the worst idea ever, and then after Christmas ended I created and teased a Shortpacked!-themed fundraiser poster.

This is it! A beautiful mash-up of Shortpacked! and Transformers, rendered on 11"x17" cardstock.  There are just fifty of these, and I'll sign and number every one.  Postage is included in the $20 price, but if you just want a cropped desktop wallpaper version and not the hardcopy, I'll send a link to you for half that.  But wait, there's more!  If you want to super-size your pleasure, I'll include a character sketch with your mailed poster for an additional contribution.  Offering character sketches is usually something I reserve exclusively for convention appearances, so if that's something you've been craving, this is your chance!

Also, let's be frank, I don't put Ronald Reagan on much stuff anymore.

So if you want to help put me on a boat, then getting this sweet, quality artwork in return isn't that terrible a trade.  One might even consider it mutually beneficial.  And you'll be one of, like, fifty people in the world who has it!

And, let's face it, Joel Watson's shoulders don't lotion themselves.

First, a reminder that I'm going to be in Austin, Texas, this weekend for Webcomic Rampage!  Click the bolded link to the left for more info.  I'll have lots of Book 4 with me!

Some of my favorite webcomics people and myself thought it'd be helpful to put together a shopping list of Items of Interest for the webcomics lover in your family.  This Christmas, give the gift of, let's face it, mostly fart jokes.

Eric Millikin

Evil Inc.

• Evil Inc. Holiday Pack

Girls With Slingshots

• Danielle's Etsy Shop


• GWS 6-book set

Not Invented Here

Sam and Fuzzy

Schlock Mercenary

• Schlock Mercenary 2012 Calendar

Shortpacked!

• Book 4

SMBC

• SMBC "Revenge" shirts

Spacetrawler

Unshelved

• Intellectual Freedom Fighter bags

Dispatches From Wondermark Manor

• Wondermark Greeting Cards

Early this evening, a freight truck dropped off a pallet of Shortpacked! Book 4.  Hooray!  My buddy Steve helped me carry, box by box, the 1500 pounds of books down into my basement, and now they are finally here for me to start mailing them to those who funded the Kickstarter project.  After I rest.  Oh my lord, rest.  Rest and Arkham City.

Mostly Arkham City.

I have a dummy page for Book 4 in the Store, but I won't open that up to actual orders until I get through a chunk of the preorders.  I already have hundreds of books I have to mail out, and I don't need to add to my mailing pile just  yet.    I will keep you posted when that status changes!

I have not yet checked any of the boxes for parts of blenders.  Hell, they could all be blenders.