#476; In which Suffering was a Waste

Comic Transcripts

SOL: I’ve finally DONE it, Morty! I’ve PAID OFF the mortgage.
Taken TEN LONG YEARS of scrimpin’ and savin’, but I finally OWN the old hovel free and clear.
MORTY: Same here! It’s a great feeling, innit?

SOL: IMPOSSIBLE! You’ve been delinquent for MONTHS!
MORTY: ABSOLUTELY. But come Christmas morning, WHAT do we see but EBENEZER SCROOGE himself DANCING down the avenue, handing out CANDY and NECK-RUBS! We can’t even get the “lo” out of “Hello” before he’s TORN UP our debt RIGHT there in the STREET!

MORTY: Food poisoning. TOTALLY insane.
By noon his ENTIRE debtor roster is CASUALLY milling around his house, hoping to “accidentally” encounter him before he has an ANEURYSM.
BARNES got a free CAR.
Larry got SCROOGE’S OWN HOUSE! Just HANDED him the deed!

SOL: I…I sold my own FILLINGS to have that mortgage paid off by Christmas.
MORTY: Then you should TOTALLY come over. Scrooge gave us WAY too much figgy pudding.

{{Header: it all pays off at WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{Alt-text: All that factory work has been real character-building for little Billy, you know?}}

#476; In which Suffering was a Waste transcribed by in

SOL: I…I sold my own FILLINGS to have that mortgage paid off by Christmas.
MORTY: Then you should TOTALLY come over. Scrooge gave us WAY too much figgy pudding.

{{Header: it all pays off at WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{Alt-text: All that factory work has been real character-building for little Billy, you know?}}

#476; In which Suffering was a Waste transcribed by in

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!