I’m selling prints to get my car fixed. Please help out if you can.
Thanks!
-Joel
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Joel Watson (cartoonist from the webcomics HijiNKS ENSUE and Sharksplode and writer/voice actor for Cyanide & Happiness) reviews the first trailer for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice by drawing cartoons directly on the trailer! It’s part review, part reaction, part play by play telestration and all completely hilarious!
I’m not 100% done with comics, but I am taking a much needed break from them to recharge and try out some new areas of creativity. If all goes well, this will be the beginning of a new chapter in my career and a new direction for my creative output.
Also, I’m working on bringing back the HijiNKS ENSUE Podcast (or rather, A PODCAST called HijiNKS ENSUE) in the next month. Lining up guests now. I decided just to do it, rather than wait for a Patreon goal. I hope you guys enjoy this new stuff. I had a lot of fun making this video.
OH! And PLEASE subscribe to the YouTube channel. There are several features that I need that aren’t unlocked until the channel has at least 100 subs.
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New “Coffee Is Life” mug: http://store.hijinksensue.com/shop/mugs/coffee-is-life-mug/
Updated “And My Axe” shirt: http://store.hijinksensue.com/shop/tshirts/and-my-axe-t-shirt/ and print: http://store.hijinksensue.com/shop/prints/and-my-axe-print/
I remade all of my prints to be borderless (edge to edge) 8×10.″
http://store.hijinksensue.com/product-category/prints/
Many of my prints have updated designs and coloring as well! They’re being fulfilled by the same people that do my shirts, so now everything can ship from the same place and the prints are higher quality to boot!
And, for the first time ever, I’m selling a print that my daughter drew in my store. If you buy it SHE GETS THE MONEY: http://store.hijinksensue.com/shop/prints/lilys-titans-print/
HOLIDAY SHIPPING DEADLINES:
US: Priority Mail = Dec. 15th, 1st Class Mail Dec. 14th
CANADA: 1st Class International = DEC 3rd! LIKE IN 4 days!!!
INTERNATIONAL: The deadline has already passed for guaranteed Dec. 25th Delivery
I’m going to be at Webcomic Rampage this year (October 17-18), hosted by Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy in Austin, TX. If you’ve never heard of this event, it’s a super chill in store signing/convention event where you can just hang out with awesome webcomic creators, watch them do live draw panels and purchase some of their books, prints, etc. Each night there’s a late-night adults-only panel where we all tell dirty stories and use all the curse words we know.
Come see me, my con-wife David, Randy, Lar and a host of others for two days of low pressure fun times surrounded by comics and gaming nonsense!
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I’ll be selling prints, doing sketches and signing stuff (including the season 1 DVD/Blu-Ray of The Cyanide & Happiness Show) with the Explosm boys all week at New York Comic Con! Come visit us at booth 2247, won’t you?
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I’ve just completely retooled my Patreon rewards and goals based on my new projects (namely Sharksplode), and what I’ve learned over the last year or so. I’ve taken stock of the things I said I wanted to do, then didn’t do (because I didn’t actually want to do them), and the things I’ve always wanted to do but never had the proper motivation for doing (like recording and releasing music). Hopefully the experience I’ve gained and the regret I feel for not reaching every goal I set for myself with Patreon originally will keep me motivated and honest.
This might not seem like great news to HijiNKS ENSUE fans. I clearly left out any HE-based rewards in the new Patreon setup, because I honestly don’t know when I’m going to be able to update HE again, or how often. My heart and brain are currently more interested in Sharksplode and I don’t want to force my self to make comics that I’m going to ultimately be disappointed with just because I feel obligated to. I will return to HE and I will finish it the way I want to. That’s the most honest explanation I have for you right now.
There’s a ton of new stuff to be excited about and chances are (if you’re already a Patron) I owe you some goodies, so please read all the rewards (http://patreon.com/hijinksensue) and msg me via Patreon if you would like to claim your custom comic print file, mobile desktop or digital commission.
Every Patron can download a bunch of convention panel recordings here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/531983
If you’ve already pledged $5 or more and haven’t downloaded your ebooks, they are all here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/3010340
I’m super excited about doing Patron-Only Sharksplode comics, recording a cover song EP, doing a live 90s Alt Rock Challenge concert, and releasing THE LOST HIJINKS ENSUE PODCAST (featuring Kris Wilson of Cyanide & Happiness).
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Fancy Bastards! If you’re going to San Diego Comic-Con, there is essentially ZERO reason to not come to booth #1234 and say Hi to me and the Cyanide & Happiness boys. I’ll be there selling prints and doing sketches all week with Kris Wilson and Rob DenBleyker!
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I’ve posted 4 comics to get you started and there will be a new comic every day this week. After that it will update Monday through Thursday. Please share the site and the comics with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and however else you see fit. It’s a bit scary feeling like I’m starting over from scratch wit zero readers, so every little push in the right direction helps.
Make sure to bookmark the site or subscribe to the RSS feed.
Enormous thanks to Hiveworks for helping me get the site up and running while I was out of town this weekend and away from my normal tech and reliable internet access.
I’ve worked really hard on the comics and this site, and I hope you enjoy them. I have the benefit of 8 years experience making comics to put into this new endeavor, but it is still incredibly young. I expect it will take me a while to really find a voice for Sharksplode and hone in on what exactly I want to do with it. I had planned to launch with 10 comics on day one, but I actually ended up redrawing the first strip from scratch 5 times trying to get the new art style right. Anyway, I an excited and I hope you are excited.
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I’ll be with Rob Denbleyker at the Cyanide & Happiness booth (#14076) from Thursday to Sunday (May 28-31). I’ll have HijiNKS ENSUE and FANEURYSM prints for sale, and Rob and I will be doing C&H sketches all weekend. Hope to see you there!
I get home on Monday June 1, and I’m also launching a new webcomic that day! (Assuming I do not fall prey to the BLOODWOLVES)
Stay tuned for a link and details.
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When I rebooted HE in 2012, I had ideas I wanted to get out and stories I wanted to tell. Once those ideas and stories are out in the world, I am going to put the comic to rest (or at least on an indefinite hiatus). Staring today HijiNKS ENSUE will update once a week is, on Mondays, and it will end in about a year is on hiatus while I work on how and when to end it properly. I will be launching a new comic that will run 4 days a week on June 1, 2015.
Long Version:
When I started HijiNKS ENSUE in 2007, it was just a pop culture commentary strip. I put myself and my friends into it and tried anchor the gags around this core cast of characters. That turned out to be mostly a mistake for the kind of humor I wanted to do. The writing I did back then wasn’t about characters. It was about jokes and ideas. Trying to shoehorn every joke into coming out of these 3 characters’ mouths turned out to be very limiting on my writing. That’s when I started just doing strips “out of universe.” If the joke was about a movie, I would just draw the characters from the movie. Then, when that strip was done, I’d bring the characters back. Sometimes, I wouldn’t do either of those things and I would just do a geeky pinup/mash-up. This actually wasn’t a HUGE problem until I started experimenting with story lines.
The non sequitur humor and the on-going story lines both using the same characters eventually seemed very schizophrenic to me, and probably to you. I was taking far too many liberties with what exactly HE was, and the audience got confused and shrank accordingly over time. So I decided to give up the gags and tell a story about my life, my family, parenting, etc. I wrote an outline for the basic story lines I wanted to address in the first year of the rebooted comic, finished about three of them, then sort of accidentally went back to writing gags using my characters (only now the characters were myself, my daughter and my wife). The difference is this time the gags weren’t about specific episodes of TV, instead they were about things going on in my actual life. The strip almost accidentally became a hyperbolic auto-bio comic without me noticing.
Six months went by and, while I was happy with the strips I was making, I wasn’t actually telling the story I set out to tell. Around this time, I realized that I didn’t actually want to chronicle my life, or my daughter’s life, in comic form. That sounded like a chore; an obligation. I felt pressured to touch on every major event in our lives through the comic, and that was never my intention. I wanted to tell the story of a guy (me) leaving a corporate high paying job, and pursuing cartooning full time in order to set a good example for his kid. I started off telling that story, but sort of lost the thread after a while.
Recently I sat down and wrote out all the remaining storylines I had originally wanted to tell, plus the one-off ideas that I never got around to and made a game plan for ending HijiNKS ENSUE. By my count it will take me about 50 strips. I’d like to end HE right on its 9th birthday, so that means I will being taking HE to a once a week update schedule (Mondays) until it is finished. When the story is all done, if there is interest, I will make a book of the rebooted HE comics. I will likely call it “HijiNKS ENSUE: The Experiment.” If there is further interest, and if it seems financially feasible, I would like to put out an omnibus of all of the HijiNKS ENSUE: Classic comics (a 2 book set, perhaps) as well.
About the new comic:
The new comic will not be called HijiNKS ENSUE. It will have a different name and live at a different URL. If you enjoy the humor of the current or former version of HijiNKS ENSUE, you are in luck! I have no plans to change my sense of humor or the way I look at things and try to figure out how to make them funny. If you liked the pop culture strips or the recent FANEURYSM strips, ALSO GOOD NEWS! I plan on doing pop culture comics as they strike me (though in a more general way so that my comics do not come with a prerequisite reading/watching list). If you dig my current comics about parenting, job stuff, coffee and cats, ALSO ALSO VERY GOOD NEWS! I plan to keep these threads going (in fact, I’ve already written about 20-30 strips on these subjects), just not with the same characters over and over. It hit me when drawing Joel and Josh and the coffee shop they were sitting in during the last story line started to feel like a chore. I realized that I want to draw different people and different things. I want to draw robots and aliens and weird looking old men, and giraffes and whatever the hell else strikes my fancy on a given day.
I want to stretch artistically, but I also want to be able to put out lots of comics every week. That means I need to A) be excited about what I’m actually drawing and B) not be drawing so much. The style (which I am working on refining right now) will be simpler, but not lazy. It will be more cartoony, less detailed, and probably more fun to look at. (My Patreon Patrons got a sneak peek of the new style HERE and HERE) I hope to launch the new comic with 10-20 finished strips uploaded to the site, ready to go. I’m hoping the decreased time it takes to draw them will allow me to update 4-5 times a week and actually create a buffer. Fingers crossed.
What about my Patreon?
Once the new comic is going strong and HijinKS ENSUE is working steadily towards its end date, I will revamp my Patreon Goals and Rewards to reflect my new project. I’m playing with a lot of ideas, but right now I’m thinking of settings goals for: Adding alt-text to all HE comics from 2007-2010, republishing those comics online in a bigger format, starting a new podcast, doing more live drawing sessions, creating/recording some music, performing some music live for patrons, and lots more. I still plan on putting out eBooks of convention sketches, and doing more Patron Only Hangouts. I’ll be posting more pre-release stuff for my new project for my Patrons as often as possible before the new comic launches.
What about “HijiNKS ENSUE”?
I’ve considered using HE as my personal umbrella for all projects I work on in the future, but I do not plan to call another comic by that name. It’s already been the name of two different webcomics and a podcast. Perhaps in the future “HijiNKS ENSUE” will just mean “a project by Joel Watson;” sort of a production company monicker. “HijiNKS ENSUE presents A NEW PODCAST or SOME OTHER COMIC or A LINE OF PERSONALLY TAILORED LAVENDER RAINCOATS.” Who knows? I might just slowly divorce myself from the name and let it come to represent the things I made during the first decade(ish) of my career as a guy who makes things and puts them on the internet. Luckily, this is not a decision I have to make now, or even soon.
Coffee Is Life, There Are Four Lights, Such Darmok and the remaining (25 or so) signed and numbered Daddy/Daughter Digital Drawing Time Posters have just been added to the HijiNKS ENSUE Store.
The regular prints are available in 8.5×11″ for $9.95 and 11×17″ for $17.95. The Daddy/Daughter prints are marked down from $35 to $15 while they last!
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Seattle Fancy Bastards need to know these things:
- I will be at booth 110 with David Willis all weekend.
- I will have lots of awesome prints, new and old, big and small (ask to see the big ones because they are in a book).
- I will have the Sketch-A-Matic!
- If you buy two prints, you get something free from THE MYSTERY BOX!
- I will have some of my wife’s fantastically geeky jewelry!
- There is a handy map to the booth here.
- I have new flyers, and many of them have coupon codes to the HE online store. GRAB ONE!
As is our tradition, Seattle, you may present me with coffee, confections or tiny bottles of booze to receive my favor. Oh such favor upon thee will I bestow!
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Potter and Daughter (the new Harry Potter podcast I am making with my 7 year old daughter) is live! You can download and listen to episode 1 here:
http://podcast.hijinksensue.com/…/potter-and-daughter-01-b…/
New episodes come out Wednesdays.
Subscribe with iTunes or RSS. Leave us an iTunes review if you enjoy it.
Our Patreon Patrons get the first TWO episodes and get each episode a week early!
SUPPORT POTTER AND DAUGHTER ON PATREON!
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HijiNKS ENSUE Books 1 & 2 are ONLY $5 each for the month of January. Then they’re gone FOREVER!
I am selling them at or below cost so they can go to Fancy Bastards that will appreciate them, rather than a bonfire.
Buy ANY TWO HijiNKS ENSUE books and get a free Mini Print!
[BUY HERE]
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I’m loading up the car to drive to Austin right now for WEBCOMIC RAMPAGE! I’ll be debuting an all new MYSTERY BOX and a cool new contraption I’ve devised for sketches called THE SKETCH-A-MATIC. If you want to see what it is, and what THE BIG RED BUTTON does, you’ll have to come visit me at Dragon’s Lair this weekend. D-Lair was nice enough to do a write up about HE here.
Here’s dem deets:
Our annual Webcomic Rampage event is fast approaching and we have a fantastic guest list with old and new creators coming to the store! Rampage will take place on December 6th and 7th!
Here’s our confirmed guest list for this year: click on the links to check out their webcomics! The schedule for the weekend is also listed below.
Danielle Corsetto Girls With Slingshots
Joel Watson Hijinks Ensue
Randy Milholland Something Positive
E.K. Weaver The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal
David Willis Dumbing of Age and Shortpacked
Alex Woolfson Artifice and The Young Protectors
Dusty Jack and JD Saxon Mahou Shounen Fight!
David Malki ! Wondermark
Dax Tran-Caffee Failing Sky
C. Spike Trotman Templar, Arizona
Noelle Stevenson Nimona
David McGuire Gastrophobia
Melanie Gillman As The Crow Flies
December 6th Schedule:
- 1:00-7:00pm General Sales: Meet your favorite webcomic creator and purchase books, prints, and more at their tables!
- Live Drawing Sessions: No RSVP required, free and open to the public! Come watch the creators sketch live and talk about their process, inspirations, and get your questions answered!
- 2:00pm: Melanie Gillman, EK Weaver, JD Saxon, Dax Trans-Caffee
- 4:00pm: C. Spike Trotman, David McGuire, Noelle Stevenson
- 6:00pm: Randy Milholland, David Willis, Joel Watson
- 9:00-11:00pm Q&A Panel: No RSVP required, free and open to the public! Come ask questions and get insight from all 14 creators! PLEASE NOTE THIS PANEL MAY CONTAIN ADULT THEMES AND LANGUAGE
December 7th Schedule:
-
1:00-7:00pm General Sales: Meet your favorite webcomic creator and purchase books, prints, and more at their tables!
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Live Drawing Sessions: No RSVP required, free and open to the public! Come watch the creators sketch live and talk about their process, inspirations, and get your questions answered!
- 2:00pm: Melanie Gillman, EK Weaver, David McGuire, Noelle Stevenson
- 4:00pm: C. Spike Trotman, JD Saxon, Dax Tran-Caffee
- 6:00pm: Randy Milholland, David Willis, Joel Watson
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9:00pm-11:00pm Q&A Panel: No RSVP required, free and open to the public! Come ask questions and get insight from all 14 creators! PLEASE NOTE THIS PANEL MAY CONTAIN ADULT THEMES AND LANGUAGE
Use code “cyborgmonday2014” to get 15% off today (12/1/2014) ONLY!
If you are a Patreon Fancy Patron, you can get a 20% off code HERE.
There are 5 new HijiNKS ENSUE T-shirts, 6 new HijiNKS ENSUE Hoodies, 2 new HijiNKS ENSUE prints, and all of my books are 50% off (and they are going to be unavailable after Jan 31, 2015 so, you know… GO GET THEM)!
I have been working on this new store (the image mockups, the web design, the backend, the integration with my fulfillment partners and printers, shipping, plugins, etc.) and the new shirt and hoodie designs 12-15 hours a day for at least the last 5 days straight. I say “at least” because I honestly don’t know anyway as that time and space and the confines of mortal existence have all become meaningless as my mind has been slowly unmade.
This past week as been a blur spent in front of code and pixels for all of my waking hours and many of my should-not-be-awake hours. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve worked VERY hard to make the new HE store something I can be proud of and something that you will enjoy. Or, at least something that will allow you to easily purchase something that you will enjoy.
Real talk: One of the main reasons I’ve re-taken control of my store (rather than using a 3rd party merch management company like I have for the last 4 or 5 years) is that I feel like being close to this process is one of the things that kept me close to my audience. Seeing the names come in with the orders, and especially seeing the SAME names come in over and over again was important to me. It kept be connected to the Fancy Bastards that supported me the most and it’s something that I’ve regrettably lost. I have lots of plans for the store, more shirts to design, more types of products to offer (some of you have been asking for usb drives with the entire HE Podcast on it…) and many more things I want to accomplish with it in the coming year. I am thrilled that this first enormous step is behind me and only a hundred million more tiny little steps remain.
Please support HijiNKS ENSUE with your holiday time spending dollars. I’m a one man operation, so each and every sale makes a huge impact for me. Thanks!
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EVERYTHING IS ON SALE!
$19 shirts are now $15
Some shirts are $5
$15 books are now $10
$20 Lil Wil Wheaton plushies (only 30ish remain) are now $10
$16 posters are now $10
$12 signed prints are now $7
$7.50 card packs are now $5
HijiNKS ENSUE Books 1 and 2 will be retired/discontinued 01/31/2015. If you’ve ever wanted to own these books, now is your last chance.
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NYCC 2014 is this weekend and, once again, I’ll be at booth 2247 with Cyanide & Happiness! Come by, say hi… be a… guy? BRING SOME PIE!
I’ve got books, lots of prints, t-shirts and I’ll be doing sketches with the CnH guys all weekend. We’re also doing a big CnH panel and group sketch jam Saturday night. Here are some details:
Title: The Cyanide and Happiness Group Sketch Jam Panel
Date: 10/11/2014
Time: 8:00PM – 8:45PM
Location: 1A10
I hope to see some of you Fancy NYC Bastards there!
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I’ve added two new rewards levels to my Patreon. At $1750 I am going to completely redesign my website with bigger comics and better organization, and at $2000 I am going to produce and release a new podcast with my daughter all about her journey through the Harry Potter book series. The specifics are below:
Clean Up This Dump!
$1,750 per month
Potter And Daughter Podcast!
$2,000 per month
HijiNKS ENSUE and Cyanide & Happiness at Toronto FAN Expo Canada THIS WEEKEND!
Toronto Area Fancy Bastards: Come see me and Rob and Mike from Explosm at booth 456. We’ll be there all weekend hanging out and doing sketches. I’ll have shirts, books and prints for sale, as well as complimentary accusatory glances.
That same weekend, we’ll be hosting the Toronto Banana Bar Crawl 3!
It’s Saturday August 30th. Here are the details from the Facebook Page:
Cyanide & Happiness is once again descending upon Toronto for Fan Expo (Booth 456) and so we’re once again getting drunk with all of you guys, while dressed like bananas.
THIS IS AN OPEN INVITE! BRING FRIENDS!
We will start at the Fox’s Den Bar and Grill and then wander over to the Artful Dodger Pub and finally stumble our way down to The Fox and the Fiddle.
GUIDELINES:
– Be a banana.
– Don’t not be a banana.
– Be cool to everyone, especially bar tenders but also each other.
– Check Twitter (https://twitter.com/bananabarcrawl) to find the next bar.
FIRST PLACE goes to Troy Zimmerman for this Edward Gorey inspired version of me. Clearly this is my destiny. This is my inescapable fate. Troy wins a digital commission of any 1 or 2 HE characters of his choice, doing pretty much whatever (within reason).
SECOND PLACE goes to Jess D. for JOEL AND ELI JOUSTING ON FREAKING DINOSAURS! Check that crazy nonsense out! Jess wins any two signed HE comic prints from my store.
THIRD PLACE goes to Zach Martin for a pretty accurate portrayal of a way that I will likely die. Come to think of it, all three of these feature my potential, if not certain demise in some fashion or another. Zach wins any one signed HE comic print of his choice from my store.
Thank you, Fancy Winners! Email me to claim your prizes.
Honorable mentions go to Patrick Chin Cheong, for this account of our actual meeting at a convention. You can read a very kind and touching story about it here at his blog.
Another honorable mention goes to Steve Walvick for these weird-ass Haikus, because he was the only applicant who took my advice to “write a Haiku if you can’t draw” to heart. I’m not sure how I feel about the part about Josh’s dong being so close to the part about my daughter though.
Last Sunday, May 11th, HijiNKS ENSUE turned 7 years old! What does that even mean? Why am I still allowed to do this? In celebration, I am holding a Fancy Fan Art Contest just like last year. And, just like last year, the rules are the same:
You’ll have a week (maybe 2 depending on how quick the submissions come in) to submit your most creative depiction of anything HE related in your artistic medium of choice. Crayon, paper mache, dubstep dance mix, digital drawing, whatever. There are no guidelines for what you can make or how you can make it, but know that I will be judging based on how much effort you appear to have put in, and/or how funny/amusing it I find it.
Please create your thing and email it, or a picture of it if it is a physical item to comics at hijinksensue dot com. Please send attachments no larger than 1mb, but feel free to link to larger versions.
If I get at least 5 submissions by a week from today (which is Wednesday 5/21/14), I will post a winner by that Friday. If I don’t get at least 5, then I’ll push the contest a week.
Check out last year’s winners. Think you can do better? I don’t see how.
PRIZES? Hell YES, there are prizes!
First Place will get a digital commission by me! I will draw any HE characters (up to two characters) you like, doing pretty much whatever you like (within reason) and send you a full color file suitable for printing and framing!
2nd Place will get 2 signed HE comic prints of their choosing. International winners will need to pay shipping.
3rd Place will get a signed print of any HE comic of their choice.
If you don’t want to participate, but you want to tell HE happy birthday, please consider making a donation, becoming a Patron, buying something from the HE Store or Sharksplode or checking out my Amazon Wishlist.
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[crossposted from my Patreon Activity Stream]
I just received my first Patreon payment:
Apr 1, 2014 at 2:00 am
+$1,046.52 processed to your account from your patrons.
$1,167.30 Pledged / $62.40 CC Fees / $58.38 Patreon
…and I just wanted to share some updates about what’s going on with my Patreon and the various rewards I’m currently working on.
3 COMICS A WEEK:
So far I’ve been pretty awful at this. So far in March we’ve had a hail storm that damaged both our cars, and our roof. We spent a night huddled in the closet due to tornado warnings, and a few days dealing with insurance, roofers, etc. Then I finsihed a comic and my laptop died before I could upload it. THEN my wife’s hard drive died the next day. I spent several days scrambling to fix these issues. Bottom line is I am almost caught up on last week’s comics and I will have 3 more for this week before the weekend is over (barring an act of universal chaos). Excuses, excuses, blah, blah, blah I need to work harder.
eBooks:
I just uploaded the first 2 eBooks for $5+ Patrons to download. Check the activity stream to get the links. There will be a new eBook before April is over and one new one a month until I run out of material (which should be at least a year or more).
Video Blogs:
Working on having at least 2 this month, if not the full 3. Post your questions in the comments concerning “Comic Conventions,” “The Hardware/tech I use to make comics” and any suggestions for a quick and dirty cover song. You can also post these to #HEVB on twitter.
Patron Only Hangout:
How about Wednesday night 4/16 for about an hour? I will post the link here in the activity feed.
HijiNKS HANGOUT:
I have two planned for this month. One with David Willis (www.dumbingofage.com) and Angela Melick (www.wastedtalent.ca) and another one with guest(s) TBD. Post questions for the guests, or future guest suggestions in the comments here or on twitter with #HijiNKSHangout
That’s a lot for the next 2.5 weeks (until I have to do it all over again for May), but you Fancy Patrons have been more than generous and I aim to keep up with my side of the bargain.
ECCC is my absolute favorite convention of the year, and it is SHOCKINGLY close to happening nowish. David and I will be at booth #1412 right next to Cyanide & Happiness! I will have the leftover DDDT prints, other prints, books, shirts, Wil Wheaton plushies and sketches.
I’ll be doing TWO PANELS:
- “The Cyanide and Happiness Group Sketch Jam Panel” / Friday, March 28, 6:10pm, Hall B, (Rooms 608-609)
- “The Experiment: Making a Living Doing What you Love” / Saturday, March 29, 6:00pm, ROOM 3AB. THIS is the one I REEEEEEALLY need you to show up for. My first ever totally SOLO panel.
Seattle always takes AMAZING care of me, but for the uninitiated, offerings in the forms of tasty treats (cookies, cakes, Cadburry Creme Eggs, Starbucks Doubleshots [the tiny cans, NOT the energy drinks]) and tasty booze (DELICIOUS BOOZE) are always accepted and appreciated.
Tiny booze bottles will have their contents slipped stealthily into my drinks at restaurants, while larger bottles will have to contents shared with my cartoonist friends in various hotels rooms in your fair city.
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It’s just like the monthly donation subscriptions I’ve always done with Paypal, but now you don’t HAVE to use Paypal, and I have a cool backend for managing rewards and such. It’s also got a bit of Kickstarter peppered in for good measure, in that there are rewards tiers for donations and milestone goals that unlock more comics, more content and more awesome along the way.
Don’t have time to read all of this? Watch the video I made explaining everything. It’s only 3.5 minutes and my adorable Kiddo steals the show.
Pledge at $3, $5, $10, $20, $50 or $100 a month and you will be supporting me being able to do what I love for a living: Making comics.
Some of the rewards are:
- New Sketch eBooks every month
- A premium RSS feed with full sized comics
- A Patron-only Google Hangout with me each month
- A Patron-only activity feed with behind the scenes art and news, mobile wallpapers and more
- Getting your name on a banner under the comics on the home page of the site
The Milestone Goals will unlock:
- More comics each week (3, 4 or 5 new comics a week ON A REGULAR UPDATE SCHEDULE!!!)
- A “HijiNKS HANGOUT” with me, you and some of my most awesome content creator friends
- More video blogs
- …A RETURN OF THE HIJINKS ENSUE PODCAST WHATWHATWHAT?!?!?!?!?
On the first day we blew past the $250 Milestone Goal, which unlocked new Sketch eBooks every month for a year. Then we went past $350, so I uploaded this video of me and my daughter covering Adventure Time Songs as a thank you.
If you are currently a Paypal monthly subscriber and would like to switch over to Patreon (which is probably a good idea since that’s where my attention will be focused), I only ask that you pledge to Patreon BEFORE canceling your Paypal subscription so I don’t panic.
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SHORTEST VERSION: My daughter and I collaborated on a print! It’s signed by both of us and limited to 100 pieces. GO BUY IT NOW (and tell 99 of your friends)!
SHORT VERSION: Instead of selling a limited print to pay for a trip for my wife and I on JoCo Cruise Crazy, like I wanted to (and like I have for the past 2 years), I am NOW selling a limited print to pay off an unexpected tax bill from the IRS which cost ALMOST EXACTLY what the cruise was going to cost. THANKS, UNIVERSE! It was drawn by my six year old daughter and I, and I’m SUPER proud of it (mostly of the parts she did).
For $35 you get this print, plus a free print of your choice, PLUS you have the option to be SUPER supportive and purchase more prints of your choosing at a HUGE discount. GO BUY IT NOW!
LONG VERSION: For the past two years you wonderful Fancy Bastards have sent my wife and I on fantastically geeky Caribbean Cruises (JoCo Cruise Crazy to be precise) via the purchase of signed, numbered, limited prints. As I was gearing up to create this years print (something featuring the HE cast in a Sharknado type scenario) I found out from my accountant that I had crossed over the threshold of self employment where I make so little money that the IRS pities me and doesn’t actually want any of it to the point [[[[juuuuuust]]]] above that where the IRS wants thousands of my dollars, effectively causing me to make less than when they wanted none of it at all. Still following along? I barely am. Seeing as how I have never owed additional taxes since I’ve been self employed, I have foolishly not set any extra money aside for the paying of such taxes. Now I’m getting charged all kinds of fines and fees for every month I don’t pay.
So instead of coming to you Fancy Bastards and asking for your support in sending my wife and I on a magical cruise, I am now asking for your help with OPERATION C.R.U.I.S.E. (Calculating Revenue Undermined Impending Seafaring Escapades). I didn’t want to come out and just ask for donations, especially around the holiday times (though DONATIONS are ALLLLWAYS appreciated) and I didn’t feel like doing the Sharknado print since it would seem out of context with my current comic direction. I decided the best thing I could offer you was something that really reflected where my art is, where my passion is and where my heart is right now, so I created something new with my daughter.
This print is inspired by (and features some of the art from) the Daddy/Daughter Digital Drawing Time posts I’ve been making on my Tumblr over the last year. In a sense, this is the very first piece of merchandise that accurately represents the new direction of HijiNKS ENSUE. When you purchase the print, you can also select a second free print of your choice, or you can purchase additional 3 print sets OR you can purchase all 7 prints I’m offering, you know… if you want to be super supportive and help me dig myself out of this C.R.U.I.S.E. hole.
Anyway, GO BUY IT NOW! (please)
~Joel
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My wife, Emily, will also be exhibiting with me and selling some of her geeky jewelry from her Etsy shop, Science & Fiction.
All the info is HERE, but this is the part you really need to know:
]]>This year’s guest list features 16 awesome webcomic talents:
–Ryan North
–David Malki
–Alex Woolfson
–David McGuire
–Danielle Corsetto
–Joel Watson
–Randy Milholland
–Rob DenBlyker
–David Willis
–Lar De Souza
–EK Weaver
–Jeph Jacques
–Dusty Smith
–JD Saxon
-Dan Price
-Bonn Adame
-Bill Williams
Dragon’s Lair Austin is hosting HijiNKS ENSUE, Something*Positive and Cyanide & Happiness at their booth this weekend as a special preview of December’s Webcomic Rampage event.
We’ll have books, shirts, prints, posters, plushies and sketches. Come by booth #938 Saturday and Sunday and say hi!
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Hey those suit shops at the mall scare the hell out of me! Thanks for assembling this montage though, very entertaining!
Nacho · 84 weeks ago
This is made of Win! Great job Dad! I bet she was stoked to see the finished product and had a blast with you in the park.
HikingViking · 84 weeks ago
Okay, that live-action comic that you made is amazingly cool! What a fantastic thing to do with your daughter. Also, you’ve now made me miss City of Heroes even more
Jay · 84 weeks ago
This is the most adorable thing I have seen of 2013 you are an awesome dad with an awesome kid I hope she grows up to be like you.
It also contains my method for dealing with a scratch on your Wacom Cintiq or other expensive, draw-right-on-me tablet PC type device. It also works for regular, non-monitor digital drawing tablets.
You can also watch the full stream of the Google Hangout I did with Jack Conte Of Pomplamoose and Patreon (a neat new way for content creators to get paid just to create content by the people that enjoy it) for Global Geekend/The Daily Elixir.
It was a great conversation about making it as a digital artist, and I’m a HUGE fan of Jack’s so I highly recommend listening to what he (and sometimes I) have to say. Pomplamoose had a huge effect on my original plan for The Experiment and I owe Jack a great deal for the inspiration that he provided when I was trying to figure out how to be professionally unemployed giving comics away for free.
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I had to watch the video because your beard in that still shot was scaring me and I had to face my fear. It turned out to not be so scary when I saw it in action.You only fear what you do not understand. Embrace the love of the beard.
I’m returning to New York Comic Con for the first time since 2011. This will be a bit different than my typical con, where I’m exhibiting just as HijiNKS ENSUE. I’ve been sitting in with my Cyanide and Happiness friends doing sketches at conventions for several years, but now that I’m a writer and a voice actor on the Cyanide and Happiness show, we’ve made the “occasional sketch jam” a little more official.
SPEAKING OF ME AND EXPLOSM: Have you seen the new HijiNKS ENSUE Store?! I now have a signed prints, posters and books which is a thing I’ve never offered before.
I’ll be with them all weekend, doing sketches, talking about the show, signing stuff and generally making a mess of things AS WELL AS selling my own books, and shirts and commissioned sketches (that last one will only be when time allows, since their line is usually wrapped around the corner).
Come visit us at Booth 2247. I’ll have a Sharpie in hand and stick figure dick jokes on my mind.
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James · 88 weeks ago
“The difference between you and me is, I make this look good”
Fletcher · 86 weeks ago
Is there a specific reason he looks like the Evil Fox Exec? Is all this “continuity” just a set up for the greatest Evil Fox Exec comic ever? HOW FAR DOWN DOES THE RABBIT HOLE GO JOEL????Actually the Evil Fox Exec was made to look like an older, more evil version of Joel. Sort of like polar opposites, or two sides of the same argument.
Wayne · 84 weeks ago
What I am more interested in knowing is, how does your wife feel about the beard? I’ve been active duty for almost 7 years now and wish I had the opportunity to grow my Ginger beard. Do you hide things in there? Snacks? Tools? Is it a Go Go Gadget Beer Beard? TELL ME YOUR SECRETS!
The new HE store is live at explosm! There are new signed prints and posters (previously only available at conventions), and for the first time I’m offering signed books!
A few of the shirts and the Lil’ Wil plushies (only 150 left) are up for preorder now (while they’re being shipped to the new warehouse) and the rest will be added when they arrive in a couple of weeks. New shirts to follow after that.
http://store.explosm.net/pages/hijinksensue
Big big thanks to explosm/Cyanide And Happiness (Derek, Andy, Rob, Matt, Kris and Dave) for making this possible.
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Here’s the deal, you Fancy Bastards. I have to move ALL OF MY T-SHIRTS, BOOKS, PLUSHIES, ETC. from one warehouse to another entirely different warehouse on the complete opposite end of North America and that is going to be an expensive and tedious process. In order to make that process LESS EXPENSIVE and LESS TEDIOUS, I am willing to offer my mercantile goods to you at roughly their cost plus a little bit to cover the labor of the actual humans who are packing and shipping them and what not.
THAT MEANS: Until 9/21/13 I will have HE Book 1 for $10 (books are the heaviest and hardest to ship so PLEASE buy these!), Book 2 for $15, and all shirts for $9 – $15. I don’t expect you will see deals like this in the HE store ever again unless I am going entirely out of business and NONE of us wants that (except for YOU, Gary. Yes I know you want me gone, but I won’t go that easily you son of a bitch!).
So GO GO GO BUY BUY BUY STUFF STUFF STUFF!
[And go go go fuck yourself, Gary.]
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Comments (10)
I was going to buy a t-shirt but international shipping has more than doubled since I last bought a t-shirt from you (Edward, ages ago), it’s like 20 bucks now… What happened, did you have any problems with shipping abroad?These shirts are being shipped by Blind Ferret, not me. As far as I know it shouldn’t be more than $10 or so. Sorry about that.
shiny · 91 weeks ago
It’s $14 shipping for one shirt to California, unfortunately. (I know it’s not your fault! Just letting you know.)SOTAS · 88 weeks ago
Joel, I discovered your comic about 8 months ago, I have started from the beginning and have been following your comic ever since I caught up 6 months ago. I love your strip, the experiment, all of it. Also, my fiancee is about to get a lot of stuff from your wifes store. I just wanted to say thank you for doing what you do. Your comic has helped keep a smile on my face and reassure me there are others out there that think like I do.That’s very kind of you and rest assured my wife and I appreciate your support a great deal. Thanks!Jaguar · 88 weeks ago
Sailing? As in Christopher Cross’ Sailing? You just got cooler (in an easy listening from 1979 sort of way).Adwxxx · 88 weeks ago
How much money do you need to restart the podcast?It’s not that simple. I need money to make it worth my time, time to make it possible within the confines of reality and other interested parties to make it not just me.
I will be participating in this Bumbershoot panel this weekend! I’ll be talking about making the most of the short time you have on this dumb planet and doing what you love for a living.
From my friend Corn Mo:
I will be hosting a panel series called “Why This? Why Now?” I curated it with my friend Chris Weber. We met a long, long time ago in Denton at the Good/Bad Art Collective. He started a label that put out one album called The Magic is You!
Speaking of friends, I got to book my friend, Joel, for the Why Froyo? Why YOLO?panel. He has a web comic series called Hijinks Ensue. Charley Miller, who helped with the .357 Lover board game, will talk about boardgames for the Why Zombies? Why Boardgames? Also, Issac Marion, who wrote Warm Bodies, will talk about zombies. I will meet everyone else at the show including the Why Fan Fiction? Why YA? panel.
I’ve never hosted a panel.
My bit is:
Sat 31 Aug 2pm
Seattle, WA
The Leo K Theater
155 Mercer Street Seattle WA 98109
2nd and Mercer in the Seattle Center
[Ticket Info here]
Your eyes and your literacy do not deceive you! I will be at Fan Expo Canada in Toronto this weekend with Blind Ferret and Randy Milholland of of Something*Positive. I will be at booth #844 and I will have t-shirts, books, sketches, prints, Lil’ Wil plushies and… THE MYSTERY BOXXXXX!!!
Come by and buy stuff or say hi, or ‘eh or aboot or CTHULHU FHTAGAN or whatever you Torontoonians say. Remember (always remember and NEVER forget) that you have the option (NAY, THE RESPONSIBILITY!) to bring me tribute in the form of exotic boozes, confectionary treats, Starbucks Doubleshots (the ones in the tiny cans), or actual Starbucks Iced Soy Lattes in exchange for my favor. My favor may take the form of a free sketch, a handshake, a confused and confusing scowl or a series of fierce blows to the head and knees and maybe the ear canals.
UPDATE: OH CRAPSPASM I JUST REMEMBERED THE KOREAN BBQ PLACE IN TORONTO THAT SERVES UNLIMITED MEATS FOR LIKE $8 OK NOW I’M SUPER EXCITED!!!
ANOTHER THING!
Check out these Tetris earrings my wife made!
Comments (14)
EvilJorge · 95 weeks ago
I want a t-shirt or print of that picture, damnit.
Larry · 95 weeks ago
Tell me more about this Korean BBQ place, please! I’m going to be in Toronto the week after this con.I’ll also suggest that, last time I was there, there were a bunch of decent and cheap sushi places on Eglinton between Yonge and Mt. Pleasant. Also, I suggest you try the amazing Jewish delicacy known as Smoked Meat. Caplansky’s near U of T and Centre Street Deli up in the burbs are both amazing, and different enough that it’s worth going to both if you want.
http://www.koreangrillhouse.com/It’s amazing. They just keep bringing you raw meat and you cook it in your table and it’s AMAZING. The more the cook the dirtier the grill gets with meat drippings so the longer you’re their cooking, the better the food tastes.
Larry · 95 weeks ago
Thanks! I do love Korean BBQ. There’s one in Philly where the little old lady who brings the bulbogi et al to your table doesn’t really trust you to get it right unless you are asian, female, and over 50.I am sad, can’t afford to go to the con this weekend. I’ll be puttering away at Michaels, doing my job instead.Where’s this Korean BBQ place though? I’d like to check it out some time in the future.
HeyZeusKreesto · 95 weeks ago
I feel kind of cheated with this comic. A week or so with no new comic, and this new one is basically an advertisement for something else I can’t afford.But I know this is not just a hobby for you, so you do what you gotta do. Also, I was thinking of buying a drawing from you if it’s still available when I get paid Friday. Is a zombie panda eating the HE crew too complicated?
HeyZeusKreesto · 95 weeks ago
Sorry, no edit button. To add to the end of my other post, I’ll most likely be including an extra $10 donation if that matters at all.Trying not to be too insulted by your initial comment, but if you feel you aren’t getting what you deserve from this situation then perhaps you should seek free entertainment elsewhere. If you want to buy a sketch that’s cool, but 4 characters will require more than a $10 donation. The guidelines are posted on the sketch drive page.I am SOOO looking forward to meeting you at Fan Expo this year! I missed you laster year as I was at the Star Wars Celebration Convention. My friend bought me your second book and i’ve been hooked ever since.Not to take away from the comic (cause it’s bloody fantastic and I very much wish that I had the opportunity to meet you!) but I do plan to buy that Tetris necklace and earrings as soon as I get a good enough paycheck! I may actually buy the earrings this week and the necklace (hopefully) soon thereafter. I call dibs!They’re made to order so they’ll be available when you’re ready. Thanks!
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On August 1, 2012 my outside air conditioner died . The year before that, on August 1, 2011, the inside AC unit died. Both times you, The Fancy Bastards, saved my sweltering ass by purchasing sketch cards from my Fancy Sketch Drive. Here we are on August 1, 2013 and (so far) no major home appliances have exploded, but finances ARE super tight in HijiNKS ENSUE land.
To that end I am offering my first ever Digital Fancy Sketch Drive!For $20 I will draw just about whatever you want and send you a hi-res 8.5×11″ file, suitable for printing and framing. It will have a nice border denoting the 2013 Fancy Digital Sketch Drive and everything.
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I ordered! Am I first? Am I second? Am I anywhere in the top ten?!?just put in a request, but forgot to say, you can IM me if it’s confusing.it’s likely confusing.
Andrew Stevens · 97 weeks ago
Hi Joel, when you say to write in the sketch request in the checkout field does that mean the one down at the bottom of the page or on PayPal? If it’s the latter I’ve made a major booboo.In the box during check out that says “sketch request.” I just checked and you did yours right.Andrew Stevens · 96 weeks ago
Thank you, please ignore the incredibly worried email I have just sent you. Of all the things I did wrong one of them was not subscribing to replies on this comment…
echo · 92 weeks ago
“…like a big shiny golden dick made of lasers…”Almost made me spit out my coffee!
I think that comment goes here http://hijinksensue.com/2013/09/11/a-sanguine-res…
Nick · 67 weeks ago
And I’m still waiting for my drawing. . . . . .
I sent your sketch download link via email on October 27, 2013To that end I am offering my first ever Digital Fancy Sketch Drive!For $20 I will draw just about whatever you want and send you a hi-res 8.5×11″ file, suitable for printing and framing. It will have a nice border denoting the 2013 Fancy Digital Sketch Drive and everything.
I will be at San Diego Comic-Con for the 4th year this week! Come see me at the Blind Ferret Booth (#1231) in the Webcomics area. I will have books and shirts, sketches, Lil’ Wil plushies and ??????THE MYSTERY BOX??????!!!! Speaking of books, if you buy HijiNKS ENSUE Vol’s 1 or 2 you’ll get a free mini print featuring my Sharknado sequel posters!
It looks like this:
I will also have a very limited supply of two of my daughter’s prints. If you buy them, she gets the money. It’s a sort of double edged “TOO CUTE TO COMPREHEND/ Teaching my kid that art has value” sort of thing. You can see the designs and learn more here on my Tumblr.
I will be posting my comings and goings from the booth via Twitter, so check there first before coming by to chat, get a thing, bring me delicious cookies, bring me delicious Starbucks Doubleshots, bring me delicious booze, bring me delicious Starbucks Iced Soy Lattes or BRING ME DELICIOUS BOOZE (which are all things I strongly encourage you to do… a lot).
Other than the convention proper, I will also be at Stone Brewing Hop-Con on Wednesday night, w00tstock on Thursday night and possibly at No Laughs Allowed: Internet Comedy is Serious Sh*t (with Cyanide and Happiness, SMBC and 5 Second Films) on Saturday night. Catch me at any of these events, answer my three riddles correctly and I’ll have to give you me pot’o gold plus safe passage across the Enchanted Bridge.
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Joel is a peach, don’t let that gruff exterior fool you. You really should bring him delicious treats because working that booth all day takes stamina.Stamina that can only be fueled by….whipped cream vodka. It’s his favorite. Just look at his joyful face! Look at all the joooooyyyy….
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BNurKOcCIAAyrn9.jpg
lekosis · 100 weeks ago
You’re not kidding, those prints really are too cute to comprehend. eee
In 3rd place with his portrayal of Juan Q. Zach on the Iron Throne is Gary Marks! Of all the hand drawn submissions, this one made me laugh the most.
Gary wins a signed HE comic print of his choice.
[click to embiggen]
In 2nd place with an ACTUAL SONG all about HijiNKS ENSUE is Adam Sakellarides! I was terrified to listen to this, in the event that it might be terrible, but I was wonderfully surprised when the music and singing were great and the lyrics showed a real understanding and love of the comics. I am SUPER FLATTERED by this composition. Way to freaking go, Adam!
Adam wins a Sharksplode shirt of his choice and a signed HE comic print of his choice.
[click to listen]
And in first place with… holyunicornjesuscanyoueven… JUAN Q. ZACH MADE MEATSPACE, is Jessica Schwab! Jessica showed me the very beginnings of this back at Emerald City Comicon in early march. I was excited, having seen her craftyworks before, but in the intervening months I honestly forgot about it. Then this chicken-lizard harbinger of the apocalypse shaped cute-bomb hit my inbox and and all my blood exploded. Jessica, you owe me new blood. Also you owe me this doll. Send it to me immediately. The address is on the contact page. Stop reading and do it now. Here’s Jessica’s account of this adorable abomination’s creation.
Jessica wins a digital commission by me! I will draw any HE related characters or thing she likes and send her a full color file suitable for printing and framing!
[click to embiggen and seal your fate]
Hey winners, email me and let me know what you want and where to send it. Thanks!
There were a lot more submissions, and ALL OF THEM were really good. I was crazy impressed with the talent among you Fancy Bastards. I’ve posted all the honorable mentions on my Tumblr.
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OMFingG that song is amazing.Ha! Thanks! I’ve never made someone “OMFingG” before. Comments like this are why I make music.That soooo deserves to win! Love it! Thanks for including me on the runner ups!Bloodsplode! That may be the most adorable crocheted harbinger of the apocalypse ever. These are all great!Glad to know it got to you! Been having some trouble with my email recently.I will draw any HE related characters or thing she likes and send her a full color file suitable for printing and framing!
David and I will be at booth 243, NOT 1749 and NOT by the LEGOs. Come in the main entrance, hang a left and head to the back corner. Here’s a photo of David peeking over a handy map.
I will be at booth 1749 (WAYYYY in the back corner by the LEGO table) with David Willis, I’ll have t-shirts and books and sketches and prints and Lil’ Wil Plushies and it’s going to be a PARTYPARTYPARTYPARTYPARTY!!! You know the drill about cookies and tiny bottles of booze, right? That shit is entirely still in effect.
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GenYus · 107 weeks ago
You were judged not *quite* cool enough to hang out by the LEGO group. So sorry, better luck next year.
PS. Thanks for the sketch (ComiCon Gallifrey), it is sweet.
Tomorrow (May 11, 2013), HijiNKS ENSUE turns 6 years old. To celebrate I want to hold a Fancy Bastard Fancy Fan Art contest.
You’ll have the next week, maybe 2 depending on how quick the submissions come in, to submit your most creative depiction of anything HE related in your artistic medium of choice. Crayon, paper mache, dubstep dance mix, digital drawing, whatever. There are no guidelines for what you can make or how you can make it, but know that I will be judging based on how much effort you appear to have put in or how funny/amusing it I find it.
Please create your thing and email it, or a picture of it if it is a physical item to comics at hijinksensue dot com. Please send attachments no larger than 1mb, but feel free to link to larger versions. HINT: I typically like to include this sort of thing in the backs of my books.
Soft Deadline is this coming Thursday with a winner to be announced 1 week from today (unless there are no submissions, then I will be sad and push it a week).
PRIZES! PRIZES! PRI-ZIZES!
First Place will get a digital commission by me! I will draw any HE related characters or thing you like and send you a full color file suitable for printing and framing!
2nd Place will get an Sharksplode shirt of their choosing, and a signed HE comic Print of their choice. International winners will need to pay shipping.
3rd Place will get a signed print of any HE comic of their choice.
If you don’t want to participate, but you want to tell HE happy birthday, please consider making a donation, buying something from the HE Store or Sharksplode or checking out my Amazon Wishlist.
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May 11th is also my birthday (I’ve just turned 20)Josh, he’s not talking whether or not whores have gonorrheaA very belated happy birthday, a few months on…!!loads a lot faster then most. Can you recommend a good hosting providerfree instagram followers http://snipurl.com/wfti
I am searching best college paper writers for my own essay writing website. In that website I am given more educational services and more interesting online writing service tips. So, every writers must read my assignment requirements on this blog.Such an extremely valuable article. Exceptionally fascinating to peruse this article.I might want to thank you for the endeavors you had made for composing this amazing article.
Guess what, Internet? I have been hired by my good friends at Explosm to write for The Cyanide & Happiness show!
I’ve been collaborating with Rob and Dave and Kris, et al on various comics, character ideas, animation concepts and songs over the last year or so, but now that their UNFATHOMABLY SUCCESSFUL Kickstarter is over and they’ve moved into full on production mode we’ve decided to make it official and I couldn’t be more excited.
The short version of the story is Explosm had been shopping the Cyanide & Happiness Show around to nearly every major network and cable outlet and after turning down offer after offer that required them to relinquish creative control of their show, they decided to forego the TV route entirely and produce the show on their own for the Internet.
The show will consist of a series of animated shorts strung together into 12 minute episodes. The writing has been going FANTASTICALLY. It’s really some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever been a part of and the early animations are just outstanding. This show is going to DESTROY the Internet (as it was foretold in scripture) with laugh-make-times. I can not wait for you to see, and hear what we’ve got in store for you. Oh, what’s that? Yes, HEAR, because I will also be a voice actor on the show. I’m just checking boxes off my “Magical Wish Unicorn Dream List” left and right.
So, there you go. Big news. I’m super happy about it.
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Cool. As one of the backers for the show, I can’t wait to see what you guys have in store for us.
I’ll have books, prints, shirts, Lil’ Wil Plushies and sketches! Last year was my first Calgary Expo and in terms of sales it was my best convention ever. In terms of meeting super nice readers and being treated very well by the staff and volunteers, it was also right up there at the top. The thought that this year could potentially top last year in either of those categories is somewhat impossible to imagine, but I BELIEVE IN YOU CALGARY!
I believe in your ability to come to my booth and say nice things and shower me in your silly, pastel, plastic money! We can do this, Calgary! We’re a team! Did you somehow forget how much I enjoy tiny bottles of booze and baked goods? I STILL ENJOY THOSE THINGS! Bring those things too! This is going to be a good time for you and me, Calgary.
UPDATE: There’s an Alberta Browcoats shindig Saturday night after the con. Details are here. There’s going to be beer and live music and door prizes. Sounds like good times.
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Really hoping I can score some tickets to this: https://twitter.com/kirbykrackle/status/326373514…I take umbrage to calling Calgary the Texas of Canada.*Alberta* is the Texas of Canada. Texas North!
Calgary is just, like, Dallas or Houston or whatever. Yaknow, just a big corporate city. There’s cows and oil all over the province.
(Meanwhile Edmonton is the Austin of Canada, or at least yearns to be. It’s the capitol, but the rest of Alberta hates it for not always voting for the right-wing majority and for not wearing as many cowboy hats.)
Thank you for this clarification. Based on your explanation, Calgary is actually Houston, not Dallas.Damn…why’d it have to be the same days as C2E2?It always is, and despite my enjoyment of Chicago, Calgary is a MUCH better show. Both in terms of sales and how it’s run. C2E2 is put on my Reed Pop which means it is in constant opposition to the exhibiting cartoonists. Not sure what it is about those guys but they only cater to big media companies and treat everyone else like garbage.Also, and this is the super depressing part, sales in Chicago were abismal the last two years I went there. Almost everyone I talked to was very polite and enthusiastic, then explained they wouldnt be buying anything because they’d just lost their job. It was really upsetting. At least 100 people told me that exact same story. In Calgary they are just throwing silly plastic money at the table and running away.
I can attest to the money-throwing behavior as witnessed at last year’s show. I shall stop by if I can or at least see you at the shindig, perhaps.I can’t speak for others, but I gave both you and Blind Ferret a lot of money (for me at the time, anyway). But I get it. C2E2 was twice as big this year, and probably will be bigger next year. And we as fans don’t know the ins and outs of how the promoters treat y’all. I do hope you’ll be there next year. If it was twice as big this year and bigger next, you’ll have a better opportunity to make more, I hope.pink and purple plastic money? canadian money is pink?Karcitis · 112 weeks ago
The $50 bill is pinky-red, yup.$20 is green, $10 is bruise coloured, and $5 is blue. Oh and $100 is gold, natch.
And it’s waterproof, tear proof, has transparent color changing holograms, one has a hockey guy on it, the rest has either Hellen Mirren or Judi Dench… seriously, it puts our money to shame.KingMeIV · 111 weeks ago
It’s not completely tear-proof. This myth was busted at the Loading Ready Run booth at the expo last year.As a side note, did you see the video of the message your good buddy Wil left for my niece at the end of his panel? Absolutely brilliant!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_BtmV4JRScKingMeIV · 111 weeks ago
I WISH it was me. It was Violet’s parents that asked Wil to leave her the message. I was at that panel though to witness the awesome in person.
I started The Experiment with the goal of being extremely transparent about the successes and failures of trying to turn my passion into my job in the hopes that someone else would read about my experiences, be inspired to do their own thing and hopefully not have to make all of the same mistakes I’ve made. Over the last 5 years I’ve heard from at least a dozen people that started “experimenting” for themselves after following along with my adventure in self employment/ dream fulfillment. Other than being a father, I think that is probably the most important thing I will ever do. If even one person allows themselves to lead a full life of risk and passion and reward and danger and all of the things that are the antithesis of punching the clock, being miserable and constantly waiting for things to get better because of something I wrote or said or did, then I’ve left the world a little bit better than I found it.
If you are a fan of The Experiment and would like to see it continue, please consider making a donation, buying something from the HE Store or Sharksplode or checking out my Amazon Wishlist. I am quite literally 100% dependent on the kindness of strangers. It’s a weird job, I know.
If you want a ZERO DOLLAR way to support HijiNKS ENSUE, please post a few of your favorite HE comics to your site, blog or social media outlet of choice with a few words as to why you think your friends might enjoy reading HE as well.
Hearing from other “experimenters” is certainly one of the most positive outcomes of this whole ordeal. But transparency isn’t just about sharing the positivity. It’s also about sharing the hardships, and the uncertainty. Partly so other experimenters know they aren’t alone if they are having similar feelings and partly just to get it off my chest. When I wrote about the 4 year Experimentiversary a year ago, I also wrote about how I was feeling creatively stifled and that I had done all I felt I could with one-off pop culture references as my only subject matter. I expressed my desire to grow as a writer and take the comic in a different direction utilizing more continuity and story lines and character development. I thought it would be fair to share my feelings on that aspect of The Experiment one year later.
Sometimes I feel like I’m getting a better handle on what I want to do with this comic. The writing is certainly easier whenI get to dance around the same topic for 4 or 5 consecutive strips. Other times I feel like I really have no idea what I’m doing and HE is just too unfocused and the subject matter is too specific to really reach a wider audience. I wrestle with the desire to get more into my characters’ heads and develop their personalities versus my total lack of desire to write anything about jobs or relationships. I’ve always been the kind of artist that second guesses my every decision. I often spend more time worrying about what kind of comics I should be making than I do actually making comics. Of course this is a terrible plan of (in)action, because the types of comics I REALLY need to be making is MORE comics.
It’s hard to gauge the reaction (or lack their of) to changes in the comic’s direction or art style since I rarely get any kind of feedback. My audience (if statistics are to be trusted) plateaued a few years ago and has declined slowly ever since. It’s holding steady at roughly 2/3 to 1/2 of what it was at its peak. It’s still a sizable group (nothing to scoff at), but it’s difficult not to get disheartened when you feel like the quality of your art and writing is improving steadily, yet your reach isn’t. I’ve been more excited about making comics over the last couple of weeks (with this HBO story line) than I have in at least a year. I feel like my art has leveled up since I changed up the panel layout, and my writing has improved along with it. I think an art career isn’t measured in minute improvement over time, but rather a series of unexpected jumps in output, talent or some combination of the two. I honestly feel like the comics I’ve been making recently will count as one of those jumps when I look back on this period of my career. The most complicated part of this feeling of accomplishment is the idea that I’m totally alone in feeling this way. It’s hard not to take pride in your work when you enjoy the entire process of creating and smile at it when it’s finished. But, as with any art that is intended to be appreciated by others, there is a fear in releasing it into the world and finding out that it’s nowhere near as good as you thought.
I’m not fishing for compliments and I’m certainly not depressed or upset about the state of my art or my career. I guess I’m sharing these feelings because I know there are some of you that wish you were doing what I was doing. I know there are some of you that are actively working towards having exactly what I have. And I KNOW there are those of you who already feel these same insecurities about your art, your audience and your place in your perceived community of peers. I suppose my point, or my message (if there is one) is if the demons and fears and insecurities don’t just magically go away after 5 years (or 10 or 20) of putting your all into your work… they probably never will. So fuck ’em. Just don’t worry about it. Just keep making/doing/sharing/going/going/going. Fear will keep you in the job you hate and fear will make you hate doing the thing you love the most. Fear is a thief. It steals time and happiness and almost everyone doesn’t have enough of either to spare.
I often worry about whether or not I am making the right choices. And I am always concerned about where the money for next month’s mortgage is going to come from. I even spend a fair amount of time wondering what I’m going to do if the way I make my living (online ads, t-shirts and comic conventions) just isn’t a thing any more in a few years. Despite those nagging concerns and insecurities, after 5 years of living this impossible dream I can honestly say I am not afraid. Cautious? Sure. Trepidatious? Probably. Uncertain about… almost every aspect of this job? Almost definitely. But, afraid? No. Not any more. Five years of making the best thing I know how to make and sharing it with kind and generous people has taught me the worthlessness of fear. Five years of traveling around America (and beyond) with my chosen family of artists, writers, actors, comedians and other talented, compassionate weirdos has taught me the pointlessness of fear. Thirteen years with my wife and 6 years with our daughter has taught me the complete and total irrelevance of fear. My readers, my friends and my family have been my safety net, my support group, and my reason to not give up more times than I can recall since this experiment started.
I don’t regret a single moment, mistake or hard lesson learned of the last five years, I do not fear the next five and neither should you. Whatever your thing is; that thing that you love doing that you wish was your job, MAKE THAT THING YOUR JOB. Stop whatever you’re doing and go figure out what the very next step is that you need to take in order to make your thing your job, then TAKE THAT STEP. When that step is complete, do the next one and keep taking steps and making progress every single day until your passion, your art, your whatever is your job. You don’t need permission (if you feel like you do, then I’m giving it to you), you don’t have much time and every day that you aren’t totally happy is a wasted one. Chase happiness, forget the fear and DO YOUR THING.
Unless your thing is murder, or genocide or destroying the legacy of a beloved sci-fi franchise. Then, maybe find a different thing.
Godspeed, You Fancy Bastards!
~Joel
Quick Links:
The Experiment Overview | The Whole HE Story | The “Digital Age” Artist’s Manifesto |
4 Year Experimentiversary, 5 Year Anniversary And More Experimenting
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I’ll have books, prints, shirts, Lil’ Wil Plushies and sketches! Check out the new mini-banner/ price sheet I made for ECCC on my Tumblr. It mentions a negotiable fee for AWKWARD STARES, but bring me some Starbucks Doubleshots and tiny bottles of booze and I’ll totally waive that fee.
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It’ll be on presale for about a week, and ship before I leave for JoCo Cruise Crazy 3 on Feb 9th.
You can also grab some of my most popular large prints for only $15 while you’re at it!
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Ahoy Fancy Bastards! I just posted my JCCC3 Fundraiser page. Just like last year I am selling 100 limited numbered and signed prints (this time it’s my characters [and Wil Wheaton] on a multiversal mashup starship bridge – Star Trek, BSG, Firefly, etc) as well as some of my most popular large prints and a few themed packs of HijiNKS Ensue comics.
Every signed, numbered print comes with a free additional print of your choice and a desktop wallpaper of the “Bridge Collapse” print. Please check it out, boost the signal and help me get back on the boat. Thanks!
[I promise you, that If I make it on the boat and IF I make photo comics of my adventures, I will NOT post them in the main comic area. I understand they are fun for some but not for all.]
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]]>The HijiNKS ENSUE Store:
There are T-Shirts (also in Ladies Sizes), Books, A Lil’ Wil Wheaton Plushie (A Lil’ Wil on the ‘sil is so much better than the Elf On The Shelf), Holiday Cards, DISCOUNT T-Shirts and AWESOME high quality prints of ANY HE comic.
SHIPPING DEADLINES: For US and Canada, orders need to be placed by Dec 9th. International orders can’t be guaranteed for delivery by Dec 24th at this point, but ORDER NOW and hope for the best.
SHARKSPLODE:
Wil Wheaton and I have made some shirts for you to buy and cover your bare bodies with. We are nothing, if not humanitarians. Check out all of our Doctor Who Shirts, Wil Themed Shirts, this one, that one or just ALL OF THE SHIRTS FOREVER OMG.
SHIPPING DEADLINES: For US and Canada, orders need to be placed by Dec 12th at 12 noon Pacific. International orders (trying to figure this out now…).
Are you in a supporting independent artists AND a giving sort of mood? Well aren’t you just my absolute favorite type of person? Are you some sort of ANTI-SCROOGE?! You are welcomed to either make a holiday style DONATION or visit my Amazon Wishlist. I’m certainly not going to discourage you from either of those worthwhile and extraordinarily appreciated activities.
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Toronto Fan Expo is THIS WEEKEND August 23 – 26.
I will be at booth 1244 with the Blind Ferret crew Thursday through Saturday. I have to skip out on Sunday because my daughter starts school the next morning and I don’t want to be the dad that regrets his kid’s first day of kindergarten for the rest of his life because he was eating nachos and doing sketches for Canadian Narutos. Don’t get me wrong, sketches for Canadian Narutos IS EXACTLY living the dream. I just know that I will have another opportunity for that in the future, where as my kiddo will embark on her educational adventure just the one time and I’d kind of like to be there to see it.
YOUR MISSION, CANADIAN FANCY BASTARDS: Come see me at the show! Say hi, talk about stuff, buy a thing or two. I’ll have books one and two, shirts, sketch cards, maybe some stickers, CERTAINLY a crap ton of prints (except for YOUR favorite one… I’m only bringing two of that one and they WILL sell out), and I’ll be debuting the new Fighting Time Lords and Grammar Dalek shirts.
I’m going to level with you Toronto. I’ve been to you before. You were quite nice. You were kind to me, and your Karaoke/Korean BBQ were fantastic. That said, I didn’t have the best sales the last time I was in you. You know where I had the BEST sales I’ve ever had? Calgary. Yep. Calgary. Are you going to take that from Calgary? Did you hear what Calgary said about your mom as it gave me all of it’s weird, rainbow colored monies? Toronto, you DO NOT have to take that kind of abuse from Calgary. You march right down to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and you show Calgary what kind of Fancy Bastards they got in TORONTO! [woohooos and cheers all around].
If you’re in the mood to bring me tribute in order to garner my favor, I’m trying to cut back on the sweets these days. I’m not saying NO SWEETS. Just not ALL OF THE sweets. I’m still entirely partial to Starbucks doubleshots in cans, Iced Soy Latte’s and tiny bottles of booze that can be pored into other drinks. You know how I role. Clandestinely drunk.
See you soon, Toronto!
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I NEED YOUR HELP! If you want the show to succeed and continue, please consider setting up a DONATION SUBSCRIPTION. Actually getting paid to do this job will make it SOOOO much easier to make sure it doesn’t fall by the wayside again. Also, please leave positive reviews on iTunes and TELL YOUR FRIENDS.
Long story, somewhat long: The HE podcast went on hiatus just over a year ago. The main reason was that my co-hosts were unable to find time in their busy schedules to record. I, being the only one of us who didn’t have a “real” job, had no right to complain or insist on them giving freely of their time but once Josh and Eli both entered a “crunch” phase at their respective jobs, the frustrations of trying to schedule the show became overwhelming. You might remember that I started recording more with “The B Team” of Alex and Roger towards the end. While those guys were more accessible (and certainly entertaining and hilarious), scheduling was still an issue. I knew I wasn’t able to commit to definitely having a new episode up every week, so I decided rather than constantly making excuses I would just hang it up and shut it down.
The other main problem with producing the show WAS producing the show. I spent about a part time job’s worth of my week scheduling, recording, editing, setting up/tearing equipment in my home studio, exporting files in various formats (which became MUCH more difficult when we started doing Post Shows and Uncut Shows), making blog posts, writing show notes, etc, etc, etc. I enjoyed the work, and the outcome but I felt it was eating into my comic-making time and the podcast had about 1/10th the audience of the comic. It seemed my time would be better spend refocussing my efforts on the comic.
Around the 6 month mark post hiatus I started to feel like I was losing my connection with the hardest of the hard core member of my audience. The ferver and undying support that I used to see was waining. This is a nebulous thing and very hard to quantify, but I could definitely feel a sea change in terms of how enthusiastic my audience was. It wasn’t long before I realized this was due in part to the direction I had taken the comic in, and LARGELY to the fact that the podcast was gone. Based on feedback from readers at conventions and via email/twitter I learned one very important thing. Readers liked the comic. Some even loved it. But listeners LOOOOOOVED the podcast. They were more invested in everything I had to offer (comics, podcasts, tweets, whatever) because of the personal connection they had developed with me through listening to me talk for hours a week. I had basically thrown away the most important thing I had ever cultivated in my career. I immediately started trying to figure out how to get the podcast back up and running.
The main things I had to change were A) Having to schedule around people’s more important commitments (work/family/etc), and B) expecting people to drive way out in the boonies where I live to record. Enter my good friends at Explosm. With their new Dallas-based office and a free room we were able to construct a remedial recording studio, get some equipment upgrades and set up a home base for the podcast that was MUCH more central to all those involved. To christen the new studio Rob DenBleyker, Kris Wilson and I recorded a test podcast. Low and behold, our friendship, natural chemistry and unrelenting ambition to make each other laugh resulted in a damn fine bit of podcastery. With the problem of the location solved, I realized how to solve the problem of co-host commitments. I decided to have a rotating cast of co-hosts and record as many episodes as possible during a given session. That way I’m not scrambling for episodes each week and I’m not eating away at the free time of the same two people over and over.
Do not fear, Eli and Josh are still a part of the show. So are the “B-Team” of Alex and Roger. The biggest changes for current HE Podcast listeners is the addition of Rob, Kris and Dave from Cyanide and Happiness to the co-host rotation. They are some of my favorite people and I really think you are going to like the stuff we’ve been recording.
What other changes can you expect? The show is less topical and more conversational. Since I am banking them weeks if not months ahead of time, it doesn’t make sense for us to review movies, etc. that will be old news by the time the show airs. Each episode will feature a brief intro by me where I answer emails, voicemails, tweets and update you on my convention appearances. Then you’ll hear an hour or so of… well that depends on who I’m talking to. With the Explosm guys, we typically tell stories, do characters and come up with bits. With Josh, Eli and Alex it’s more like the old show, but less structured. I hope you enjoy the mix and it keeps you from getting bored. The other new aspect is that I’m going to pepper in more interview-style shows here and there with some of my professionally funny/geeky celebrity-type friends (like this one with Chris Hardwick).
So that’s it. If you’re a previous listener, I hope you jump back on board and if you’ve never heard the show before I hope you give it a shot.
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I obviously don’t expect to raise over $5000 in sketches, but every bit helps. If you would like to help and don’t require a sketch in return for your generosity, please feel free to make a donation of any amount. All donations received in the month of August will go straight to the AC fund.
So there are now 50 more pieces of very nice paper that I will happily ruin with the scribblings of your choice!
I’m nearly done with the first 50 and they will be leaving in the mail this week. I’ve really been working hard to make them special. If you want to see some recent sketches, check out my Tumblr.
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There is also a new version of the Fighting Time Lords shirt (created by me and Wil Wheaton) up for preorder.
It is moving from Sharksplode to my Blind Ferret store so that we’ll be able to bring them to conventions (something fans have been asking about for a long time).
The preorders will determine how many of these shirts get made, so if you’ve been wanting either one please place your order in the next few days. If the preorder goes well, I should be able to have these shirts at my next couple of conventions rather than waiting until next year to take them on the road.
I also wanted to remind you that there are 5 HE shirts that likely won’t be printed again and are selling for only $12.95.
Several sizes of each are already selling out. If you want one of these, now is a great time to get it since we need to make room for the new designs.
Thanks!
~Joel
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I am leaving for San Diego Comic-Con in 4 FREAKING DAYS!!!PANIC!!!AHHHHGHGHGH!!!
SDCC con-goers will be able to find my merch (t-shirts and books) with Blind Ferret at booth 1332 in the webcomics area. Due to our booth accidentally getting cut in half this year, I will not have table space to sit and draw, but I will be hanging out during the weekend.
CHECK MY TWITTER through out the weekend for scheduled booth/signing times. I will have sketch cards and prints with me when I’m at the booth.
Since the Grammar Dalek shirts couldn’t be ready in time for SDCC, I am bringing a limited number of Grammar Dalek prints. I don’t know if they’ll be on display so you may have to ask me for them if you want one.
San Diego is a special kind of chaos that both invigorates me and drains the life clean from every cell in my body. I am going to run 1, maybe 2 new comics during the week of SDCC, then I am going to run sketches from the Fancy Sketch Drive for the rest of the week. Possibly for the rest of my life. I usually don’t want to do much of anything but sleep for about 6 months to a year after SDCC. See you there!
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Finances are tight in HijiNKS land, so it’s time to raise some funds. To that end I am offering 100 very nice pieces of paper that I will happily ruin with the scribblings of your choice and I will broadcast said scribblings live on Ustream!
Live drawing broadcasts will be HERE and start this Friday (7/6) and go through the weekend. Watch my Twitter for the schedule.
If you are a Donation Subscriber, you should have been emailed a link to download the first HijiNKS ENSUE iBook/eBook. It’s called HijiNKS Ensue: Drawing Hands Is Hard, and it contains all of the HE comics from 2007-2008 plus some neat extras at the end.
It is in iBooks format for iPad and PDF format for everything else. If you are not a donation subscriber and don’t plan to be ($2 a month? C’Mon!), you can get my eBook offerings on a pay-what-you-want donation model. My wife and I worked really hard on this and I’m pretty proud of the results. A tablet with a hi-res screen is just a fantastic way to read comics. Enjoy!
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I can’t wait until the Song Of Ice And Fire septilogy (or possibly octology) is completed and my great great grandchildren can read the final book to me. Of course some will say that the small moon that contains the A.I. super computer that houses George R.R. Martin‘s consciousness is colder and less emotive than the original flesh and blood author, but I’ll take comfort in his calculated and mechanical 5 page descriptions of each and every meal because it will remind me of what it was like to eat food before the ApocaCult unleashed their famine-droids to burn-destroy all our food-crops.
This idea had been floating around in my brain-head for a time-while, but after I saw Paul & Storm’s new video for “Write Like The Wind,” I decided it was time to take action-doings.
If you are anger-frustrated with sad-waiting for the next book, let George and the world know. Head on over to Sharksplode and check it out.
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A little Ferret tells me that the Lil’ Wil Wheaton plushie is going to go on presale this coming Monday (6/11) at midnight (Tuesday morning 6/12). The ONLY way to make sure you get one by the holidays is to order during the presale which I believe is going to be one week, maybe two.
The presale will be HERE in the HijiNKS ENSUE Store. They’ll be $20 + shipping.
We’ve been working on this thing for a year, and we’re REALLY proud of it. I hope you guys like it too. Who’s going to be the first to knit him a little clown sweater? Who’s going to give him a tiny Sparks McGee hat? Ohhh, what about a tiny Utilikilt or a complete dicebag conversion?
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PHOENIX COMICON IS THIS WEEKEND!!! I will be there with Blind Ferret at booths 707/806. Other fine webcomicers in attendance will be Randy, Danielle, and Spike at booth (table #517), and David and Rob (Artist Alley at table 649). Little Vampires (booth 712) will be there too! WHEATON will also be there and I suspect we will get into shenanigans[TM].
Last year was my first year at PHXCC and it was an absolute blast. The fans were great, the sales were great and the show is just incredibly well run. Next to Emerald City in Seattle it was certainly one of my favorite shows of 2011.
I will have: books 1 and 2, most of my shirts from the HE Store (not from Sharksplode), sketches, stickers and unexpected, nonconsensual chest bumps, bro-hugs and that move where a bride and groom drink champagne with interlocked arms. YOU are bringing the champagne.
If you choose to participate in the ancient right of a reader offering tribute to an artist at a convention, I am partial to cookies, Starbucks Doubleshot cans, Iced Soy Lattes, and little bottles of booze that can be clandestinely added to other drinks. I’m just sayin’.
Here’s a map of the entire show floor, that shows where we’ll be in relation to everything else. Seems like we’re right up front, so we shouldn’t be hard to find. Click to embiggen.
That said, so far 2012 and has been far more difficult financially than 2011 was. My readership is actually way down from the end of the last year. This directly affects every way that I make an income. Ad sales are down, merch sales are down, and donations are WAY down while expenses due to conventions and travel just keep going up and up. It’s been a tough few months and I’ve been constantly thinking about what I can do to turn things around. All of the way in which I can make money come down to simple numbers. The more people looking at my comics every day the less I will have to struggle to make a living. With that in mind I started evaluating why someone might enjoy my comic initially then stop reading it, or read it irregularly and eventually forget about it. I listened to what readers said at conventions, I talked with some of my peers and I studied what it was about comics in general that made people come back day after day.
At first, I thought the answer was “story.” Readers get hooked by story and can’t miss an update or they won’t know what’s happening. Well, HE doesn’t have a story, and I really never had any intention of working one in. The purpose of HE is to provide commentary on geek pop culture through the eyes of its characters… DING DING DING! Characters. That was the answer. The most popular story comics on the internet aren’t breaking any new ground. They primarily deal with relationships, jobs, emotional issues – sitcom stuff. These scenarios are NOT hard to come up with, and writing them has never held any real interest for me. So if it isn’t the amazing originality of the situations, it must be the characters and how they deal with the situations they are put into that people gravitate to so much. Now look, I KNOW this is common knowledge and had you asked me in ANY OTHER context than that of my own creative output, I would have been able to rattle off the answer instantly. I’d just never seen my comics that way.
Now here’s the rub. HE used to have a very strong character element along with the humor. I started looking back at old comics and thinking back to the comments I used to get an conventions and the emails I would receive and the number one positive remark I would get is that the “characters are just like me and my friends,” or “I love Josh because he reminds me of my friend,” etc. Then all of a sudden these comments stopped. What changed? I reread my old comics again and realized that as I started traveling more and my daughter got older (requiring more and more time for her extracurricular activities), I started seeing the real life Josh and Eli less and less. In fact, I probably haven’t seen either of them more than once or twice in 2012. Our social realities just don’t align that well any more. It’s a fact of life and a byproduct of having children. I don’t love them any less, and I don’t believe we have grown apart as friends. The time to just fuck around and be silly with each other just isn’t there nearly as often as it used to be.
The result of this decreased exposure to the inspiration for my characters was that I lost my crutch. I had never been forced to create personalities for the characters since I would just observe the real people behind them and exaggerate their actions and reactions. Sometime around the middle to end of 2011 I really started writing in a singular voice. Every character was interchangeable and while I think the joke writing got MUCH tighter as time went by, the character development essentially vanished. This was never more evident than in the fact that NO ONE ever seemed to know the names of the characters. As one of my peers, who I respect greatly, told me, “Your characters are interchangeable. People love our characters and that’s why they love the comic.” I used to say, “The characters in HE are just there to service the joke,” as if it was one of the selling points of the comic. If that was the case, why would I keep drawing the same guys over and over? I didn’t realize I was admitting a shortcoming of the strip and disguising it as a feature.
So where does that leave me? Well, this Friday May 11th is the 5 year anniversary of HijiNKS ENSUE. I think that’s as good a milestone as any to re-evaluate what I’m doing, what I should be doing and what direction I am heading in. To that end, I would like to announce a new experiment of sorts. I am going to start devoting more time in HijiNKS ENSUE to getting to know the characters. Not necessarily their jobs, relationship or other sitcom type stuff (which still doesn’t interest me), but more their characteristics, quirks and view points. I want to teach myself (by doing) how to write in a voice that is not my own. I want to recapture that individuality the HE characters had in the early years before they became prisoners of my own head and parrots for my own point of view. The best part of this new direction is, if I do it correctly you shouldn’t even notice the change. You might just find yourself more interested in checking the site more often and getting your friends interested in the comic as well.
The first step down this terrifying new path involves location. I am going to experiment with having the characters fixed at one location, setting or event for more than one comic at a time. Their conversations might carry over for several days before shifting to another topic. I believe the ancient Greeks called this con… continuity? Yes, I think that’s right. Again, these will not be stories per se, but rather little chunks of continuing subject matter (like the “Under The Bridge Downtown” comics). For starters all of the comics for this week, starting with THIS ONE, will take place at The Avengers (before, during and after the film). Depending on the response to this change, I may do this for a week or so at a time, and intersperse it with one off gags to break things up. Beyond that, I don’t really have a plan other than to try new things and see what feels right.
What do I need from you? Just to keep an open mind. If you are of the opinion that HE is perfect as is and should not change, all I can say is A) Thank you, and B) You are wrong. My audience plateaued over a year ago and hasn’t seen any sustained growth in that time. In order for me to reach my goals of financial stability, toiling in obscurity cannot be a part of the equation. Luckily for this fictional guy that loves the comic and fears change, I have no plans to change the actual humor of the strip. Just the context in which that humor is presented. For each 3 panel HE comic I usually write a page worth of dialog, then trim the fat. With this new format I should be able to write 3-4 pages of dialog on a few related subjects then actually craft that into a 3-4 comic arc. I would also appreciate it if you, after reading the comics this week, shared some feedback with me. I would rather that you email comics (at) hijinks ensue (dot) com with your thoughts than post them publicly, and I don’t necessarily want to know what you think until you’ve read all of this week’s comics, though I will never discourage honest communication (and you are certainly encouraged to comment on this post if you have questions or words of support). Then, if you dig the way things are going, how about telling EVERY SINGLE PERSON YOU KNOW? Post about HE on your Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc like an insane person who is extremely fixated on one particular geek comic and REALLY wants everyone else to read it. I would consider that a kindness.
I am extremely scared and pretty damn excited about trying something new. I hope you (and I) will be pleased with the results. I hope I will be making a somewhat similar post about the continuing future of HE in another 5 years. I hope people are still allowed to make fun of stuff on the Internet in 5 years. I hope the A.I. Arachno-drones that police our homes and monitor our thoughts will take favor with my offerings and allow me to continue to make a living through putting silly pixels on your computers.
Godspeed, You Fancy Bastards!
~Joel
Quick Links:
The Experiment Overview | The Whole HE Story | The “Digital Age” Artist’s Manifesto |
4 Year Experimentiversary, 5 Year Anniversary And More Experimenting
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I am going to be at Calgary Expo this coming weekend with Blind Ferret at booths 925/1025!
The whole cast of Star Trek: TNG is going to be there as well. Maybe you wanna come get a Star Trek themed sketch from me and THEN have your cast member of choice sign it? I can’t even guarantee they will do it, but it seems like a reasonable request, right?
This is my first big show in Canada. Please don’t let me down Canadian Fancy Bastards. My fragile Texan constitution is not suited to your frosty wilderness. Though I do hear that Calgary is basically the Dallas of Canada, what with all the oil and cowboy hats and what not. Is there also a lot of racism? Who-boy if there is, I will certainly feel at home (or just as uncomfortable as I always feel at home).
As always, I will remind you that conventioning is thirsty and hungry and often cookieless, boozeless work. Your contributions of iced soy lattes, cookies and assorted boozes are ALWAYS appreciated and will be rewarded with a hearty “THANK YOU!” and perhaps an UNCOMFORTABLY LONG HANDSHAKE!
Here is a handy map to help you locate me!
Click Map To Embiggen
C2E2 in Chicago is this weekend! I’ll be with Blind Ferret at Booth 432. I will have books 1 and 2, prints, shirts, sketch cards (new bigger sketch cards too!), stickers and firm handshakes coupled with sheepish glances. That last one is designed to confuse you concerning how I felt about our meeting.
Also our booth is directly next to Explosms!I predict no end to the shenanigans. Good times!
Click Map To Embiggen
Our panel last year was really the highlight of the show for me, and I’m hoping for a repeat performance.
Panel: Webcomics Roundtable With Blind Ferret and Explosm!
Date: 4/14/2012
Time: 4:00PM – 5:00PM
Location: N426c
Description: Join the professional Internet picture makers from Least I Could Do, Looking For Group, The Gutters, HijiNKS ENSUE and Cyanide and Happiness for an hour long Q and A as they reveal their deepest, darkest webcomicing secrets. Thrill at their unbridled shenanigans! Fear their brutal honesty! Recoil in terror as they don’t really answer any of the questions and just make fun of each other onstage for an hour! [official details here]
UPDATE: Looks like Cyanide & Happiness has ANOTHER panel (traitors) on Friday night at 6:15pm. So go see that one too I guess.
You Chicago FB’s saw how well Seattle did in the cookies, coffee, and booze gift department right? Are you going to let them show you up? I’m not sayin’ but I’m just sayin’. [iced or hot soy latte, Starbucks Doubleshots, rum, vodka, tequila, pretty much any kind of chocolate, no nut allergies]
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Hey, Seattle Fancy Bastards! I will be in your wonderfully overcast hamlet this weekend! Emerald City Comicon is without a doubt my favorite convention of the year and I am entirely too psyched to be exhibiting at it once again.
Even though the website and the program say I will be at booth 307, I will actually be at booth 306 (just around the corner) with Blind Ferret. You should still stop at booth 307 and spend all kinds of money, because my friends Gordon, Tom and Angela will be there. Angela will be debuting her new book (available for purchase now) and I highly recommend it. I won’t bother listing every other cartoonist or famous geeky person that will be there, because it’s essentially all of them. Seriously, this is THE BEST show.
I will have T-Shirts, books 1 and 2, prints, sketch cards, stickers. I will also sketch in or on anything you like for tips. This includes, but is not limited to sketch books, loose paper, motorcycle helmets (did one last year), faces, butts (dudes and ladies), boobs (dudes and ladies), and shovels.
I am doing 3 shows in the next 6 weeks or so and the cost of travel has hit me INCREDIBLY hard this year. If you are coming to one of the shows, please consider buying something or dropping a few bucks in the tip jar. If you would like to support my endeavors to get out there and see the Fancy Bastards in person you can make a donation. Your contribution will be GREATLY appreciated (cue Sarah McLaughlin song). In lieu of monitary support, I will say that conventions are hungry and thirsty and cookieless work. Feel entirely free to bring Starbucks Doubleshots, Iced Grande Soy Lattes, cookies or whatever to the booth. Those are the things that reall get a cartoonist through the day. Also booze. Just sayin’.
Last year at ECCC I had drinks with Jonathan Frakes. How are you going to top that Seattle? How?! Will I find a golden Batmobile with the keys in it? Seems like it would be too heavy to drive? How’s the mileage on this thing, anyway? Have you seen the price of gas lately? No thanks. I SAID NO THANKS!
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Me, Randy Milholland, David Willis, Danielle Corsetto, Jeph Jaques, Rob Denbleyker and MORE will be at the Dragon’s Lair Webcomic Rampage panel/signing event on December 10th and 11th. It is always a good time. Austin Fancy Bastard should NOT miss it.
I will have “The Doctor Is In” shirts, “Winter Is Coming” Shirts, HijiNKS ENSUE books, prints, sketches, stickers and furtive glances!
Saturday 8-11 pm
Sunday 12-5 pm
**Q&A panels by reservation only!**
Sat: 6-8 pm
Sun: 10-12 before signings
8-11 pm after signings
Austin-style Fancy Bastards, I am going to be at Austin Comic Con this weekend (Nov 11-13)! I will have books 1 and 2, “The Doctor Is In” shirts, “Winter Is Coming” shirts and just a few sizes of “Edward“ and “Ewok Stare.“ I will also have prints, stickers and sketch cards upon which I will draw nearly anything for a monetary tip of some kind.
I will be accompanied by my old HE summer intern (HEntern), James. He will be taking your cash, fetching your shirt sizes, running your credit cards, acting as my personal foot stool and side table, and doing a little jig at random intervals for my amusement. If you must pelt someone with things, that it was he is there for.
Also appearing at the con will be Dennis of LAWLS, who recently nearly died updating and fixing the CSS on my website, and the illustrious be-DeLoreaned Ernie Cline, author of Ready Player One. Now it isn’t just going to be the three of us. There are about 100 comics and genre TV/ movie guests as well. Damn near half the cast of Buffy is going to be there, so will certainly be able to get your Scooby-squee on. It’s a fun show with plenty to see, but it’s not overwhelming. Come. You will have geeky fun.
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Corn Mo And .357 Lover need your help to finish their next album! They have a Kickstarter to raise $5ooo and they are over halfway there with a month to go. I have had a rough mix of this album for over a year and I have worn the mp3’s down smooth.
It is nearly impossible to explain their sound to someone that hasn’t seen them live, but imagine the power and melody of Queen, the gravitas of KISS meets Tenacious D and the musicianship of… well Queen again, mixed with the lyrical irreverence of They Might Be Giants. Also, throw in some Dio for good measure. I promise you that they are making some of my favorite music of all time and they deserve your help. Plus they have a traditional Jewish arena Metal song about “Hava Nagila Monster.” Also a song about “Event Horizon.” So there. [Corn Mo Twitter/Web/Band Site/Youtube]
Stepto’s Audiobook is out now! GET IT HERE! It features a foreword be ME (also Wil Wheaton, Paul And Storm, Mike Phirman and other interest famous people)! A portion of the profits are going to the Child’s Play Charity, PLUS MY FOREWORD IS HILARIOUS! Oh, also the book which collects stories about 15 years of working at Microsoft and banning penis revealers from Xbox Live is pretty entertaining as well. DID I MENTION THE FOREWORD! It alone is worth the price of admission. [Stepto Twitter/Web]
How do you know these things are great? I get a lot of requests from readers and random people alike to post links to things. Maybe they have a blog or a company or whatever and they want to leverage the Fancy Bastards to increase awareness of their thing. The problem with asking strangers with a large audience to link to your thing is that it circumvents the authenticity and trust that gave me an audience in the first place. As a rule I only recommend products, services and sites that I actually like and would or do use myself. I’d like to think you read this comic because I am honest about my opinions and you either agree with my point of view or you at least find my way of looking at things interesting. So believe me when I say, these things are great and you should support them.
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I am going to be at New York Comic-Con with Blind Ferret this weekend (10-13 to 10-16, though I might be really late on Thursday due to my plane landing around when the show opens).
I will have books 1 and 2, T-Shirts (including the new “Winter Is Coming” shirt and maybe a debut of another new shirt), stickers, sketches and prints.
I am going to be staying in Brooklyn so I hope to hit up the Doctor Who themed bar, The Way Station. Maybe we can do a bit of an informal Fancy Bastard Meetup there.
While I am gone, I will be running a few guest comics created just for you by several of my webcomicing cohorts (Paul Southworth, Sam Logan, Randy Milholland and Alina Pete). Based on what I’ve seen so far, this will be the most epic HE guest week ever.
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I worked SO HARD on this design, you guys. I had to take the full color/water color effect I used in the original comic and distill it down to three colors. Not as easy task, but I am VERY pleased with the result. This is definitely one of the best shirts I’ve ever made. Please show your support for HE by picking one up in the store, or forwarding a link to your friends that might be into Game Of Thrones, Calvin and Hobbes or, god forbid, both.
Tweet it in the Facebook with your G+ or whatever Internet type situation you have. Let’s get the word out!
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If you are new to the site and you dig this comic, you might like some more comics about Doctor Who, Apple, Tech, Sci-Fi, featuring Chris Hardwick or our mutual friend Wil Wheaton. Also, the HIJINKS ENSUE STORE is a place where you can buy nerdy T-shirts and stuff.
Baltimore Comic-Con is the first show I ever exhibited at (2009), and for some reason has been the annual gathering spot for some of my most supportive readers. It’s a very low key show, focused almost entirely on comics. There is little to no media (TV, Movies, general entertainment industry) presence there which makes for a show that is easy to navigate and pretty stress free. I will be in the Artist Alley right next to Dannielle Corsetto at Table #A187 or so. I will have books 1 and 2, “The Doctor Is In” shirts, “Team Edward [James Olmos]” shirts and “Ewok Stare” shirts, plus prints, stickers and Fancy Sketches.
We have had a really fantastic Fancy Bastard meetup each year. This year FB Adam M. is taking it upon himself to plan the festivities. We are going to have a food, drinks, movie, party-type situation at his parents’ house (since they are locals and are totally the kind of cool parents that will buy us beer and let us stay up real late) and if you are interested in attending you can find the details HERE on G+ or talk to Adam directly on G+ or Twitter. Hope to see you at the show and the meetup!
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It’s only been live for a few hours so there are still some kinks to work out, and organizational things I plan on addressing, but for now please go check it out and maybe buy a book or a shirt or something. Shirts will be shipping soon after we all get back from Comic-Con.
You will also notice that the “Doctor Is In” shirt has moved from Sharksplode over to The HE Store. I did this because it was based on an HE comic and should be in the place where I am selling things based on the comic. After talking to Wil, we decided that instead of having Sharksplode as my second comic-related store (a confusing proposition for the reader, I admit) that it would instead be more useful as a repository of shirts and what not created from our random geeky ideas. I like this idea. I like this idea a lot.
Major thanks to Becker and the rest of the Blind Ferret team for getting this store up and running while they are simultaneously scrambling around to get to San Diego Comic-Con.
What’re you waiting for?! GO BUY SUMFIN!
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San Diego Comic-Con is this week! I will be with Ryan and Lar and Danielle at the Blind Ferret Booth [Booth 1332] in the Webcomic area. I will have books 1 and 2, prints, sketch cards, stickers and nearly all of my shirts.
This will be my debut show as a part of Blind Ferret Entertainment. This is a great partnership for me in that it will allow me to focus more on making comics and less on the administrative aspects of running a small business. Blind Ferret are going to be producing all of my T-Shirts, my books (no more 4 month preorders!), managing many of my convention appearances (which allows me to do bigger shows that I can’t afford to do on my own), and opening up possibilities for new kinds of HE merch like plushies and what not. The new Blind Ferret powered HE STORE will be opening soon. Hopefully right after comicon.
If you are going to be at the show, please come by booth 1332 and say hi. I will be the one going on 2 hours of sleep and propping my self up against Lar deSouza.
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Connecticon is upon us! This is my first year at the show, so it is up to you CT-area Fancy Bastards to come out and show your support so I can come back again. Come see me and David and Ryan and Lar and the Explosm quadruplets and much many mores!
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If you want something that is currently in the HE Store, you only have until the end of this week (Saturday 6/18/11) to get it before the store is shuttered for a few weeks. Even after the store is relaunched, the thing you want might not be available for a while. So go get stuff while the stuff gettin’s good!
There are several shirt designs that won’t be reprinted once the current stock is gone. Please check out this blog post to see which designs won’t be coming back, in case you want one of those.
Also if you are a fan of the larger (15″ wide) HE Comic prints that are currently in the store, this week is your last chance (probably forever) to get one of those. Individual comic prints may come back but they will be 8.5 x 11″ again.
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Sam had this to say:
I was telling Joel about how I sometimes come up with shirt ideas that work perfectly from a design sense, but express ideas that no human being would ever actually want to have on their body… only Joel thought [this horrible t-shirt] was a great idea!
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PHOENIX COMICON IS THIS WEEKEND!!! I will be there with Kel McDonald at TABLE 241. Also there will be Randy, and Danielle, and Spike, and Becky & Frank and WHEATON. It will be fun fun times. I may be around the show floor on Thursday but I probably won’t be exhibiting proper until Friday. This is a first time show for me, so please come out and make it a special one.
I WILL have “The Doctor Is In” shirts. This is the first con where I will actually have those in person. I will also have Ewok Stare shirts, books, stickers, prints and other such… suchiness.
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The Ladies Grey “And My Axe” shirts are also on crazy sale. They are $12 and there are only about 5 of them left. Get ’em while the gettin’ em’s good.
The British Knights Shirt and Sci-Fi Tv-Movie Title Generator Shirts are also not long for this world. They are regular priced for now, but in short supply and probably won’t be printed again.
Same goes for the Sci-Fi TV-Movi Title Generator Print. This is your last chance to get that one for the foreseeable future.
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The pallet of over 1000 books arrived at my house on 3/3/11. Immediately I left for Seattle, got home and left again for Chicago. Shipping books is my #1 priority now that C2E2 is over and I don’t have another con for about a month.
All Non-Artist Regular Editions have been shipped. Regular Artist editions are shipping now as I sketch them (usually in bundles of 10 or so). Non-Artist-UFE’s will all be leaving within 1 week of this post. There was a hold up on one of the stickers, but now all the goodies are in and can head out to you. UFE Artist Editions will also be leaving as I sketch them. This may take a little while because I refuse to do the “30 second sketch” you get from a lot of cartoonists. I will take the time to make your sketch special, so please be patient and bear with me. Thanks!
If you order the book (regular or artist edition) now, it will ship based on the rules outlined above.
Check the links below to see some of the Artist Edition Sketches I have already shipped out.
UPDATE 4/7: All Non-Artist Edition UFE’s have shipped.
UPDATE 4/11: All Regular Artist-Editions (save for a few special cases) have shipped.
UPDATE 7/1/11: All Preorders, UFE’s, etc have been shipped!!!
How did you do it, Chicago? What dark magiks did you employ to fuse the power of pizza with the form of pie? TELL ME! TELL ME YOUR DELICIOUS SECRET! OR AT LEAST GIVE ME SOME OF THAT PIZZA! OK, deal.
C2E2 IN CHICAGO IS THIS WEEKEND!!! I will be there with Randy [Something*Positive], Danielle [Girls With Slingshots] and David [Shortpacked & Dumbing Of Age]!
According to David [who seemed to have more info than I]: “we’re in booth 862, which is a corner booth in the back of the hall facing Artists Alley and the Webcomics Pavilion.”
I will have Ewok Stare shirts, Edward shirts, just a few Groverfield shirts, comic prints, and HE Book’s 1 and 2. I will also be at the Patton Oswalt/Comedy Deathray show Friday Night immediately after the show (6pm?). If you are going, feel free to come up and say hi. I won’t even punch you!
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OMG EMERALD CITY COMICON IS THIS WEEKEND!!! It is by far my favorite show of the year. Come see me and Angela at booth 307. Here’s a MAP to all the other webcomics I know that will be there. I will be at the Marian Call show in Seattle Thursday night. If any Fancy Bastards are in the audience, feel free to comic up and say hi. Due to my traveling, there will an unusual comic schedule this week. Probably a guest comic and maybe a few more Lo-FiJINKS comics than normal await you.
I will have Book 1 AND BOOK 2 FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, prints, buttons and sketch cards!
PS
Airfare, hotels, boothspace, merch, shipping, etc for con season have really hit me hard financially. I really enjoy doing these shows, but the costs can get overwhelming. If you would like to help out, please consider making a DONATION. Thanks!
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Starting now (actually last week) there will be 4 regular HE comic’s a week (usually Mon-Thurs) and a Lo-FiJINKS comic on Friday. There may occasionally be more Lo-FiJiNKS comics over the weekend. I felt it better to “show” before “telling” since my last announcement of “I’m doing 4 comics a week” was poorly timed around my convention schedule and never came to fruition.
I promise you that I WILL screw up and miss updates. I know myself too well to say otherwise. But I also promise you that I will make the best comics I possibly can as often as I can and continue to give them away for free.
If you like the idea of more comics, then how about setting up a donation subscription so I can maybe have less constant crippling anxiety about financial issues? Doing so will get you access to the Vault where I post all kinds of secret, behind the scenes art, photos, bonus podcasts, desktops and mobile wallpapers.
I should note that the decision to make this change has been rolling around in my brain-head for 6 months or so, but the final nudge over the edge came when I saw my friend Alina was doing the same thing. Seeing her step up and put her comics where her mouth is (???what???) really gave me the courage to do the same. Read her comic, Weregeek, and enjoy the LOLS.
Thanks for letting me continue to have the best job in the world. I am extraordinarily grateful.
“Godspeed, You Fancy Bastards”
~joel
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Guys, I made a giant comic for you! It just happens to be on a different website. My friend David Willis is taking his belated honeymoon this week (on JoCo Cruise Crazy of all places) and I did a guest comic for him over at Shortpacked.
Before you read it (and you MUST read it) you will need to familiarize yourself with the all too true story of how the US Post Office stole a box of David’s books and replaced them with the bottom half of a blender. I know it sounds like the craziest of fictions, but it is 100% tue and 100% robot-tits insane.
David also makes a comic about college life antics called Dumbing Of Age. Read heartily and enjoy!
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There is a special episode of the HE Podcast UP NOW. It is a webcomics panel recorded at the annual Dragon’s Lair Webcomic Rampage event in Austin, TX. Enjoy!
It features myself, Danielle Corsetto of Girls With Slingshots, Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content, David Willis of Shortpacked and Randal Milholland of Something Positive.
If you like listening to friends tell stories about stalkers, shitty jobs and making a living doing what they love, I think you will appreciate this.
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You can pick up the book in 4 delicious flavors: Regular, Regular Artist Edition, Ultimate Fancy Edition and Ultimate Fancy Artist Edition. Other than conventions this will probably be your only chance to get a personalized and sketched book. You can also add a SUPREME ULTIMATE FANCY BASTARD Donation upgrade to your order if you would REALLY like to support HE and help with the astronomical costs of printing actual full color books on actual paper (we’re talking $8000 – $10,000 here).
This year the Artist Editions are cheeper ($10 instead of $15) and the Ultimate Fancy Editions have more Ultimateness. If you weren’t around last year, the UFE’s are a special limited edition bundle (200 150 orders) that have a $10 donation built in to help with financing the book (see above, re: astronomical). In addition to a signed and numbered book, you will also get a signed and numbered print based on the cover art, 2 stickers, an “Ultimate Fancy Bastard” button, and YOUR NAME IN THE BOOK on the Fancy Bastard Wall of Fancy Fame.
If all goes well the books will ship late February 2011. In case you are giving this as a gift for the 2010 holiday times, I will make a printable “No, I really did get you something” card available for download shortly.
I already know [hopehopehope] this is going to be a huge success and that is due 100% to you guys. So thanks in advance for allowing me continue to have the most amazing job in the world.
~Joel
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The pack is $15 and you get 12 cards (3 of each design). By large demand there is a “I’m a Snowflake On The Wind” card, an Xmas-ized version of “If Loving You Is Wrong…“, and 2 brand new designs feating the Zombiefied HE Crew and Boxcar Pete commanding a legion of rats!
]]>HijiNKS ENSUE Volume 2: My Heart Is A Hate-Filled Pineapple
HijiNKS ENSUE Volume 2: A Hate-Filled Pineapple
[both in reference to The Evil Fox Executive explaining why he is so evil]
HijiNKS ENSUE Volume 2: The Doom Engine
HijiNKS ENSUE Volume 2: The Doom Furnace
[both in reference to The Evil Fox Executive stealing geek tears to fuel FOX’s empire]
HijiNKS ENSUE Volume 2: Triumph Of The Usurper
HijiNKS ENSUE Volume 2: We’ll Fix It In Post
HijiNKS ENSUE Volume 2: Live-Tweeting The Apocalypse
Please cast your vote in the comments (like NOW since I need to be drawing it NOW). I am not currently looking for alternate titles. Thanks!
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Then, through the magic of Twitter and The Internet I was able to interview the very same Chris Hardwick while he was in Dallas doing a few stand up gigs. Chris killed with murder-style laugh-times on stage and was extremely gracious and kind off stage. I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation as much as I enjoyed… conversating it.
LISTEN to or DOWNLOAD the podcast HERE
SUBSCRIBE to The HijiNKS ENSUE Podcast in iTunes or via RSS
If you Fancy Bastards aren’t already clued in to The Nerdist, you must check out his BLOG, The Nerdist Podcast (Matt Smith is the most recent guest) and The Node (a crowdsourcing/nerdsourcing/problem solving online community). Much like The Freemasons, it is invite only. So you’ll need to learn the secret handshake and go through the spanking machine to get in.
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[based on THIS COMIC]
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[Based on THIS COMIC]
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My buddy David Willis has posted all of the relevant info:
Hey, dudes, there’s one last hurrah for me this convention season, and it’s a doozy! On December 11-12, Dragon’s Lair Comics in Austin, Texas, is holding Webcomic Rampage [link to Facebook Event]! It’s Saturday and Sunday, each day beginning with a panel featuring all of us webcomics guests, and culminating in some Webcomics Christmas Shopping. Who’s coming?
David Willis of Shortpacked!/Dumbing of Age
Danielle Coresetto of Girls with Slingshots!
Joel Watson of Hijinks Ensue
Bill Williams of Side Chicks
Randy Milholland of Something Positive
Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content
Josh Lesnick of GirlyThese are all awesome people and Webcomic Rampage is going to be awesome. Be there!
Last year this was a fantastic and informal show with tons of creators and readers just hanging out and talking comics. I had a blast and can’t wait to do it again.
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This weekend (November 12-14) I will be sharing a table at Austin Comic-Con with Randy from Something*Positive (Randy will only be there Saturday and Sunday). Saturday night after the con we are going to have a joint reader meetup at [location to be determined by you!].
If you are an Austin local, please feel free to suggest a good place for the meetup within general walking (or short driving) distance from the Austin Convention Center (which is located at 500 East Ceaser Chavez). It’s right in the heart of downtown so there should be plenty of choices.
We are looking for a place that serves food and drinks (preferably BBQ), has more of a “hang out” atmosphere than a bar atmosphere and can accommodate medium to large crowds comfortably. Make a comment below with your suggestions and Randy and I will pick a winner.
These locations have already been suggested. Feel free to comment on these as well:
- G’raj Mahal
- Frank
- Moonshine
- The Hideout
UPDATE: Looks like we are going to Iron Works BBQ which is right outside the convention center. The show officially ends at 7pm, so let’s meet there between 7:30 and 8pm.
I really hope to see you there. Reader meetups are always super fun times.
]]>With that in mind, I have a plan. If the HE Podcast is going to continue it needs to contribute to my ability to make it as an independent artist. That is why I am starting a DONATION SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE to keep the podcast alive. If we can reach my goal of 300 recurring donation subscribers (at $5, $10, $15 or $20 a month) by the end of the year (and maintain 300 subscribers or above there after) I will keep the podcast going once a week for the foreseeable future. If by the end of the year we are nowhere close to that goal, I will have to consider retiring it for good.
The good news is there are already about 80 donation subscribers now, so there’s a decent head start. As a thank you for your subscriptions you will get access to The Vault where I will continue to post bonus podcast content and Podcast Post Shows (in addition to all of the regular comic-related Vault stuff). For our comeback episode I have already put up the Post Show and a special uncut version of Podcast Episode 66. Basically it’s the entire show with no editing, which comes to about 25 minutes of extra nonsense. It was Josh’s idea so if it sucks, blame him. If it’s great, it was totally my doing.
So there you have it. If you love the podcast and you can help with a donation subscription, please do so by STARTING YOUR SUBSCRIPTION TODAY. If you can’t swing $5 a month (or even if you can), you can also help by posting a positive review of the show on iTunes. If the show gets greater exposure, it will be easier to eventually attract sponsors.
Thanks!
~Joel
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I am super proud of this design, as it took over a year and at least 6 complete do-overs to get right.
If you would like to support HijiNKS ENSUE, picking up this shirt would be a great way to do so. You can also submit this post to your favorite sci-fi and general geek interest blogs/news sites to spread the word.
Here’s a close up pic. [click to embiggen]
1) Original “Scott Adsit” comic art from Heroes Con 2010 w/ comic print: $35 + $4 shipping US
Comic is drawn on Bristol Board in India Ink and Prisma Marker
[click to embiggen]
2) Original “Anime Convention” comic art from Dallas Animefest 2010 featuring David Willis w/comic print (not shown): $35 + $4 shipping US
Comic is drawn on Bristol Board w/ Copic and Prisma markers
[click to embiggen]
3)SOLD “David Willis Quintesson Tentacles” Original Art from Dallas Animefest 2010: $30 + $4 shipping US
Drawn on Bristol Board in Copic and Prisma markers
[click to embiggen]
4) SOLDEarly Sketch Collection – 5 Pieces: $25 + $4 shipping US
Drawn on heavy weight sketch pad paper with various pens and Prisma markers
I drew all of these at the airport on my way to my first convention (Baltimore Comic-Con 2009). I was debuting the first HE book at the con and I was nervous about sketching in the books, having always worked 100% digitally, so I used these sketches as some last minute practice before having to perform in front of a live audience. These are some of the first ACTUAL sketches involving HE characters that I ever did. The vampire cat was a Twitter suggestion from a reader.
[click to embiggen]
Most of you know that I still work 100% digitally so I really only do REAL art with ACTUAL art supplies at conventions which makes this stuff pretty rare.
Thanks!
~Joel
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I’ve always thought my comics looked at least 60% better when viewed at a larger size. Now when you buy a comic print you can get them at the size I actually draw them! No more secret pixels that only I know about. Also, when you click “Buy A Print” beneath a comic it will autofill the URL of the comic in your order. Pretty cool stuff.
Just so you know, this is relative size difference between the web art you see on the site and the size of the art on the new prints:
[click to embiggen]
VS.
[click to embiggen]
Frumph was the lead developer on Comicpress for several years which is the WordPress theme that runs 90% of the comics you read. He is starting a new fork of that project called Comic Easel (which I’m sure we will all be using when it is released). Frumph spends most of his nights working on sites for webcomics artists and often (if not usually) free of charge. Chances are near 100% that at least one of comics you read besides HE has been bailed out by Frumph on more than one occasion. With that in mind I ask that you to toss a few bucks in his donation bucket to help with the development costs of his new project. The webcomic community has benefited greatly from his efforts and will continue to do so as long as he is able to keep going. Let’s help him out, alright?
Donate to Frumph!
Also, special thanks to Joenis/Denis/Slug (he goes by a few names) who makes a comic called L.A.W.L.S. for pitching in and doing a lot of the CSS work for the new site. Without his help it definitely wouldn’t be ready yet. His art is really fantastic and you should check it out.
I hope you enjoy the new layout of the site. It will be at least a week until everything is buttoned up and the placeholders are removed. If anything seems broken, feel free to comment below and I’ll add it to the bug list. Oh! And I’ve spent the last week reformatting all the 2009-2010 comics. They are now 60 pixels wider and include the title in the comic. Whatever percentage 60 pixels is out of the original 760px, that’s how much bigger they are! For FREE! Enjoy your embarrassment of pixel riches.
]]>Shortpacked! Panel – AnimeFest 2010 from John DeLuna on Vimeo.
From AnimeFest 2010 in Dallas, TX. David Willis (aka Walky) discusses his webcomics and much more! …well, not much more actually.
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I will be in the Artist Alley at table A164 with Fancy Bastard Alex (Mechamenchi) at my side. Here’s a FULL MAP OF THE SHOW and here’s a closer look at my table:
[click to embiggen]
Baltimore FB meetup will be Saturday night August 28th around 6:30 & 7pm. We will meet up outside the convention center and go to an eating establishment within walking distance. 4 or 5 of you have already said you’d be coming, but the more the fancier.
Please comment below of you think you will be able to make it.
Follow me on TWITTER for updates on the Meetup as we get the plans finalized.
At the show I will have shirts, books, stickers, buttons, comic prints and a few select large (11″ x 17″) prints such as the “Snowflake” and “Under The Bridge” designs. I am only bringing 4 or 5 of each of those. I will also be doing sketch cards for donations.
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July 1st – July 31st will be your LAST CHANCE to get a PERSONALIZED HE BOOK 1 ARTIST EDITION until the 2011 holiday season!!!
ORDER NOW or forever (or for like 6 months) hold on to your funds!
After July 31st you will be able to order the book through my Topatoco store in regular and (non-personalized, as in “pre drawn”) Artist Edition flavors. If you want something special in your HE book 1 you must act nowish.
CANDID MOMENT TIME: Paying the bills has been pretty difficult lately, so if you would like to see HE continue to… continue please consider making a donation or subscribing for a rolling monthly donation or picking up something from the HE Store.
I have several hundred of these books just waiting to be adopted by a good home. I’m not saying they are going to be euthanized because that implies their deaths would be painless and they are actually going to be murdered horribly if you don’t buy them.
The support of the Fancy Bastards is THE ONLY reason I am able to do HE as my full time job. I know this sounds like a desperate plee (because it is), but if and when that support dries up, so goes the comic.
Thanks!
~Joel
]]>
BEHOLD! I have decrypted the ancient science fiction cypher from which unspeakable beasts are birthed onto your television! What monsters will you create now that you know the secret? Dinoyeti? Chupaconda? Arachnodile? Tractorsaurus? Sharkshark?
Based on THIS COMIC.
There is also a PRINT of this design too!
Based on THIS COMIC and expertly colored by Silkspinner from Complex Actions who you may also remember from THIS GUEST COMIC.
$15 + shipping.
Printed at 11″X17″ on high quality stock.
Suitable for framing.
Since Tom did all the grunt work, I will simply help paint a clearer picture of the weekend’s event with a few photos and videos.
[Me and my boothmate Gordon from Multiplex]
[The Great Steal Bean of Chicago: A gift from the same ancient astronauts that brought us bratwurst and mustaches]
[The same park had two giant glass obelisks featuring the vissage of the love child of Bruce Willis and Sly Stalone]
[Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would have assumed “Mojo” cosplay to be impossible]
[Matt, Chris and Rob from Cyanide and Happiness. I spent most of the weekend with these guys. Let me say that tuxedos do not do them justice. They are gentlemen and scholars each. Also, I owe Chris a great debt for introducing me to the concept of “Yeti Murphy.”]
[FB Colin was a super nice dude. I drew him a picture of Denise eating a penguin and he drove me and Matt (from CnH) to the airport. Again, I say, Super Nice Dude. ]
[A closeup of Denise’s culinary adventures]
[In the future (or possibly distant alternate past) we will all be wearing pneumatic steam punk stilts]
[One webcomics fan was asking everyone to draw dicks. I asked him what kind of dick and he replied “any dick will do.” Thus my new comic was born. I still need to register the URL.]
[I spent the whole weekend staring at Erica Moen and Lucy Knisley. Not because they are pretty girls that draw awesome comics, but because they were seated across from me. You pervs.]
[Alina was across the isle and one booth over so I spent less time staring at her. Sorry, Alina. I will affix my manic gaze at you at a future con.]
[Chis and David were next to Alina. Oddly enough I couldn’t NOT stare at them. Constantly. I really enjoyed talking Transformers with David. He is a living Encyclopedia Cybertonica.]
[One FB had heard of our exploits at the Karaoke Bar the night before and asked for a sketch commemorating a gang of comics nerds utterly destroying a drunken, stupefied bachelor/bachelorette party.]
VIDEOS [You can’t see anything but the audio is good]:
- LINK – Me doing “Mr. Roboto”
- LINK – Dave from Dead Winter doing “Fuel” (yes that’s me chiming in in the middle). It’s a real shame I didn’t get any of him doing Megadeth.
- LINK – Abby, Spike and Kel doing “Barbie Girl”
[After karaoke, Spike was kind enough to invite us to her home for an little after party. Here she is comforting her slightly (entirely) neurotic dog. He felt like a velvet penis.]
[I was glad that I got a chance to meet and hang out with Zach from SMBC. He wears shorts and sandals in 40 degree Chicago weather as if to damn the gods. I like this guy.]
[One of David‘s readers brought him a real KFC Doubledown. David died 23 minutes later. Rest in peace sweet prince of action figures.]
[I did not manage to steal these from the Iron Man auction. My plan was the grab it, plug it into one of the gloves them repulsor my way back to Texas.]
[I finished my stay in Chicago right with a genuine deep dish pizza and good conversation with Danielle and Jessi.]
[This is my favorite pic from the con. Me, Danielle, super-reader Marty and Uncle Randy power up our Webcomics Wonder Triplet Rings.]
C2E2 is THIS WEEKEND!!! April 16-18
I will be at booth WC-B in the Webcomics Pavillion with Gordon McAlpin of Multiplex. We will be a few tables over from Girls With Slingshots/Something*Positive and right across from Shortpacked, WereGeek and Erica Moen/Lucy Knisley.
You’ll also be able to find (right in that same area) Theater Hopper, Explosm, PVP/Halfpixel/Webcomics.com, Least I Could Do/ Looking for Group and Topatoco featuring: Questionable Content, Pictures for Sad Children, MS Paint Adventures, Overcompensating, Wigu, Wondermark!, GunShow , SMBC, Nedroid and (one would assume) hundreds more!
There are a billion comic book and media types that are going to be there as well. A solid billion. I’ve counted.
I will also be a part of the Webcomics Town Hall panel which will take place Friday night in Room E450 from 7:15pm to 8:15pm.
That took me an hour to research and write. That should tell you how amazing this con is going to be. I hope to see you there!
]]>If you are fairly new to HE and The Experiment and would like to show your support, please consider getting a book or shirt in the store or making a donation.
As part of the next phase of The Experiment, I am now producing HijiNKS ENSUE 4 times a week. I know it’s going to be rocky at first upping my output like this but I really think it is imperative to the survival of the comic that I get as close to one comic a day as possible.
UPDATE: I spoke too soon. While it is still my goal to produce HE at least 4 times a week, so far it has proven impossible due to travel, cons and other obligations. WAY TO FAIL!
I am also happy to announce that I was asked by Olmos Productions, Inc. to design a new shirt for them based on the meeting that took place last year between the cast of Battlestar Galactica and delegates of the United Nations. Please check it out HERE and send the link to any scifi/BSG blogs or forums that you frequent.
]]>
Don’t forget Houstonian Fancy Bastards, Comicpalooza is this weekend!
Guests include: Nicholas Brendon, Bruce Campbell, Dichen Lachman from Dollhouse, Peter Mayhew, Ray Park, a million comicbook pros and a hundred million more people of various influence and interest!
I will be doing a webcomics panel with Randy, Malki! and Phil Foglio. Check HERE for exact date and time of the panel.
What am I bringing? Tons of Book 1, Groverfield shirts, Edward shirts, Sci-Five shirts, stickers, buttons,“Snowflake” prints, and I’m debuting two new 11X17″ prints: “The Proposal” and “Space Jesus”!
I really hope to see you there!
Riker? I Hardly Know Her! T-Shirt
Also I’m cleaning house in the HE Store, so until Feb 20th these 5 shirt designs will be on sale for $18 then retired for the foreseeable future. You can probably find a 15% discount code if you check out my Twitterfeed.
UPDATE: All discontinued shirts have been moved HERE. Email store(at)hijinksensue(dot)com if you would like to inquire about ordering one.
]]>
I’ve worked my ass off on this one for the last two days straight. It might look simple but there’s at least 16-20 hours of design time hidden within those blue-tinted pixels. For my troubles I have caught a cold, or possibly the dreaded pork flu. I exist in a haze or alternating OTC medications and am subsisting entirely on cough drops and a different bag of cough drops. So I guess I’m saying that you should pity me and buy the shirt to make me feel better. Maybe that’s just the Sudafed/Tylenol Night Time Syrup/Ibuprophen cocktail talking.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON IN THE STORE?
There are big ass “I’m A Snowflake On the Wind” prints, the first ever HE Button Pack and important holiday shipping deadlines for you to check out as well.
I also want to say thanks to everyone that purchased something during the first ever HE Black Friday Sale. It was smashing success and will certainly be repeated in an annual fashion.
]]>If you are planning on ordering something for the HE Store for the holidays, PLEASE READ!!!
Some of my SHIRTS ship from Topatoco. READ THEIR DEADLINES HERE.
Some of my SHIRTS don’t ship from Topatoco
-12/2 is the cutt off for International/Canada
-12/4 is the cut off for US orders
BOOKS ship from my home.
-USPS Domestic Priority Mail Regular Editions should be ordered by Dec. 15th
-USPS Domestic Priority Mail Artist Editions should be ordered by Dec 7th
-International Orders probably won’t arrive by 12/25 if you haven’t already ordered them.
Canada and UK may be the exception to the rule since they ship pretty fast, but I can’t guarantee anything at this point.
PRINTS have the same deadlines as Regular Books.
]]>- BOOKS are $5 off
- SHIRTS are $4 off [except for Topatoco Shirts who’s prices I don’t control]
- SIGNED COMIC PRINTS are $4 off
- The BRAND NEW 11″X17″ ‘I’m A Snowflake On The Wind’ COMIC PRINT is $5 off
- The BRAND NEW HE BUTTONS are… regular price. But they’re NEW!
Depending on how well this goes (and whether or not I’m feeling saucy) I may extend the sale past Saturday 11/28 and into Sunday. Test my sauciness! I dare you!
]]>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
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!
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
]]>
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).
- I will sign, personalize and sketch in your book
- 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
]]>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
]]>
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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>
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.
]]>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.
Internet + General Geekery
-
Man bites off tip of own penis + Friend bites man’s penis off and swallows it + Raccoon bites off man’s penis after attempted rape
- Dallas Douchebag Tea Party
TV
-
Dollhouse And Terminator Really Not Canceled Yet, Say Insiders
- Joel sort of recommends “Pitchmen” on Discovery
Movies
The Mail Sack
- Reader Questions are in the comments below
The Post Show
]]>So now it’s “do or die” time. Phase 1 of The Experiment was all about “make the best comic you can and see what happens money-wise.” Phase 2 (this is Phase 2) is all about “The comic is pretty good, let’s get serious about the money part!”
A big part of the new money seriousness is that the fine folks at Topatoco will now be selling HijiNKS Ensue Shirts along with the shirts they already offer from all of your other favorite webcomics.
This is a pretty big deal for me and it’s great news for you. Topatoco is a top notch operation and all they do is sell webcomics merchandise. The shirts are cheaper than they were before, the are professionally screenprinted and you can save on shipping when you buy multiple shirts from me or any other artist. I’m extremely excited. I really want the Topatoco guys to see they made the right choice in adding HijiNKS Ensue to their roster and a great way to show them would be to pick up one (or all) of the new shirts (hint cough hint).
What about the old store? It’s still there… for now. It’s run through Yahoo Stores and I have ALWAYS hated their back end and every other aspect of using them, so I will be shutting this store down in the next couple of weeks. You can still purchase any of the shirts or prints available in the old store as long as it’s still there. I will be moving to a different store front service (same URL for your convenience) shortly. You will still be able to buy prints there and eventually it will have the first HE book. Seriously. I’m watching my wife lay it out right now. It’s happening. I will probably still offer some of the non-Topatoco shirts in the store but not many. If there’s one you want I would suggest getting it now.
What about the Donation Drive? Your monthly donations currently total a little over $700. I am so freaking grateful for this, I can barely express it. The original idea was to reach a goal of $1500 in monthly donation subscriptions. Then the economy went to shit and the donations dried up. Anyone who has donated any amount, especially those of you that have stuck it out and continued your subscriptions have my heartfelt thanks. I’m not going to be shooting for a specific goal any more with the donations. Instead I’m just going to post the monthly totals in the sidebar of the site. I don’t want you guys to feel like “we are never going to get there” in terms of donations. What you are doing now is already more generous than I could have ever imagined.
What about The Vault? The Vault is the “premium content” site that all donators and subscribers get access to. I have big plans for it in this phase of The Experiment, but you can already get Post Shows for the HE Podcast, Destop Wallpapers, iPhone Wallpapers, unfinished art, behind the scenes/making of type stuff, and much more when you donate or subscrbe.
So that’s the current “State of The Experiment.” Treading water but hopeful. The new shirts, the book, and a few other things I have planned for this year are really going to decide the fate of HijiNKS Ensue. If you want to help (with money) you can buy a shirt, buy a print or subscribe to The Vault. If you want to help (without money) you can tell a friend about the site, post a comic on your blog, or send me an encouraging email. Every little bit helps.
Thank you all so much for making the last 12 months so geektastically amazing.
-Joel
]]>Big HE announcement coming in a week or two (a good one).
-Joel
]]>Most HE comics are 100% digital from beginning to end so I hardly ever put pen and pencil to paper. Other than the very first few HE comics (which I am saving for now) these are some of the ONLY original comic art pieces I have.
You can bid on the original art for The NeverDigging Story over HERE:
And the original art for Christian Slater’s My New BFF over HERE:
You will also get a signed print of the final comic which I will be happy to customize with the message of your choice.
UPDATE: Fixed bad links for the first comic auction.
I am very happy to announce that I will be attending the New England Webcomics Weekend in Easthampton, MA from March 20-22. If you haven’t already heard, Webcomics Weekend is a gathering of the webcomic minds so to speak. It’s not really supposed to be a con, but it will feature signings, open studio tours and the chance to hang out with more than 30 of your favorite webcartoonists. Also, it’s completely free to attend.
I will be there to hang out with my fellow cartoonists and Fancy Bastards alike for all 3 days. I want to give very special thanks to FB JustChristine who, after hearing how badly I wanted to attend this event, donated a plane ticket. Without her generosity, this trip certainly wouldn’t have been possible.
I still need to raise a little cash to pay for hotel, transportation and food. If you’d like to help you can make a Donation and put “Webcomics Weekend” in the comment box. I will make sure that money goes to funding my trip and in no way provides food or shelter for my family.
I will also be auctioning off/ selling some original art this week. Check back for an update on that in a day or two.
If you plan to attend, leave a comment. I already know a short list of FB’s that will be there. I think this thing is going to be pretty effing awesome and I would love to share it with you guys.
]]>-
The CW Orders A VAMPIRE DIARIES Pilot update to 30 Days of Twilight
-
Christian Bale apologizes and The Christian Bale Flip Out According to the Other Guy update to Do You Like Phil Collins?
-
Want To Get A First Glimpse Of Tron 2? update to 2 TRON 2B 4 GOTTEN
-
Coraline Brings Back The Scary Fairy Tale update to The Head of Many Nails
-
Joaquin Phoenix Stands By Rapper Act, Calls Career Change “Weird” and Did Joaquin Phoenix Pulls A Crispin Glover On Letterman and Joaquin Phoenix’s Rap Career Isn’t A Hoax update to Being Joaquin Phoenix
-
Large Hadron Collider to re-start in September update to With So Much Drama In The LHC
-
Petition to Strike Joker from Future update to Why So Posthumous?
-
Apple says jailbreaking is illegal update to Hoboes are basically worthless
-
Joss Whedon’s ‘Dollhouse’ Is A Flop and Have a Little Faith in Dollhouse update to Stacking The Odds
-
SARAH CONNOR’s Ratings Plummet Another 27%!! update to The Chronic-What?-cles of Sarah Connor
-
THREE Jane Austen Science Fiction Movies In The Pipeline? update to Pride and BRAAAINS!
-
50% of Charges Against Pirate Bay Dropped update to S.W.A.T. (Swedish Weapons and Torrents)
-
Joss Whedon Abandoning TV for Good, Turning to Web update to Comic-Con ‘08 Revelations Pt. 1 “SereniTube”
(Download 580k – Print this out landscape style on 8.5 x 11 paper and fold it over to complete the romantic magic)
]]>Here’s a preview:
Thanks for being patient Fancy Bastards.
-Joel
]]>
I am available for:
- Freelance Illustration
- Freelance Cartooning
- Photoshop/ Photo Manipulation
- Graphic Design/ Print Design
- Creative Consulting
- Speaking Engagements
If you know of a project that I might be a good fit for, email me and let me know. Right now I am considering all offers (big and small). I recently designed a T-Shirt for one of our very own FB’s. You can see it here.
Freelance Illustration, Freelance Illustrator, Freelance Cartoonist, Freelance Cartooning, Dallas TX Illustrator, DFW Freelance Cartoonist, character design, graphic design
]]>- The Recession, As Performed By Microsoft’s Songsmith and So Bad It Hurts: Classic Hits By Microsoft Songsmith and SongSmith: Flawed music software produces comedy gold updates to Like a Blacksmith, But For Songs
- Battlestar Galactica: The Timeline update to If This Battlestar’s A-Rockin’
- Spreadsheet of artists, bands, and record labels on Twitter update to Tweroes and Twillains
- Cheney Leaves VP Residence, Takes Pixelated Google Map with Him update to Dick Everlasting
- The Pirate Bay Gets Ready for Court Case update to S.W.A.T. (Swedish Weapons and Torrents)
- Barack Obama Really Loves His Blackberry (PICS) and Confirmed: Obama gets his BlackBerry, no Sectera Edge in sight and Obama Allowed to Keep BlackBerry, Must Use Sectera Edge For Official Business update to Adjusting To Change
- The Recession Hits BSG Fans Hard [Battlestar Galactica Auction] update to Going Once, Going Thrace, SOLD!
To get to these goodies, you can either subscribe to The Vault to get access every month, or make a one time donation and get access for one month.
If you are new to HijiNKS Ensue, please check out The Experiment to get an idea of what this comic and your support for it mean to me.
In The Vault you will also find:
- The HE Podcast Post Show (usually 45 min – 1 hour of extra Podcastery for each show)
- Behind the scenes art
- Works in Progress
- Original concept art and early comics that have never been published before
You can also see the other guest comics I’ve done for PVP and Unshelved and such HERE.
]]>Why not use today as an opportunity to check out the Fancy Bastard Forum. Here’s what’s been going on this week:
- Favourite underrated video games
- Help name the HE Book Club
- My first macbook
- How did you find HE?
- Wolverine and the X-Men
- NY Comicon 09! Fancy Bastard Meet Up
- Battlestar Galactica Discussion
-
How many AAAAAs in Khaaaaaaaan? update to The Grieving Process
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Psystar continues to be stubborn update to I keep calling them “Pie Star”
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Heath Ledger kicks some more alive people ass at Golden Globes update to Why So Posthumous?
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Is the Zune About To Become Extinct? update to MACaveli
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Nolan Thinking About TDK Sequel, New Joker a Possiblity update to (An HE Podcast where we addressed this topic… which one was it?)
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Is Apple Really Happy to Let Go of DRM? Don’t Bet on It update to Give Me Something To Bitch About and Technobillies
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Real Life Superheroes On the Rise (Really) [Reals] update to (Another HE Podcast where we addressed this topic… which one was it?)
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Who should direct ‘Twilight’ Sequels? update to 30 Days of Twilight
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JK Rowling’s Tales Of The Beedle Bard Becoming A Movie update to And The Deathly Spoilers
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Tina Fey: Sarah Palin impression wasn’t ‘mean’ (Now with bonus scar story!) update to VPILF
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Good News: Astronauts Can Drink Their Own Urine [Urine Luck] update to Abort Launch Sequence
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Ridley Scott to Direct ‘Monopoly’ Film update to Battleship: The Movie, The Game, The Breakfast Cereal
Click the orange icon to go to the sign up page. I’ll be adding a sidebar widget later today with a link to the sign up page as well.
On to the aforementioned “Other Goodness”
- A quick reminder: if you aren’t already following me on Twitter, you probably should. It’s the best way to communicate with me through out the day other than email. I post most of my day to day stuff there as opposed to making full on blog posts.
- Jackson Ferrell from “This Week In Webcomics” did an awesome write up about HE and The Experiment.
- Fancy Bastard KravStorm is writing a play about HijiNKS Ensue. Or, rather a play starring the HE cast transposed into a sporting goods store. I believe this is officially the first HE fanfic. It hasn’t taken the turn into “slash” territory yet, but it’s also not finished...
- Fancy Bastard PatrickCentral showed off his geek projecting skills by making the “Problem Button” from Venture Brothers. Check out his other projects and despair at the geekitude.
- Will Smith gives big to Scientology
(update to Yo, Homes, Smell Ya’ Later)
Bonus link The History Of Xenu, As Explained By L. Ron Hubbard In 8 Minutes
- Walmart has a change of heart, decides to maintain DRM servers
(update to Technobillies) - Fox exec on Dollhouse – “We can give them 12 or 13 weeks to find an audience”
(update to My Uncle The Astronaut) - Smallville Season 9?
(update to Clarkanthropy)
-
5 Ways To Fix A Stuck Pixel On Your Screen
(update to It’s Hardly Noticeable) -
LHC Might Not Be Back Online Until 2010 or Later
(update to With So Much Drama In The LHC) -
Family of man trampled to death sues Wal-Mart and
Walmart Shoppers Cracked Jokes at Trampled Worker’s Expense
(update to In Blackest Friday)
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‘Jurassic Park 4’ Called Off Because of Crichton’s Death/Ghost
(update to Jurassic Park 4: Freakin’ Dinosaurs with Freakin’ Laser Beams) -
Exclusive: Bryan Fuller’s Rx for ‘Heroes’
(update to There Goes My Hero) -
‘Day the Earth Stood Still’ Playing in Alpha Centauri, 2012
(update to Keanuaatu) -
Watch The Dark Knight Blu-ray LIVE with Christopher Nolan
(update to Mysterious Scientific Theatrics) - The Question Of Whether Abrams’ STAR TREK Is Truly Canon Has Been Answered…Sort Of…
(update toWhere No Man Has Gotten Freaky Before) -
TR2N …All 3-D!!
(update to 2 TRON 2B 4 GOTTEN) -
on the importance of maintaining one’s grip on reality
(update to Tweroes and Twillains)
There. That should kill some time at the end of your Thursday work day.
]]>- I’m leaving for a family Xmas road trip to my home town. We’ve been packing and preparing all day so Friday’s comic will probably be up sometime during the day on Friday (assuming I can find internet access). I will probably be away from email, comments and such while I’m out of town, but I’m sure I will still be available on Twitter via the iPhone.
- Speaking of Twitter, you might want to check out my feed if you are interested in coupons for the HE Store. I’m just sayin’ is all.
- Avatars are back in the store for a limited time.
- 3 of your very own Fancy Bastards will be providing guest comics for the week of Xmas. I’ve seen two of them and they are GEEKTASTIC!
If you are a subscriber to the Vault or have donated this month you can download them here. If you don’t know about the Vault, or the Experiment, please do read a bit about them and what I’m trying to accomplish with HE.
The wallpapers are formatted for iPhone dimensions but I’m sure you can crop and resize them to fit on other phones.
If you do download and use one, why not send me a pic of your showing off your HE iPhoney goodness?
I finally got around to editing the video that I recorded when drawing “The Host’s Lament” back in June. If you wanted to know more about what goes into the process of making an HE comic, here’s the 6 hour process condensed to 10 minutes.
All the music in the background is by Spiraling.
]]>Finally! In this return of the HE Experiment Video Blog I catch you up on The Experiment, Donations, The Store and the recent shirt woes. I ran out of time at the end and looked like a doofus. Enjoy.
]]>The Macromancer
Donate then Download Here
Bear Arms
Donate then Download Here
El LOLuchador
Donate then Download Here
]]>There are a handful of shirts that should already be in FB hands and are… off the grid. More than likely I am going to be eating a chunk of cash, cursing the USPS and going into disaster recovery mode to get these shirts out. I’m already getting unhappy emails from customers which is the worst thing that can happen. I’m suspending the comic (again) until this crisis is averted.
This kind of shit gives me ulcers.
Eli and Josh aren’t available for the Podcast this week, so I offer a worthy substitute in the form of the “Open Mike, Insert Foot Podcast.“
Mike Leuszler (MiketheArtGuy.com) conducted an interview with me (my first!) and it’s all uploaded in MP3 goodness. It’s all about the comic and The Experiment and such. It’s about an hour, so check it out and hopefully the HE Castcast will be back next week.
In summation: I have a shirt related migraine, comic will be up Saturday and No Podcast this week/ listen to the Interview I did.
UPDATE:
The shirt situation is handled. I could write a 3 or 4 page post about the frustrations the last few days have caused me, but I’m just going to chalk it up to “on the job training” and move on.
If you ordered a shirt in the month of September and haven’t received it, I’ve refunded your shipping. The shirts are in the mail and should be there any day. I
If you ordered a shirt in the month of October, you either already have it or will within a few days.
If you ordered a print at any point before today, they are signed and in the mail.
If you ORDER A SHIRT today you will get it much faster than in the past because they are being drop shipped directly from the printer. I lose a little profit this way, but it’s much faster and easier on every body.
Things to Remember:
- HE Podcast Castcast Live Tonight!
- New Shirts in the HE Store
- Help keep HE live and get access to The Vault with you DONATION
Thanks for your understanding,
-Joel
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“In 1972 a crack hockey team was sent to the penalty box by for high-sticking and decapitating a team mate with their skates. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security moose cave to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the Canadian government, they survive as maple syrup smugglers. If you have a pancake, if no one else can help, and if you can find the syrup, maybe you can hire the Eh Team.”
Near….. Far…..Yeah, let’s keep it at “far.” As far as possible would be great. (Groverfield shirt)
A couple of other changes in the store:
- Signed Comic Prints are now $10 (down from $12.50). They look fantastic framed and are totally awesome and totally tie your room together.
- I retired (for now) the “Magically Fabulous” and “Catonmyface” shirts since they have only sold in the single digits over the last several months. If you have one, it’s a collectors item!
- Personal Avatars: I’ve been enjoying doing these (you can see a few here), but they are extremely time consuming and I was undercharging for the amount of work I put into them. For right now I’ve stopped accepting new avatar orders. If you’ve already paid for one, you will certainly get it. They may return in the future.
I’d noticed some nefarious plans taking shape on this thread in the Fancy Bastard Forum, but it wasn’t until tonight that I realized plot had come to fruition and it was already too late for us all.
I present to you newest applicant to the Evil League of Evil, THE RECLUSE!
FB’s will recognize the Feisty Fiddling Recluse as Tindomiel from the forum and comments. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that everyone else in the video was a Fancy Bastard:
Corporal Punishment, founding member of the hero team Shine Junkies – Sean
Nude Knight, former member of Shine Junkies – Dramthevirgin
Kid Kosmic, former member of Shine Junkies – Eddie
Null, former employer of the Recluse – Sean (again)
Oscar the dachshund – himself
Additional HE nods are peppered through out the video (a fallen hero named “Rainbow Grizzly” getting the “Godspeed, You Fancy Bastard” salute, the desktop on The Recluse’s PC and the Super Villain team name “The Shine Junkies” which is an anagram for… something)
So, please support your fellow Evil FB’s and watch the video, rate it, leave positive comments, link to it and send it to your friends. The winners, chosen by Bad Horse himself, will appear in the extras on the Doctor Horrible DVD.
Regarding Tindomiel‘s performance, I am THOROUGHLY impressed to say the least. She exhibits dangerous levels of musical baddassery which is my favorite kind of badassery. Plus a chance for anything HE related to appear on a Dr. Horrible DVD is super awesome bonus tits. Regardless of the outcome, I am very proud of you guys. We are all evil winners!
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We talked about THE EXPERIMENT, a few items of webcomics news and the 2008 presidential election. If you need a fix between HE Podcasts, I suggest you check it out.
]]>As of last month I am looking for part time work or freelance/contract work in order to keep the Experiment and HE alive.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
If you know of anyone (your company perhaps) that might require my services (illustration, graphic design, writing, etc) please drop me a line. I am also available for personal contracts like logo design or freelance illustration.
If you or anyone you know would be interested in SPONSORING HijiNKS Ensue, I am working on the details of a sponsorship advertising program now. Please let me know. You know what kind of audience HE attracts, so you probably know if HE is a good fit for your company or organization.
Here’s a new desktop wallpaper for anyone that that donates or subscribes to the Vault:
Thanks, guys!
-Joel
]]>- Comic about Movies, TV, Scifi, Tech, or The Full Archives
- The About Page
- The Experiment
- The HijiNKS Ensue Geek Podcast
- The HE Fancy Bastard Forum
- The Store
If you like what you see you can SUBSCRIBE via RSS or leave a comment on this post.
Thanks!
Regular HE readers might want to check out the Unshelved guest comic I did. Guest comics on Unshelved are a little bit different than others I’ve done, in that they are more like illustrated book reports which they call the The Unshelved Book Club.
Behold:
THE SINKTERPRISE!
I hurt my shoulder pretty bad which has sevrely limited the mobility of my neck and back. This happens every once in a while and usually takes a few days to get over. Needless to say I wasn’t able to draw a comic for today. I’m feeling a little better now so if there is a comic for Monday it will be up late tonight or possibly Tuesday.
Thanks for understanding.
-Joel
In the mean time, check out Jarmo’s HE tribute at Finn-Strip.
HE Podcast Castcast!!!
- starts in about an hour (around 4:30pm central)
- Live chat and LOLS for all
- HERE
LIVE SHITTY MOVIE NIGHT TONIGHT!!!
- After the Podcast (I’m guessing between 7 and 8pm central
- Shitty terrible movies to be determined by Eli (he rarely disappoints)
- Live MST’ing of the shitty movies. Add your comments in the live chat!
- Same URL as the Podcast (live only! will not be recorded)
Here’s a comic that might explain why Denise has a cat on her face (except it doesn’t).
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Please HotLink the images directly so I can update them with new donation subscription totals.
Please link the images to:
http://www.hijinksensue.com/donations
You can also link your readers to this post for more info about what’s going on:
http://hijinksensue.com/2008/08/05/the-state-of-the-experiment-save-hijinks-ensue/
Check out the sidebar to the right and you will see the updated donation subscription totals. As of this post we are at $325/month. That’s 13% of the $2500/month goal.
Thanks, guys!
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Gene · 78 weeks ago