Comic Transcripts

WHITE HAT: The only thing that builds character is HARD WORK. You should EARN your rewards. NO HANDOUTS! Don’t give my money to some FREELOADER!
BLACK HAT: I agree completely! Let’s outlaw INHERITANCE!

WHITE HAT: What
BLACK HAT: The last relic of FEUDALISM! Your parentage shouldn’t determine your wealth! EVERYONE should start from ZERO, so we can have a nation of people with character!!
WHITE HAT: Hold on
WHITE HAT: If I earn wealth, I should be able to leave it to my family.

BLACK HAT: Why? To CODDLE them? You said it — no one deserves anything they DIDN’T EARN!
BLACK HAT: I say, you have until death to donate your wealth to whatever charity you like…

BLACK HAT: THEN, once you die anything left over goes into a nationwide student loan & medical bill repayment fund. Help your fellow citizens get UP to zero, so they can have a FAIR SHOT in our glorious meritocracy!
BLACK HAT: If I thought you were SERIOUS about the intellectual rigor of your ideals, I’d debate this with you out of my maniacal desire to prove others wrong regardless of my personal opinions.

BLACK HAT: But I don’t think ANYONE really has IDEALS. What we have is a tangled mess of ad-hoc opinions, constantly sliding past each other in search of a position that favors itself the most, like a 5-gallon bucket of earthworms.
WHITE HAT: I wish my EMPLOYEES worked HALF as hard as that METAPHOR.

{{header: give it all to WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{alt-text: Of course you can live without actual, coherent ideals. Wad enough tiny strands of hair together, it’ll still clog a drain.}}

#1135; Throw Back the Dead Man’s Coin transcribed by in

WHITE HAT: The only thing that builds character is HARD WORK. You should EARN your rewards. NO HANDOUTS! Don't give my money to some FREELOADER!
BLACK HAT: I agree completely! Let's outlaw INHERITANCE!

WHITE HAT: What
BLACK HAT: The last relic of FEUDALISM! Your parentage shouldn't determine your wealth! EVERYONE should start from ZERO, so we can have a nation of people with character!!
WHITE HAT: Hold on
WHITE HAT: If I earn wealth, I should be able to leave it to my family.

BLACK HAT: Why? To CODDLE them? You said it -- no one deserves anything they DIDN'T EARN!
BLACK HAT: I say, you have until death to donate your wealth to whatever charity you like...

BLACK HAT: THEN, once you die anything left over goes into a nationwide student loan & medical bill repayment fund. Help your fellow citizens get UP to zero, so they can have a FAIR SHOT in our glorious meritocracy!
BLACK HAT: If I thought you were SERIOUS about the intellectual rigor of your ideals, I'd debate this with you out of my maniacal desire to prove others wrong regardless of my personal opinions.

BLACK HAT: But I don't think ANYONE really has IDEALS. What we have is a tangled mess of ad-hoc opinions, constantly sliding past each other in search of a position that favors itself the most, like a 5-gallon bucket of earthworms.
WHITE HAT: I wish my EMPLOYEES worked HALF as hard as that METAPHOR.

{{header: give it all to WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{alt-text: Of course you can live without actual, coherent ideals. Wad enough tiny strands of hair together, it'll still clog a drain.}}

Of course you can live without actual, coherent ideals. Wad enough tiny strands of hair together, it'll still clog a drain.

#1135; Throw Back the Dead Man’s Coin

  — June 25th, 2015

[ Tags: , , , , ]       Permalink: https://wondermark.com/c/1135/

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My newest game: Noodle Battle! At PAX!

September 2, 2026 by David Malki !

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!


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