The commotion is that the flying man who always comes by has returned once again.

#1581; The Longest, Most Fruitless Search

  — January 23rd, 2026

[ Tags: , , , ]       Permalink: https://wondermark.com/c/1581/

Continued from Wondermark #024
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Stripped: The Comics Documentary

My good friend Dave Kellett, and my new friend Fred Schroeder, have been making a documentary for two years now all about the changing landscape for comics as newspapers fold, artists find success independently, old models adapt to new, and people worldwide in many fields find the ground shifting beneath them.

Now he’s raising funds to finish the film properly. Dave has already invested over $30K of his own money shooting hundreds of hours of documentary footage — one hour of that with yours truly — and I can’t wait to see this film finished. It’s gorgeous, insightful, and perfectly timely.

Check out the trailer above or on the Kickstarter page! I have not one, but two quotes in the trailer. So you know it’s got severe issues with credibility great. And if you like what you see, consider pre-ordering the DVD or pledging further! (Dave’s good for it — and if not, I know where he lives.)

World Science Fiction Convention

This week I’ll be in Reno for my first-ever World Science Fiction Convention! I’ll be in the dealer room with my Machine of Death co-editor Matthew Bennardo, but I’ll also be on the following panels:

Thu 16:00 – 17:00, The Science Fiction and Fantasy Canon within Comics
What are the essential science fiction and fantasy comics?
Tom Galloway (M), David Malki, Andrew Wheeler, Scott Edelman

(I will say right now that my answer to that question is “Um…aren’t 90% of mainstream comics considered science fiction?” And then I will make jokes to mask my nervousness. If you have suggestions for BRILLIANT ANSWERS I can whip out to seem learned on this panel, please leave a comment on this post.)

Thu 18:00 – 19:00, Making Wondermark: Victorian-Style Collage with a Humorous Bent
To make the celebrated comic strip “Wondermark”, David Malki repurposes illustrations and engravings from 19th-Century books into sarcastic, silly, and surreal collage-style comic strips. Come watch how it’s done and find out if he’s as funny in person as he is in comics!

(I’m somewhat more comfortable with the subject matter of this one.)

Fri 11:00 – 12:00, Ultimate Steampunk – Could the Victorians Have Built a Flying Carriage
While the Victorians built guns, trains and submarines, they never quite got off the ground. But, what if they had built a flying carriage, a spacesuit or a non-loom computer?
David Malki (M), G. David Nordley, Allison Lonsdale, Harry Turtledove, Lawrence Person

(My role as moderator of this panel will chiefly be to say, “Have you guys seen Master of the World with Vincent Price and Charles Bronson? It would’ve been like that, right? Right?”)

Fri 14:00 – 15:00, Book Design and Layout
A review of the process and challenges involved in designing and producing a book once the written word is in hand.
Tara O’Shea (M), David Malki, Sandra Tayler

Sat 15:00 – 16:00, Editing Anthologies
How do editors approach anthologies? Do they just call their friends, or do they (or their assistants) plow through slushpiles? Do the “Best ofs” present special issues?
David Malki (M), Jennifer Brozek, John Joseph Adams, Ellen Datlow

Sun 12:00 – 13:00, Humor in SF and Fantasy
Groucho Marx said that comedy is harder than drama. What are the challenges of writing humor? Who are influences — inside the field and out?
Peter J. Heck (M), David Malki, John DeChancie, Dr. Demento

I’ve also been playing with a new toy — an Eye-Fi camera card that will allow me to take pictures with a nice (non-mobile-device) camera and shoot them straight to my iPad for uploading to the Web. I’m going to try to make a habit of sharing pics all week long on my Twitter, so keep an eye out for those! Are you curious what the inside of the Reno State Convention Center looks like? No? Well, you’ll soon find out.

Machine of Death Volume 2 submission stats!

It’s taken us a while, but we’ve finally entered all the data for the story submissions we received for the upcoming second volume of Machine of Death! I wrote up a bit about it for the MOD blog:

The final few days of submissions felt, for us, in a weird way just like October 26 of last year. The flurry of activity we witnessed on Twitter, on Facebook, and on blogs as you finished writing your stories was incredibly energizing.

It’s a wonderful feeling watching people become enthused and finding reward in the thing that you asked them to do. It makes us not want to have to turn anybody down for Volume 2! But we received 6,373,643 words of submissions — if we published all of it, it would be longer than all the Harry Potter books and all the Lord of the Rings books and all the Song of Ice and Fire books and all of Stephen King’s Dark Tower books put together. You guessed it — we’re having a very busy couple of months, reading all of this!

(Read more)

For more details and all kinds of stats on the final count, as well as some neat new things we need your help with (do you know how to set up and run an academic survey? We’d very much like to pick your brain or enlist your assistance!), check out the full blog post.

Congrats to everyone who sent in a story, or three! We’re reading furiously, and I gotta say, it’s super fun. You devil, you made me have fun!

A mystery, solved.

Regarding Comic #741, that tale of the elusive goofy elk…Dave D. writes in with this to say:

David,

You have inadvertently solved a mystery that has been troubling my wife and I for years. A few years back, we picked up a dog from the boyfriend of a customer who couldn’t care for her anymore. She is a mixed breed of some sort, but we are the third owners and have only her original vet papers which claim she is a “Rottweiler/Shepherd/Lab?” She clearly has some Rottweiler in her, and most often is mistaken as a Rottie puppy since she is only 60lbs and has a lot of energy. She also has a tongue much too large for her skull and a rather silly demeanour.

Well I was reading your comic, as is my habit, and you’ve solved it! I would bet the farm that she is a Rottie/Goofy Elk cross. Although the attached picture does not show it as well as it might, she does make the exact face of the beast featured in the latest strip. It would also explain why I have been feeling more and more Marty Feldmanish … Feldmany .. Feldmanesque .. with each passing day.

Anyhow, I have always loved your comic but I hadn’t realized what an educational tool it was. Thank you.

Cheers,
Dave

Dave enclosed the photo below. To which I can only say…SEPARATED AT BIRTH???


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