Book 2 Fancy Sketches: Browncoat Edition

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made a thing! Check out our Wesley’s Big Adventure Shirt over at Sharksplode.

CONVENTION NEWS: Connecticon is next weekend!!!. Holy crap. Come see me and David and Ryan and Lar and the Explosm quadruplets and much many mores!

I. HAVE. FINISHED. SKETCHING. ULTIMATE FANCY EDITIONS!!!! And only several months later than I had intended! If you are expecting a UFE Book 2, it will be in the mail today, assuming the mail is running today [July 1,2011]. I sketched 16 books today, so instead of making a comic, I have assembled for you some choice selections from those sketches, colored them and even organized them into a theme! I’d say at least a 3rd of my Book 2 sketch requests said, “draw something Firefly related.” This comic was bascially founded on Browncoatishness, and I often regret not having more reasons to draw Captain Mal and his crew of misfit space peoples. I try to keep HE topical and there just isn’t much new Firefly/Serenity type stuff happening these days. What I’m trying to say is I enjoyed drawing these and I hope you enjoy reading them. I also hope the owners of the books these sketches are attached to will enjoy owning them.

The final sketch, “Reverse Dino Betrayal,” was auctioned off for the Toronto Can’t Stop The Serenity event. I might make that idea into a shirt. What do you think?

STORE NEWS: The HijiNKS ENSUE Store is closed for a few weeks so I can make some big, exciting changes. [READ MORE HERE] In the meantime you can still get shirts from Sharksplode and HE Book 2 from this very site.

MUSIC NEWS: My friend Tom Brislin has started a Kickstarter to raise money to record his first solo album. Fans of the HE Podcast will know his music from… the HE Podcast. Tom is a fantastic song writer, a virtuoso piano player and one of my favorite creative people on the planet. Please back his project so that I may hear the wonderful musics that are currently stuck in his brain.

Got GoT?

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made a thing! Check out our Wesley’s Big Adventure Shirt over at Sharksplode.

My Friend Lar saw this shirt and drew THIS. It’s amazingly wonderful.

Anybody hear about this Game Of Thrones show? No? I guess it sort of flew under the radar, because people haven’t been talking about it on the Internet non-stop for months and months or anything.

I had been purposefully ignoring the glowing reviews of Game Of Thrones because I didn’t have HBO and I didn’t want to bother trying to acquire the show through other means. As I get older I look at every Torrent and ask myself, “Is this hour of entertainment going to be the one that costs me a $35,000 settlement?” I am old.

When I noticed an HBO free preview weekend on my HD Fiber TVmawhosits I hoped I might luck into a GoT marathon that I could record for later viewing at my leisure. Alas, there was no such marathon, but the entire series was available via On Demand. I had a very important decision to make. The free preview only lasted another 26 hours, and there were 10 one hour episodes to devour. In order to consume a media-meal this large I would have to forsake all other responsibilities. Sleep, work, my family, all liabilities that were keeping me from being caught up on the new thing all the Internet kids are Internetting about. “Eff it! I’m going for it!” And for it go I did… go.

I was surprised how little the show resembled Lord Of the Rings in tone. LoTR is very grand. The scope of the story, the settings and the characters are equally vast. GoT is almost the opposite. Instead of an epic struggle against ultimate evil for the fate of the world, GoT focusses on about 40 characters internal struggle to “get theirs.” The story masquerades as grand because there are kings and castles and knights and wars and talk of dragons, but it is actually very small and very human. It’s a tale of selfishness and petty jealously. The only great evil resides in the schemes and machinations of nearly every characters in the show. They’re all just terrible people (except for most of the Starks).

One thing I find confusing about the series (and the books too, I suppose) is the fact that [SPOILERS] nearly everyone dies. Like everyone. Just as you are saying to yourself, ” Oh man, if that guy gets to do the thing he wants to do, it’s totally going to fuck up the things those other guys want to do,” he dies. Then the other guys die. Major plot threads just build and fizzle due to character death. I understand this is Martin’s thing and all, but it’s… jarring? [/SPOILERS] Regardless I really enjoyed the series and look forward to season two. I might even sign up for HBO for a few months just to watch it in real time. Though I admit, seeing 5 eps back to back was SO much more satisfying than waiting week to week. Also, Peter Dinklage fucking rules.

Anyway, here are some GoT greeting cards slogans I made up on Twitter:

“You put the IMP in PIMP.”

“Congrats Graduate! Once you take The Black, you never go back… to having sex.”

“Happy Fathuncle’s Day!”

“You’re Hodorable!”

MUSIC!: My friend Tom Brislin has started a Kickstarter to raise money to record his first solo album. Fans of the HE Podcast will know his music from… the HE Podcast. Tom is a fantastic song writer, a virtuoso piano player and one of my favorite creative people on the planet. Please back his project so that I may hear the wonderful musics that are currently stuck in his brain.

COMMENTERS: Feel free to post your SPOILER FREE thoughts on Game Of Thrones or make up your own G0T greeting card slogans.

There’s No Basement On The Enterprise

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made a thing! Check out our Wesley’s Big Adventure Shirt over at Sharksplode.

There also aren’t any bathrooms.

Last night Wil tweeted a bit about watching Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. It reminded me a line in his book, Memories of The Future, where he compared a particularly indignant and slightly snotty Wesley line read to the way Pee Wee informed Dottie that they would NOT, in fact, be knocking platform bar-dancing boots in the back of the bike shop. I found myself sitting at my desk, trying to convince myself to draw a comic about shotgunning the whole first season of Game of Thrones in less than 36 hours (a thing which I really did), INSTEAD of drawing the weird thing you see above. It seems that I lost my internal battle of wills, logic was thrown to the wind and common sense did not prevail.

If you are now or were ever a fan of Star Trek: TNG, I can’t recommend Memories of The Future more highly. I have enjoyed reliving the first half of the first season of TNG through Wil’s eyes (both the ones he had as a naive child in an adult’s world, and those he has now, which look back at the series with fond reflection, a little regret, and a ton of snark) more than I would have thought possible.

HEY A THING!: Someone familiar pops up in this Weregeek comic.

ANOTHER THING!: My friend Tom Brislin has started a Kickstarter to raise money to record his first solo album. Fans of the HE Podcast will know his music from… the HE Podcast. Tom is a fantastic song writer, a virtuoso piano player and one of my favorite creative people on the planet. Please back his project so that I may hear the wonderful musics that are currently stuck in his brain.

Big Cat

[Posted 6/27/11 ] I’m still a few comics behind. Thanks for your patience. I’m trying desperately to get caught up on comics, while also shotgunning an entire season of Game Of Thrones before my free preview of HBO expires in a few hours. Assuming I am successful I will get to make MORE COMICS about Game of Thrones that I should have made months ago when the show was actually a thing people were talking about.

Given Apple’s new multi-touch interface patent that grants them eminent domain over nearly every obvious and expected feature of the modern smart phone, you have the wonder what their strategy is going to be moving forward. Are they going on the offensive? Will they attack HTC, Samsung and everyone else that dares to have a touch screen device where the screens display colors in the visible spectrum and the icons do not trigger full volume racial epithets when pressed?

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

Or will they simply let every other cell phone company know that they are welcomed to pay a hefty licensing fee for their now infringing features, such as “A phone that can display eBooks which do NOT depict graphic illustrations of cattle autopsies”? As for the bobcats circling outside every Sprint store, the employees will just say, “They must be attracted to our… advanced 4G network. Also you should put on these full body leather falconry suits before going back to your car.”

INTERVIEWS: I did a really fun interview with Lauren Davis for Gamma Squad, and the full audio of my interview with ABC Australia’s Nerdzilla Podcast is HERE.

COMMENTERS: What else does Apple’s super broad iPhone Interface patent include? “A Method my which poking at stuff on the screen with your crummy fingers results in a desired action”? “A process by which unwanted phone calls from relatives/employers/ex-spouses can be identified and sent directly to voicemail”?

The Judas Cradle

[Posted 6/24/11 ] I’m still a few comics behind. Thanks for your patience.

My wife and I took out daughter to the fancy mall a few towns over because it has a nicer indoor playground than the one near our house. I stopped in the Brookstone to poke, fondle and sit on things I had no intention of ever purchasing, as one does. There was a new massage chair which was marked down from $3499 to $2000. What a deal! [Seriously, though. When you can take $1500 off of the price of a useless gadget that no one needs and it still costs over two grand, mistakes are being made on all sides]

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

Before you could say,”Memory foam pillow!” I plopped myself down in the pulsating papasan. If Picard had one of these on the bridge, they never would have stopped to check out any unusual pulsars or gas clouds. That is to say, it was a pleasant seating experience. Not phenomenal, but pleasant.It actually had areas (as illustrated above) to insert your forearms and legs. Getting fully situated in this comfort-monstrosity was not unlike suiting up in a battle mech. I half expected a neuro-piston to be driven directly into my brainstem once my limbs were secured. I pressed the “Full Body” button on the remote, but kept my finger hovering over the “Happy Ending” button, just in case the opportunity for full release presented itself.

Just then a salesman walked over, grabbed the remote and said, “Mind if I make some adjustments to increase your pleasure?” As a rule of thumb, this request should always be denied. Regardless of where you are, or who is making it, just say no. The chair latched onto my limbs more tightly and tilted me back so far as to completely remove any chance of escape. He then pocketed the remote out of my reach (literally making me a captive audience) and started reciting his memorized pitch for this particular chair, which I immediately tuned out. Having been in sales for so long, I can always identify the cadence of words that are meant to sound spontaneous but have been spewed for on autopilot so often as to advertise the damage they are doing to the speaker’s will to live. When a sales pitch is repeated by a mortal over 100 times, it becomes of series of killing words. It’s more of a hex, than a list of product attributes. The salesman becomes merely a bullhorn through which this dark monologue is passed on. With each recitation his soul is eroded just a bit more. So, yeah… I wasn’t listening.

I was actually paying more attention to the guy next to him making the hard sale on some kid and his dad for an RC helicopter. How much could commission on a toy helicopter possibly be? A dollar? Two? He actually said, “What do I have to do to get you to take one of these hone today?” It’s a $40 piece of plastic, not a fucking Honda Accord. After my 15 minutes in “The Machine” were up (I had only intended to be there for 5 minutes or so), I grabbed my shoes and muttered something about sending my wife in to try it out before we made a decision. I don’t know why I play those games. We both knew there was no chance in hell I was going to buy an unattractive, impractical chair that cost the same as the nicest computer Apple makes, two 50″ flat screen TV’s or 5 plane tickets. I should have just been honest and said, “Thanks for letting me rub my butt all over your expensive bullshit. Maybe I’ll come back later and buy a digital picture frame for someone I don’t like because that’s a terrible gift.”

INTERVIEWS: I did a really fun interview with Lauren Davis for Gamma Squad, and the full audio of my interview with ABC Australia’s Nerdzilla Podcast is HERE.

COMMENTERS: Have you EVER bought ANYTHING at Brookstone? No? Of course you haven’t. No one has. They are a front for some sinister organization that plans to overthrow the world’s governments with air purifiers and iPod speaker docks. Have you ever pretended to be interested in buying something expensive just so you could play with it? Give me your absolute worst example.