Apparently it's National Same Sex Kiss Day or something.  So have some art I drew for my wife the other day of Velma makin' out with Hot Dog Water.  You know, from Scooby Doo Mystery Inc, which is the best Scooby Doo show ever.  I know, that's not a bold claim, but it's seriously perfect, and Maggie and I drop everything to watch it.

We ship them.  We ship them hard.

Now, technically these Same Sex Kisses are supposed to be happening in a Chick-Fil-A, but just pretend the art takes place outside one at like midnight or something.  Or maybe they broke in to search for clues... and love.

Actually,  you know what?  Screw it, let's do this right.

When I've not been reassembling my site from its sudden shambles, I've been sending out the "The Shortpacked!: The Movie" posters!  Here's a photo of a few posters underneath one of the character sketches some lucky dude ended up with.  There's more where that came from!

But not too much more.  These things are limited.

Mike is one of my oldest characters, as he originated from a story written in the opening weeks of fifth grade.  That was what, 1987?  Yikes, that means I've been drawing him for 24 years.  Can't believe it took him that long to knock some chick up.

Anyway, enjoy a stream of Mike Art Through The Ages, starting with the earliest I have on me, the blue-tinted one, which is from 1990ish.  Then watch me draw him fold his arms again and again and again for the next two decades.

Of all my characters, he's probably the one that's changed the least over time.  Hey, if it ain't broke.

First of all, a reminder that the Ethan statue is still up for preorder!  Put in your purchase to ensure you'll get one.  He's 7 meaty inches, baby!

Second, the text on the back of the seventeenth volume of Hayate the Combat Butler reads:

By now Hayate's nigh-total awesomeness is a matter of public record. But how did he come to master the twin disciplines of housekeeping and martial arts? In the ?ashback to end all ?ashbacks, we journey back to Hayate's hapless childhood and his cryptic encounter with the girl who would change his life forever. Be forewarned--the drama tag will be pulled.

(Bolding mine.)  That's right!  I'm in your language, dudes!  I'm deep inside it!  Like a splinter, you're gonna have to get a sterilized needle and just dig at me for days.  You'll never get me out.

You should blame Shaenon Garrity for this.  And the only way to enact your vengeance is to buy a copy.

And finally, a bunch of artists at C2E2 doodled onto a piece of art that's being auctioned with its proceeds going to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund.  I was one of these dudes, and when I got the piece of art in front of me, at the time it only had some robot thing unknown to me and a drawing of G1 Ratchet.  So I, of course, drew Animated Ratchet next to him.  That's just what I do.  It's how I roll.  And then all this other stuff was added later which was not Ratchets.  I tried to convince Joel Watson to draw a Ratchet, but he's all "lol no" and drew his boyfriend Riker.

It's an awesome assemblage of cartooning!  If you have the funds, please bid on it.  Parts of Japan are underwater and they need buckets.

Speaking of Joel, I've appeared in two of his C2E2 photocomics.  I'm sorry.

Phew!  I've spent so much time getting over the stupid sickness ECCC injected into me that I almost forgot how damn fun it was.  And it was fun!  As I pack for undoubtedly another fun weekend in Chicago for C2E2, have some belated photos.

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So this is the infamous half-blender of Webcomic Rampage.  For those readers of mine who still haven't heard this story, let me retell it here.  I shipped two boxes of books to the Austin Dragon's Lair comic shop ahead of myself so that I could sell them to my fans.  One box arrived easy-as-you-please!  The other box had been opened, books removed, placed in a new box, with the books exchanged with half a blender.  HALF A BLENDER.  So, yeah.  Post Office lost/stole/ate my books, and gave me an incomplete blender in exchange.  That was fun!  But a good story, I guess?

But the sad, sobering reality is that losing those books cost me a potential few hundred dollars in sales.  That blows!  So to share this story and to help recoup my losses, since there's no real legal recourse for me to retrieve these books or my lost potential sales, I've doodled a bunch of my characters on the surface of this blender with a Sharpie. And you can own it. Keep in mind, it is an INCOMPLETE blender.  You will only get what you see here.  Just the bottom, with a plug.  There's no top half.   The blender also has some scuff marks at some of the edges where its silvery finish was removed in transit.  But on the plus side, there's now all these Shortpacked! and Dumbing of Age characters on it.  Sweet, huh?

I've left a spot up next to Ultra Car where the winner of the blender can request anyone they feel is important that I've forgotten.  (Which, as it turns out, will probably be Mike.  Man, how'd I forget him?  Oh well, you can request him should you win.  Or somebody else!  There's also no Dorothy, no Reagan, no Sal...)

So, uh, yeah!  You can own this piece of dubious webcomics history.

I'm way too lax on auctioning things I mean to auction, so this is my weekend of auctions!  I need to get some stuff out of the way before I'm, y'know, On The Road to Conventions again, where it's kind of inconvenient to orchestrate these things.

So here's two new auctions, this time left-over art from two conventions.

First up is a set of 9 sketch cards of Shortpacked! characters I drew at San Diego Comic-Con.

Second up is a set of 7 sketch cards of G.I.Joe characters I (mostly) drew at Canadian Joe Con.

Bid on them if you like 'em!  They're one-of-a-kind art.

(Oh, and don't forget yesterday's BotCon 2010 bagged set.)

BotCon is next week, so to raise some spending money I'm throwing up for auction all the convention art I have remaining from C2E2, Penguicon, and Wildpig. There's some sweet stuff here, some I'm sad to see go 'cuz they're awesome.

It's nine pieces of art, with seven of them being full-color.  Starting bid's just $20, the auction will last 5 days, and then I'll get them mailed off to the winning bidder before I leave for BotCon next week!

Good luck!

So as we were debuting the new site this weekend, Frumph says to me, hey, guess what, this is awesome.  See all those folks with no avatars?  Well, what if I told you that if you uploaded your own avatars to a certain directory and did some Comicpress magic, they'd be randomly assigned to unavatared users?

So I says, holy balls!

And so after crankin' out a handful every day since then, there are now a total of 24 avatars in the pool.  If you don't have an avatar and you post, you'll get randomly assigned, say, Sodomuffin.  And then every time you post, you'll keep that Sodomuffin avatar.  (... at least until I upload a new image into the pool, which restarts the math and they all get switched around again)

Since I have so many, and I put so much work into them despite being tiny 64x64 things, I thought I'd show them to you big as a wallpaper.  You are also free to crop them out and make your own avatars on other boards, so long as you give me credit.  I am also wondering if maybe I should try to do this a print or a poster or something in the meager number of hours I have remaining before C2E2, but we'll see.

Enjoy!