Wheaton Comic Dare: Wil Wheaton Paper Doll

This weekend I’ll be at Dallas Animefest with Rob from Explosm. We’ll be in the dealer room, terrified of glomping cat-girls and Sailor Bubbas alike. I’ll have both HE Books, Prints, sketch cards, “Grammar Dalek” Shirts and “The Doctor Is In” shirts.

Wil didn’t so much “dare” me to make this paper doll as he did call me up and, with his best “WE SHOULD TOTALLY DO THIS BECAUSE IT WOULD BE TOTALLY AWESOME!” enthusiasm-voice, ask me very politely to draw it. The last time Wil dared me to draw him as a child’s plaything it took us over a year to bring it into meatspace. The good news is this time around the plaything in question doesn’t require an army of Chinese children with nimble fingers to make it a reality. All we really need is a PDF and a laser printer. To that end, Wil is going to have actual Wil Wheaton Paper Doll sheets that you’ll be able to purchase at PAX this weekend! For those of you unable to attend PAX, you can use the “Buy A Print” button below this comic to get your own Paper Wil.

I was under the impression that these would be “hang on the wall” types of things, but Wil is insistent that you guys actually cut them out, fold the tabs, dance them around and make them have holodeck tea parties. He is usually right about this sort of thing, so I’m going to fully endorse the idea. I would go as far as to suggest that you make your own accessories and post photographic evidence on one or more Internets.

COMMENTERS: What should be in a potential add-on pack for the Wheaton paper dolls? What accessories or clothes would a paper doll of YOU come with?

Toronto Fan Expo 2012 Fancy Sketches

This weekend I’ll be at Dallas Animefest with Rob from Explosm. We’ll be in the dealer room, terrified of glomping cat-girls and Sailor Bubbas alike. I’ll have both HE Books, Prints, sketch cards, “Grammar Dalek” Shirts and “The Doctor Is In” shirts.

This was my first Toronto Fan Expo, but my second time in Toronto. Once again, I found the city and it’s comic-loving citizens to be as kind as pleasant as the Canadian Constitution requires them to be under penalty of mild reprimand. I only had one goal for my weekend in Toronto, which was to dine once again at Korean Grill House. This is a restaurant where you are given a table that is on fire, tray after tray of raw meat, some tongs and ZERO instructions, guidance or supervision of any sort. It’s $10 all you can (m)eat, and I’m pretty sure it’s my favorite place in the world. I wondered if I was hyping it up to my friends too much, but after seeing them marvel at the quantity and quality of meats, the looks of childlike wonder at the thought of throwing said meats into a flaming grill that was built into the table, and their amazement as we elected to reward ourselves for consuming our own weights in meat with celebratory milkshakes, I knew that I was significantly UNDERhyping the fantastical nature of this (m)eatery. If you are visiting Toronto, there is a KGH on Bloor and another on Queens. The service is terrible, the staff is incredibly uninterested in bringing you more lukewarm soda, and the bathroom was unusable, so please take all of that into consideration when I STILL DEMAND that it is my favorite place to eat.

I left the con a day early so I could get home in time to accompany my daughter to her first day of kindergarten. Delta lied to me and told me even though my flight from Buffalo to NYC was late I would definitely still make my connection to DFW. I was still on the first plane when my connecting flight home took off. Even if every plane had been on time, the flights were scheduled 27 minutes apart. Given the 15-20 minutes it takes to de-board the first plane, the time it would take to get to the other terminal (which was a “bus ride” away according to my flight attendent) and the time to board the following flight there was essentially no way possible for this connection to be made. Delta sold me an impossible flight, lied to me about my chances of making it home, then when presented with a plane load of passengers that missed their connections the Delta agents elected to offer us NOTHING as compensation. No flights into TX (for me at least), no flights on other airlines that might have gotten us to our destinations, no hotel and no travel vouchers.

The dead-eyed, policy spewing assfaces I spoke to (Shout outs to Kentun and Chris the PO at Delta in LaGuardia!) made it clear that if I had been the only one affected I would have been taken care of, but since their error screwed 10-15 people NO ONE would be given any sort of consideration. “What would you have me do? Give ALL THESE PEOPLE a hotel?” Oh, the people your company lied to, bilked and stranded hundreds if not thousands of miles from home? Yes, I would. That would be doing the right thing. Delta had an opportunity to make me a customer for life that night. Instead they made me miss my little girl’s first day of school, lose hundreds of dollars by skipping a day of the convention for no reason, and through their arrogance and lack of compassion they lost a customer (who spends nearly $5000 a year on air travel) FOREVER.

COMMENTERS: Please feel free to share your stories about Toronto, Fan Expo, Korean BBQ, or air trave nightmares.

Remuneration

HE Podcast Episode 85 just went live! Subscribe via RSS or iTunes.

Toronto Fan Expo starts TODAY!!! I’ll be there with Blind Ferret and booth #1244. More info HERE. The following weekend I’ll be at Dallas Animefest with Rob from Explosm.

THE END! The Eli/Boxcar Pete story is over! So is the comic! I’m done! Exclamation points!

Actually the comic isn’t over, but I know a few of you are IN NO WAY sad to see Boxcar Pete go. Interesting thing about moving from single, self-contained gag comics to longer form stories is that when someone hates what you’re doing, they don’t just hate it for one day. They hate it, and you for days and days and days and let you know about it in the rudest ways imaginable. I will certainly be keeping the stories shorter (and possibly further apart) from now on, but overall I am pretty happy with how this turned out. I pushed myself to draw people and places I am not comfortable with drawing, and to draw poses that weren’t just two 3/4 turned heads talking at each other. Since this story line wraps up something that started in the Avengers arc (the first mini story line), I feel like the whole thing has a bit of closure. It seems like a mini “season” to me. Anyway if you liked it, I’m glad. If you didn’t and managed not to send me a rude comment or email, I’m also glad about you. You are why we are almost able to have a society. Everyone else is on my list.

I drew this comic at my friend Paul’s house in Buffalo. Later today were are going to drive into Canada to ~~do battle with Frost Giants~~go to a convention. I know it’s sort of a throw away line in the final panel, but I have recently watched all of Sherlock and HOLYCOCKMOFFATS is it an amazing show. Really, it is just flawless. I could go on (and I intend to later) but for now it’s 5am and I have to drive across the Bifröst a regular bridge to Canada in a few hours.

COMMENTERS: WHY IS SHERLOCK SO GOOD?!?!?!?!

The Benefactor

HE Podcast Episode 85 just went live! Subscribe via RSS or iTunes.

Toronto Fan Expo is THIS WEEKEND!!! I’ll be there with Blind Ferret and booth #1244. More info HERE. The following weekend I’ll be at Dallas Animefest with Rob from Explosm.

This story line has gone on a bit longer than I had originally expected, and I know some of you are ready to move on to something new. I’ve just been having more fun with the dialog and what not between Eli and Boxcar Pete than I anticipated. Good news is that it wraps up this week, and for my first attempt at a slightly longish story, I’m pretty pleased with it. I’m still getting my feet wet with this continuity situation, so if you’re tired of top hats and pirate-speak just bear with me. If you’re confused as to how this story even started or why Eli is chasing Pete in the first place, I will tag the whole storyline when it’s over to make it easier to see find the beginning and end, and I’ll post a quick recap with links to the relevant comics.

For those of you who may be enjoying the stories but miss the pop-culture commentary, I am working to weave that back into HE as various stories unfold, but for topics that require a timely reaction I am working on bringing back the Lo-FiJinks comics. They’ll be quick and crudely drawn (compared to HE), but more frequent and separated from the main archive.

Hobomian Rhapsody

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

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

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

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

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