blog: things you should check out

Girl Genius is a wonderful graphic-novel series about a steampunk — er, “gaslamp fantasy” — world run by mad scientists. You can read many, many years’ worth of the adventure online for free!

Today, Phil and Kaja Foglio are releasing their new Girl Genius novel, Agatha H. and the Airship City. I’m continually impressed by the multimedia empire the Foglios have developed: in addition to the comic series, and this new novel, they do a neat live radio-drama event at conventions and there is even an audiobook version of the new novel available too.

Inspired by our success with Machine of Death, they’re urging folks to buy Agatha H. on Amazon today — already they’re #1 in many subcategories and as of this writing, are up to #21 overall.

Phil and Kaja have long been kind and gracious supporters of Wondermark and I’ve already bought my copy of Agatha H. If you like the steampunkier side of Wondermark, or prefer your surreal Victoriana to have storylines, I recommend spending some time with Girl Genius!

Here’s the book on Amazon. Phil and Kaja are also doing book signings in Seattle tonight and throughout the week — more info on those events here.

December at Wondermark has been sponsored by MyDamnChannel.com. MDC features original comedy shows by some pretty interesting and talented people! The video above is the first episode of Pilot Season, starring Sarah Silverman, David Cross, Marc Maron, and others. Other shows of note:

Back on Topps: Jason & Randy Sklar — whom I would watch read a grocery list — star as the heirs to the Topps baseball-card fortune who must save the company after it is sold to Michael Eisner.

Wainy Days: A very Curb Your Enthusiasm-style show following the comedian and director David Wain through a series of problematic relationships. (A little blue at times.)

Temp Life: Following the travails of office temps and their managers at the nation’s second-largest cell-phone-button manufacturer.

MDC is also the home of many other shows you may have heard of before, such as You Suck at Photoshop, Cookin’ with Coolio, and Children’s Hospital.

Also did you know that a new Spinal Tap album came out in 2009? I wonder what is wrong with our communications infrastructure that I didn’t hear anything about it at the time. Here is a video promo for same on MDC, featuring the Spinal Tap guys now:

IN CONCLUSION: THANK YOU FOR YOUR SPONSORSHIP, MYDAMNCHANNEL.COM

Here’s an amazing video by designer Jarrett Heather, taking Jonathan Coulton’s song “Shop Vac” and rendering it in superbly-animated kinetic type.

I like it!

I’m pleased to announce that as of this week, classic Wondermark episodes will be running in The Onion’s A.V. Club every Monday and Thursday! Many of you know that Wondermark ran in the print edition of The Onion for several years and it took a global economic collapse to defeat my talon-like hold on that paper. Now, after patiently waiting across the street and pretending to read a magazine since 2008, I’ve managed to sneak into the A.V. Club through an unattended back door and will be frantically hacking some HTML onto their site twice a week until they notice. Check out my curated selection of favorite episodes from Wondermark’s 7+ year history, twice a week at the A.V. Club!