Comic Transcripts

[[IGNACIO is listening to the phone.]]
VOICEMAIL: Your call is very important to us. Please listen carefully, as our menu options have recently changed. For billing, press one. For sales, press two. For technical support, press pi.

VOICEMAIL: If you know your party’s extension, you may dial it in reverse order using your touch-tone phone. To access a company directory, please hold your phone receiver over a stove and watch the patterns the steam makes when viewed against a dark background.

VOICEMAIL: To report a lost or stolen card, twist the receiver in opposite directions with both hands. Have a resealable glass container nearby to catch the liquid that emerges from the earpiece. In a dark, quiet room, press your face against the mouth of the container and tell the liquid exactly what happened to your card. Vivid memories are best. The good times your card enabled you to have. Tell it all this, and seal it.

VOICEMAIL: Let the liquid harden into a gel in a cool cupboard In seven to ten days, you will receive a packet of seeds. Plant the seeds in the gel in the shape of a regular heptagon.
IGNACIO [[looking nervous, thinks]]: Man, these options have changed

{{header: please hold for WONDERMARK.COM}}

{{alt-text: Your replacement card will come in the mail. The seeds are just to keep you occupied. They are actually just sand. We will bill the card we are sending for the sand.}}

#651; Those Volatile Menu Options transcribed by in

[[IGNACIO is listening to the phone.]]
VOICEMAIL: Your call is very important to us. Please listen carefully, as our menu options have recently changed. For billing, press one. For sales, press two. For technical support, press pi.

VOICEMAIL: If you know your party’s extension, you may dial it in reverse order using your touch-tone phone. To access a company directory, please hold your phone receiver over a stove and watch the patterns the steam makes when viewed against a dark background.

VOICEMAIL: To report a lost or stolen card, twist the receiver in opposite directions with both hands. Have a resealable glass container nearby to catch the liquid that emerges from the earpiece. In a dark, quiet room, press your face against the mouth of the container and tell the liquid exactly what happened to your card. Vivid memories are best. The good times your card enabled you to have. Tell it all this, and seal it.

VOICEMAIL: Let the liquid harden into a gel in a cool cupboard In seven to ten days, you will receive a packet of seeds. Plant the seeds in the gel in the shape of a regular heptagon.
IGNACIO [[looking nervous, thinks]]: Man, these options have changed

{{header: please hold for WONDERMARK.COM}}

{{alt-text: Your replacement card will come in the mail. The seeds are just to keep you occupied. They are actually just sand. We will bill the card we are sending for the sand.}}

#651; Those Volatile Menu Options transcribed by in

[[IGNACIO is listening to the phone.]]
VOICEMAIL: Your call is very important to us. Please listen carefully, as our menu options have recently changed. For billing, press one. For sales, press two. For technical support, press pi.

VOICEMAIL: If you know your party's extension, you may dial it in reverse order using your touch-tone phone. To access a company directory, please hold your phone receiver over a stove and watch the patterns the steam makes when viewed against a dark background.

VOICEMAIL: To report a lost or stolen card, twist the receiver in opposite directions with both hands. Have a resealable glass container nearby to catch the liquid that emerges from the earpiece. In a dark, quiet room, press your face against the mouth of the container and tell the liquid exactly what happened to your card. Vivid memories are best. The good times your card enabled you to have. Tell it all this, and seal it.

VOICEMAIL: Let the liquid harden into a gel in a cool cupboard In seven to ten days, you will receive a packet of seeds. Plant the seeds in the gel in the shape of a regular heptagon.
IGNACIO [[looking nervous, thinks]]: Man, these options have changed

{{header: please hold for WONDERMARK.COM}}

{{alt-text: Your replacement card will come in the mail. The seeds are just to keep you occupied. They are actually just sand. We will bill the card we are sending for the sand.}}

Your replacement card will come in the mail. The seeds are just to keep you occupied. They are actually just sand. We will bill the card we are sending for the sand.

#651; Those Volatile Menu Options

  — August 24th, 2010

[ Tags: , , ]       Permalink: https://wondermark.com/c/651/

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My newest game: Noodle Battle! At PAX!

September 2, 2026 by David Malki !

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!


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