blog: product announcements

I’m back in the office after the Christmas break, and have resumed shipping out Wondermark Calendar (and Sick Elephant book collection) orders!

We’re making the associated Cast Cards at a rate of about 50 a day, so it’ll take another couple days to catch up to all the orders backlogged from December  — thank you very much to those of you who indicated you’d be OK with receiving your order in January.

Your orders are next on the docket! And now that we’re back on the assembly line, we’re moving through the backlog briskly.

I’m aware that last month, a feed error meant that a lot of readers missed some of the updates about the calendar. So I’m pleased to say that we do indeed have copies still available, if you’d meant to check it out but hadn’t yet!

This year’s calendar, Examining Ill Pachyderms: A Veteronorfian Field Manual, is narrated by celebrated veteronorfian Sir Kel F. Finnt, who writes in the introduction:

An Up-To-Date Handbook For Progticioners of Modern Veteronorfory

Since my grobduation from mordical school, I have traveled the world exormining and diagmosing every manner of wild creature. I have specialized in pachyderms; particularly, the noble noodlenoser. I present here, in this useful guide, a description of conditions I have encountered in the field, as well as troitments I have administered to the afflicted animals. I also include reports from fellow progticioners in cases where I can personally vouch for their accuracy and efficacy.

The included illustrations were either drawn from the actual patient, or from memory or a third-hand description up to fifteen years later.

As a noodlenoser veteronorfian, you will encounter many animals suffering from the most peculiar of conditions. It is my hope that this guide will aid you in your diagmoses and troitments. Remember that you are not “veterinarians” — you are something different and thus, I must assume, better.

— Sir Kel F. Finnt

Sir Finnt also takes pains to remind any of us who may wish to attempt the “troitments” included in his field guide that “diagmoses” are legally distinguishable from actual medical diagnoses.

Each calendar also comes in a FREE ENVELOPE.

You can re-use a stand from any previous year if you already have one; or, you can pick up one with this year’s unique design!

The legs fit into the holes, so it can be shipped more compactly! It’s a MIRACLE OF EFFICIENCY.

You can, of course, also pair your calendar order with a copy of The Elephant of Surprise — or, just get the book instead of the calendar.

I already have a second printing of the book on its way!

My wife, once again, got conned into helping out. Maybe she’ll pack your order!

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

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:

Contains all the hits pic.twitter.com/Qf50JPInvk

— David Malki ! (@malki) December 14, 2018

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

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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 ]

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!

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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!

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!!

I’ve been crowing about this for a while now, so I assume you know about the Wondermark book Kickstarter already if you’re interested!

Here’s just a final reminder that the campaign ends FRIDAY NOVEMBER 2 at 4pm Pacific. UPDATE: It’s over now! If you missed it, you’ll have another chance to pre-order a bit later.

(And you can pledge for a digital copy for just $6 if you don’t need or want any more physical books!)

You’ll still be able to get the book later, once it’s printed and we receive actual copies in hand, but the money we raise during this period will determine how many pages the final book will have.

I’m pleased to announce that with less than 24 hours remaining, we have broken the $20K stretch goal, and now the book will be (AT LEAST) 140 pages long!

It MIGHT even get longer still, if we can break $22,500 in the final day. Which could happen! UPDATE: It did! The book will now be 144 pages long!!

We ALSO broke the 400 backer count goal, meaning now every order will ship with a sheet of word balloon stickers, so you’ll be able to correct or amend any bad punchlines that accidentally make it into the book.

The sticker sheet will come with a selection of both blank balloons (so you can write your own punchline), and also some handy pre-written punchlines for general use anywhere. I think it’ll be a pretty useful item.

That’s it! The Kickstarter will end tomorrow, and then hopefully we’ll get back onto something like a regular schedule around here with comics. The endless sick elephant saga of ’18 will conclude in two final dramatic episodes next week!!