I'm instituting a new rule, next Halloween. If you're a trick-or-treater, and you're taller than me, or have more facial hair, NO CANDY FOR YOU.

And in a follow-up to my favorite Sheldon Halloween strip from years past, here are some reader favorites:

1.) The Lost Art of the "Trick"

2.) Lactose Intolerance and Halloween

3.) Solid Literary Reference

4.) Sauron, and a Good Followup

5.) Ha! I've Clearly Had This Revelation Before!

You've probably heard me talk about two new projects I'm working on: the cartoonist-advice podcast Webcomics Weekly, and the upcoming book for Image Comics, "How to Make Webcomics". These are by no means solo projects: I'm doing them with three fantastic friends: Kris Straub, Brad Guigar, and Scott Kurtz.

In fact, we've been having so much fun working together on these and other projects, that we've decided to band together in a "Traveling Wilburys" sort of way. In addition to the book, related book talks, and the weekly podcast, we've got a number of new and behind-the-scenes projects that we'll be working on together. And because we crack each other up, there's a lot of laughter along the way. Being in the humor business, it's always good to be laughing.

The expansion of Halfpixel would've meant split energies on my part with Blank Label Comics -- the great co-op of cartoonists I've belonged to for 3 years. And those split energies wouldn't have been fair to either Blank Label's "everyone contributes" model, or to the new workload on Halfpixel projects. So, as friends, we've all decided to part ways. There's no drama in the parting: Blank Label is and shall remain a great group of friends and artists I respect.

What does this mean for you? Well, the only substantive change at the moment will be a new forum system that will have one added benefit: now, you'll be able to directly chime in on the day's blog post. The new Sheldon forum (coming in about two weeks -- I'm still fiddlin' with the css layout) will be able to do that. I think it will make the blog posts another nice springboard for discussions, which'll be good.

Aside from that, there's only one other change you can expect as a Sheldon reader: more of the same good stuff. The site's the same, the strip's the same, and the cartoonist behind it all is the same....albeit a little more excited for new ventures!

Want to read more about this? Here's the first journalistic-y interview with all four of us about Halfpixel.