Starting today I am announcing three separate HijiNKS ENSUE contests with fabulous prizes.

CONTEST 1: Recreate an HE Comic
PRIZE: 1 Copy of Gearbox Software’s Borderlands for PC on Steam
RULES: Recreate ANY HijiNKS ENSUE comic WITHOUT drawing it, painting it, etc. You can use photos, legos, video, audio, clay, GI Joes, whatever. The final product should be laid out like an HE comic with sequential panels (unless your chosen medium negates this rule; ie video). Speech balloons are optional but encouraged.
SUBMISSION: Post your entry online and email a link (not the actual product) to comics (at) hijinksensue (d0t) com with the Subject line: HE CONTEST 1
DEADLINE: Friday Night 10/30/09 SUNDAY NIGHT 11/1/09

CONTEST 2: Hottest Fancy Bastard
PRIZE: 1 Copy of Gearbox Software’s Borderlands for PC on Steam
RULES: This one is all Josh. Let me stress that. THIS ONE IS ALLLLL JOSH. Take your fanciest, most alluring FB photo…
SUBMISSION: email it to dopefish3d (at) gmail (d0t) com with the Subject line: HE CONTEST 2. Josh will pick the winner based on his own criteria. Men and women are encouraged to submit but in the end he’s going to pick whoever HE likes best. (I have nothing to do with this).
DEADLINE: Friday Night 10/30/09 SUNDAY NIGHT 11/1/09

CONTEST 3: HE Pumpkin Carving
PRIZE: 1 Copy of Terminal Reality’s Ghostbusters for Xbox 360 (donated by Eli)
RULES: Carve an HE themed Pumpkin. That’s the only rule. Oh, and that it has to be awesome. That’s the other rule. Eli and Denise will choose the winner.
SUBMISSION: Post your photo online and email a link to elivorio (at) gmail (d0t) com with the Subject line: HE CONTEST 3.
DEADLINE: Friday Night 10/30/09 SUNDAY NIGHT 11/1/09

UPDATE:
Winners announced HERE

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I have several upcoming appearances between now and the end of October. These will be my first real reader interaction experiences, and I would appreciate your help in making them fantastic.

Baltimore Comic-Con – Baltimore Maryland

October 10-11
I will be in the Artist’s Alley at table 129
I will have books, buttons, stickers, prints and will be doing sketches
This is my first real con, so if you are in the area please attend and show your support
[Read more on their site]

Book Signing and Reader Meetup at Rogue’s Gallery Comics & Games – Austin TX

October 24th [1:00pm - 3:00pm]
The idea here is to do a book signing and a reader meetup at the same time. The success of this endeavor depends entirely on YOU. If you are in the Austin area and think you can make it out, please leave a comment. I’m open to ideas. We can go get coffee afterward or whatever.
[check out their site for info and directions]

UPDATE: More info HERE.

Ka-Baam!! Improv Comicbook Adventure Comedy Show – Austin TX

Friday October 23rd and Saturday October 24th
What is Ka-Baam!!?
Based on audience suggestion, every performance of Ka-Baam!! premieres the origins and adventures of three never-before-seen, never-to-be-seen-again, heroes. It is the Golden Age of comics revisited with the greatest of villains, most ridiculous of brawls and special guest comic book artists every week (in this case ME) to help capture the action in pencil and ink. It¹s every fanboy¹s four-color fantasy writ large… Ka-Baam!!
Details:
KA-BAAM!!: Improvised Comic Book Adventures runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm at the Hideout Theater, 617 Congress Avenue (between 6th & 7th Sts.) from September 11th thru October 24th (no show on Saturday, September 26th).
Tickets are $10 each and can be obtained at www.hideouttheatre.com or calling 512-HIDE-OUT.
[More details at Austin360]

AWESOMENESS NOTE: While the performers create their characters based on audience suggestions, I create whatever villain or disaster for them to face that I want. If you have an idea for a new super villain or disastrous comicbook danger, post a comment and I might use it during the show.

Dallas Fancy Bastards…

November 14th a few local Dallas artists are putting on a small event called “The Dallas Webcomics Expo.”

UPDATE:
I will be attending the Dallas Webcomics Expo on Nov. 14th. Dallas Fancy Bastards come out and say hi!

I have been contemplating attending, but I’m still on the fence. It’s $5 to get in and you will get to see Randal Milholland – Something*Positive and Rob DenBleyker – Cyanide & Happiness and a lot of local Dallas Webcomics artists (plus me if I decide to go). We could probably turn this into a Dallas Reader Meetup if you guys are interested. If you are, please post a comment as that will help me decide whether or not to go.

I hope to see ridicu-tons of Fancy Bastards at these events, so please come check them out!

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My wife and I have spent the last 72 hours furiously editing, correcting, rewriting and redrawing text and images for The Book (AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER NOW!). We’ve gotten an average of 3 hours of sleep a night for the past 3 nights, and are each completely out of brain juice. Owning a 2 year old human that demands constant entertainment has further exacerbated this issue. The good news is the book files will leave my hard drive tonight and travel deep into the Canadian wilderness where enchanted moose and elk will gnaw the pages out of oak trees.

What I’m trying to say is THE BOOK IS FINALLY DONE! I am sending TransCon the files in a few hours, and it is such a freaking relief.

If all goes to plan (and it won’t), the books will be in my hands just before I leave for Baltimore Comic-Con on October, 8th (so hopefully I will have them at the con). They should start shipping as soon as I get back.

The stress of completing the book, coupled with my recent crippling back pain has made comic updates rather spotty for the past 2 weeks. For that I apologize and want to extend my deepest thanks to all of you for not giving me a hard time about it. This is my first book, and it’s been an incredibly difficult project. Now that it’s done I feel like things in the HEniverse can get back to normal.

There will be a new comic on Wednesday (9.9-09), and the normal M-W-F schedule will resume there after.

I can’t wait for you guys to see this book. I’m extraordinarily proud of it and I think you’re all really going to enjoy it.

~GYFB, Joel

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HijiNKS Ensue Volume 1: Godspeed You Fancy Bastard is up for preorder in The HE Store NOW!

What’s in the book?

• All of the HE comics from 2007-2008 in full color
• 116 Pages of geeky goodness
  
• “Directors Commentary” on each comic
• A forward by Bill Barnes of Unshelved (it’s incredibly mean)
• Early sketches of the HE characters
• Never before seen comics from my Highschool Newspaper days
• AND MORE!

If the Preorder goes well, the books should ship in mid to late September. The first books is always the hardest, so please bear with me on the preorder and shipping times.

It is available in several tastey flavors:

ULTIMATE SPECIAL FANCY EDITION (limited to 150): $50

• The book, signed and numbered
• A special limited print of the cover image, also signed and numbered
• A “Godspeed, You Fancy Bastard” sticker
• Upgrade to “Artist Edition” for just $10 more and I will sketch in the book, essentially ruining it
  

This edition of the book is for you Super Fancy Bastards that want to help with the printing costs of the book. The price includes a $10-$15ish donation. No other books or prints will ever be numbered so these are one of a kind editions. If I can sell all 150 of these I can pay for ALL of the books I am printing (and sleep at night).

Artist Edition: $35

• I will sign, personalize and sketch in your book

Regular Awesome Edition: $20

• A book, with all that other stuff, minus the fancy stuff

Any long time FB’s who are familiar with The Experiment know how important this book preorder is to the continuation of HijiNKS Ensue. You can read more of the dire details of the situation HERE. The bottom line is (and yes, this is basically me begging) if you enjoy HE and want it to continue PLEASE PREORDER THE BOOK. The next month or so is going to determine the future of HijiNKS Ensue.

Godspeed, You Fancy Bastards

-Joel

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Who: The HE Podcast Crew, a few other friends and YOU FANCY BASTARDS!

What: Shitty Movie Night to celebrate my 28th Birthday (which was June 3rd). We’re broadcasting the event live over Ustream so you can watch along and make fun of the terrible movies with us in the chat room.

When: Saturday Night, 06/27/09 starting at 8pm Central (barring the usual technical difficulties)

Where: The HE Podcast Ustream area

Why: Because it was so god damn much fun last time. Those of you who were there can testify that we had a blast trashing the shittiest of movies with Fancy Bastards all over the world.

Eli is providing the movies, so you know they will be frighteningly aweful. Hope to see you there!

-Joel

I hope you guys dug the guest comic that I did for Jeph. Today is his birthday, and everyone deserves a day off once in a while.

If you are new to HijiNKS Ensue here are the basics: It’s a geek comic. There are 3 main characters. Joel has the hair flip, Josh is the gay bald guy and Eli is the Mexican with the hat. Most of the comics make fun at some aspect of geek pop culture. It’s been described (by me) as “Penny Arcade minus video games, plus everything else.”

If you like SciFi, Movies, Geek TV, Joss Whedon, Star Trek, Technology, Apple or any other geeky pursuits you will probably find something to enjoy here.

Thanks for checking out HE!

[you can follow me on Twitter if you are so inclined]

[you can also read about my Experiment to see if I can make a living from my webcomic]

To HE readers: if you are looking for a comic today, please feast your pixel-hungry eyeballs towards today’s Questionable Content. I gave that comic all the extra comic sauce I had and I’m all tapped out until Friday. If you aren’t already reading QC, then you’ve got about 1500 comics to read instead of working today.

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I totally forgot (until @justchristine) reminded me that Hijinks Ensue Turned 2 years old earlier this month. May 11, 2007 was the first comic.

P (another) P (and then) S

In case you missed it, the HE Podcast moved and lives HERE now. We’re back to a 90 min format, so if you were turned off by the length (TWSS) in the past, maybe you want to consider giving it another go.

P (and then) Something Else

I want to apologize for missing that last two Friday updates. Anyone that follows me on Twitter has heard about the giant commission project that was keeping me over-occupied for the last few weeks. It’s over now and things can get back to normal. I am struggling to pay the bills right now, so unfortunately the real paying gigs take precedent at the moment. Thanks for being patient. Not a single one of you Fancy Bastards gave me any grief for missing the comics or even brought it up. That’s how I know I have the best readers in the tubes.

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The HijiNKS Ensue Podcast now lives own it’s own domain at http://podcast.hijinksensue.com.

If you listen to the podcast (or if you want to) you’ll need to add this domain to your bookmarks. All podcast related posts, reader questions, videos, downloads, etc will be posted there.

The RSS feeds are the same, but many of you are still subscribed to the pre-Feedburner RSS feeds. Please update your feed to http://feedproxy.google.com/hijinks-ensue-podcast

Make sure you subscribe to this feed if you want to know when the live streams will be and when to post questions for the podcast crew.

iTunes subscribers should probably unsubscribe and resubscribe to make sure they don’t miss anything. Here’s the iTunes link.

The site design is pretty stock right now, since I am just trying to make sure everything works first. Expect some graphic and feature improvements over the next few weeks.

The next HE Podcast (Episode 53) will be streaming live Sunday night 5/3/09 starting around 6:30pm central. You can post your questions topics and links HERE.

The hard drive in my Macbook Pro died last night. I’ve spent the last 24 hours doing every data recovery method I know of and so far it isn’t looking good. I have a backup but it’s two weeks old (yes, I am teh dumbs), which means I’ve lost all the original comic files for about 6 comics. I’m still trying to recover them. Yes, I put the drive in the freezer. First for an hour (which did not help) and then over night (which doesn’t seemed to have helped).

There won’t be a comic today for obvious reasons. I’m going to have to go buy a new HD, restore from my backup then figure out what I’ve really lost. Most likely it will be a few important emails that weren’t on gmail, 6 comics or so, some recent freelance work, all of my todo lists (see, I put everything into Things about a week ago and trashed all my paper lists! Yay!) and probably a few odds and ends that I won’t realize are gone until I really need them.

Thanks to everyone that offered suggestions on Twitter last night. I’ll let you know how it goes.

UPDATE:

It looks like some of the Fancy Bastards have taken it upon themselves to help me out with my hard drive woes. Thanks, guys. You are a fantastic bunch of geeks.

UPDATE 2:

You Fancy Bastards have donated enough for me to get the new drive AND a new backup drive with room to spare!

UPDATE 3:

The saga is concluded HERE.

We’ll be broadcasting live via Ustream.TVm FRIDAY (4-24-09) starting at 9:30pm central.

This will be a Joel, Eli and [special guest] Alex type of deal.

See you there for the live chat.

If you can’t make the live stream, you can always pick up the HijiNKS Ensue Podcast via RSS, iTunes and The Podcast Archive Page. New casts are usually uploaded a few days after the live stream. You can also check out the Vid-cast archive on Ustream.

(more…)

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