#541; In which I thought of it First

Comic Transcripts

JOSH: I got a great idea for a product. It’s perfect, it fills a needs, solves a common problem.
TAD: But you have absolutely NO engineering knowhow, seed capital, or business acumen whatsoever!
JOSH: ABSOLUTELY none. In fact, LESS than none, considering what information I DO have is irrevocably flawed.

JOSH: So what do I DO with my idea? I mean, it is SO great!
How do I CASH IN without having to do anything HARD?
TAD: If there’s really NOTHING you can do with it yourself, you have three options.
You can TURN IT OVER to the world, to someone who CAN do something with it.
You can cling to it, and nine years from now when somebody else comes up with it independently, moan that it was your idea.
OR, you can write a letter to the President of Inventions explaining your idea, and he’ll send you a form to fill out with a check to follow.

CAPTION: NINE YEARS LATER
OFFPANEL VOICE: …have developed a way to reprocess COW METHANE into JET FUEL.
JOSH: THAT WAS MY FRIKKIN IDEA
TAD: Man, EVERYBODY picks option two.

{{Header: come up with WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{Alt-text: Writing to the President of Inventions is like writing to Santa Claus, except that the President of Inventions is a notorious intellectual-property thief and Santa Claus is imaginary.}}

#541; In which I thought of it First transcribed by in

The past few weeks have been a frenzy of assembling the very laborious, very bespoke first print run of NOODLE BATTLE, the puzzle game I am releasing this weekend at PAX West in Seattle!

PAX has an event called the PNW Tabletop Game Market (Saturday night ONLY), which is a curated selection of short-run games from local designers. As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I applied for a space in this fall’s event mainly as a way to force myself to finish a new game. And here it is!

The drawings are all by Jason Poland, good pal and cartoonist of My Dad Is Dracula. Jason played an early version of this game at Alaska Robotics Comics Camp this spring, and really liked it!

So I said, “Do you want to help me make it?” And so he has! It was his idea to make all the characters fun little animals, and I think it adds a ton of charm.

Because this edition is limited-run, it has been incredibly labor-intensive to make! The boxes and cards were made by a game factory in the usual fashion, but separately. The blank tiles were made by a woodworker dude out of Connecticut. For each game, we have had to:

Cut a piece of plastic and install the box window
Paint all the tiles, hundreds at a time
Apply a sticker to both sides of every tile
Apply stickers to the box (we couldn’t get the box back printed in time, so the whole back side of the box is a sticker too)
Apply the “Nutrition Facts” sticker, which was a late suggestion by my kid that I just had to run with
Fold up the rule sheet (they come from the printer as big strips of paper)
Put all the components into the box and seal it all up

I knew it would be a lot of work and would require some inefficient, expensive compromises AND I WAS RIGHT. But the final product is turning out great, which is the important thing!!

I will have 50 copies with me (if all goes well) at PAX, and then between now and the holidays we will be putting together additional copies to round out this first edition.

I will announce additional copies on Patreon first, once they are available online!! And here too, naturally, before long.

You can also sign up here if you’d like me to email you once the game is available online!