I had a great night of gameplay tonight, trying out the German boardgame “Settlers of Catan” for the first time. Jorge, Amy, and Kazu took my wife and I through the gameplay, and it lasted long, long into the night. What a great game: I highly recommend it, and will be picking up my own copy, post haste.

The only reason I mention it is that Sunday’s strip hadn’t been put up on the server before venturing over to Jorge’s house — whoops — so it’s going live a little later than normal. My apologies for the late-night update. 🙂

Also, I have to give a doff of the cap for today’s strip to my friend Joey Aucoin. The concept for today’s strip is an ol’ chestnut that I’ve laughed at for years with Joey. He’s honed it into a much finer bit than I could ever express… but I wanted to draw it up for him as a late birthday gift.

Today must be my day to recommend good cartooning. I had some spare time this morning to catch up on some reading, and it’s put me in the mood to share great work you may not have seen.

So here’s a recommendation that Philadelphians (and a whole host of non-Philadelphians!) are sure to love: “Phables.”

Created weekly by my very good friend Brad Guigar, each installment of “Phables” is a wonderfullly drawn and intimately told tale of Philadelphia, with expansive, beautiful linework and heartwarming tales that earned it a nomination for cartooning’s Eisner Award. I’ve never lived in Philly, myself, and I love it. I know you will, too.

Here’s one of many great ones: Look at that linework!

At last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, I had the pleasure of meeting the immensely kind Kaja Foglio, who is part of the husband-and-wife team behind Girl Genius. After hitting it off and chatting for a bit, Kaja and I did a little swap: She getting the “Sheldon” books, and I getting the “Girl Genius” books. And I can tell you right now, I got the better part of the bargain: “Girl Genius” is a thoroughly wonderful story.

The Foglios describe it as “…gaslamp fantasy with adventure, romance and mad science.” It’s set in a (alternate-history) steam-powered, Industrial-Age Europe, where unique individuals have super-human abilities with technology and invention. These “sparks”, as they’re called, variously employ their abilities for good and evil… resulting in grand tales of conflict and heroism.

It’s a great series of books, with particularly beautiful establishing shots and backgrounds. (The kind you look at for ten minutes, soaking up all the detail.) If you haven’t read it before, dive on in online.

Aside from the occasional Arthur-created rhyme (which is one of my favorite strips of all time)… it’s worth mentioning that Sheldon and Gramp once dipped into a little rhyming themselves:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

So far, so good! The new forum seems to be humming along pretty well, and we’re slowlly revising or fixing hiccups as they occur:

1.) The color scheme has happily been revised to black type on a blue-gray background, and the font size has been bumped up — so the whole thing is much easier on the eyes.

2.) The forum’s been enabled so that any registered Sheldonista can start a new topic of discussion. (Ha! My bad: I had that feature turned off!)

3.) Testing out the first poll seemed to go well. We have around 1,500 people chiming in so far.

4.) New users may notice that when you go to sign up for the forum, the signup process takes you through the “Sheldon-by-Email” signup. Not to worry: That’s a hiccup that’s soon to be fixed. In the meantime, go ahead and sign up via that route, then e-mail me *or* follow these three steps to avoid geting that daily e-mail:

— Sign up here.

— Click the confirmation e-mail sent to your inbox.

— Once you’re confirmed and signed in, go here to remove the Sheldon-by-Email deliveries.

My apologies for that wrinkle in the meantime. And my thanks to Mr. K at Dumbrella Hosting, who’s been hard at work answering reader requests as they pop up… and who’s been getting the whole forum system to run so smoothly!

Good news for all you Sheldon original art collectors: The cover piece for “A Blizzard of Lizards” is now up for auction-o-rama, here!

I want to make it as available as possible, so I’m startin’ ye olde bidding at one penny.

This is the original art for the cover of the fourth Sheldon book, “A Blizzard of Lizards”. It’s drawn in lightfast, archival inks on heavy, acid-free, Bristol vellum stock. The cardstock itself measures 11″ x 14″, while the drawn image is roughly 10″ x 10″.

In a fun twist, I’m also going to be throwing in the initial pencil sketch of the drawing, which was created with pencil on a separate piece of non-archival artist’s paper. This is the first time an initial sketch has ever been included with a Sheldon original art offering, I think.

I’m especially pleased with how the final, inked piece came out. Cover art always has that unique quality of being very frame-able — since it was designed to be a cohesive presentation — but this piece is especially cool. I know there’s an Arthur or Flaco fan out there who’s really gonna dig it. So head on over: The starting bid is only a penny!

Just for fun, I thought I’d try myfirst blog poll using the new forum system. Let’s start off with an easy question….

Gramp’s problems with electronic signatures is not the first time this has come up for the poor guy.

His hatred for electronic signatures prompted this funny response from Sheldonista Mary J:

A checker at Trader Joe’s showed me that one can draw images on the signature pad, and they will be accepted as well. Since then, I include a small sketch in all my TJ’s signatures.

That’s hilarious. I’m “signing” with an Arthur from now on.

On Tuesday, the good folks at Dumbrella Hosting started to bring the new Sheldon Forum live for Beta-testing.

The new forum features two (Two!) ways to comment:

1.) Like the old forum, you can start any discusion you’d like at the forum hub, here.

2.) Aaaaand, you will now be able to post directly to the blog posts, right down there. See it? That blue bit?

The two different methods are tied into the same forum system, which is kinda neat. I’m hopeful that “post-to-the-blog” feature will be a fun one for Sheldonistas to chime in on and read (…as I very often get e-mails that would be more fun to share with the world.)

The new forum is up on it’s feet and running well so far in Beta-testing, but there is one kink in the signup process that I should mention. Right now, the system assumes you’re signing up for the daily “Sheldon-by-Email” deliveries — so for the next few days it involves one additional signup step:

1.) Sign up here.

2.) The system will send you a confirmation e-mail to make sure you’re a human being and not a spambot.

3.) Once you’re confirmed, just go here to make sure you’re not also signed up for Sheldon-by-Email deliveries (…this step is the kink that needs to be fixed).

Worth noting: If you’re a current user of Sheldon-by-Email deliveries, you can start posting to the forum right away using your current user login.

Also worth noting: We’ll keep the old forum up for a few months, as a “read-only” type thing. Thanks to Bookworm Computing and Blank Label Comics for hosting the old one in this interim time — very kind of them both!

Today we’re adding the University of West Florida to the schools running Sheldon. Welcome!

It’s turning out to be a popular week for Sheldon on college campuses! And remember: If you want Sheldon in your college paper, it’s amazingly easy. Just read over the info page, then e-mail me to get started! You can be running Sheldon toons in tomorrow’s edition!