David Malki !

Guest comic for Dinosaur Comics!

I have done a guest comic for Dinosaur Comics today! Ryan North is getting married (to his fiancée) this weekend and he asked for some fill-in help for the occasion. Everyone else leaped on the wedding and honeymoon fill-in positions but I just made a comic. I am already married, you see!

If you’re not familiar with Dinosaur Comics or its established canon, check out this episode in which characters are handily introduced all round, this episode about the phenomenon of island dwarfism and certainly also this follow-up! Not only will reading these fine and hilarious works give you a firm working knowledge of Dinosaur Comics but they also conveniently are exactly what you need to understand the specific references in my guest comic.

Congratulations Ryan and Jenn! I wish you both at least five years of happiness. I have learned the secret to a successful marriage, and I will tell it to you right here because we are friends and I want you to be happy until such time comes that I can somehow profit from your sadness. If that day never comes, then I want you to be happy forever!

Are you ready? Lean close, here is the secret!

lots of snuggles

p.s. here is another Guest Dino Comic I made a while ago, referencing this Canonical Dino Comic!

Help me CHEAT AT SPELLING

Maybe you’ve heard of 826 Valencia, the organization founded by Dave Eggers that helps 6- to 18-year-olds with writing skills through community events and after-school tutoring. 826 has several branches nationwide, and my local chapter, 826LA, has its office just down the street from mine! In fact, I pass it every day on my way to work. My friend and fellow cartoonist Keith Knight is on the board of directors there, and when he invited me to participate in a fundraising event for 826LA, I gladly agreed!

It’s called “A Spelling Bee For Cheaters” and it takes place August 14 in Santa Monica, CA. Keith, Dave Kellett and I are on a team called “The Sweaty Hams,” because we are all men and, well, sometimes things happen. We’re somewhat late-comers to the fundraising game, so we are trying to raise pledges to buy “cheats” so we can be competitive in the event!

Cheats include passing on a difficult word, buying immunity after spelling a word wrong, swapping places with another team member, and other non-officially-endorsed-by-the-American-Spelling-Association deviousnesses. (See how I used a word that’s probably not in their official lexicon?) We only get cheats — and thus, a fighting chance against the other teams with loads of cheats — if we raise money! 826LA is a volunteer-based organization that helps kids in a number of remarkable and wonderful ways. Will you please help our team with a donation?

The event is less than two weeks away and thanks to rudderless team leadership we are entering the fundraising race way at the back of the pack. PLEASE DO NOT LET US FAIL IN THIS

AS WE DO MOST EVERYTHING ELSE

Introducing Malki-In-Progress !

A little while back I asked your opinion about what I should do with my sketches, works-in-progress and various miscellany. I am pleased to introduce Malki-In-Progress !

In flagrant disregard of public opinion, I have set up a Tumblr microblog which I hope to populate with all manner of strange nonsense. I decided to do it this way because I have come to regard the Wondermark site with a certain measure of reverence — it’s like a brightly-lit gallery for work I am beaming with pride to share, while the new site will be a more of a garage workshop where I can tinker with stupid things not fearing that the slightest absurd scribble will trigger ten thousand Feedburner emails to folks who subscribed expecting comics.

The new site has its own RSS, and all the site content will cross-post to Twitter @wondermarkfeed (which also posts the updates from this main site). Expect to see drawings, Wondermark comic in-progress shots and detail views, behind-the-scenes info on other major projects, and maybe — if I have the gumption — pages of a new book as I write them. Nothing will change or decrease here at Wondermark; everything on MiP! will be new, additional content. I’ll occasionally post highlights here so you don’t miss anything I think is particularly cool, but I won’t overload you with duplicate posts. (Or you can just cast an occasional eye over on the right-hand sidebar to see thumbnails of recent posts.) The main idea is just to give me a little playground to mess around in — I’m deliberately not setting a schedule or standardized format for the MiP! posts, and in fact will probably soon abandon the MiP! moniker as it’s starting to strike me as ridiculous.

ANYWAY HERE IT IS ENJOY

These Are ALL Their Stories

Brandon Bird has posted all of the pieces from the “These Are Their Stories” Law & Order-themed art show, including my very own (detail pictured above).

I particularly like “Sugar Daddy Suspected of Murder”, “A Rich Man And His Very Young Daughter Are Shot” and Brandon’s own “A Complicated Murder Case”.

The show is on display right now at Gallery Meltdown in Hollywood, but today is the last day!