#442; In which Beth keeps her Books

Comic Transcripts

FRANKLIN: SO MANY BOOKS! I thought we were trying to CUT DOWN the amount of STUFF in our lives?
There must be a THOUSAND books here!
ELEANOR: I’ve pared the collection down to the essentials.

FRANKLIN: How many of them do you actually ever READ?
Why not donate them to the library? That way they’ll still be there whenever you want them–
ELEANOR: They’re not really for me.

ELEANOR: Look, WE love to read because we grew up in homes filled to bursting with weird and wonderful books.
I’m keeping these books not because of how often I read them all, but so, on rainy days and lonely nights, our children can discover them for themselves.
FRANKLIN: By the time we ever have children, we will be DROWNING in a SEA of books, gasping for breath in a little air pocket near the ceiling.
ELEANOR: Then they will be bibliophibians.

{{Header: stay up late with WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{Alt-Text: They will breathe with gills that make the sound of fluttering pages.}}

#442; In which Beth keeps her Books transcribed by in

FRANKLIN: SO MANY BOOKS! I thought we were trying to CUT DOWN the amount of STUFF in our lives?
There must be a THOUSAND books here!
ELEANOR: I’ve pared the collection down to the essentials.

FRANKLIN: How many of them do you actually ever READ?
Why not donate them to the library? That way they’ll still be there whenever you want them–
ELEANOR: They’re not really for me.

{{Header: stay up late with WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{Alt-Text: They will breathe with gills that make the sound of fluttering pages.}}

#442; In which Beth keeps her Books 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!