And for those already enjoyin’ the strip — and for those willing to trust my opinion — I come bearing good news! There’s a new book collection for the strip that gathers the entire run in one go:
So support good comics! Pick up the book today, here!
I’ve been thinkin’ about how to best draw today’s Saturday Serial for a while, now…and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. My favorite bit? Flaco grabbed Arthur’s wing with his foot, not his hand.
Flaco’s pretty rad. I love how, for such a little dude, he’s got this mountain-climbin’, bear-wrasslin’ attitude about him, sometimes. Does that sound like I’m surprised about that? It should — I was genuinely surprised when Flaco decided to leap off Arthur’s back. You see, he’s a fully realized little guy, in my head, and HE made that decision to leap, not me. Sounds weird, but it’s true.
Oh! And someone asked me recently how you pronounce “Flaco”. It’s Flah-co …similar to “Taco”. (“Oso”, by the way, is Oh-so).
1.) Klingons! Always fun.
2.) Unshelved topped 20,000 e-mail subscribers today, which is great. Congrats, fellers!
Speaking of e-mail signups: Sheldon has been tracking a (roughly) 5% monthly growth rate in e-mail subscribers…which is nice. But man! The Sheldon RSS feed is growing by about 10-15% a month. I don’t use RSS, myself. I am the oldest man alive on earth, clearly. But just based on the growth rate for the Sheldon feed, RSS must be a great way to work the web.
Dave Kellett: possibly about to dip a toe into the wonders of RSS.
Actually, since it’s the weekend coming up…
Dave Kellett: about to mow his lawn, and then, come Monday — should he remember — will possibly dip a toe into the wonders of RSS.
You’ll need to be a registered forum user to vote, but now’s the perfect time to sign up…’cause there’s big-time, high-falutin’, dog-votin’ at stake! Click to sign on up and vote!
And the added bonus is, signing up means you’ll be able to chime in on the ridiculous discussions we have on the forum!
Thanks, Josh!
Oh, and also: if you haven’t yet come across it, you have to check out Josh’s site, The Comics Curmudgeon. It’s kinda one of the funniest sites on the web.
Also, also: why did I put “immensely” into parentheticals? Odd choice, that.
2.) It’s good to start with the bad news…cause then we can focus on the good news. Sheldonista Derek Pedersen has animated Saturday’s toon, and it is pretty darn awesome. Please check this out…it looks so cool! Click to watch.
Derek is an artist and designer whose work can be seen at Happy Leaf Studios. Please check out his site and show him some love. And note: having tried this out on Sheldon, Derek’s interested in working with other cartoonists. So especially show him some love if you can use his services!
3.) Reader pics continue to trickle in over at the store…and I’ll be adding them in when I have a free moment. So if you have a fun pic you’d like to share, by all means mail it to me!
(Sheldonista Margaret C. and her framed Sunday original.)
4.) I got the chance to watch an early “Transformers” showing with about 1,000 other nerds, yesterday. It was pretty fun, I have to say. But my opinion was totally clouded by the crowd I saw it with. To give you an idea of the crowd’s caliber, people were literally standing and applauding the first time Optimus Prime transformed…or spoke…or twitched an eyebrow. It was though someone had found the lost Shakespeare play “Loves Labours Won”, and was performing it for the first time in 500 years. It was that sort of crowd.
So was the movie good? Who knows. It’s a Michael Bay film. But I had a blast watching it with the collected uber-nerds of Southern California.
5.) But one movie I can wholeheartedly recommended is the Irish independent film “Once”.
You’ve either learned of this movie from all your friends, or you’ve never, ever heard of it. I heard about it from all my screenwriting friends in LA, who praised it to unbelievable heights of hyperbole. And the scary thing is…they were right. This might be among my top five films of all time. I kid you not. It’s a wonderful, intelligent, moving, funny film…with one of the best original soundtracks you’ll ever hear.
In most big cities, you’ll find it playing at smaller theater houses and independents. But please…take the time to seek it out. You won’t regret it. In fact, if you go to see “Once”, and don’t like it, here is my guarantee: I will personally refund every cent of your money. Every cent.*
[*Note: Refunds only valid if you live on my street, and your name is Skip, and you have an old football knee injury which flairs up in humid weather.]
[*Special Note: No one on my street matches this description.]
Which requires that I step back in time to explain.
As many of you may remember from the launch of the Sheldon website, newspaper comic strip syndication was always my hoped-for dream, growing up. Which makes sense: In post-WWII America, newspaper syndication was the best way — perhaps the only way — to make a consistent living as a comic strip cartoonist. So, if you wanted to create comic strips, it followed that you wanted to create comic strips for newspapers.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the newspaper. A.) Folks my age and younger stopped reading newspapers B.) Newspapers themselves took increasingly fewer risks in launching new strips, and C.) Newspaper comic strips themselves got increasingly stale as they catered to the realities of points A and B.
But in the last 5-7 years, more and more cartoonists began sharing their art and making their living online. These were cartoonists who were producing fantastic, interesting work; who were talking directly to their readers by e-mail, blogs, and forums; who were taking a direct hand in the way their characters, books, and licensing were being handled; and who were taking risks with their strips that traditional newspaper syndication never would’ve allowed.
For me — a cartoonist who had been chasing that nirvana of newsprint, but then “saw the light” on internet cartooning — it’s taken me a while to break the mindset of newspaper formatting. But in the last few months, I’ve started to dip a toe into formats, sizes, and shapes that wouldn’t have been possible in traditional newspaper strips.
So, with strips like the “Crotchley Labs” jokes (#1, #2, #3), I was able to use an odd shape and grayscaled images to help convey the feel of cheesy, 1950’s newsreels. And with the recent Home Depot strip about standing in a never-ending line, I was able to string out the strip’s physical size…reinforcing the point of time’s passage. And finally, with Saturday’s strip, I was able to play with a larger negative space…showing the fall of the baby duck in a way that a “normal” strip sizes wouldn’t have allowed.
These experiments have been fun to do, and I think they’ve benefited the strips in which they were used. So, on that front, I’m inclined to use such experiments in the future.
But I’d be curious to hear what you’d have to say on the matter, as a Sheldonista reader. That’s far more interesting than what I have to say on the matter. So, if you have a thought to share, swing by the ol’ Sheldon forum, or let me know via e-mail.
The book is 8.5″ x 11″ / 160 pages, with perfect binding and black-and-white interior ink. You can order one right now through Lulu. Sample pages One Two Three Four Five
Tell your friends, tell your friends-friends, and spread the word over at Pug Village and the Pug Community! There’s just two days left to get your photo entries in — and I don’t want anyone to miss out by a day or two.
Reminder: the winner will be getting a personalized, frame-able drawing of their pug, plus a personalized copy of “The Good, The Bad & The Pugly”. So get your pics in!
And if you haven’t seen them, check out the pics submitted so far!
