[[A woman, GERTRUDO, sits at the dinner table table with a young girl, TIFFANORIA, who is seated in a chair]]

GERTRUDO: Can you finish your veggies? Veggies help us grow up big and strong!
TIFFANORIA: GROW UP? Why would I want to do THAT? I'm good now!

GERTRUDO: I've got everything I need! I have YOUTUBE and my ROOM and all my STUFF... I get BOSSED AROUND a little, but that's not a bad tradeoff

GERTRUDO: You can do all kinds of things when you grow up! You can drive!
TIFFANORIA: I don't want to GO anywhere!
GERTRUDO: You can get a job and earn money!
TIFFANORIA: A JOB? That thing you HATE?
GERTRUDO: You can BECOME ANYTHING you want to be!
TIFFANORIA: I want to be ME, right NOW, right HERE!

TIFFANORIA: If you're contemplating DEPRIVING me of something to PUNISH me, I would consider that CRUEL.
GERTRUDO: I'm trying to figure out how to INSPIRE you to CARE about bettering yourself.
TIFFANORIA: I CAN'T "better" myself! I'm already GREAT!

{{header: start small at WONDERMARK.COM}}

I mean, sure, veggies 'help' us grow up, but the direct causality implied here would be trivial to refute. A determined objector will easily find flaws in the reasoning.

#1583; Groan Up

  — April 4th, 2026

[ Tags: , , ]       Permalink: https://wondermark.com/c/1583/

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Comic Transcripts

[[A woman, GERTRUDO, sits at the dinner table table with a young girl, TIFFANORIA, who is seated in a chair]]

GERTRUDO: Can you finish your veggies? Veggies help us grow up big and strong!
TIFFANORIA: GROW UP? Why would I want to do THAT? I’m good now!

GERTRUDO: I’ve got everything I need! I have YOUTUBE and my ROOM and all my STUFF… I get BOSSED AROUND a little, but that’s not a bad tradeoff

GERTRUDO: You can do all kinds of things when you grow up! You can drive!
TIFFANORIA: I don’t want to GO anywhere!
GERTRUDO: You can get a job and earn money!
TIFFANORIA: A JOB? That thing you HATE?
GERTRUDO: You can BECOME ANYTHING you want to be!
TIFFANORIA: I want to be ME, right NOW, right HERE!

TIFFANORIA: If you’re contemplating DEPRIVING me of something to PUNISH me, I would consider that CRUEL.
GERTRUDO: I’m trying to figure out how to INSPIRE you to CARE about bettering yourself.
TIFFANORIA: I CAN’T “better” myself! I’m already GREAT!

{{header: start small at WONDERMARK.COM}}

#1583; Groan Up transcribed by in

Bolted! Shipping is UNDERWAY

Bolted! games have been shipping to backers over the last couple of weeks! The non-US orders are (mostly) done and some folks have been reporting receiving them already!

@davidmalki.com My game arrived today!! It looks gorgeous 🙂 Hope you are well 🙂

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— Lar deSouza (@lartist.bsky.social) April 2, 2026 at 2:52 PM

My US inventory of games is now in-country, but still being staged at the fulfillment centers. It’s being distributed to regional warehouses, so the actual shipping to backers happens more efficiently. I hope the bulk of US shipping will start next week.

These are what the cartons (and games) look like!

bolted! games BOLTED! GAMES (pounding the table) B O L T E D ! G A M E S

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— david malki ! (@davidmalki.com) April 3, 2026 at 10:37 AM

I am also waiting on the bonus cards to be finished printing! I ended up needing many more of those than I had anticipated, so I decided to have the game factory print those too, for perfect matching with the base game cards.

Most people will be receiving two separate mailings: the game itself, and “anything else” (bonus cards and/or add-ons) which will be sent by me personally.

As of today, 86% of backers have completed their surveys so far! That’s pretty good, but it’s not everyone. I know YOU PERSONALLY have already completed YOURS though, so no worries!!

We have now moved OFF of Kickstarter and ONTO BackerKit for any new orders. You can bundle a game with basically anything else I sell on that there website, it’s pretty nuts!

ECCC this weekend! With a sample of Bolted!

If you’re at Emerald City Comic Con this weekend in Seattle, come say hello at booth #25000 in the Summit building and check out my single sample copy of the finished, factory-produced Bolted! game:

(I’ll have Wondermark pins, stickers, and books, as well.)

Bolted! games have finished being produced and are currently on a boat heading my way. 

If you haven’t yet secured your copy of the game, a tiny little window of post-Kickstarter “late pledging” is still available. Shipping for all pre-orders should commence before the end of March!

A good thread on Terrible Dickens Sequels

Over on Bluesky, Ryan Estrada has done a deep dive on the 22 (!) Christmas stories that Dickens wrote in the aftermath of the success of A Christmas Carol.

An old thread is making the rounds again, so here's an updated version. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is one of the most enduring and adapted works of literature in history. But did you know that he wrote 22 sequels? Some are great! Some are trash! Some are bizarrely fascinating.

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— Ryan Estrada (@ryanestrada.com) December 24, 2025 at 6:24 PM


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