Guest Comic By Terry Blas Of Briar Hollow

HOLY CRAPBASTARDS! ME AND WIL MADE “THE CODE” INTO A SHIRT!!!
Get it now @ Sharksplode! People will be scanning your chest like freaking crazy!

As I am travelling in the belly of an iron sky engine, or bird cannon as you may call it, anc likely braving a pack of deadly imaginary bloodwolves, please enjoy this guest comic by Terry Blas of Briar Hollow. Terry presented this oddly beautiful watercolor painting of Josh to me at Emerald City Comicon this weekend and, after realizing it was neither cookies or booze, I realigned me expectations and graciously accepted. It really is fantastic, if not disturbingly arousing… I mean confusing… I mean who’s hungry?

Thanks to all who came out to support me at ECCC. You have reaffirmedkey belief that ECCC is the best comics show there is and Seattlites (rainfolk, or mistkind) are a kind, enthusiastic and generous bunch. More so than any other show, you guys make me feel likes rock star.

Additional thanks to Blind Ferret for being gracious booth hosts, wonderful business partners and good friends all weekend. I love those Canadical sonsobitches.

COMMENTERS: This weekend I took maple tequila shots out of hollowed out Cadburry eggs. We called them “Sadburry eggs” but they were anything but. They were quite fantastic actually. Is there a weird ass drink/candy/food/tile grout compound that you have tried or would like to try? Is anyon willing to make their own Sadburry Eggs and post the videos and/or recipes online?

Guest Comic By Kris Wilson Of Cyanide And Happiness

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made this “Fighting Time Lords” shirt for you!

JoCo Cruise Crazy II Guest Week is stranded up on a desert island! I am surviving on the contents of the buffet trays that keep washing ashore and have constructed a rudimentary shelter out of David Willis. The good news is the drinks are now free. The bad news is the drinks are all sea water. Those of us that remain has formed a simple organizational hierarchy, but I fear for the safety of Piggy. I just don’t think he has what to takes to not be murdered. HEY A CRAB!

Sometime around 1997 Kris Wilson along with an elite group of boobies-obsessed preteens, middle aged engineers and Rupert Murdoch met in secret to write the original charter for the Internet. Kris was the one that decided on the “dot” in “.com” due to its ressemblance to both a dick hole and the dickhole-shaped birthmark he has on his dickhole. At only 15 years old, this dude was shaping the very web-o-tron that we live, work and prey on today. Was his early entry into the hall of eHeroes a case of child prodigy, lax parenting or both? The answer, like our collective innocence, is lost to the ages. The answer is also “both.”

There are few people on this planet whose company I enjoy more than Kris Wilson’s. And that is saying a lot considering he spells his name like a girl and he was born in Wyoming. We met at C2E2 2010 in Chicago and within moments we were singing karaoke’d Creed to a party of drunken bride’s-harpies. It was a fast friendship after that and an even faster, more furious courtship. I expect the court proceedings to be even more so 5ast and 5uriou5.

Kris is one of those guys that’s down for anything, ready to run with any joke premise no questions asked and would rather lift up those around him than bring them down or see them fail. These attributes are what has kept him alive all these centuries and what will make facing him in The Cartoonist Quickening all that much harder. Still, I shall have his head for my trophy belt. My belt of heads. It is impossible to sit down while wearing that thing.

He and his Explosm cohorts (one of which is on a boat with me right now! Hi Rob! Can you get me another rum punch? No? You’ve forgotten how to walk? Whale venom will do that to you.) are working on a TV pilot for Comedy Central right now. At least I’ll be able to say, “I knew him when…” and “Can I borrow like $40,000? I KNOW you got it man! I KNOW YOU GOT IT! YOU COCKSUCKER! THEY’RE GOING TO TAKE MY HANDS! MYYYY HAAAAAANDS!”

The above comic illustrates everything I love about being a self-employed cartoonist. The dialog comes straight from a BUSINESS EMAIL between me, Kris and a few others. BUSINESS. Like the stuff you get paid for. That kind of business. What?

COMMENTERS: What conversation, activity, or other whatever have you been the most shocked by (either positively or negatively) in a business setting? One time my old boss called me into his office to look at something that was wrong with his computer. When I got there he typed on his screen, “You can totally see down [female coworker]’s top from here. She keeps shaking her foot and making them bounce. I can’t get any work done. I don’t know what to do?”

Guest Comic By Shawn Coss

“Winter Is Coming” shirts are now IN THE STORE!!! [based on this comic]

JoCo Cruise Crazy II guest week sails ever onward! Oceanward! Towards the ocean, but also IN the oceans! It’s wet!

Shawn Coss is like the 5th Beatle of Explosm in that he does his fare share of the work but gets none of the credit. As soon as those dudes start dying off he needs to slide on up in to the first vacant spot and just pretend nothing has happened. Shawn and I have shared many a convention adventure (conventure!), many a yelled conversation across a loud and terrible bar and many a stumble through the streets of this great nation’s various metropoli. He is good people. At least he seems to buy me drinks without me having to ask. He’s either good people or a dangerous and irresponsible enabler.

You can check out his macabre and disturbing art HERE, and HERE. He designed some of these Cyanide and Happiness posters, but knowing those jags they probably don’t give him a cut. Maybe just give him a high five and a sorrowful glance at the next convention. He’ll be the one working just as hard, but not rolling around on a pile of Internet cash.

Hey, here’s his newest design!

COMMENTERS: All kidding about Shawn’s status in Explosm aside (they DO treat him fairly… as far as I know), who is your favorite 5th Beatle? Who’s the behind-the-scenes guy that really made a different in a creative work that you enjoy? Bear McCreary comes to mind. His music really sets the tone and atmosphere for any show he works on.

Guest Comic By Lar deSouza

Nothing says, “I bought you some stuff from the Internet,” like buying people stuff from the Internet.

JoCo Cruise Crazy II guest week starts now! I will be on a boat all week with about half of the Internet and a dozen or so of my close friends and at least a handful of my creative heroes, and YOU sent me there with your generous participation in my fundraiser! So, thanks for that. What a swell lady or gent or undefinable organism you are. I will karaoke “Come Sail Away” by Styx in your honor. Was I being too presumptuous in classifying you as an organism? I’m trying to be sensitive but at this point I will have been drinking rum punches with dolphins for several days and I should not be held responsible for… well, anything. Of course I am technically writing this the Thursday before I leave, so… now my eyes have gone cross. RUM PUNCH STAT!

It is a safe bet that you aren’t Lar deSouza, which is to say I am not as fond of you as I am of Lar deSouza because I AM SUPER FOND OF LAR DESOUZA! He is essentially the greatest guy. Completely disregarding the fact that he can draw EVERYTHING in nearly any style or configuration, have it look amazing and somehow seem effortless – disregarding all of that – he is one of the most genuine, sweet men I am ever met. Let’s see, you got the talent. You got the sweetness. You got the MIGHTY MIGHTY beard. You got the penchant for wearing fezzes and various other novelty chapeaus. He really has it all… ladies. Also he has a wife… ladies. So whatever you’re thinking… he is probably totally cool with you thinking it AS HARD AS YOU CAN. Maybe even email him some pictures of what you’re thinking of.

Lar was kind enough to contribute a comic for Cruise Guest week, but introduced him to Jonathan Frakes, so that makes us even essentially forever. You can see Lar’s work on Least I Could Do, Looking For Group, on Twitter and you can buy some pretty fantastic prints in his store. I personally recommend this one of all 11 Doctors as bunnies because… well did you read the thing about Doctors and bunnies? I know, right?

COMMENTERS: Perhaps The Doctor is our only hope against The Phantom Menace in 3D. How could he make the movie, nay, the whole prequel trilogy more palatable?

Guest Comic By Alina Pete of Weregeek

“Winter Is Coming” shirts are now IN THE STORE!!! [based on this comic]

NYCC Guest Week concludes all over your face! Massive impact crater! EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT!

Thanks to all the Fancy Bastards that came out to NYCC. Since I am writing this the night before I leave for New York, I am assuming that non of you mugged and or murdered me. You know the old saying, “New York: The city so nice, they murdered you twice.” Regular comics of some sort (possibly LoFi or photo-based) will resume sometime tomorrow (Tuesday).

Alina Pete of Weregeek has the honorable distinction of (along with NYCC Guest Week Alumnus Sam Logan) of being one of the 4 or 5 Canadians I know. Unlike Sam, who has perfected a nearly (suspiciously) perfect American accent, save for the occasional stray “aboot,” Alina, being neither a spy or ashamed of her heritage, has a very cute Frost Elf (pardon my racial epithet) way of speaking which I find ADORABLE!

Alina makes a comic about geeks and nerds that play tabletop/roleplaying games along with other geekery, and nerdish leanings. I know that subject matter is very near and dear to many a Fancy Bastard, and I know I am not sufficiently catering to your needs in that area. Occaisionally I will repeat something I heard Wil Wheaton say about “rolling” and “dice bags” and “critical hits” or whatever, and that’s about the extent of my knowledge. Alina is here to SAVE YOU weary traveller! She has jokes that YOU will UNDERSTAND with your BRAINS and HEADS! SHOUTING! Also, one time she drew me in the background of one of her comics, which nearly excuses her putting me in a “David Willis shirt”. WILLLLLLLIIISSSSSSSSS! #nemesis

Funny enough, had I been making comics this week, I probably would have made this one. I find it really arrogant and uninformed that dozens of political cartoonists depicted Steve Jobs getting all buddy buddy with St. Peter. I don’t believe in Heaven or Nirvana (though I really enjoyed “Unplugged In New York”), but I still find it disrespectful to portray Steve Jobs in a religious manor contradictory to his beliefs. Of course I don’t really expect much from “modern” political cartoonists. They literally LABEL EVERYTHING so you fully understand beyond a shadow of a doubt why you aren’t laughing.

COMMENTERS: Using the standard tropes of political cartoons, come up with a better (by which I mean worse) comic to commemorate jobs in the dozens, if not tens of newspapers that are still in circulation. How about Steve Jobs as baby new year in a top hat that says “Steve Jobs,” and the Grim Reaper as the Statue of Liberty standing next to a pig that says “Big Oil” and a business man smoking a cigar that says “Iran” across his chest. A fitting tribute if there ever was one.

Also, how about that fucking panel 3 up there, huh? Jesus H. Chr… I mean, Alan H. Moore, that’s some serious shit. I might be so inclined as to turn that into a mobile wallpaper. First one of you to get that masterpiece tattooed on your back gets a lolly.