You're suggesting that HEADSTABBERS UNIVERSITY, a midseason-replacement spinoff show conceived expressly to draft off the brand recognition of the famous franchise but feature mostly younger, lower-priced actors with only token cameos from the more famous and more expensive core franchise cast, and which seems to be painstakingly written to justify reusing extensive special effects footage from previous seasons of its parent show is, what?? Garbage???

#1587; And Onward One Opines

  — June 5th, 2026

[ Tags: , , ]       Permalink: https://wondermark.com/c/1587/

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Free stories from THIS IS HOW YOU DIE!

Today’s the day! Our book This Is How You Die is officially released. Some people on Twitter are reporting having received their pre-ordered copies already!

(The above tweet is in reference to my guest appearance on the podcast Jordan, Jesse, GO this week!)

We’re also super excited that The A.V. Club gave the book a solid A grade:

…But what is consistently surprising about This Is How You Die: Stories Of The Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine Of Death is the range and quality of the stories. Machine Of Death was smart and sophisticated. The stories often had twist endings, but they tended to be O. Henry-style twists, based in well-realized characters and the inevitability of fate, rather than cheap reversals or shock-driven rug-pulls. The sequel keeps the insight and the commitment to solid storytelling, but broadens the scope considerably. The editors challenged contributors to take the central concept in bold new directions, and the result is a much wilder collection that stretches around the globe, spans a range of genres, and experiments with the short-story form.

The review goes on to point out delightful things about several of the stories individually. It’s always funny…you work on something like this for a long time, with nothing but your own taste and judgment to guide you, and it’s so gratifying when people like it! Maybe this whole thing makes sense after all.

OKAY so you ALREADY KNOW you can buy the book on Amazon or your favorite bookstore. BUT WHAT CAN YOU READ FOR FREE? Here’s all the chunks of the book you can read without paying a single dime:

• Here are EIGHT OF THE STORIES as a free PDF. Ninety pages! That’s a pretty healthy chunk.

• The publisher’s website also has a preview featuring FOUR FREE STORIES. Two of these are also in the PDF above; two aren’t.

• Lightspeed Magazine has Ryan North’s story “Cancer” on their site, in both text and audio. It’s a lovely, heartfelt story, and really funny too. There’s an interview with Ryan as well!

• The publisher also has a short preview of the audiobook here — not an entire story, but still a fun excerpt to listen to. I’m trying to get them to send me one of the full stories, so I can post it on our MOD podcast.

And I assume at some point Amazon will enable the “Look Inside the Book” feature as well.

Hopefully this gives you a pretty good sense of whether the whole book is something you might like! OR, just read these, and enjoy them!

IF YOU’VE ALREADY ORDERED THE BOOK: thank you so much! Send me a picture on Twitter when you get your copy!!

BONUS LINK: Contributing author ’Nathan Burgoine has been reading and reviewing the stories in the book one by one, if you’d like to read even more about the different pieces that make up the collection!

BONUS LINK 2: here are a bunch of puppies looking adorable and confused

Roll-a-Sketches! Featuring MANY MERMAIDS

Here are some Roll-a-Sketches from recent shows! It’s funny how the dice work — even though it’s random, often a given element will pop up over and over for a while. Just the nature of chance, I guess! This bunch had a lot of mermaids in it. Saucy mermaids, as you can see!

RHINO + MERMAID:

CACTUS + MERMAID:

BEAR + SHARK + MERMAID + TANK:

MERMAID + HAMBURGER:

And just for good measure, HAMBURGER + GIRAFFE:

If you’ll be at the San Diego Comic-Con this week, come and get your own Roll-a-Sketch from me at booth #1229! (Mnemonic to remember: just think 1-2-3-4. We’re like 10 feet away from #1234.)

I’ll be there the whole time except for Friday morning from 11-12, when Ryan North and I will be signing copies of This Is How You Die at the Hachette booth, just an aisle away at #1116.

Comic-Con will mark the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the invention of the Roll-a-Sketch. I will celebrate it by continuing to populate the strange world that all of these creatures live in. IT IS MY HONOR AND MY DUTY.

MACHINE OF DEATH 2 — Video! Pre-order! Reddit AMA!

We are in EXTREME COUNTDOWN MODE for the Machine of Death sequel, This Is How You Die! Here are some IMPORTANT BULLET POINTS:

• We’ve made a super-cool video to introduce the MOD concept to people! My friend Michael Mohan directed it. WARNING: it features violence and attractive people in swimwear so DON’T WATCH IT if you don’t like that stuff.

• FRIDAY, JULY 12 – 9:30 AM Pacific / 12:30 PM Eastern – I’ll be doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) interview along with Machine of Death co-editors Ryan North and Matt Bennardo, as well as many of the contributors to MOD Volume 1! We’ll be joining authors Cherie Priest and Robert Charles Wilson as we discuss the newest Humble eBook Bundle, which features the first Machine of Death book!

If you’re not familiar, the Humble Bundle allows you to name your own price for a whole bundle of top-shelf ebooks (by Neil Gaiman! Cory Doctorow! Wil Wheaton! Randall Munroe!) and support great charities at the same time. If you haven’t read the first MOD, this is one great way to get it, in whatever ebook format you choose, for a price that you choose.

Once it’s live, the AMA will be linked from this page.

• Regarding This Is How You Die. Matt, Ryan and I have worked super hard to make it the best book we can. It’s filled with great illustrations and comics by tons of cool artists whom you probably know (Aaron Diaz, Meredith Gran, Trudy Cooper, Ramón Pérez, Graham Annable, KC Green, Kris Straub, Ryan Pequin, Anthony Clark, THE LIST GOES ON). And the stories are our very favorites from the nearly 2,000 submissions we received from writers around the world. It’s a book we couldn’t be more proud and excited to share with you.

Last time, as you may recall, you helped us drive the first Machine of Death book all the way to #1 on Amazon. It was an amazing success that opened a lot of doors for us — including paving the way to make this book possible, which we love just as much as the first one (and which is a little longer, even!) We’re so grateful to everyone who’s shown support for MOD over the past few years, and we wanted to make sure we made exactly the book you’d want to read.

But how do you top being #1 on Amazon? Only one answer:

We want to make this book a New York Times bestseller.

We want to make every single one of the contributors to this book into a New York Times bestselling author. To have any shot at it, we need to rack up as many orders as possible between now and July 20, which is the end of our first week of release.

The book is available for pre-order now — you can get it from Amazon, or your favorite retailer. We think we have the best shot at the print-format list, but if you’d prefer an ebook, it’s available from all the regular ebook vendors too.

Or, if you’ll be at the San Diego Comic-Con, you can pick it up from us in person — Ryan and I will be at TopatoCo booth #1229 (and we’ll be doing a formal signing on Friday morning, 11:00 AM. Also, every other time).

We’ve set up a page with the video, the book links, and even a FREE PREVIEW of EIGHT FULL STORIES from the book, in case you need to try a little taste first. All that info is at:

ThisIsHowYouDie.com

That’s the link to pass around to share the video, the ordering info, and the preview chapters. If you have other ideas about how we can spread the word, please leave a comment on this post! I’m keen to hear your thoughts!

JULY 20. We have EIGHT DAYS. You are going to hear about this from me a LOT.

Here’s the table of contents in case you’re curious! (click for bigger)

Thanks so much for your support! I wouldn’t be this loud if I didn’t really, truly believe that this book is worth your while. Five hundred pages of stories for about twelve bucks!!

Check out: ‘How Terminator Should End’

This is another one of those videos that’s got 10 million views already, so I’m probably late to the party. But if you haven’t seen it, it’s an animated trailer proposing the end of the Terminator film franchise. It’s super goofy and fun but I was taken by surprise how dramatic it also is! Recommended watching for movie fans.

“Terminator – How It Should End”


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