It was on Wikipedia the whole time, dude. You could have looked.

#1559; In which a Home is Haunted (Part 8 of 8)

  — February 1st, 2025

[ Tags: , , ]       Permalink: https://wondermark.com/c/1559/

This storyline began with Part 1.

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Wondermark Cast Cards Update!

For a few years now, I’ve been making Wondermark Cast Cards – little commemorative plaques that memorialize special events and reader participation:

With this year’s end, so ends the program, so I thought this would be a good time to let everyone know how they might obtain some of the last few to be issued!

Here’s how they’re made – and which ones are still available:

• On our Patreon, subscribers at the $21 tier are entitled to a different unique card every month!

Patreon is a great way to contribute any amount to support the things you like to read, and the very kind folks who are able to contribute a higher amount are rewarded accordingly. Pictured above in the top row are the October, November, and December cards.

(Psst: I also posted a couple bonus comics to Patreon this week.)

There are still a few days to qualify for the December card if you like – just be in that tier by the end of the month. The December card is Bill Claus, from the holiday storyline a few years back.

And that’ll be it for the subscription tier! That tier will be morphing into something different in January.

• Then, there are two Wondermark Calendar-related cards: Sir Kel F. Finnt is awarded to anyone who gets a copy of this year’s calendar AND/OR a copy of the new The Elephant of Surprise mini-collection, both of which are still available while supplies last.

• If you qualify as a Calendar Ace (a patron of that product five or more times over the years), then don’t forget to claim that card as well when you make your order this year, if you haven’t already.

• And finally, there will be one last card in the spring, shipping with the next hardcover Wondermark collection, Friends You Can Ride On.

If you’ve reserved a copy of that book already thanks to backing our Kickstarter, then great! You’re all set.

If you missed the KS but would still like to secure a book (and card), I’ll reopen pre-orders via BackerKit in January, so you’ll have another chance! Watch for that in a few weeks.

How Cast Cards are made

It’s been a while since I first introduced Cast Cards, so I thought maybe it’s worth a little refresher of what they are and what goes into making them.

I wanted some kind of premium item to honor reader participation and accomplishments. Cast Cards are mini-commemorative plaques that each feature a character from the Wondermark cast on one side, with all their relevant “stats” on the back.

The base piece is laser-cut tempered hardboard (Masonite). Each blank is cut out of a sheet, and engraved on both front and back, by our giant industrial laser:

Each sheet of wood yields 44 blanks:

I lay out the artwork in Illustrator, then print out a set of 9 cards’ worth at a time onto label paper:

Then each individual piece is cut out with the laser! I used to do this part by hand, but why, when you have a laser???

This process creates a series of individual stickers.

I transfer each one onto a blank sheet of sticker backing paper – so they can be removed again – then match each front and back with a glossy gold foil cover sticker (rolls of which I had custom made):

The back is just a frame shape, while the front also has the WONDERMARK text in gold:

The gold foil is really the part that gives it the special touch, in my opinion! I’ll have to figure out what to do with the leftover gold stickers.

Then each combined sticker gets applied to a wooden blank, front and back sides both:

Yes, I custom-made a little form for my thumb to fit onto, because it was starting to hurt putting pressure on the corner of the roller over and over.

And the card is finished! The “feet” are cut separately – each card ships with a foot, of course, so it can stand up.

That’s the whole process! It is fun and satisfying but also elaborate and painstaking. I am happy to have done it for so long, but equally happy to try something new in the future. There will be 52 in all once all of these last few have been issued.

If you’d like to get ahold of any of the final few, now you know how! When I blog about anything related to these last couple, I’ll say CAST CARD AVAILABLE in big letters so you know.

And thanks once again to everyone who has participated so far. I hope you enjoy the ones you have!!

Hi there, email and feed readers!

Another brief hiccup with the RSS feed (which powers the mailing list) means you could be just now seeing (or getting a very long email containing) a bunch of posts that you may have missed from the past month.

I’m sorry about that! But in terms of big news you may have missed, the short version is, you can now order the 2019 Wondermark Calendar and/or the new sick elephant book collection, The Elephant of Surprise!

Orders placed now will ship in the first week of January!

[ Here’s the link to the store ]

More pictures of the 2019 Wondermark Calendar

Hey we actually have some printed calendars now!

They look like this!

Each card features a particular pachyderm with a problem — and the solution to their ill.

There’s no “Elle sycophants” or other such nonsense in this calendar. It’s just good, useful information about how to cure diseases that may afflict noodlenosers.

Also, you can get the veteronorfian himself on (one of our final few) Cast Cards — Sir Kel F. Finnt himself!

The Calendar Ace card (for past patrons who have participated to the tune of five calendars or more) features the vaguely elephantine lava creature from the “Un-Named Beasts of the Forgotten Wilds” calendar from 2016.

Both Cast Cards are optional, but free if you want them (the latter only if you qualify, of course)! There’s a menu on the order page for you to indicate yes or no.

There’s also an option to let you select how urgently you need the calendar! I am shipping them out this week for those who request haste (as many as we can manage, anyway). UPDATE: I’ve shipped all I can before Christmas; everything else will ship in the first run of January!

The true, formal print run of the calendar will not be complete until after Christmas.

But for the folks who indicated they would really love to get their copy as soon as possible, I have done a SPECIAL BESPOKE PRINT RUN.

It turned out I could get a limited number made in time as long as I was willing to do all the finishing work myself.

That means all the cutting, trimming and drilling.

So that’s what I’ve been doing the last few days, and it’s turning out pretty good, I think!

If you get one of these, you will probably get some charming hand-made irregularities included at no extra cost. Probably!

I will only be shipping the advance orders through Wednesday of this week (the 19th), or until supplies of the advance batch last, whichever happens first — then I’ll take a break to have Christmas with my family.

I’ll be returning to the studio the week after Christmas, picking up the “real” print run then, and commencing to ship the remainder of all orders!

Oh yeah, and I got the sick elephant books in too:

You can get the book by itself if you like, or bundle it with the calendar! It’s 132 pages long, somehow!!

Since we were a bit late getting the calendar going this year (WHAT ELSE IS NEW), there are still plenty of copies available, and I expect it will remain on sale at least through the first week of January.

Or they might sell out before then! But there are at least several dozen copies remaining as I write this.

Now I’m gonna go out to the garage and drill some more calendars to ship tomorrow! Maybe one of them will be…YOURS????

[ The Wondermark Calendar 2019 and/or Sick Elephant Book ]

First look at the 2019 Calendar + sick elephant book! New greeting cards too.

Here are some pictures of the (presently in-production) 2019 Wondermark Calendar, Examining Ill Pachyderms: A Veteronorfian Field Guide.

If you have a wooden stand from any previous year, it will work with this year’s calendar as well — but this year we are also offering a 2019-exclusive wooden stand design, each of which will be signed and dated by me!

Those holes allow the legs to ship flat INSIDE THE STAND ITSELF, which satisfies my perpetual desire for MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY.

And, optionally with the calendar or just by itself, also available is the sick elephant book collection, The Elephant of Surprise:

I only printed a limited run of these for this season, so if they end up selling out, I’ll reprint them in January.

You can get any or all of the above right here!

And of course there will be an exclusive Cast Card — one of the final ones produced — available with the calendar or book as well.

As is true every year, the production and shipping schedule for the calendar is very, very tight. I cannot promise every order will arrive by Christmas — but there is a menu, when you order, that lets you select whether you do or don’t care about that in particular. UPDATE: I’ve shipped all I can before Christmas; everything else will ship in the first run of January!

I will prioritize shipping the orders for folks who say it’s important to get it by Christmas. And if you personally don’t care, I appreciate you letting me know that as well! I never really know how many of these things are purchased as gifts vs. purchased for oneself. Anyway, we will just try our best!

Turns out I will indeed have some new greeting card designs too:

These are available singly or in quantity, along with all of my other greeting card designs.

Greeting card orders are shipping without delay, since I know you have to receive them with enough time to send them back out!

More pictures of the calendar as I have them! About half of our limited run have already sold, so don’t delay!

New stickers & 2019 Wondermark Calendar pre-orders are open

I’ve just added a few more new stickers to the store:

I also have the usual complement of holiday cards! I was hoping to release at least one new card this year, but I’m still waiting on the order to arrive from the printer. So we’ll see when those actually show up.

I’ve changed the way the store handles greeting cards so that now each card design is an individual product, meaning you can order as little as one card!

And you can still get quantity discounts starting at 3 or more cards (the product page shows you a coupon code that you can enter at checkout).

The Multi-Purpose Cards in particular are also now available in this store as PDFs you can download & print out yourself.

The 2019 Wondermark Calendar is up for pre-order!

Patreon backers learned about it several days ago, so the first 60 or so have already been claimed.

There’s not much to show, so far — I’ll share pictures once there’s something to take pictures of — but if you already know you want it, you can claim your copy now!

This year, available optionally with or without the calendar is a new mini-book called The Elephant of Surprise.

It collects all the comics from the entire sick elephant saga, and somehow this makes it 132 pages long.

This is because for this book, I’ve broken strips into individual panels and spread them over multiple pages so they can be printed decadently oversized. I’ve also added a few panels here and there for pacing, or enlarged existing panels to show more detail.

This book also contains all of the classic Wondermark elephant comics that are referenced in the story! There are nine classic strips from 2003-2012 that get called back to in the saga proper.

Pictures of this book are forthcoming too! The first thing is to get it finished!

There’s also a couple of sick-elephant-related T-shirts — but you probably shouldn’t buy them, because you’ll look like a big dork, and we wouldn’t want that!!


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