First things first: THANK YOU to everyone who came out to San Diego Comic-Con. It was a fantastic five days of laughter and sketches and high-fives and good times. To be able to get out there and meet you all at conventions means a lot to me. I will admit it: The kind words you share about the strip at conventions…? I carry those with me all through the year. So thank you for that!

Thanks also to the three or four English Sheldonistas who brought me Hobnobs cookies from the UK. I and my expanding waistline thank you…they were amazing.

We gave out all the free Dilly Duck prints by Thursday morning and sold out of all the “Pugs” and “Living Dangerously” books we brought (and almost all of the “Nerds on Parade” books as well). Surprisingly, to mostly new readers. Thank you to everyone who dragged their friends/cousins/office mates over to the booth to introduce them to the strip. That means a lot.

This year, I was in a corner booth in a fantastic location, and it seems like everyone found us pretty easily. I shared the booth with my co-authors and friends Kris Straub and Brad Guigar. I laugh all weekend with these two, and miss them greatly when the convention ends. They are two of the most naturally funny guys you could ever want to meet. If you’re not familiar with their work, do yourself a favor and check them out.

On another note: If you took any photos at SDCC of your Sheldon sketch, your high-five, etc., please e-mail ’em to me! Cap’n Forgetful forgot to take pics, and I’d love to show folks how the show went. Thanks!

Oh, and one last thing: The new Sheldon book will be going on sale after the Book Launch party on August 9th. More news on both of those later in the week!

Reminder: I’ll be at BOOTH #1228 for all five days of San Diego Comic-Con! Here’s a snapshot of what you’ll find:

– The new book, “Living Dangerously”!

– The con-exclusive print, “Anatomy of a Pug”!

– Original Art for $25 smackers off the normal price!

– FREE “Dilly Duck” prints for the first 100 folks!

– FREE sketches for everyone!

– FREE Official Commemorative 2009 San Diego Comic-Con High Fives! (Limit two per person.)

I’ve put together a one-page, printable “Guide to San Diego Comic-Con” for folks coming to the show. Grab the printable image by clicking HERE.

A quick heads-up for Sheldonistas coming to San Diego Comic-Con: All Sheldon Original Art is $25-off at the show. Your favorite strip involving Lord of the Rings? Bam. 25 smackers off. How about the one onBluetooth headsets or Aquaman? Bam. $25 off.

All I ask is that you e-mail meto tell me which strips you’re interested in. Here’s why! Every year, people get to the show, and say “I’d like to get the strip about XYZ, please,” not realizing that there are 3,000 strips, and I couldn’t possibly bring them all. So please drop me a note. TRUST ME: You-from-four-days-from-now will be thanking the you-from-today. And me-from-today will be high-fivin’ a happy you-from-four-days-from-now.*

*Note: Both you-from-seven-days-from-now and me-from-seven-days-from-now will be sad, though, because SDCC will be over, and we’ll be back to our normal routine.

If I can take a personal moment, I want to publicly congratulate my parents on something pretty fantastic:

Today, my folks celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary! Which is pretty darn impressive, no matter how you slice it. 50! They renewed their vows with all their kids and grandkids gathered ’round, and we all had a pretty spectacular day. Congrats, Mom & Dad!

Glornak, as you’ll recall, first made his Sheldon appearance in this strip… and then went on to star in this bumper sticker.

Sheldonista Christine B. has brought ol’ Glornak to life, though, using the awesome power of knitting.

Here’s a scale shot of Christine’s hand-made Glornak next to a water bottle:

But then, as Christine tells me, “I realized that what the picture really needed was terrified little people running from Glornak. Then, I realized that no, that wasn’t right. Glornak needed to be facing down a whole bunch of little green army men.” Et, voila! Notice that Glornak has trapped one of them under his (assumedly) slimy appendages.

Even better, Christine started to lose her daylight while taking the shots, requiring her to move to flash photography. The results were suitably dramatic:

My favorite shot is this one, though. It feels like 1950’s B-Movie. “Attack of the 400-Foot Potato” or something.

Christine wanted everyone to know that “… in the end the green army men were victorious, though they suffered heavy losses. After an extensive rehabilitation period and continuing anger management therapy, Glornak has found a new home with Tim, Susan, Jimmy, Becky and Spot. He is extremely proud of his place in their “Our family” sticker and says that whenever he feels the urge to go on a rampage, he remembers that, how it symbolizes just how far he’s come, and it calms him back down.”

Christine, you’re awesome. Thanks for the pics!

Cartoonist Daryl Cagle, I believe, coined a phrase in editorial cartooning for the real-life scenario when five separate editorial cartoonists end up doing the exact same joke on the topic-of-the-day: “The Yahtzee”.

As I’m finding out from readers this morning, the setup of today’s strip was already tackled — and tackled funnier — by the strip xkcd.

As a cartoonist, when you accidentally go to the same concept like that, my gut tells me the only intellectually honest thing to do is acknowledge the first cartoon as soon as you find out about it. It’s bound to happen after 3,000 Sheldon strips, but it’s an embarrassing bummer nonetheless.

My apologies to Randall Munroe, the creator of xkcd. You got there first, and you tackled the topic way funnier.

I’ve started crack-a-lackin’ on drawing all 300 Artist Edition copies of “Living Dangerously (With Saturated Fats). They’ll all be going on sale in the second week of August. But! In the meantime, check out the artistic flourish that I ended up giving to the #1 book!

(…and here’s another little Arthur on the facing page…)

It came out so awesome that I want to separate it out from the rest of the bunch (where it would go out completely randomly to whoever hit the Paypal button the fastest). So! For the true Uber-Sheldonista out there who wants the best of the Artist Editions, here’s your chance to have it on your bookshelf! Shipping for this book is FREE in the U.S., and we’ll start the ball rolling at 1 penny for it….’cause I’d rather let you guys decide what it’s worth.

(Click here for a larger image.)

Four fun bits of news today:

1.) There’s a new Sheldon shirt just for folks pug-lovers: “Anatomy of a Pug”! Check it out…

2.) “Lucky Duck” shirts are now available for dudes! That’s right, fellas, we heard you: Now there are women’s AND men’s sizes!

3.) By popular request, “Mind of a Ninja, Body of a Manatee” shirts now go as large as 4XL! Which, as you’ve told us repeatedly, is only appropriate!

4.) Also, I’m excited to say we have a new and super-stylin’ place for Sheldon shirts! You guys already know that Sheldon books, original art and more can be found at the Sheldon Store — and that’ll still be true — but now the folks at Topatoco will be handling all our shirts! This means we’ll have more new shirts, larger size selections, and faster restocking than ever before. “Anatomy of a Pug” is just the first of many shirts we’ll be adding to classics like Coffee: It’s What’s For Dinner.

We have entered the long-prophesized Golden Age of T-shirts, my friends. 🙂

Last year, when Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) invited Scott Kurtz and I out to give a lecture, we had the good fortune to get to know Professor Jeremy Mullins. Jeremy was instrumental in bringing us out after hearing one of our talks in San Diego, and could not have been a more gracious a host once in Savannah. He gave up his own days off to ferry Scott, myself, and our families around Savannah…showing us the sites that only locals would know, touring us around SCAD’s facilities, talking shop and cartooning technique with us, and sharing a few meals and many laughs.

Jeremy invited me into two of his classes to give the students critiques and feedback on their work, and I could tell just how highly Jeremy’s students thought of him. He really gave them his all, as a teacher…really did everything he could to fire them up about cartooning, give them the tools they needed, and prepare them for the real world. It was an honor to share a classroom with him.

Last month, SCAD, myself, and everyone who ever met him were shocked and saddened to hear about Jeremy’s untimely death. It really broke my heart in the way that only a young death can. Jeremy had so much life stretching before him: So many projects of his own to work on, so many students left to teach, so many things large and small to tackle in life. He will be greatly missed. And yet, there’s some comfort in knowing how many students there are who are better off for his presence in their life.

Jeremy was always thinking about his students. Always thinking about how he could give them real-world experience in an industry that rarely presents younger cartoonists with those opportunities. When I was at SCAD, Jeremy asked if I’d be willing to take in an intern from among his seniors or grad students…and I happily agreed. One, because Jeremy’s energy was infectious, and two, because I myself was given a wonderful internship by Mr. Bob Kittle of the San Diego Union-Tribune when I was young, and I feel a real responsibility to pay that good will — that kindness — forward. Internships can be a wonderful, eye-opening thing for a young artist. It was very much the case for me.

This is a long way of saying that, thanks to the energy of Professor Jeremy Mullins, I’ve been happy to welcome Cari Corene into the studio for a three-month internship. There were many wonderful applicants for the internship from Jeremy’s students, and it was impossibly difficult to choose beween them. But Cari’s written statement and subsequent interview stood out. And her art style is really quite wonderful: The grace of European cartooning infused with the funkiness of Japanese manga. Cari, you’ll be happy to know, colored this Sunday’s strip…and will probably do a few more before the three months are up. (If you like her work on Sunday, take a second to let her know. I’m sure she’d appreciate that.)

It’s fitting, I think, that one of the last things Jeremy did was help make this internship happen for Cari. He really worked to bring the cartooning world to his students, and his students out into the world…and this is such a nice example of that.

Jeremy, you will be missed.

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SCAD, by the way, has set up a special arts scholarship in Jeremy’s name. If you’d like to support a future artist in their studies, here’s the information:

Jeremy Mullins Sequential Art Scholarship

Savannah College of Art and Design

P.O. Box 3146

Savannah, GA 31402-3146

For more information, call the institutional advancement department at (912) 525-5868.

Because, let me tell you, after watching this guy come within an inch of his life — and not even blink — I am amazed.

In contrast, to get a picture of how I would’ve reacted, you’d need to imagine Daffy Duck, with his tail on fire, being chased by flying piranhas, over a series of low-rolling hills off into the horizon. Accompanying by that Three Stooges sound effect that Curly used to make: “A-whoooo-whoo-woo-woo-woo.”