Bestest. Dorkstock. EVAR.

If you're at Lucca next week...here's my signing schedule. The "Area Performance" is live painting (where I'll be coming up with something for the charity auction - more Boobies, perhaps?) I'm not sure what I'll be yakking about, yet, for the Sunday talk, but I'm sure it'll be, um, riveting:

Thursday.
11.00-12.00: Autographs and Sketches (A211 Raven)
13.00-15.00: Area Performance (A709)
16.00 -17.00: Autographs and Sketches (A204 Nexus)

Friday.
11.00-12.00: Autographs and Sketches (A204 Nexus)
13.00-15.00: Area Performance (A709
16.00-17.00: Autographs and Sketches (A211 Raven)

Saturday.
11.00-12.00: Autographs and Sketches (A204 Nexus)
12.30 -13.15: Talk in Sala Incontri (SI1)
15.00-16.00: Autographs and Sketches (A211 Raven)

Sunday.
11.30 -13.00: Autographs and Sketches (A204 Nexus)
14.30-15.30: Autographs and Sketches (A211 Raven)
16:00 - Charity auction

http://lucca09.luccacomicsandgames.com/index.php?id=804

The zippy new DEDICATED DORKTOWER.COM SERVER says "come visit me! Bask in my spiffiness. Amaze your friends by actually being able to read the damn comics again! Spread the word!"

New Dork Towers up this week:

WEDNESDAY -



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.


FRIDAY -



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

I need about 75 humorous phrases/catch-phrases/sayings for a game I'm developing. Hopefully under 20-25 characters long. The sayings don't need to be well-known, but being well-known is a plus. Who can help a brother/cartoonist/designer out?

The zippy new DEDICATED DORKTOWER.COM SERVER says "come visit me! Bask in my spiffiness. Amaze your friends by actually being able to read the damn comics again! Spread the word!"

New Guest Week Dork Towers up this week:

MONDAY -



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

I'd like to offer absolutely huge thanks Weregeek's Alina Pete for this week's guest strips here at Dorktower.com.

Last Thursday, the Lovely and talented Judith, Louisa (henceforth known as "the Bean") and I moved house. Since Chez Muskrat was the house I've occupied for the last 20 years (the last 15 of them with Judith; the last ten months with Judith and the Bean), this was no mean feat. The word "Detritus" came up more than once. Frankly, I'm still exhausted.

Fortunately, a couple of months ago, I was at MisCon, where I was lucky enough to be on a couple of panels with Alina - a great cartoonist who hails from Canadialand. Even more fortunately, she also turned out to be a really great person, and offered to do a week's worth of strips to help give me a bit of a break during this period of home upheaval.

I love watching other cartoonists take on Dork Tower, and the best of them - amongst whom Alina is one - give me fresh insight into the lives of characters I've known for these last dozen years (Carson, of course, for these last thirty).

So flock to Weregeek.com, follow her on Twitter at @alinapete, and heap praises and thanks upon Alina. She deserves it. She not only came up with some fab, fun Dork Towers (to say nothing of her own world of Weregeek), she's helped save my sanity this week.

- John

The zippy new DEDICATED DORKTOWER.COM SERVER says "come visit me! Bask in my spiffiness. Amaze your friends by actually being able to read the damn comics again! Spread the word!"

New Dork Towers up this week:

MONDAY -



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.


WEDNESDAY -



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.


FRIDAY -




Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

Oh. Hey. Hi, there. Didn't see you there.

New Dork Towers up this week:

MONDAY -



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.


WEDNESDAY -



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.


FRIDAY -




Click here, there or anywhere to see it.


****

So, I was hypnotized for the first time in my life.

OR WAS IT?

Cue ominous music.

Du-du-du-DAAAAAH!

Oh. Hey. Hi, there. Didn't see you there.

New Dork Tower cartoon up today.



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

****

I'm trying to get back to three strips a week. While I'm still pushed for time, I've been really unhappy with the flow of the strip while I pulled it back to twice a week (even if that was only intended as a temporary thing during Louisa's first year). We'll see.

In some bad news, Comics Buyers' Guide has had to cut back on expenses due to the economy, and alas, alack, one of those expenses was Dork Tower. The editor says this is hopefully just a temporary thing, and given the feedback I get from the CBG staff and editors, I'm hoping so as well. Yet, for the first time in ten years, Dork Tower is exclusively a web-only strip.

This is a paradigm I've yet to get used to.

This is also a business model I need to figure out. While I'm notoriously unmotivated by money, the fact that there is now a Daughter involved and a College Fund to be funded puts a spin on things that wasn't there five years ago.

On the plus side, while there are still massive slowdowns on the Gamespy server, at least the move to the new server is expected to be VERY soon.So hopefully the site should be super-fast and super-spiffy super soon.

Oh. Hey. Hi, there. Didn't see you there.

New Dork Tower cartoon up today.



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

Sorry about reusing panels from old strips, but honestly, if I hadn't, there'd be no cartoon today, with my schedule this week...I try and be upfront about this. Pride is involved. Even if it's a "Wall" strip, I *enjoy* the drawing part of this job: plus, it's the only way you get better at it.

It frustrates the heck out of me when there's a massive time crunch like this, and a dozen deadlines seem to loom.

****

On the plus side, I spent the morning with Louisa, and saw her pull herself up, and stand up for the very first time!

An ecstatic and terrifying moment! My baby girl is eight and a half months old, and crawling like nobody's business. It's moments like these why I'm staying away from conventions until she's at least a year old.

I'm thinking about all my pals at the AAEC convention, and at CONvergence this weekend. But in all honesty, seeing Louisa stand for the first time is worth a thousand conventions, to me.

Just in case anyone's interested, here's my iTunes Glam playlist. It's been getting me through the last couple of days' worth of work.

Most of the tracks are from a double CD I picked up in London, "The Best Glam Rock Album In The World...Ever." It was pretty solid, but I added some extra Bowie, T-Rex, Slade and Sweet to the mix.

A few of the bands are crap. Mud, for instance. Even at the age of 12, I realized this was pretty fake stuff. But I left them in the mix as the entirety of this represents a very specific time and place in my life.

Glam is possibly why I always kept my taste for pop, even after Punk hit and blew me away. In a sense, it's the music that defined me: some of these bands are the first groups that I ever realized MATTERED - that their music was BETTER, for some reason I couldn't really define. This was IMPORTANT in a vague, palpable way that twelve-year-old me couldn't put into words at the time.

When Punk hit, I was a bit older, and knew why it mattered. Years afterwards, I considered Punk the prime musical influence of my life. But it took "The Best Glam Rock Album In The World...Ever" to remind me of what had shaped my musical tastes a few years before.

Ending the mix, neither "Boston tea Party," "Sound and Vision" nor "Blinded By The Light" are - technically - Glam, but I included them as bookends of a movement that in some parts evolved and in others faded surprisingly quickly. In the same mindset, I could have just as easily have thrown the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy In The UK" as the ending track, with its blazing chords a direct descendant of the heavy guitars of glam (physically, if not philosophically). England had moved from Cockney Rebel to Cockney Rejects, but roots were shared.

Like finding forgotten photos of a first girlfriend, "The Best Glam Rock Album In The World...Ever" helped me to realize that my first musical love was was a LOT hotter than I remembered.

And every now and then, it still gets me through the days.

Come on. Feel the noise.

THE RADIO MUSKRAT GLAM PLAYLIST

Killer Queen - Queen
Blockbuster - Sweet
All The Young Dudes - Mott The Hoople
John, I'm Only Dancing - David Bowie
Virginia Plain - Roxy Music
The Passenger - Iggy Pop
Children Of The Revolution - T.Rex
Elected - Alice Cooper
Mama Weer All Crazy Now - Slade
This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us - Sparks
Let's Stick Together - Bryan Ferry
Radar Love - Golden Earring
The Man Who Sold The World - Lulu
Space Oddity - David Bowie
Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) - Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
Perfect Day - Lou Reed
10538 Overture - Electric Light Orchestra
Ball Park Incident - Roy Wood's Wizzard
Rock On - David Essex
I'm the Leader of the Gang - Gary Glitter
Little Willy - Sweet
See My Baby Jive - Roy Wood's Wizzard
All The Way From Memphis - Mott The Hoople
20th Century Boy - T.Rex
The Ballroom Blitz - Sweet
Tiger Feet - Mud
Life On Mars - David Bowie
Devilgate Drive - Suzi Quatro
All Because Of You - Geordie
Gudbuy T'Jane - Slade
Personality Crisis - New York Dolls
Do The Strand - Roxy Music
Once Bitten Twice Shy - Ian Hunter & Mick Ronson
Cum On Feel The Noize - Slade
Motor Bikin' - Chris Spedding
Seven Deadly Finns - Brian Eno
Cherry Bomb - The Runaways
Solid Gold Easy Action - T.Rex
Standing In The Road - Blackfoot Sue
Dyna-Mite - Mud
Angel Face - The Glitter Band
Starman David Bowie
Dance With The Devil Cozy Powell
Skweeze Me Pleeze Me Slade
New York Groove Hello
I Love Rock And Roll - The Arrows
Can The Can - Suzi Quatro
Do You Want to Touch Me - Gary Glitter
Boston Tea Party - The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
Fox On The Run - Sweet
Sound And Vision - David Bowie
Blinded By the Light - Manfred Mann's Earth Band

With the death of Ed McMahon, a few - A FEW - editorial cartoonists across the country are already sharpening their pencils, and drawing as fast as they can, ready essentially for a day off after a phone-it-in.

As we all know from such cartoonists, All Celebrities Go To Heaven. So, we have the setting. But hey, why even come up with a PUNCHLINE? Here are four ready-to-use Obit ideas that took a whole of five minutes to think up[!

FIRST: The obvious idea.



SECOND: The sentimental idea. Feel free to use your character crying in the bottom right-hand corner, should you use one.



THIRD: The less obvious idea, but still a possibility, if you don't wanna seem like TOO much of a hack...just SLIGHTLY one:



LASTLY: An idea that would probably only either be done by the Onion's brilliant KELLY, as a joke, or Colorado Springs' Chuck Assay, completely seriously...



But why stop at these four? See if YOU can predict tomorrows editorial cartoons today with the Easy-To-Use Obit Cartoon Lame-O-Matic Template!

Oh. Hey. Hi, there. Didn't see you there.

New Dork Tower cartoon up today.



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

****

It's a very silly joke - one I've had in the back of my mind for a while. Just never had the right set-up. Also needed a solid after-line from Matt. So, yay.

Apologies to Arby's, but (a) You lobbed the softball with the slogan, and (b) well, honestly, your food's just not that good...

I did used to love Arby's when I was a kid, and a teenager. Then I gave up red meat for 25 years. Coming back to your roast beef sandwiches wasn't QUITE as disappointing as trying a Big Mac again, but it was close...

****

The site seems zippity-fast, right now. At lest compared to the molasses-like speed it's had the last couple of months or so.

The folks at Gamespy have been working like fiends trying to fix it. Let's hope it sticks...

John

Oh. Hey. Hi, there. Didn't see you there.

New Dork Tower cartoon up yesterday morning.



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

****

Um...errr...Also: forgot to post Tuesday's cartoon here:



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

****

I think I broke the internets this week. Sorry about that.

****

Want to know what happens when, say, Neil Gaiman himself twitters that he likes "My Little Cthulhu," and likes the fact that there is a free papercraft version on the web site to download?

More than 11,000 folks go to download papercraft My Little Cthulhus.

Yeah. Wow. Feeling VERY humble, right now. :-)

For those not following the breaking news on Twitter, here are some of the highlights from the Worldwide Developers' Conference:

* Apple announces it is running out of cats to name its operating systems after. Will start on marmots, next...

* Apple announces Steve Jobs died last year: rose from the dead on the third day.

* Apple pledges "really - no more cat names" following OS X Garfield.

* Apple announces Dude playing "I'm a Mac" vs. John Hodgman's "I'm a PC" on those commercials to legally change his name to "What's His Name?"

* Apple announces new Mind Control technology on iPhone 3GS. WAIT! WE MEANT VOICE CONTROL REALLY! HONEST!

* Palm announces its smartphone name "Pre" is, in fact, short for, "Pre-June 19, we might actually sell some..."

Oh. Hey. Hi, there. Didn't see you there.

New Dork Tower cartoon up this morning.



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

(It amuses me more than it should that I snagged tinyurl.com/milliwheaton for this).

****

Also: forgot to post Tuesday's cartoon here:



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

****

This Twice-A-Week Dork Tower thing is driving me nuts. Must start back on three Dork Towers a Week. Soon.

***


Win a Copy of Word on the Street!

In Out of the Box’s newest game, Word on the Street, players brainstorm words to fit the category shown on the category card. Then, players pull each letter of that word one lane closer to their side of the street. The first team to capture eight letters on their side of the street wins!

To win a copy of Word on the Street, enter a word that fits the category:

"Something that comes in a bottle"

Entries may only be one word in length, proper names and plurals are allowed where appropriate to the category.

The 25 entries with the most consonants will win a copy of Word on the Street. If there is a tie, winners will be chosen randomly from the tied entries.
Click here and submit the following information to enter:

1. One word that fits the above category
2. Your name, address, city, state, zip

One entry per person. Contest ends 6/30/2009. Free shipping only to winners within the continental United States.

Oh. Hey. Hi, there. Didn't see you there.

New Dork Tower cartoon up this morning.



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

(It amuses me more than it should that I snagged tinyurl.com/milliwheaton for this).

****

Also: forgot to post Tuesday's cartoon here:



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

****

Here are some of the panels I'll be on at MisCon. Unfortunately, I won't be at the con on Monday, but Friday, Saturday and Sunday will be chock-full of Muskratty goodness:

Blending and Shading
Proper blending and shading is essential part of making your art look realistic. Panelists will discuss various media.

Cartooning as Art
How is cartooning an art form? Going from line art to a digital file, to publishing it online, how does it differ from traditional artwork. Tell the process and details that go into cartooning.

Game Art
John's worked with Munchkin and other games ~ He'll us about it. Talk about designing, developing and having fun creating artwork for games!

Artist's Workshop
John'll be critiquing artwork submitted by attendees, answering questions about art and his profession.

Web Comics: The How & Why
John Kovalic and fellow web-comic artist Alina Pete will discuss how they started their web-comics, why they decided to do it and why they continue to do so.

What Were You Thinking
We're asking all our Guests of Honor to answer questions about their work. We have attendees who will be bringing specific items and questions and presenting them to the guests.

Comic Books vs. Comic Strips
John Kovalic and fellow artists will discuss the major differences between published comic books and online/printed comic strips.

****

I'm feeling utterly overcommitted. I fear Miscon may be my last convention for quite a while...

No Origins, GenCon, CONvergence or Comicon. Need to take the summer off. As I just tweeted, I need to stay home and play with my baby girl, this summer. As it is, I barely see her for an hour after I come home from work, before her bedtime - and that's not nearly enough. I need the weekends with her, too. Much travel these last two months have really hammered home how much I miss her when I'm away.

As far as Lucca and Warpcon go, I very much hope Louisa and Judith can come along to those...

Oh. Hey. Hi, there. Didn't see you there.

New Dork Tower cartoon up this morning.



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

****

Seriously. Heard that almost exact, word for word, on the Weather Channel the other night.

Almost.

****

Grinning like an idiot, here. I've been listed amongst Wired's "100 Geeks You Should Be Following On Twitter." Goes to show where Drunk Twittering will get you, in life.

"Twitter has of late been inundated by, shall we say, “normals.” What was once our little playground has become rather more populated. But that doesn’t make it any less effective a tool for communication. It just means we have to stick together, and keep the geek community thriving.

To this end, GeekDad has assembled the following: a list of 100 awesomely geeky-geeks. These are great, creative gamers and chiptune artists, astronomers and LEGO builders."

The list doesn't look like there's any kind of order to it. Save for Everybody's Pal Wil at #1, of course. Were it sorted by Relative Obscurity, I'd most likely be #100. Still, seriously, it IS really sorta cool, and I can't believe the company I'm in.

HEY! Yes, I'd act like I've been there before - IF I'D EVER BEEN THERE BEFORE!

Which I haven't.

Hence: grinning like a dolt.

****

Um...prolly should note here:

I'm muskrat_john on Twitter.

****

JUDITH (listening to "Wonderful Tonight" on the radio): There's nothing wrong with liking Eric Clapton, is there?

JOHN: No. No. Of course not.

(Pause)

JOHN: Unless you're George Harrison's wife...

My morning so far...

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

EDIT: Sorry about the earlier double-post. It was sent from my iPhone, which occasionally does such things...

Oh. Hey. Hi, there. Didn't see you there.

New Dork Tower cartoon up this morning.



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.

(The site seems slow at the moment, but it was displaying fine just a bit earlier.)

****

Obsessing about "Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh" by Say Hi. Man, am I loving this song.

****

Mythos Buddies will, apparently, be shipping in June. Yay, yay!

Only one of the 12 designs left to announce. What will it be, oh, WHAT will it be?

****

In Austin, TX, briefly (too briefly) to talk about many cool things with Steve Jackson Games.

Many evil deeds are being hatched. Much great food is being consumed. Games shall be played.

It's a hard life, this cartooning biz.

****

Being a morning traffic reporter in Austin must be the easiest job in the world.

"It sucks."

"Right, Colt. It sure sucks."

"There you have it: traffic sucks. Now, back to the studio..."

Thirten years and five weeks ago, today, I quit the last "real" job that I ever held.

This date is familiar to me mostly because thirteen years ago, today, I married the Lovely and Talented Judith.

Honestly, it's not been often in my life that I've made two utterly brilliant moves in a five-week space. But really, Judith had much to do with both of them, so let's call it a shared credit. :-)

It's a super-spectacular marriage, and honestly, I got stupid lucky when Judith said "yes." Which is probably as good a time to bring up the actual method of my proposal again, as any.

I adore my wife, and our thirteenth year of marriage was about as amazing as any can get. Which doesn't mean I won't be trying to make the 14th even better. But life with Judith - and now with Louisa as well - is frankly pretty freaking awesome, 24-7.

***

Need a new desktop machine: pretty badly, as it turns out.

For the first time in a decade, though, I have to wonder if it might not make more sense saving $1,000 and going with a pretty good iMac, as opposed to a pretty awesome Mac Pro, the sort of which I've had and loved for years...

***

Oh. Hey. Hi, there. Didn't see you there.

New Dork Tower cartoon up...um...last Thursday, that I forgot to mention here.



Click here, there or anywhere to see it.