Comic Transcripts

[[MARITRIX roots through a desk as KORDRA sits on a chair nearby and watches her.]]

MARITRIX: Are you sure it’s okay to go through your dad’s old things?

KORDRA: He always told me “When I’m gone, there are no more secrets.”

MARITRIX: Look at all these LETTERS…

[[Maritrix reads from a series of papers.]]

MARITRIX: “Dearest John, I write this not because I have any great desire to correspond with you, nor to hear from you, but rather because I happened to have a little ink left in my pen after composing a journal entry…”

MARITRIX: “My dearest John, I was spending another day not thinking of you at all when I was seized with the desire to tell you how absolutely nothing you mean to me…”

MARITRIX: “John, dearest.  You torment me so.  I care nothing for you, not for your eyes, sapphires in the moonlight; or your hands, strong like old ropes; or…”

MARITRIX: It goes ON!  There are REAMS of these!  All in the same handwriting!

MARITRIX: Was this an old lover?  Did your dad have a secret admirer? Or an AFFAIR?!

KORDRA: Nah, we figured out pretty quick that he was writing them himself and mailing them to the house to make himself seem, like, MYSTERIOUS and DESIRABLE?  He’d been doing it since he was a kid.

KORDRA: We all played along.  Mom chalked it up to a harmless quirk.

[[JOHN comes up from behind Kordra.]]

JOHN: I said when I’m GONE, Kordra!  WHEN I’M GONE!

{{header: the past is prologue WONDERMARK.COM}}

#1447; In which a Correspondent is smitten transcribed by in

[[MARITRIX roots through a desk as KORDRA sits on a chair nearby and watches her.]]

MARITRIX: Are you sure it's okay to go through your dad's old things?

KORDRA: He always told me "When I'm gone, there are no more secrets."

MARITRIX: Look at all these LETTERS...

[[Maritrix reads from a series of papers.]]

MARITRIX: "Dearest John, I write this not because I have any great desire to correspond with you, nor to hear from you, but rather because I happened to have a little ink left in my pen after composing a journal entry..."

MARITRIX: "My dearest John, I was spending another day not thinking of you at all when I was seized with the desire to tell you how absolutely nothing you mean to me..."

MARITRIX: "John, dearest.  You torment me so.  I care nothing for you, not for your eyes, sapphires in the moonlight; or your hands, strong like old ropes; or..."

MARITRIX: It goes ON!  There are REAMS of these!  All in the same handwriting!

MARITRIX: Was this an old lover?  Did your dad have a secret admirer? Or an AFFAIR?!

KORDRA: Nah, we figured out pretty quick that he was writing them himself and mailing them to the house to make himself seem, like, MYSTERIOUS and DESIRABLE?  He'd been doing it since he was a kid.

KORDRA: We all played along.  Mom chalked it up to a harmless quirk.

[[JOHN comes up from behind Kordra.]]

JOHN: I said when I'm GONE, Kordra!  WHEN I'M GONE!

{{header: the past is prologue WONDERMARK.COM}}

the only thing worse than receiving a 'Dear John' letter is writing AND receiving one

#1447; In which a Correspondent is smitten

  — January 8th, 2019

[ Tags: , , ]       Permalink: https://wondermark.com/c/1447/

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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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