San Diego Comic-Con is almost here, and I want to share three things with Sheldon attendees:

1.) First up: The Sheldon guide to the show. Click HERE for a big, printable version you can take with you.

2.) All Sheldon original art is 20% off at the show. But! You have to e-mail me now to tell me which strips you want me to bring. Do it now before you forget!

3.) This year, we’ll have five items new to the show: The Literature book, the Drive book, the “Coffee: Circle of Life” print, the “Fantasy Football vs D&D” print, and an exclusive Sheldon/Dante print only available in San Diego to the first 50 takers.

We’ll also have the other 8 books, all the prints, buttons, Glornak stickers, and FREE SKETCHES for everybody.

Here are the two books premiering at the show:

And here are the three prints — the last of which is the San Diego exclusive:

The last print will be numbered “# of 50”, signed, and can feature any sketch you’d like added to it.

So! Booth #1228! Print out the Sheldon guide, above! And e-mail me right away if you wanted a specific piece of original art!

Rad!

It’s Saturday, which means it’s time for our Saturday Sci-Fi Featurette, “Drive”.

For those wishing to read the whole story straight through, you can head over to the temporary Drive site to go through it.

The eventual “full” Drive website will have a breakdown of the story thus far, and what we know about the characters, and all that..but if anyone wants to start a Drive Wikipedia entry in the interim, I’m happy to point to that. It’ll be a nice stop-gap until we can get the full website goin’.

EDITED TO ADD: Rad! Looks like it’s been started! Feel free to add to the Wikipedia entry here.

By happenstance, I recently stumbled on what turns out to be greatest gym workout song ever, Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (especially from about 1:30, on). If there was ever a song that was designed for runnin’ or liftin’ weights or doin’ the EFX machine, this is it. And it got me thinking, “What other awesome workout songs are out there that I’ve never come across?”

So I put it to you, friends: What are the best, most inspiring/energetic/manic songs out there for working out?

Let us tackle this task together: Let Us Build The Greatest Workout Mixtape EVER.

(Post your best suggestions below: The lesser-known the song, the better.)

JULY 15th, LOS ANGELES, 7-9PM: Meredith Gran, David Malki ‘n myself will be signing, sketching and selling books at Secret Headquarters — possibly the coolest comic book shop I’ve ever seen.

Aaaaaand…I’m pretty sure I’ll have advance copies of the “Literature” book for those that come out! Raaaaaaad.

There are two changes to the 2010 appearance schedule, so let’s take a second to review what’s coming up:

WEST COAST:
San Diego: San Diego Comic-Con, July 22-25
Long Beach, CA: Long Beach Comicon, Oct. 29-31

EAST COAST:
Bethesda, MD: SPX, Sept. 11-12
Easthampton, MA: NEWW, Nov. 6-7

MIDWEST:
Columbus, OH: Festival of Cartoon Art, Oct. 14-17

New Yorkers: Note that I’ve decided against going to New York Comic-Con this year, as my October schedule is already packed. But! Expect to see me out there next year.

Hey! In fun news, July 24th will bring with it the 3,000th Sheldon strip! That’s pretty cool right there: THREE THOUSAND STRIPS!

And, in the kind of awesome coincidence that you could never plan, that day will also be the first day of San Diego Comic-Con!

So let me put it to you guys: How should we celebrate it? What should we do? Comment below and chime in!

Sheldonista Patrick J. wrote in with this awesome tidbit:

I just had to refer to this strip to remember how to tie up a cord. And I’m not sure weather I should be proud that I actually took the time to actually tie up the cord or be ashamed that I didn’t remember how to do it on my own…

Rad.

For those wondering, the last three installments of “Drive” have been drawn digitally, without pen ‘n paper, on the Cintiq.

For those who didn’t spot it — great, that’s the goal! For those who did spot it — also great! That means you’re keen-eyed enough on my style to spot minor(ish) differences…which I take as a compliment. So! Win-win, really!

Today’s strip was really just an excuse to come up with fun names. “Chitners,” as a last name, made me laugh out loud. If you say it with a bit of Appalachia, it sounds so perfect.

Anyway! A lot of you wrote in to defend the banjo, which is great. It’s a pretty rad instrument.

A great many of you sent along great YouTube clips of cool people doing cool things with the banjo. (Note, though: Sending in videos with musicians named “Earl Scruggs” doesn’t particularly help the joke, but I suppose what’re you gonna do? There are no “Lord Biggles-worths” playin’ the banjo.)

Here’s a particularly nice YouTube video of Béla Fleck playing Bach and talking about the improvisational skills of the composer. Well worth the watch, both for the talent and the humility of the performer.

San Diego Comic-Con, as you guys know, is the big enchilada of the comics world. It’s 130,000 folks gathering over five days for comics and pop culture. And this year, we’ll have TWO new books premiering at the show!

The first book will be centered on a theme, like the popular Pugs collection, which gathered all the pug strips into one book. The new collection is themed for book-lovers: It’s called LITERATURE: Unsuccessfully Competing Against TV Since 1953, and gathers all the Sheldon bibliophile strips into one book. It’s everything from Twain to Tolkien, Seuss to Shakespeare.

The book will be available at SDCC, and then will be available in the Sheldon Store a week or so later, when we’ve had the big LA book-launch party. Here’s the cover (or click here for a larger image):

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The second book will be the first collection of DRIVE strips! It’ll have the same shape as the Sheldon books, but will feel closer to those 50-page Marvel/DC novelettes, with glossy interior pages. I’m excited for it! Here’s the cover (…for a larger image, click here):

The Drive book will have a super limited print-run — just a few hundred copies — but remaining copies will be available in the store after the San Diego show ends.

Anyway, I can’t wait for you guys to see ’em!