You may remember this piece I made for Brandon Bird’s Law & Order-themed gallery show earlier this year! It features an incredibly historically-accurate account of curious and suspicious murders. It has been newly colored by the kind and fruitful Marcus Thiele (whom you may also recognize from his wonderful illustration in Machine of Death), and I have made it into a brand-new poster! I think it looks great on any wall and hopefully you will too.

The Homicides poster is the first of three brand-new TopatoCo products I’m offering this holiday season. (These are separate from the holiday cards and calendars in my in-house store.) The second is a new poster version of “The Matter of the Envelopes”:

Just choose “The Matter of the Envelopes” from the drop-down menu here. Now, each individual episode is already available as a single print, like any other Wondermark comic, but since Comics #670-674 were a single story arc I thought it’d be neat to combine them into a large poster as well. Over at the Poster Shoppe I offer large-format versions of all the larger comics, plus #463, the Back to the Future parody.

And a new T-shirt as well! Based on what may be the most popular comic I’ve ever done — certainly in the top ten. Hooray!

These are the only new TopatoCo products I’ll be releasing this holiday season so there’s no need to wait; please commence gift-buying for all your cleverest friends and relatives. TopatoCo has posted holiday ordering deadlines as well.

I say it often, but it bears repeating: thank you so much for your kind patronage year-round. It allows me to spend all my time making fun and interesting things for you, and I love every second of it. You are the best!

Since I announced the pre-order on Tuesday, we have sold an amazing 117 units — meaning there are only 58 left! At this rate, not everyone who wants one will be able to get one, so don’t delay. Order yours now.

Thank you kindly for the great advice regarding my plastics conundrum! I have been in touch with several kind individuals and I hope to have the situation well in hand forthwith.

I am also pleased to announce that the 2011 Wondermark Calendar is now available for pre-order!

This will be the fourth year I’ve offered the calendar, and every year they sell out. The calendars are produced by hand and are individually signed and numbered! They’re mailed in the order that they were ordered, so the first buyer will get #1 (which is already gone!) and the last, #175. To get the lowest possible number, order now! Do the numbers matter? Not to me. But maybe to you???

Last year I wrote a very detailed explanation of how we create the calendars. I looked back through it today and I’m really pleased with how it reads! If you missed it last year, definitely take a look. I think it’s pretty interesting!

IN OTHER NEWS

Here are three brand-new Monocle Poppers™ holiday cards I’ve created just for you:

These add to my existing catalog of holiday cards to make nine designs total! Plus the various blank notecards, thank-you cards and the all-powerful Every Occasion Card. And remember that you get steep discounts for multiple cards! Basically what I am saying is that I got you covered. If you need cards, I am your man.

SPECIAL NOTE: The calendars will ship later in December, but I know you need holiday cards in-hand earlier so I’ll be sending all card orders out ASAP. Feel free to combine both in one order, and I’ll send the cards out right away even if the calendar has to follow later on.

(Non-US customers: Priority Mail is always your better bet in terms of expedient shipping. International First Class simply cannot be predicted nor guaranteed.)

FINALLY

Here is a new offering in the ol’ dry-goods concern: loose pages from old books for use in crafting, collage, or really anything you like (I won’t judge):

These are the lovely remnants after I have mined old volumes for their usable images! I am making them available in packs of about 100 pages each. See, I’m starting to fill box after box with these pages and I figure someone else can put them to better use than I can! They’d be great for all sorts of craft projects or just lining a drawer in that armoire you found on Craigslist.

Some covers are available too, for your journal or what-have-you! You do what you like. I’m just the enabler.

AND A BRIEF NOTE

Regarding Wondermark books, posters, shirts etc. from TopatoCo: that fine institution has posted its holiday ordering guidelines which I recommend taking a hearty peek at! However I will also mention that I do have one brand-new shirt in the TopatoCo pipeline which has yet to appear — hopefully that will show its face soon.

SO THAT’S WHAT I GOT

For some of you, this image is all you need to know.

You remember my call for submissions for this anthology, based on a Dinosaur Comic that postulated the idea of a machine that could predict how a person would die. You recall me talking about the 700 submissions we received, and how we whittled it down to 30. You’ve asked me at conventions for the last four years — “When’s Machine of Death coming out? What’s the story with that? I really want to read that book!”

The answer is: October 26. Tuesday.

For the unfamiliar, here’s a bit of the premise:

The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words DROWNED or CANCER or OLD AGE or CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. It let people know how they were going to die.

The problem with the machine is that nobody really knew how it worked, which wouldn’t actually have been that much of a problem if the machine worked as well as we wished it would. But the machine was frustratingly vague in its predictions: dark, and seemingly delighting in the ambiguities of language. OLD AGE, it had already turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or shot by a bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machine captured that old-world sense of irony in death — you can know how it’s going to happen, but you’ll still be surprised when it does.

There were now machines in every doctor’s office and in booths at the mall. You could pay someone or you could probably get it done for free, but the result was the same no matter what machine you went to. They were, at least, consistent.

The book contains 34 stories by folks such as me, Ryan North, Randall Munroe, Shaenon Garrity, Yahtzee Croshaw, Erin McKean, James Lafond Sutter and a bunch of other great people. The stories are illustrated by folks such as Kate Beaton, Kazu Kibuishi, Aaron Diaz, Karl Kerschl, Jeffrey Brown, Scott Campbell, Cameron Stewart, Adam Koford and just too many more people to list. (Although at that link we try.) We’re also doing an audiobook that’s narrated by folks I can’t even mention yet.

Here is the significance of October 26 specifically:

It only takes a few hundred sales in a short time to become a Number One bestseller on Amazon.com.

So even though the book is available for purchase now, we want to concentrate all the attention onto October 26. Blog about it, tweet about it, invite your friends to the Facebook event — just spread the word that October 26 is the day to buy Machine of Death on Amazon.

We talk about the whole deal some more at the official Machine of Death site:

The simple truth is that we probably can’t compete on the shelves at Barnes & Noble alongside every other book in the world. The agents and the publishers are right; it might not work for a mass market. That’s okay. We don’t need to sell it to everyone. We don’t need to sell 100,000 copies; we don’t have the rent on a New York office to pay for.

We only need to sell it to you.

On October 26, we want to send a message that a little project dragged kicking and screaming from “crazy idea” past “it’ll never work” all the way to “By God, they actually did it” can make a big splash. We’re internet people; you are too. We want to prove to all the people who said “this will never sell” that internet people make things happen.

Here’s the link to that post explaining everything: http://machineofdeath.net/a/mod-day

Here’s the book on Amazon — tack your own affiliate link on there and make a few bucks, we don’t mind: http://machineofdeath.net/oct26/

Here’s the Facebook event.

Here’s our faces when everybody pitches in and we take the world by storm:

Buy it on October 26! Spread the word! And thank you!

I’ve joined a dodgeball league here in L.A.! The Eagle Rock Yacht Club is a neat group of folks who’re into being social, having fun, being active, giving back to the community, and hitting each other with balls. I’ve been playing the last few weeks and having a blast, so when the new league season rolled around I happily signed up.

My team’s name is “Stranger Danger” and I had the privilege of designing the team shirt! We’re going to print it up next week, and having gotten some positive comments on the design, I thought I’d open it up to anybody who’d like to pick one up for themselves. I think it’s fairly context-agnostic — tell people it’s a band! — and it’s gonna be a neat shirt, printed on American Apparel 50/50 fabric with a discharge process, meaning it’ll probably be the softest shirt you’ll ever own. If you’ve felt my The Revolution Will Not Be Telegraphed shirt, it’s the same fabric, but without even the stiffness of screenprinting ink — discharge printing is a dye-bleach process, so the shirt stays flexible and soft.

We’re doing just one print run of these shirts, and making it available to you is our way of bringing the unit cost down for our team members. Proceeds from online sales of the shirt will go back to our league and the community center where we play. Orders for the shirt can even be combined with greeting card orders in the new greeting card shop! It’s all the same shop.

Anyway here is where you can order it! This item will only be offered through September 26. UPDATE: We’re done!All orders will ship starting on October 1.

I am very pleased to announce the BETA LAUNCH of my all-new greeting-cards shop! As longtime readers know, I have in the past offered Wondermark greeting cards, and they’ve always done well, particularly around the holidays. Well, a few holiday seasons ago, they did so well that I ran into a bottleneck — myself and a houseful of assistants spent pretty much every waking hour of the month of December furiously stuffing cards into envelopes and then, agonizingly, waiting for my local print shop to churn out a new batch of this design, or that surprisingly-popular design…it was wonderful to have the business, but it was also a very anxious month as I attempted to make sure everybody’s order was filled correctly and in a timely fashion. A bug was planted in the back of my mind to figure out a better way to do this.

Well, here is my answer:

Monocle Poppers™ are high-quality greeting cards produced in my studio here in Venice, CA. Using professional giclée printing technology and archival fine-art papers, we have become a one-stop manufactory for all sorts of cards for every occasion. My interns will tell you how picky I am with this stuff — how many inks and paper stocks we’ve tested over the past six months; how long we’ve spent tweaking files and squinting at colors and teaching ourselves how to use “creasing machines,” which are a thing I did not used to know existed. I was determined to create the perfect greeting card production system, one that didn’t rely on outside vendors and one that would scale effortlessly without bottlenecks as the busy season approached. I even had custom store software developed to make things (hopefully!) as easy as possible for you to get any cards you like at any time, from one single birthday card to a million at once. And I think it’s finally time to do this.

Most importantly (to me), I’m having a ton of fun coming up with new and clever card ideas, and I’ll be releasing new designs really frequently. Here’s one you haven’t seen before (click for bigger):

This new Piranhamoose card is available now! And how about this one:

The Multi-Purpose Greeting is perfect for every occasion. Also available now!

These are just two of the 20+ Monocle Poppers in the greeting card shop right now! And the cool part is that you can build your own multi-packs. I was adamant on this point. When you buy multiple cards, you trigger a tiered discount system that gives you greater and greater discounts as you add more cards to your cart — up to a maximum of 50% off. So if you need one card for a birthday, great — but if you need 50 for the holidays, you can get those just as easily, and the cards are discounted accordingly.

I’m officially calling this the BETA RELEASE of the store, as we roll slowly out of the driveway on this calm, windless day, so please let me know your thoughts in the comments below — is it easy to use? How’s the navigation? Is everything clear?

I’m very anxious to start sending out cards as soon as possible, so feel free to avail yourself of our discount system and pick up some of the new designs! I have some existing stock of older designs too, so you may get a mix of new prints and old stock as I work through the inventory — but don’t worry. As you know, I’m very picky about quality and nothing leaves my hands unless it’s beautiful and delightful. NOW LET’S DO THIS

Have I got some fun new things for you:

Engineering: it’s like math, BUT LOUDER. Based on “Accomplishment Measured in Decibels.” I got a lot of emails about this one, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it, but then I really enjoyed playing around with the design so now here it is!

Are you a member of the secret order of the International Fraternal Corps of Bears in Ill-Fitting Hats? If you are, perfect! Here is a shirt for you. And, well, you don’t have to be a member of a professional sports team to wear the jersey, you know what I mean?

Unlike most of my other shirts, which are printed on the American Apparel brand, the guys’ shirts here are Gildan — they’re a bit thicker and more roomy than AA. I made that choice because some folks have asked me for a workout shirt, and this provides an option!

I also made a new bumper sticker! It’s not really based on anything except real life. In fact, I am personally very interested in flying cars, and can discuss the question of “where’s the flying cars???” in a fair amount of detail. Interested parties can check out my two favorite contemporary answers to the question: the Terrafugia Transition, basically an airplane that’s also street legal (marketed quite cleverly to pilots and the existing aeronautical community, who are used to both the challenges and the price tag of general aviation) and the Parajet SkyCar, a dune buggy that operates on a parasailing principle which quite handily avoids all the tricky questions of fixed-wing aerodynamics. In other words, one’s a plane that drives, and the other’s a car that flies. Two interesting principles, and I hope we soon live in a world with room for both!

The sticker is available as a 3-pack, or in a combo pack along with 1 each of my other two bumper stickers:

Here is where you click for these things and many more!

It’s here! The very first Tweet Me Harder book. Written by me and Kris Straub, this book collects the first ten hours of our weekly comedy podcast and adds illustrations, annotations, footnotes and indexes to become the ultimate Tweet Me Harder companion. And if you’re not already following Tweet Me Harder, this is a great way to check out the content of the show (and get plenty of good laughs) without all that bothersome listening. TMH BOOK: Read your podcasts.™

ALSO: As a special upgrade we are also offering this book in DISGUISE MODE, for when you want to shield what you are reading from others (for any reason whatsoever):

Keep your privacy your own with TMH Disguise Mode.™

Also here is a new shirt I have made! It is what I feel, about everything.

Remember: you get five bucks off with the purchase of any three shirts from TopatoCo (my store or others). May I humbly suggest The Second Coming of Lincoln and perhaps Everything is Fine, as well?

It’s my latest book — Dapper Caps & Pedal-Copters, a new hardbound Wondermark collection from Dark Horse Comics!

Like my previous Wondermark collections, this book contains 100+ individual comic strips (complete with mouseover text), plus something like 20 pages of new and bonus material, most of it created specifically for this volume. It reprints the long-form Wondermark story “The Catch!”, which was seen previously on MySpace Dark Horse Presents, but also includes:

• An Extra-Large Pedal-Copter Post Card
• An Inventor’s Catalog of Advertisments
• A Table of Contents, Preface, and a version of the book’s full text presented in the superior Sandoval Method of Rapid Reading
• An Index of Topical References
• Patent applications, world record lists, theater reviews, and a bevy of other features extrapolating on premises put forth by individual comic strips (many of which are newly presented in full color)
• Abandoned Efforts and other comics that have never been published on this site
• Exploded Views of certain comics, showing the components they have been crafted from
• A Bears-In-Ill-Fitting-Hats Image Gallery, for the pleasure of zoologists/haberdashers
• And many more things as well, including an entirely separate, secondary book contained within the covers of this one. Seriously.

All of my books are like this! I love cramming them absolutely full, cover to cover, with all sorts of goodies, bonus bits, and things that can only work in printed form. It’s a whole new and exciting reading experience!

I already mentioned that the book contains certain comics in full color: thanks to my recent coloring contest, in this book you will find work that has been chromatized by Carly Monardo, Marcus Thiele, Philip R. Obermarck, and the scarily-named Jolly Rotten. Here’s another sneak peek at the book as well.

Dapper Caps is available through pretty much all the major book places. If you have a local comic shop, they probably have or will get it, or they can get it from Dark Horse. If you have a friendly local bookstore, they can certainly order it, or they might have it already. (The ISBN is: 978-1-59582-449-3.) If you are strapped for cash and would prefer to order it through a certain huge online bookstore website, it is quite honestly probably cheapest there (but at least do me the favor of using the search box in the right sidebar of my site, so I get a little kickback from the sale).

OR you can just order it from me! When you do so, you directly support me and my efforts, and I get a much, much higher percentage of the sale. And as a special bonus, from now through April 12 I am offering Artist Editions of all books! That means the new book and any/all of the old ones can be upgraded to include a custom unique sketch by me, which I will execute in a couple weeks (so the orders won’t ship until then). The regular, non-sketched edition of the new books will ship at the same time (April 13 or so), so why not upgrade to an Artist Edition and get the super-special version? You might get something like this:

Let’s recap! The new book can be ordered now (and your copy will ship around April 13). You can also get it, or any of the old books, upgraded to Artist Edition for a limited time. I won’t be offering Artist Editions again until November. Here are more examples of what Artist Editions might look like (though of course they’re all different)!

AND HEY WHAT — I’ve also got some keen new sticker-packs as well:

As well as the regular complement of shirts, posters, comic prints et cetera at the Wondermark Store. Please remember that any order containing pre-ordered books will ship all at once, once the books come in.

Thanks a million for your continued support! Let’s keep doing it just like this

A hundred birds leapt at once from the shaking earth. A leaf fell; the first of many, as the pounding grew stronger, more violent, more energetic. A slight burning smell tickled the nose of a dog, trotting across a field. At the next deep, crackling slam, the dog turned and ran the opposite direction.

First to break the surface was a finger. It looked like a potato being rejected by the world, jutting suddenly forth from the ground like a coin had been dropped in some slot: “Potatoes – 10¢.” Someone must have dropped a dollar in, because nine more soon followed, pop-pop-pop. They flexed and the caked brown dirt fell off at the cracks and seams. Beneath was red — burning red, the red of a body in a sauna, the burning of a soul sent back, to finish up.

The hands spread the earth away on both sides like a swimmer surfacing, a smooth, easy motion that swept up great mounds of field, rolling right over trees, trucks, squirrels, the lot. Hills now existed in these places, and behind them, canyons. The arms broke the ground, the sleeves steaming but whole, hanging heavily like great bags of rope. The hands found the crust of the planet and pushed against it — and then the hat crested. And then the head was through.

When its face touched air it drew a ragged breath, and with that sharp intake came power: it breathed again, and again, and then it rose. It stood and sought out the sky. It sought out the land on either side. Then it sought out a tree. It stared at the tree, steadily, until the leaves withered and began to burn.

By now the road was crowded with cars, with trucks, with shouts and the jangle of telephones. As the distractions drew the man’s attention, a line of bright hot flame sped across the road, exactly following his gaze. The first car his eyes washed over began to burn. Shouts turned to cries, but these sounds were far-off. The man did not notice. He lifted his feet and set them down. He walked away.

The flame spat itself out in a long line toward the horizon, before petering out as the man’s gaze extended into the distance. Buildings stood there. He made for them, leaving behind the cars, the people, and the deep, hot tunnel he had climbed. For weeks he had climbed; for months he had fought his way through the earth. Today, the day with the air, was a good day. It was the start of something beautiful.

This day — the climbing from the pit — had been anticipated by many. Some waited for him in Springfield, at the tomb; others favored the memorial in Washington. A few even camped out near Hodgenville and the old log cabin. For many years there had been whispers that he was returning. Everybody had gotten ready for him; everyone expected him to welcome them, to praise them, and for him to take up their burdens.

They were wrong. He did not know those people. Their constant wails were brambles in his ears; their prayers were caterwauling bleats, one litany of sobs after another.

So when the day came that his eyes flashed awake, he fled, kicking away from that sound, into the heat and the liquid and the blessed, blessed silence.

By the time the first flames began to lick the buildings of Perth, everyone knew what was happening. It’s just that no one had expected him to take the long way up.

—

The new shirt is printed on American Apparel Organic Edition in the very lovely Galaxy color!

Okay! Now that we’re well into the holiday shopping season, here are the highlights that you need to know:

FIRST: The limited-edition, hand-made Wondermark 2010 Calendar is now available for pre-order! Here’s the link. No pictures yet exist of the 2010 calendar (you’ll see the 2009 calendar at that link) but you’ll get the idea. Calendars will start shipping in about two weeks. You may or may not get them for Christmas, depending on where you live. You will probably get them before the New Year, however. We are doing our best over here and we thank you for your understanding. “We” is basically just me.

NEXT: Greeting cards. Let’s talk about greeting cards. TopatoCo’s trying their darndest to keep my holiday cards in stock over there, and doing pretty well considering the demand, but it’s been up and down. Anything that’s out of stock should be being reprinted soon, but we live on a roiling sea of no guarantees. Again everyone is doing their best and you should check back periodically.

Now then. I do have some limited stock of holiday cards in-house as well. For your convenience I have newly assembled some 10-card packs of popular designs — but I only have a few and supplies are limited. You can also mix and match with, like, Valentines and thank-you cards and so on if you want to be conscientious. Whoo! It is like the Wild West over here.

Anyway! In-house holiday cards are here. You can combine these orders with anything else in my in-house store: stickers, books, etc. All orders containing holiday cards may ship in multiple shipments, so you’ll get your cards right away even if the calendars won’t be ready until later.

Finally! I also have the regular complement of books, comic prints, posters, T-shirts and messenger bags over at my TopatoCo store! That’s the bulk of all my tremendous gift items, and those guys are pros. Everything there should be shipping promptly, but you should also be aware of their very important holiday shipping deadlines. December 8 (TODAY) is their deadline for international shipping using the not-extremely-expensive Priority Mail! Domestic deadlines are coming up very soon as well. DO NOT DALLY.

What would we do without the holidays? Sleep, perhaps. As always, I am supremely grateful for your support and if there’s anything special I can do to make your holiday dreams come true, please don’t be shy about dropping me a line. Did you buy one of my books at your local shop or Amazon? Request a free signed bookplate!

Thanksgiving Project results will be up later this week!