Comic Transcripts

A couple walks down the street, the man in a turban, the woman in a very high-collared fur coat. This is ASHWAY and BERTREX

A: You know that origami flower shop we keep talking about maybe one day wandering through?
A: I finally had an occasion for which I would have liked some paper flowers. But they’ve closed!

B: That’s a shame, they just opened like five years ago!
B: I wonder how much of our community is powered by people imprudently opening wildly unprofitable businesses, pouring their time and savings into them for the period of exactly one commercial lease, then letting them close.

B: Like, it didn’t turn out to be sustainable, but for a while, you offered some cool origami classes for kids, and some people in the neighborhood have some paper flowers in their homes now? I assume?

B: Sorry it didn’t make you a millionaire, but you shoved the big stone wheel back uphill a few turns, and that helped us all.
A: And, in this metaphor, the big stone wheel is…
B: The thing that’ll smash us all into dust with its uncaring inertia if we don’t hold it at bay with our collective effort, yeah

A: Okay, cool. And our collective effort, in this context, means buying forty-dollar paper flowers?
B: Is THAT how much they cost?
B: I kept meaning to look in the store window when I walked by, but I never managed to tear my eyes away from my phone.

#1569; The Foldery has Folded transcribed by in

A couple walks down the street, the man in a turban, the woman in a very high-collared fur coat. This is ASHWAY and BERTREX

A: You know that origami flower shop we keep talking about maybe one day wandering through?
A: I finally had an occasion for which I would have liked some paper flowers. But they’ve closed!

B: That’s a shame, they just opened like five years ago!
B: I wonder how much of our community is powered by people imprudently opening wildly unprofitable businesses, pouring their time and savings into them for the period of exactly one commercial lease, then letting them close.

B: Like, it didn’t turn out to be sustainable, but for a while, you offered some cool origami classes for kids, and some people in the neighborhood have some paper flowers in their homes now? I assume?

B: Sorry it didn’t make you a millionaire, but you shoved the big stone wheel back uphill a few turns, and that helped us all.
A: And, in this metaphor, the big stone wheel is...
B: The thing that’ll smash us all into dust with its uncaring inertia if we don’t hold it at bay with our collective effort, yeah

A: Okay, cool. And our collective effort, in this context, means buying forty-dollar paper flowers?
B: Is THAT how much they cost?
B: I kept meaning to look in the store window when I walked by, but I never managed to tear my eyes away from my phone.

That forty dollars goes to good use -- it allows the flower shop owner to buy a forty-dollar sculpted soap set from the soapery next door. The soapmaker will go on to buy some paper flowers with that same money. Then both of them will pay income tax on their earnings, which will go toward paying a defense contractor to build bombs for military drones to drop onto various strangers. It’s all part of living in an interconnected community

#1569; The Foldery has Folded

  — June 24th, 2025

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New ways to get Bolted!

July 24, 2026 by David Malki !

In addition to buying things directly from me, the normal way, my game Bolted! is also now available on Amazon dot com.

On that famous website, you can also get the Creature-Crafting Magnets Set, which is made of the same artwork from the game, but is just a weird little trinket (not a playable game).

My kiddo made the elaborate version below to show off just how many magnets you get in the set (it’s 150 pieces in all — this isn’t even all of them).

Also now on Amazon is my set of Multi-Purpose Greeting Cards — a full dozen cards with envelopes in a fancy, unbranded, foil-stamped box!

Event alert!

I’ll also be showing off Bolted! at Greenwood Games, an event in Seattle this Saturday:

Greenwood Games is a free, all-ages community game event that invites players to spend the afternoon walking Greenwood Avenue from 65th to 80th, collecting clues, cracking puzzles, and discovering games made right here in Washington.

Think of it as Pride Hop, ArtWalk, and the Gumshoe all rolled into one,  except the whole thing is built around games and puzzles.​

Local game designers will be set up at different places along Greenwood Avenue in Phinney Ridge (near Ballard). My specific spot will be the “Holy Mountain Phinney Ridge Taproom”. All the information about all the different games & venues is on the website!

(If you’re in Seattle generally but not free tomorrow, Bolted! is also stocked at Blue Highway Games in Queen Anne.)

Next week, I’ll be at Gen Con! I personally will be hanging with my buddy Sam Logan at BFE Webcomics, booth #1217… but I have it on good authority that copies of Bolted! will be available at the CRWN Studios booth, #2549.

Visit one booth! Then the other! The order…is up to you.


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