Comic Transcripts

[[JERMETHY is back at the ol’ workshop, tinkering with a device that resembles a jar with a bunch of valves and an enormous protruding wheel. He’s got his glasses up on his forehead as he concentrates on the task.

LORLA pokes her head in. She’s wearing a long knit sweater and a cozy-looking scarf. This isn’t relevant to the story but I want to call it out.]]

LORLA: Are you STILL tinkering with that? You said you were giving it up.
JERMETHY: I had a new idea for it.

LORLA: You told me “I don’t care if this can somehow be made to work, it’s not worth the effort.” You said “I’m going to give it up, SPECIFICALLY as PRACTICE in giving up. Deciding it’s DONE and putting it on a shelf.” YOUR words were “It’s about FOCUS and PRIORITIES and practicing CONTROL over my impulses.”
JERMETHY: I did say all that.

JERMETHY: But IT was not LISTENING. A new idea came to me, just to SPITE me

JERMETHY (scowling): And I’ll be DAMNED if I let it TAUNT me!
LORLA: What you KEPT REPEATING was “Discipline!”
JERMETHY: Oh, I’m gonna discipline this naughty thing all right.

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#1580; What’s Undone is Undead transcribed by in

[[JERMETHY is back at the ol' workshop, tinkering with a device that resembles a jar with a bunch of valves and an enormous protruding wheel. He's got his glasses up on his forehead as he concentrates on the task.

LORLA pokes her head in. She’s wearing a long knit sweater and a cozy-looking scarf. This isn’t relevant to the story but I want to call it out.]]

LORLA: Are you STILL tinkering with that? You said you were giving it up.
JERMETHY: I had a new idea for it.

LORLA: You told me “I don’t care if this can somehow be made to work, it’s not worth the effort.” You said “I’m going to give it up, SPECIFICALLY as PRACTICE in giving up. Deciding it’s DONE and putting it on a shelf.” YOUR words were “It’s about FOCUS and PRIORITIES and practicing CONTROL over my impulses.”
JERMETHY: I did say all that.

JERMETHY: But IT was not LISTENING. A new idea came to me, just to SPITE me

JERMETHY (scowling): And I’ll be DAMNED if I let it TAUNT me!
LORLA: What you KEPT REPEATING was “Discipline!”
JERMETHY: Oh, I’m gonna discipline this naughty thing all right.

{{header: get back into WONDERMARK.COM}}

The man is having trouble getting his one-wheeled valve manifold to work. He's not the first and he certainly won't be the last.

#1580; What’s Undone is Undead

  — January 14th, 2026

[ Tags: , ]       Permalink: https://wondermark.com/c/1580/

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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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