For Drive readers, an interesting question for the upcoming Grand Council is, “How many members are there in La Familia?” As we saw in this past Saturday’s strip, getting them all in one place for a meeting hasn’t been done for 100 years: And with good reason. Without Familia onboard, large military ships and transports have no one to service their drives. Without Familia running the courts or trade consulates, law and business freeze up. Without Familia…the whole Empire just goes on hold for a week or so.

The last time a council was called, it was just an aging Emperor Conrado, his five middle-age kids, and a smattering of grandkids in adulthood. And in the background, an empire that consisted of Earth, the lunar and Martian colonies, and Veeta.

This time around, it’s dozens of planets, a fleet of military and trade ships, and a family numbering in the….

Well, that’s the interesting part. Thanks to the kind efforts of Drive reader Brian Huisman, you can plug in the variables yourself, to see how big the family might be after 140 years. Try it out yourself. (We assume that, for political & economic reasons, La Familia encourages an intentionally high number of children, such that each offspring averages five kids. Also: That they have them (on average) between the age of 25-30, that their (average) lifespan is 80 years old, and that males and females both count as “continuing” the family line. Add to that, we know that Conrado already had five children 140 years ago, and can assume that they were near, but not at, adulthood. We also know that, by Fernando’s time, there were “1,200” Familia servicing the drive — but that’s just a slice of the total populace, as they serve multiple roles in the Empire.)

Anyway, plug in the variables and see what you get! The number can rise and fall exponentially with tiny tweaks…so I’m still debating where *I’d* like the final tally to be. For now, I’m thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000-8,000 current members of La Familia.

Anyway, fun stuff!

Guys, it has come to my attention that no one ever claimed the fifth Kellett Baronetcy in the UK.

Granted, this Baronetage no longer exists, since Cork is no longer in the UK (along with the rest of the Republic of Ireland)…but COME ON. Let’s make this happen! Let’s give a useless “Baron” title to a (one hopes) somewhat-less-useless cartoonist!

There are Irish and English solicitors and legal scholars among the Sheldonista masses: Surely there is some legal loophole we can exploit here? Some way we can turn this whole thing into the plot of a delightful B-grade Disney movie co-starring me, Anne Hathaway, and Dame Edna… right?

🙂

Just a heads up: A few tickets are still available for the 2010 Festival of Cartoon Art at Ohio State. It’s the big, triennial shin-dig in the cartooning world, and I’ll be speaking at this year’s event along with a host of cartoonin’ dignitaries…like Matt Groening (Simpsons), Roz Chast (New Yorker), Patrick McDonnell (Mutts), Art Spiegelman (Maus), Dan Piraro (Bizarro) and more.

Head over to the registration site if you’d like to go: My talk is going to be a response to Bill Watterson’s 1989 speech “The Cheapening of the Comics”…and will be titled “The Freeing of the Comics”. Should be good!

That’s a heck of a way to go into the weekend.

We got some great shots from the book launch party on Sunday night that you can check out here.

Click on any image for a larger pic.

…and a reminder: The books go on sale in the Sheldon Store on Wednesday!

Thank you to everyone who came out to the book launch party last night. It was awesome…and I’ll have a full write-up and pics later in the week.

Also! I should mention that the books will be going on sale Wednesday. Buuuut, first crack at the Artist’s Editions for both books will be linked to later today (Monday) on my Twitter feed and on the Sheldon Facebook page…so look for ’em there!

Over in the forums, Drive reader Bill asked a good question regarding the emperors, and the timeline around them. So let me take a second to help clarify:

Veetans live (tops) around 25 years, but begin their grand “walk-abouts” around 3 or 4. So Nosh’s grandfather has about 22 years of space travel behind him.

The current emperor, Fernando’s uncle, and the one we’ve met in the strip, has only been in power for a few months.

The previous emperor, Fernando’s grandfather, was the one the elder Veetan served under.

Big reminder of the big shindig:

This Sunday, Aug. 22nd, The Crescent Lounge, Peligroso tequila and Steaz energy drinks are hosting the book launch party for the new “Literature” and “Drive” books — and you’re totally invited!

There are FREE drinks from Peligroso Tequila and Steaz, FREE sketches from yours truly, aaaaand FREE contest give-aways at 9PM. It’s gonna be pretty dang rad.

It all takes place in Beverly Hills, at the very cool Crescent Lounge (see below pic). It’s free and open to all Sheldon readers, family and friends…so come on out!

Here’s a Q&A that anticipates your every need:

1.) Wait: You’re being serious…there’ll be free drinks? YES.
2.) And free sketches? YES.
3.) Will there be free high-fives? UNDOUBTEDLY.
4.) Will the new books be available for purchase there? YES: THAT’S WHERE YOUR FREE SKETCHES GO!
5.) Will there be much awesomeness? ONLY IF YOU ATTEND. THIS CAN NOT BE STRESSED ENOUGH.
6.) I’m in! Now how do I get there? The address for the Crescent Lounge is: 403 N. Crescent Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Here is their site, and here’s a Google Map you can use for directions.
7.) Is there a Facebook Event page for this? SURE, WHY NOT.

Oh, “Garage Sale,” when did you become the catch-all phrase for any sale of cheap &*^%$ at the front of our house, whether it be of the lawn-, driveway-, or indeed garage-variety?

For those not familiar with the reference, Grammar Girl is Mignon Fogarty’s awesome blog on the more idiosyncratic parts of the English language. I highly recommend it: It’s a fun, interestin’ read on language ‘n learnin’ ‘n lingual luminations. <–This sentence would get me in trouble over there.

In fun news, Drive — our Saturday SciFi featurette — turns one this week!

I really want to thank you guys for letting me try this new experiment: The encouragement has meant a lot. When I started drawing Drive, I gave myself permission to “fail spectacularly,” as I had never done anything like this before. It was SciFi, it was long-form story-telling, it was a whole new layout and approach. But thankfully, it seems to be working so far…and the response that you’ve given it has been very encouraging. At Comic-Con, for example, the Drive book outsold all the other Sheldon books combined — which I take as a great vote of confidence!

And since we’re at the one-year mark, I thought it’d be fun to look at some Drive-related highlights from the year. Stuff like this awesome turnaround of the Machito, created by Robert Maxwell:

Drive – Machito from Robert Maxwell on Vimeo.

…orrrrr this flyby of La Invencible that Robert also created:

Drive – The Emporer’s Ship from Robert Maxwell on Vimeo.

Also courtesy of Robert, a free Drive-themed desktop for your computer monitor. Click HERE for the 1920×1080-pixels image that can be cropped or resized to your pleasure.

Another amazing, amazing Drive featurette, produced by Dan Taubert, is really one of my personal highlights for the year. It just came out so slick…it gets *me* excited about Drive:

DRIVE Animation from Dan Taubert on Vimeo.

Dan also sent along this big, HD-version of the emperor’s ship, La Invencible. Check out the much bigger image by CLICKING HERE.

(And if you’d like to see Dan’s process for creating that visualization, you can check out his website here.)

A few months back, I put up a temporary Drive site so that folks could read the full archives in order. But we’re makin’ progress on the full Drive site. Here’s a sneak peek of the work-in-progress: