Winter Is Coming

UPDATE: “Winter Is Coming” shirts are now IN THE STORE!!!

I’ve been tossing this Calvin and Hobbes meets Game of Thrones idea around for a while. Originally it was going to be Calvin/Jon Snow and Hobbes/Sam standing atop the wall mirroring the dialog from the final Calvin And Hobbes strip, ending with “Let’s Go Exploring.” As I was doing research for reference images I came across the cover to the Attack… collection and realized it was basically already a scene out of GoT, complete with a White Walker and everything. So there you go. I hope you enjoy it.

Baltimore Comic-Con is this weekend! 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. Details HERE on G+ or talk to FB Adam (who is organizing it) directly on G+ or Twitter. Hope to see you at the show and the meetup!

Commenters: Please come up with your own Game Of Thrones/ Sunday Comics crossover and let us know how it plays out. I’ll get you started: The Family Circus as the Lannisters. Jeffy = Joffrey? Right? Amirite?

UPDATE: You asked for it, so I added a “Winter Is Coming” desktop to The Vault. I’ve also added “Chibi Wolverine” and “Three Wheaton Moon” desktops as well. Just make a donation of any amount, or sign up for a recurring donation subscriptionand you’ll get access. I’ve also added mobile versions of these desktops HERE.

The Unrelenting Muse

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made this Three Wheaton Moon shirt. You can buy it! Then you can wear it! Only two steps to total geeky happiness? Sign me up!

The panels above represent an [somewhat] exaggerated examination of the Joel/Wil creative process. You see, every time Wil and I make something, I really can’t tell if it’s going to be a thing that only we love or that everyone will love. I usually have a good barometer for that sort of thing, but where Wil is concerned the unrestrained enthusiasm he exudes when it comes to making cool stuff is infectious and blinding. I often finish whatever dark task Wil has… tasked me with, then sit back and look at what mine hands have wrought and scream aloud to the heavens, “OMGWTF THIS IS HILARIOUS! EXCEPT PROBABLY ONLY THE GEEKIEST 5% OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WILL GET IT! OH WELL! WHATEVER! I STILL LIKE IT!” Then I remember that we are citizens of Internet and Internet is where the geekiest 5% of people are running the game.

As Wil is fond of saying, “I’m positive we will sell fives of these!” I know we are both really pleased with this shirt and hope you enjoy it as well. It also makes a really great gift. How better to tell someone, “I bet you are a huge weirdo.”?

UPDATE: You asked for it, so I added a “Three Wheaton Moon” desktop to The Vault. I’ve also added “Chibi Wolverine” and “Winter Is Coming” desktops as well. Just make a donation of any amount, or sign up for a recurring donation subscription and you’ll get access. I’ve also added mobile versions of these desktops HERE.

Hello, Harkness, My Old Friend

Big thanks to Mike Phirman for letting me use his Tweet as the title to this comic. You MUST check out his new album! He was one of the big standout performances at this year’s w00tstock (a show about which he just released a very funny new song).

Alternate Title: The Dart Of Harkness

Hollywood certainly seems to like its “gay” easily identifiable. It’s the clandestine gays they don’t seem to fond of. Every once in a while a show or movie gets it right and actually portrays a homosexual as a regular person as opposed to a frolicking, mincing, bedazzled stereotype. That’s one of the things I like so much about Captain Jack Harkness. He’s a hero first, an adventurer second, a time traveler third, a bit of a slut fourth and an omni-sexual man somewhere towards the end. That’s how you build a character that actually promotes a positive image of homosexuals. You show them as a human, flaws and all, then (when the story dictates) you address their sexuality.

Torchwood: Miracle Day is built around a fascinating concept. What if one day everyone stopped dying? The execution is… compelling if not a little uneven. Last week’s episode was about 14 minutes of story poured into a 50 minute bucket. I still enjoyed it quite a bit, but the pacing (considering it was the series’ halfway point) seemed sluggish. I will certainly be sticking around until the end if only to see who’s behind the “Miracle.” It’s a good mystery with a decent balance between questions and payoff. Still, it leaves me wondering: Where is The Doctor while all of this is going on? Seems like the kind of thing that would have cried out to him across the universe and… oh… right… if he showed up, they wouldn’t have a show. Carry on then.

COMMENTERS: Are you watching Torchwood: Miracle Day? Do you like it more or less than previous seasons? The premise has really been causing me to come up with a lot of post-Miracle Day “what if?” scenerios. I like it when a show makes me ponder its universe. What about Captain Jack’s eyes? Are they TOO dreamy or just perfectly dreamy enough?

The Tell-Tale Brains

THE HIJINKS ENSUE STORE IS BACK!!!

The newly relaunched HE Store is up and running over at Blind Ferret. Please go check it out and maybe buy a book or a shirt or something. Shirts will begin shipping soon, now that we are all back from Comic-Con.

What’s that in the distance? Why, it’s the faint siren song of the undead. Hearing them is SO much scarier than seeing them. I can only image their desiccated corpses, somehow animated by a perversion of biology, their skin sloughed off to reveal muscle and bone, their entrails spilling out of their gaping abdominal cavities, their… oh, you get the picture. No need to see any of that. Let’s go inside for a long time and talk about how there are probably zombies all over the place.

All of the news about what AMC is doing to The Walking Dead (firing Frank Darabont, requiring 13 episodes for less money than they had to make 6 last season, threatening the cast and crew to keep quiet) sounds BAD. Like REALLY really bad. Why can’y hollywood just pet the pretty rabbit? Why do they have to crush its tiny rabbit skull every time?

COMMENTERS: How else are AMC going to ~~ruin~~ cut costs on The Walking Dead?

Ghost Protocol

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made a thing! Check out our University of Gallifrey Fighting Time Lords Shirt over at Sharksplode.

The newly relaunched HE Store is up and running over at Blind Ferret. Please go check it out and maybe buy a book or a shirt or something. Shirts will begin shipping soon.

After getting rave reviews for season 4.5, shooting all of season 5 (to air next year) and getting picked up for at least a 6 episode 6th season, Eureka got up-picked up and cancelled. Normally I would nerd-rage against SyFy or its parent company NBC/Universal or their new parent company Kabletown… err, Comcast for being short sighted or too focused on profits at the expense of quality, but this time it’s a little different. This is the first prematurely cancelled show I’ve enjoyed where I’ve had multiple friends working on said show. Amy Berg, pictured in the panels above, is the co-executive producer and a writer on Eureka, and Wil (as most of you know) plays Dr. Issaac Parrish on the show. So instead of spitting indignant geek venom all over the internet, I’ve decided instead to focus on my friends, the great show they’ve created and what they’ve (we’ve) lost.

At San Diego Comic-Con this year I went to the Eureka screening with Amy and our friend Dammit Liz. As we watched the never-before-seen episode I found myself getting nervous. What if the crowd didn’t respond well? What if I didn’t laugh enough? The lady right next to me made this show! Luckily the crowd loved it, and lack of laughter was not an issue. It was a great episode and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Still it made me realize that geek TV was starting to fall off of the unattainable pedestal I had always kept it on. Sitting next to a television writer as she laughs at her own show then criticizes the use of high heels in an action scene where high heels would have actually caused the character to die was sobering and served to humanize the whole experience.

The show was larger than life (especially since it was being projected on a 50ft wide screen), but at the same time it was very small and personal. I was surrounded by the crew that worked on the episode and I realized I had never before seen a TV show reflected on the faces of the very group of people that made it. Immediately afterward I turned to the writer, Ed Fowler, and congratulated him on a job well done. TV had never really been this accessible to me. After the screening the writers and crew gathered outside the hall for a congratulatory huddle and group hug. They were proud of their work and proud of each other. That experience is why I’m viewing the cancellation of Eureka differently than say, SG:U or Terminator: TSCC. I loved those shows, but all I knew of them was the finished product. The gloss and polish. Thanks to Amy, Wil, Ed and the other Eureka crew members I met, I see this show in a different light. I feel like instead of a show being cancelled, a family is being broken up. I realize that is not a unique occurrence within the Hollywood machine, but it was the first one I was even tangentially close to and it saddens me.

Still, fans of Eureka do have some 19 or so episodes to look forward to. That is probably the longest run for an already cancelled show that you have ever gotten or ever will get. At least it gives us time to get used to the idea. And at least Syfy IS giving them one extra episode to wrap things up. My guess? Eureka is purgatory and they’ve all been dead the entire time.

Wil posted his thought about getting to work on Eureka and its cancellation HERE.
Wil also reposted Amy’s tweets on the subject on Google+.
Syfy decides not to order a 6th season of Eureka

COMMENTERS: DO NOT SEND ANYONE FROM EUREKA YOUR IDEAS/GUESSES FOR THE FINALE!!! THEY REALLY DO HAVE TO BLOCK YOU IF YOU DO! NO JOKE. Still, I bet you could post your ideas here, on my site and nobody would get in trouble. Probably.