In late 2006, the satirical newspaper The Onion launched a comics page in its print edition (currently available free on newsstands in 10 metropolitan areas). I was thrilled to feature Wondermark on that page in every market, and for about two and a half years, the comic ran in 700,000 papers every week.

Now, however, the Onion comics page is going away. The issue appearing on newsstands in a few days will be the last to feature a Wondermark strip.*

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed — it was wonderful to attend conventions in cities like New York, San Francisco, Austin, and the D.C. area and have people recognize the strip from the paper, thrilled to discover things like book collections and the email list. It was always a kick to pick a paper off the newsstand and see my work in print, and knowing that bored people on the subway would be reading my comic helped give me perspective — and kept me from making too many internet-nerd in-jokes. The whole time, the editors at the Onion have been uniformly gracious, accommodating and supportive, and I am deeply indebted to Tasha Robinson and Joe Garden particularly.

But the financial realities of the newspaper-publishing business are what they are. (That is to say, miserable.) Moving forward, my goals are twofold — both of which heavily involve you:

> First, I want to make sure that people who enjoyed Wondermark in the Onion know that the strip itself is still very much alive and continuing online. If you have friends who regularly read the comic in the paper, remind them that they can sign up for email delivery of comics and not miss a beat. In fact, they’ll get twice the comics! (Since the Onion only published one comic a week, but I post two a week here on the site.)

>> Second, if you attend or work for a school (high school or college) with a newspaper, let them know that Wondermark is now available for syndication through MCT Campus, the same syndicate that offers comics such as “K Chronicles”, “Brewster Rockit”, and “Bliss” to schools. MCT is offering Wondermark on a trial basis, which means that it lives or dies based on newspapers electing to participate and reader feedback – both things that I can’t provide, but you can.

Yes, you (in the aggregate) have the power to make Wondermark available to millions of students and faculty (in the aggregate) who might enjoy them. With the loss of the Onion audience, this opportunity for additional exposure is very precious, and I’d love to make a good showing. Please contact an editor at your school paper and direct them (very kindly) to the MCT Campus folks here, along with a few words about why you enjoy Wondermark and why it could be a good fit for your school.

And if the paper picks it up for syndication — tell me about it! I’ll send a personalized thank-you gift to anyone who sends me a scan of Wondermark in their school paper.

Thanks so much, everyone! And to any fugitive Onion fans who’ve found your way here, thanks for making the leap online. Here’s the email subscription list, the RSS feed, the website’s Twitter feed, the LiveJournal feed — pick your flavor. It’s nice to have you around.

*If you live in Madison, San Fran., NYC, LA, Austin, Chicago, Denver/Boulder, the Twin Cities, Milwaukee, or DC, pick up an Onion late this week. You might be glad you did, hint hint

Anyone with a copy of Beards of our Forefathers has seen the 10 or so colored comics that it contains — similar to this comic from a few months ago. They were tons of fun to make, and I planned to do the same for my next collection, Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death. But thanks to a wonderfully busy holiday shipping season, I haven’t had the time to do so.

That’s where you come in! I’m inviting you to color one, two, three…up to six of my comic strips. The best entries will be printed in Clever Tricks (scheduled for release by Dark Horse Books in May 2009), and will be credited to you and, if you like, your website. The best colorists will also receive payment for their work — I’m not looking for free labor here.

The catch is that I need them soon. I’m hoping that you’ve got some days off this week, because I’ll be accepting entries only through this Sunday, January 4 (11:59 PM Pacific time). 

Details are below the jump! Good luck to all.  (more…)

Happy holidays to everyone out there in internet-land! Whether you celebrate Chanukah, Christmas, Festivus, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, Bear-Hatting Day, one of the fake holidays or nothing at all, I hope you spend the coming week warm and in the company of those you love.

Here are some of my favorite Wondermark holiday comics from years past:

#363; In which Joy is mandated
#093; In which a Fortress is breached
#357; In which Mall Parking sucks
#141; In which the Son of God stands in queue
#081; In which a Confrontation occurs
#260; In which a Plan ends poorly
#069; In which the Canucks get a Pretty Good Idea

My challenge to you: send a holiday card to a stranger from the phone book.

I was addressing our family’s holiday cards this year, and I had a couple left over after my list was done. So I found the White Pages, opened to a random page, and found a couple’s name and address. I wrote them a nice note in the card, enclosed a copy of our annual newsletter, and sent it. Then, again. The cards went out yesterday, and I suppose that’ll be the end of it.

Why am I bothering to tell you about it? Because I think you should do it too. Here are the reasons why:

• It’s fun. A little bit of minor mischief is exhilarating. For example, I think it’d be cool to work on an Improv Everywhere mission, to play a small part in making the lives of strangers more surreal, but those guys usually operate on the other side of the country from me. This is my very small way of doing the same thing.

• It’s cathartic. I watched a lecture once about the types of programming that we all undergo simply to interact functionally with society. For example, we obey driving rules, in the interest of the greater good, and usually that gets us where we’re going without a hitch.

Occasionally breaking out of those bounds, however — doing things that are “wrong,” even if harmless — keeps us cognizant and gives us perspective.

Examples (these are all things I’ve done): In the dead of night, with no cars for miles around, stopping the car on the highway and touching the ground outside. In a deserted building, using the “wrong” restroom. Asking for a hamburger in a hardware store, or a hammer in McDonald’s.

Why would we hesitate before doing any of these (ultimately harmless) things? Because social roles are very powerfully conditioned into us. Usually, as mentioned, that’s good — it keeps us safe, and allows strangers to interact smoothly so the world can work. But when you order a hammer at McDonald’s, you add a hiccup into the routine, and thus become very aware of it. Sending a card to a stranger is similar.

• It might touch someone. Probably what’ll happen is, the recipient of your card will be a little confused, then figure that either someone made a mistake or they’ve been placed on some mailing list. Whatever explanation settles their unease more, they’ll accept, and then they’ll either keep the card or throw it away, the end.

But maybe the person is lonely. You don’t know. Maybe a little note saying “All the best, warm wishes,” etc. would be a nice pick-me-up.

Of course, maybe a lonely person would get even more depressed if the only card they received seemed like a mistake. I guess this is an inherent risk of the plan.

• It could lead to something. You might get contacted by the person you sent the card to! You might even become fast friends. Now, it should be noted that you might also be ax murdered in your sleep — but again, inherent risk.

SO. All that being said, here are my tips for sending cards to strangers:

• Pick your names randomly, but wisely. I opened the phone book to a random page, but then searched that page for a married couple with their full address listed. To cut down the risk of unduly confusing people, I also tried to choose names that weren’t obviously seniors (”Elmer & Agnes”).

I’d advise sending holiday-neutral cards, but if you do have overtly Christian cards, say, try to avoid the Cohens and the Goldbergs. Just to hedge your bets.

Oh, and you can find a ZIP code for any U.S. address here.  Leave off the +4, it’ll look like you got the address from a mailing list.

• Don’t make a big deal about it. The perfect situation is if you have one or two bulk cards left over from a pack — the cheap ones you probably got at Rite Aid are great. Don’t buy a $4 Hallmark card, or it’ll seem too planned. And I wouldn’t use Wondermark cards, for two reasons: firstly, they’re kind of expensive and if you’ve bought them, I’d hate for you to waste them; secondly, they’re branded with ‘wondermark.com’, and the recipient, looking for clues to the mystery, might find this website, with this post, and then the jig is up.

This was the one thing I did wrong. I send out Wondermark cards every year (special exclusive designs not available for sale!), and between the branding on the card itself and the mentions of my books in the enclosed newsletter, it would be easy for the strangers receiving my cards to write the whole thing off as a viral marketing gimmick. Remember, when confused, folks search for whatever explanation they can hang their hat on — anything that looks like marketing, or a prank, or out-of-the-ordinary at all could cause them to make those assumptions.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with them thinking whatever they like — it’s not like there’s some specific response we’re trying to provoke here. We’re just trying to make people wonder.

• But do have fun with it. I recommend writing a warm, perfectly normal note (no “Thanks for the backrub last night” or “The aliens are after you”), and for maximum puzzlement, enclosing a brief family newsletter. Again, the aim is to be perfectly banal and typical, with nothing to show your hand that you don’t know these people.

A touch of the weird is fine. Your newsletter can talk about your accordion concert tour across Bulgaria. But keep it subtle.

• Don’t expose yourself unnecessarily. Absolutely feel free to omit a return address, if you want to avoid any chance of it getting back to you — in fact I’d recommend this for the majority of cases. Don’t take chances, for the aforementioned ax-murderer reasons. Or, if you want to leave the door open for a response, perhaps you can use a real address (a P.O. box?) with a fake name.

THAT’S IT. Now let me hear your ideas, and also tell me your stories — will you try it? Did you? Against all odds, did you get a response? Share your thoughts with me and other readers on the Wondermark forum.

This holiday season…let’s everybody waste 42¢ together.

* Special note for kids under 16: “Phone books” are what we used to look up phone numbers before the Internet, back when residences had single shared phones for an entire household. The book itself listed all the numbers, and sometimes addresses, for the residents in a given geographic area. Your local library may have archival examples.

** A “library” is a place where … oh, forget it.

As of this writing, only 73 copies of the calendar remain.

Hey what’s this?

It’s the 2009 Wondermark Calendar! These guys are made of twelve individual monthly cards, each 8.5″ x 5.5″, which sit in a heavy brass easel. Each month is adorned with an image and a bit of dark verse written by me. The calendars are hand-screenprinted by my wife Nikki in our home, and are strictly limited to 150 copies.

We didn’t have a chance to make a new video, but the process is exactly the same as last year, illustrated below (or at this link, for readers on feeds):

…With the sole exception that I am now a full year older than in that video. This year’s calendars are created by hand just like last year, and they are available with the easel (recommended!) or simply as a “refill” of just the cards if you still have an easel from last year. We are printing the 150 copies of the calendar now, and will start shipping them next week. You should order them right this second — our U.S. shipping deadline is nominally this Sunday, but we will continue shipping all packages (sans guarantee) right up ’til Christmas Day, at which point we will collapse from exhaustion. So your chances are reasonable to very good, and you should order now.

“But David,” you may say in a charming accent, “are you insane? Those of us in far-flung foreign countries with postal services that you justifiably distrust could never get these by Christmas!”

A-ha! I’ve got you covered, friend. I will do everything in my power to get these calendars out the door as soon as possible. BUT, should the vagaries of Fate stand between my California hovel and your palatial estate in Dublin or Johannesburg or Auckland or Oslo or Hong Kong, your sweetie for whom you have purchased this thoughtful gift will not be empty-handed come The Day. For you can give them this:

It is a Certificate asserting that you have, indeed, purchased a calendar and that it is on its way. Simply print it out on A4 paper (right-click to download PDF) and keep it as a backup in case your postman disappoints you. Your honeybunch will understand! And then you can have a Second Christmas when it finally arrives. (I think in the majority of cases this will not be necessary, but, you know, just in case.)

As I said, there will only be 150 of these calendars made. This is a bit of a gamble; we sold 100 last year, and I’ve decided to step it up one notch. But savvy pre-ordering customers have already purchased, as of this writing, 51 of the 150 — so only 99 remain! Go to it.

CAPSULE BOOK REVIEWS

Okay, time’s getting short, the holidays approacheth anon, you’ve still got a long list, let’s get to it. Books your clever friends & weird family will love:

The Affected Provincial’s Companion, by Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy.
This is a lot like a Wondermark book, except it’s written by a guy who actually rides a penny-farthing bicycle around town while wearing a plaid suit with a daisy in the lapel. Other books in the Wondermark vein (Victoriana played for parody): The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases • How to Make Friends and Oppress People: Classic Travel Advice for the Gentleman Adventurer (Seriously.)
Perfect for: Anyone who’s ever wistfully said, “Oh, I was born in the wrong century!”, but wasn’t mocking a nerd at the time

The Kris Straub Comedy Compendium (Starslip Crisis Volumes 1-2; Chainsawsuit: The Book), by Kris Straub
Kris is a funny guy and his comics read thrillingly well in serial form. The nuances of his space-opera story really unfold underneath the day-to-day gag strips, and his Chainsawsuit goofball thing is ideal for the can.
Perfect for: Anyone who owns Firefly or Doctor Who DVDs, especially if they won’t let you borrow them

Moruskine, by Dirk Schwieger
A book of comics illustrating the adventures of Dirk in Tokyo, chronicling the things that random people dared him to do around Japan. Read as much as you like on the Web and see if you’re not instantly fascinated.
Perfect for: Anyone who reads Lonely Planet books for fun (I do! They’re really entertaining)

Pugs: God’s Little Weirdos, by Dave Kellett
Dave has a serious affection for pugs, but he’s certainly aware that they’re lacking something critical in the skull that would make them more intelligent than a bumblebee in a special school. Pugs is a collection of Dave’s charming “Sheldon” comics about the crazy animals.
Perfect for: Your mom

I Am White Ninja and You are My Pickle Sidekick, by Scott Bevan & Kent Earle
“White Ninja” comics do indeed feature a white ninja. But no, they are not about anything really ninja-related. What “White Ninja” comics are becomes perfectly clear when I explain that these are schoolchums from Saskatchewan who began drawing comics in like the seventh grade.
Perfect for: Anyone who’s ever named something animate after something inanimate, such as a dog named “Toaster” or a baby named “Bagpipe”

Now go to it! And don’t forget to order a calendar!

After I announced my ‘Hierarchy of Beards’ poster, a fine Marksman named Dan I. shared the following with me. It’s a Beard Photo-Spread from the April 24, 1939 issue of LIFE magazine, full of such gems as the “Norse Skipper”, “Oom Paul Kruger Beard”, and “Double Spitzbart”. The best part is that, as far as I can tell, these are more-or-less accurate names, unlike mine, which are 100% invented from whole cloth. But in a few cases I wasn’t far off! Take a look (click for bigger):

(Full transcription of the text on page 2 is after the cut, below.)

I also recently stumbled across the work of cartoonist William Kerridge Haselden (1872-1953), who drew spot gags and editorial cartoons for the UK’s Daily Mirror from 1903 to 1940. The University of Kent has a fine archive of Haselden’s Mirror cartoons; here’s a few from 1907-16 dealing specifically with the issue of wild and variable beard-stylings:

Many more may be found at the British Cartoon Archive.

Finally, I was also made aware this week of a beard-chart similar in tone to mine in the pages of The Affected Provincial’s Companion, a book that will require its own entry on this blog someday:

The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that there is clearly a desperate need for as many facial-hair taxonomies as possible. It reminds me of the Age of Exploration, when rival map-makers would ornament the New World with unique details to make their maps more appealing than the competition, but everyone was working mostly from scribbled sailors’ notes and conjecture.

One day, perhaps not in my lifetime, we will enter an era of satellite beard-imagery and Global Moustache System mapping that will allow Rand McNally and the National Geographic Society and The Mercator Consortium to publish accurate-to-the-square-meter surveys of the lumpy beard-scape all around us. But until then, in these wild and woolly frontier-days of roughshod beard-classifying, I’m glad I’m right at the bleeding edge of the straight-razor. Enjoy!

(more…)

Here’s Wondermark holiday cards in the London Telegraph…

And the new ‘Hierarchy of Beards’ poster on BoingBoing and Andrew Sullivan…

(psst: here’s a larger version of that poster image for your perusing pleasure)

Domestic orders for either should be placed within the week to ensure delivery by Christmas! If you are not concerned about such things, you may order whenever you like. If you have already ordered, you are my personal hero and I love you.

Soon I will be able to stop talking about merchandise! Just…not quite yet. In the meantime there is this, which gives my wife the major giggles at every single opportunity:

(here’s the direct video link for readers on feeds)

It’s here! The poster-sized expansion of my ‘Beard Spotting Guide’ from Beards of our Forefathers.

You can also buy it in a bundle with Carly’s and my Futurism poster and save 10% on the whole deal.

To reiterate: This product is sold from and shipped by TopatoCo, which also sells my T-shirts. Purchases from TopatoCo are processed entirely separately from my in-house store, which sells holiday cards, books, and gift items. However, it should be reiterated that purchases from either should be made with a certain, shall we say, vitesse, as the Post Office can only deliver things so fast. All non-U.S. orders should use Priority or Express shipping to have any chance of arriving by Christmas. Unfortunately the world is rather large, and we must deal with the ramifications.

Domestic orders can continue to be placed for the next week or so! Hooray for beards!

Assuming you’ve already got copies of all my books — both my comic strip collections and my parody Victorian novels — and perhaps even a Wondermark T-shirt or two…well, you probably think I’ve got nothing more for you this holiday season! You, my close personal friend, are dead wrong.

First, I have a hearty “thank you!” from my warm, rent-paid-up household to yours. This is my job, thanks to kind folks like you. Hooray!

Second, I know for a fact that you don’t want to go to the mall, you don’t want to fight for parking…but neither do you want to just browse Amazon like a sluggard and hope you stumble across the perfect gift for all the weirdos on your shopping list. That’s where I can do you a favor, with the following fine list of Gift Recommendations that are Wonderfully Creative and Unique and also Help My Colleagues Not Starve. After all, you’re the one about whom everyone’s always saying, “Where do you find all these bizarre and wonderful gifts?” Don’t worry…your secret’s safe with me!

For the book lover who’s already got a framed print of this strip, the “Unshelved” book bag is hard to resist. Also check out their T-shirts — my wife’s got several and they always get appreciative bibliophile double-takes (or maybe that’s just my wife).

Poop sign. Great stocking stuffer? Probably won’t fit. Great everything-else stuffer? ‘Nuff said.

Jon Rosenberg’s “Goats” is soon to be a 3-book graphic novel series from Del Rey, and he’s offering some limited-edition, signed & numbered archival prints of artwork created for the first volume, Infinite Typewriters. Really lovely!

Indigo Kelleigh’s designed his own 8-bit tarot cards in a colorful, retro-Nintendo style. These cards are also printed in limited edition.

Next week: book reviews!