Also here is a brand-new Valentine for this year (click for bigger):

This and four other Valentine card designs can be had at the good ol’ Wondermark Goodsery!

A few other things of note at the Goodsery — we’re still selling calendars, by Jove, and as 2009 marches steadily along I can’t recommend heartily enough that you pick up one of these babies before they disappear for good. As of this second, we’ve got only 42 left, and that is it.

We’re also still giving away free gifts with purchases of over $40 and $75 through the end of January. A calendar and some cards will hit that mark easily; or a calendar and a nick-and-dent book, of which we now have several:

(for example)

These books are discounted due to minor damage sustained in shipping and storage. You may not want to give them as a gift, for fear of being labeled a terrible person who gives gifts that are mildly damaged, but (while supplies last) they’re a fine addition to your personal library at significant savings over the brand-new price.

The final decisions were difficult, but we had to take into consideration thematic concerns, what the strips would look like on paper, and how they would incorporate into the existing page designs. I think we made decisions that will produce the best book as a whole package. The book will also contain five strips colored by Carly Monardo, my collaborator on the Futurism poster.

The contest winners are:

#291, In which Notability is determined: Alyssa Stock
#302; In which the Moon is annoying: Anita Hawkins
#319; In which He is watching: Kory Bingaman (website)
#324; In which Alvin chooses wisely AND #326; In which the Day is seized: Marcus Thiele (website)
#333; In which Everyone had better Shape Up: Mario Martín (website)

(Guys if you have websites you want me to link to, let me know)

Where are their entries? Why, they’ll be printed in Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death, out in May!

“But I wanna see some co-olor,” I hear you saying. Okay! Here are some pretty cool honorable mentions (click for bigger):

#291 by Katherine Wirick (website). Katherine did some nice work in the skin tones, giving the shapes dimension.

#302 by Christina Major. Christina was the only one to color all six comics! In this one she’s explained why, exactly, the Moon is so annoying. This made me laugh out loud. Nicely done, Christina!

#302 by Danielle Gavino. This was a really lovely take on the strip. I commend Danielle for a creative palette choice!

#324 by Shazzbaa (website). Shazzbaa was one of several to use color to make the Walt-Whitman-headed bat slightly more magical. I also like the muted palette.

#333 by Taryn Trousdale (website). Taryn made extensive use of textures in her entries, which is something I do a lot of in my books as well.

These honorable mentions will all receive prizes for their effort! WHAT PRIZES? Who knows!

Thanks so much for your work, everybody. It’s been a real treat to see! Exactly what I’d hoped for has happened: folks have applied their very divergent personal styles to make these strips unique and distinct from one another. The six strips chosen for the book are very different from these as well, and I think you’ll really enjoy seeing them in May!

Finally — these six strips are now colored and done, but I’ll extend an open-ended invitation to anyone and everyone: If you’d like to take a crack at coloring your favorite strip(s) from the archive, just drop me a line and I’ll send you the full-rez, layered file. If I like your coloring, I’ll replace the black & white version in the archive with your version, and include a link to your site! Easy as that. (You just have to promise not to take it personally if I don’t like it, my standards are pretty high for this sort of thing.) Of course, any entries submitted will also serve as auditions for paid coloring work, just like these have been. So there you go! What are you waiting for, etc.

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, share a few words about why you enjoy Wondermark and why it could be a good fit for your school, and ask them (very kindly) to contact Tony Regan at MCT Campus about syndicating the strip.

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. 

Below you’ll find a link to download hi-res versions of the six comics that need coloring. Only colored versions of these particular comics are eligible for the contest! 

I’ve provided layered .PSD files for each of the six comics. You can color the comics however you like, as long as you don’t change or distract from the joke. Creativity is a plus! Use your imagination. (Don’t worry about missing fonts; use the existing pixel data and I’ll replace them later.)

Aside: If you’re not into coloring but are curious how I build the comics, feel free to download and poke through the layers of #319. It’s the most complex of this bunch and I’m pretty proud of how it came together.

My single favorite submission for each of the six comics will be printed in Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death. (So your odds are better if you choose to color one of the more intricate images that fewer others might choose.) You may submit as many entries as you like.

For each comic chosen for publication, in addition to in-book credit the artist will receive their choice of either $25 cash or a $50 gift certificate to the Wondermark Goodsery (the in-house store, not the TopatoCo store). So it’s possible for a single artist to earn up to $150 cash or $300 of store credit. I may award other prizes as well, if there are entries that I can’t print but nonetheless really like.

To submit, simply email me a .PNG or .TIFF of your finished, colored comic. (Flattened is fine, so it’ll fit in an email.) If you win, I’ll send you FTP info so you can upload a layered file. The comics MUST stay at full-size: 400 dpi, 2870 pixels wide. Email your submissions to davidmalki at gmail dot com, with the subject line “Colored #319″ (or whatever number).

Finally, here is a very important point: I can only print six comics in this book, but every single submission is an audition for more coloring work in the future. I like coloring, but I’m kind of slow and uncreative at it. I would love nothing more than to build a roster of colorists that I can hire for books, posters, etc. I will keep every submission on file as a sample for future paid projects!

You can download the full-res layered .PSD files here. Go to it — you only have until Sunday night! Update: The deadline has passed. Thanks very much to everyone who submitted; winners will be announced shortly.