Hobomian Rhapsody

HE Podcast Episode 84 is live and Episode 85 will be going up Wednesday. Subscribe via RSS or iTunes.

Toronto Fan Expo is THIS WEEKEND!!! I’ll be there with Blind Ferret and booth # [I currently have no idea]. The following weekend I’ll be at Dallas Animefest with Rob from Explosm.

The Fancy Sketch Drive was a MASSIVE success! All together with sketches and donations we raised almost $3500 to go towards my $5400 new AC unit bill. The new unit is installed and cooling the house wonderfully. The rest is on credit and will haunt me for years to come. All joking aside, this is just one more time that I am completely floored and humbled by the generosity and compassion of you Fancy Bastards. You guys are a confusingly bright ray of human decency in an often dim and apathetic world, and I am extraordinarily grateful to have you as a community.

Sketch shipping update: The first 50 or so sketches from last month have all shipped (except for 1 or 2 odd cases). If you’re in the US you should have been emailed a tracking number (and should already have the sketch by now), and if you’re international then you should cross your fingers and hope for the best. Experience teaches me that at least two of your will have your sketches stapled to the tire of a Humvee, driven down a mountain made of fire and mud and eventually returned to me with a note written in a dead language that poorly translates to “Package Fuck.” Those are the breaks, and if you are so sadly broken then I will make it right for you. I will start drawing the remaining 60+ (everyone that ordered during the AC fundraiser) when I get back from Toronto.

So the plot is thickening… or coagulating, or whatever a mixture of 1 part raccoon blood to 4 parts moonshine liquor does. Just a few more comics and this story will be wrapped up. We’ll know what happened to Eli the night he was helicoptered away from the Avengers showing, and what role Boxcar Pete played in his weeks long state of bedrunkitude. SPOILERS: Pete is NOT Eli’s father. Eli’s father is a retired Mexican Wrestler. Everyone knows Hoboes are bound by their code not to don luchador masks, as not to soil them with burnt beans which would be both disrespectful and rude.

Every Day I’m Shoveling

The HE Podcast is back! Episode 84 is live!

Grammar Dalek T-Shirts are in and shipping now!

GenCon is right now. Hit up Blind Ferret (booth 119) and you’ll be able to pick up some of my shirts and books. You can also bother Randy.

Toronto Fan Expo is very soon! I’ll be there with Blind Ferret. The week after that I’ll be at Dallas Animefest with Rob from Explosm.

The Fancy Sketch ends this Friday. Every Fancy Sketch and donation in the month of August goes toward helping me buy a new air conditioner for my home.

I hope you enjoy this comic as much as I enjoyed drawing that raccoon. What weird, stupid animals. Hoboes, I mean. Not raccoons. Raccoons are majestic, like antelope and those bleached cow skulls that cartoons would lead me to believe are randomly strewn about the desert. Raccoons, or “Land Piranha,” are nature’s bitning machines. They say a raccoons bite brings good luck… I mean disease. Good disease. No, that’s not right either. HORRIBLE disease. That’s it. What I’m saying is they’re great and I bet they want to be domesticated and walked around parks on leashes and to NOT eat your face off the moment you let your guard down or remove your raccoon-proof helmet cage. Protip: NEVER REMOVE YOUR RACCOON PROOF HELMET CAGE BECAUSE THAT IS WHEN THEY EAT YOUR FACE OFF. Can you tell that I’ve been awake for 2 days? I CAN’T!

COMMENTERS: Have you ever gone up against a wild animal? Were you toe to toe with a particularly nasty fainting goat? I ferret bit through the meat of my finger once. Have you every known anyone that tried to domesticate a wild animal? Did said animal eventually drag that person around by their genitals before ripping them off? No? Then I bet it wasn’t one of those diaper chimps thats always doing that sort of thing.

Introduction To Vigilantism

My home air conditioner died last week and it’s $5400 to replace. To that end, there are 50 more custom Fancy Sketches available [actually about 25 left at this point] and all donations in August will go straight to the AC fund. Your help and support in this time of RIDICULOUS SWELTERING TEXAS STYLE BULLSHIT is much appreciated. Read more HERE and see some of the recent Fancy Sketches HERE.

Picking up from where we left off, it looks like Eli’s search for Boxcar Pete is making the opposite of progress. This is typically what happens when you venture outdoors in Texas in the summer time. Inside your air conditioned home you have all these goals and aspirations, then once you open the airlock and step out onto the corona that is your front yard, you forget everything and all life before that moment becomes but a distant half-remembered haze. You struggle to recall your purpose for leaving the safety of your cool, non-hostile environment and just as you begin to have a glimmer of a thought… your name, perhaps your mother’s face, you feel the saliva in your mouth vaporize into steam as your teeth turn to chalk. It’s motherfucking hot is what I’m saying.

Were you a fan of the HijiNKS ENSUE Podcast? Well… it’s coming back. Expect details later this week.

COMMENTERS: Have you have had big plans that were ruined, not by inclemate weather, but simply by your own refusal to deal with the temperature outside? Just today I found myself opening my mouth to offer to take my daughter to park and quickly back pedaling when I realized it was 105 degrees outside and the metal park equipment was probably closer 140. What about you Fancy Bastards that live in colder areas?

An Unexpected Journey

GRAMMAR DALEK SHIRTS ARE HERE!
The preorder is going on now!

There’s more new shirt news HERE including a NEW FIGHTING TIME LORDS SHIRT! A good preorder means I will get to take these new shirts to cons!

Check out my friend Sam’s massive SDCC Jam Comic, to which I contributed a panel.

So finally, Eli is out of the house and off to seek out Boxcar Pete. I’m finding that when writing storylines 3 panels at a time and only every other day or so, it takes a REALLY long time to get things moving. A couple of minutes of conversation can take more than a week’s worth of comics to get out. I am very much in the “figuring this out as I go along” category with regards to these story lines. It’s like that thing where you are having fun, but also terrified? The Batman ride at Six Flags? Yes. It is like the Batman ride. Especially because sometimes everything runs in reverse with no warning and something is cackling maniacally in the distance, then you throw up. That metaphor works for pretty much everything.

COMMENTERS: Do you have any stories to share about setting out on an adventure on your own? When I was 17 I drove up to Dallas from SE Texas to visit some friends for a week. During that time I met a girl, and decided to move 300 miles away from my family so we could maybe date or whatever. Thirteen years later we are quite married, intensely not tired of each other and entirely parents to a wonderful and ridiculously intelligent little girl. Sometimes you just have to shut your eyes and leap.

El Trueno Marrón

GRAMMAR DALEK SHIRTS ARE HERE!
The preorder is going on now!

There’s more shirt news HERE including a NEW FIGHTING TIME LORDS SHIRT!

I suspect I won’t get around to making an actual comic about The Dark Knight Rises during this storyline, so I feel like I need to direct you to the Fancy Bastard Facebook Group threads on the subject, both spoiler free and SUPER SPOILERY. I have shared SO MANY OPINIONS on that particular bit of cinematic Batmanery and such a STRONG DESIRE to share them.

COMMENTERS: If you have Batman opinions and don’t want to join the Facebook discussion, feel free to post them below. If you are going to post spoilers, please start your comment with !!!SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!

Alternately: Any experience, positive or negative with homebrew, moonshine, or other jars of miscellaneous clear or brown liquids?