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:

You know as well as I do that education — especially arts education — has taken it on the chin in this recession…but here’s your chance to help a little bit:

826LA (a non-profit writing/tutoring center) helps 6- to 18-year-olds with writing skills through community events and after-school tutoring.

My friend and fellow cartoonist Keith Knight is on the board of directors there, and when he invited myself and fellow cartoonist David Malki to participate in a fundraising event for 826LA, we said “heck yes”. But here’s the deal, guys: I’M SUPER LAME. There’s only two more days to fund-raise for the event, and I completely forgot to blog about it! So help me overcome my own forgetfulness..and help kids in their arts education: Read on and donate!

The event is called “A Spelling Bee For Cheaters”, and it takes place August 14 in Santa Monica, CA. Keith, David and myself are all on one team, battling it out in a spelling bee against other teams. We’re somewhat late-comers to the fundraising game, so we are trying to raise pledges to buy “cheats” — so we can be competitive in the event! As we are cartoonists, and not Yale literature professors with a knack for spelling!

Potential cheats include passing on a difficult word, buying immunity after spelling a word wrong, and swapping places with another team member. But! We only get cheats if we raise money! 826LA is a volunteer-based organization that helps kids in a number of remarkable and wonderful ways. Will you please help our team with a donation of $5, $10, $20, or $50?

Or heck, way, way higher! This is for kids, after all!

Just a note: The new Drive and Literature books will go on sale the day after the Aug 22nd book launch party. We’ll start with the 250 Artist Editions for both books, then have the regular edition available a few days later. Sound good?

Just a reminder for those of you enjoying the Saturday SciFi feature, “Drive”: You can read the full archives of the story here, at the temporary site.

Do you guys remember this cartoon, about the very rare dog, the Himalayan Squishie?

Well, Sheldonista Susan C. has sent in shocking photos that have captured the rare beast. But first, her letter:

I have a friend in the US Foreign Service who is currently stationed in Nepal. I sent her an e-mail yesterday asking if she’d ever heard of an Himalayan Squishie. I didn’t hear back from her. Then early this morning there was a knock on the front door. By time I got out of bed to answer the door, all I found on the porch was an animal transport carrier, and a car with diplomatic plates swooshing down the street.
Inside the crate? A little dog that looks like a wrinkly loaf of bread! I’m shocked – I don’t know if my landlady will let me keep an Himalayan Squishie in the house, as I already have a cat. We’re headed to the vet later today to get him all checked out and all his shots updated. Then it’s off to get a dog bed and some chew toys.

And now, finally! The shocking photos revealed!!!

For more pics of the wild pup, check out her Flickr set here.

Just a reminder: For the three new prints, try to get your order in by Friday, if you would. It’ll be super helpful on our end of things.

If you were waiting for the new books to get into the store to make one big purchase, no need to wait: These are shipped specially anyway, so they’d be shipped off separate from any book order you’ll be making.

Here are the three new prints:

FIRST PRINT:

<img src="https://www.sheldoncomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/blog_100731.jpg"

SECOND PRINT:

<img src="https://www.sheldoncomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/blog_100731b.jpg"

THIRD PRINT:

<img src="https://www.sheldoncomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/blog_100731c.jpg"

All of the prints are professionally made on matte-finish photo paper, measure 12″x18″, and look awesome. Anyway: I you can, try to get your order in by Friday. Thanks!

GUYS, THIS IS SO RAD:

On 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 Energy Drinks, 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.

Before time slipped by too far, I wanted to collect a few memories of San Diego Comic-Con 2010 and share them with you.

San Diego, as you probably know, is the biggest geek-fest on the planet. 125,000 folks traipsing through one big ol’ convention center for five days, checking all the best pop culturey stuff around. Amid all that, I get the chance to meet and talk to Sheldonistas from around the world. Seriously, around the world: This year I met Scots, Aussies, Kiwis, lots and lots of English and Canadians, South Africans, Mexicans, Chileans, Germans, French and a few Belgians, and one Swiss reader. It was the most international “meet-up” I’ve ever had…which was rad.

And in general, this was the high-water-mark in terms of readers coming out and saying “hi”. San Diego has always been a show where I sort of see how Sheldon is “doing,” you know, in terms of readership? A sort of litmus test as to how many folks are reading it? And this year was just much, much bigger than previous years. So that’s nice! Thank you for tellin’ friends about the strip!

As in previous years, I exhibited with my friends and “How To Make Webcomics” co-authors Kris Straub and Brad Guigar.

It was also the debut for two new books, the “Literature” book, and the first ever installment of “Drive”:

I did a quick little interview that starts at the 40-second point and really picks up at the 2-minute point in this video. It’s a bit bouncy, but there’s a fun spoiler toward the end of it:

A lot of Sheldonistas came by for free sketches and the obligatory high-five, but I was really, really touched by all the kind words and gifts that folks brought by to celebrate the 3,000th Sheldon strip last Wednesday. Sheldonista Amanda W. even framed a custom piece of congratulatory art:

Sheldonista Joe C. brought by a copy of (the now pretty hard to find) “Well Balanced Meal” — my first book of comics from 1996:

There were many ridiculous poses for photos, like my overly earnest handshake with Kevin L., here:

And anytime anyone asked if they could get a sketch of me sketching “like I normally sketch”, I tried to recreate my standard pose at home. Just an artist sittin’ at his desk, sketching totally normal. As one does:

But most folks just got custom sketches and high fives, like Stephanie P., here:

Here, let me share some of those custom sketches with you. I only took pics of maybe 1/100th of them (I kept forgetting), but there are some funny ones in the mix:

There were a lot of requests for “Sheldon/Drive” mashups, too, which made for some weird sketches:

But the big theme-sketch for the show this year seemed to be literary figures in folks’ copy of the “Literature” book:

Speaking of the “Literature” book, I should update you on the new books. The big book launch party for both new books will be on August 22nd, after which Artist Editions and regular versions of both books will go on sale in the online store. That’s right, I said both books. There are copies of “Drive” still available!

As you remember, my intention was for this first “Drive” book to be a super-super-limited print run…to sorta gauge interest on whether there was interest. But two things happened: A.) The printer printed 128% MORE copies than I ordered, and B.) The Drive book outsold *all* the Sheldon books at Comic-Con. So, in retrospect, it’s kinda good that the book run got overzealous. Anyway, we’ll have more info on the big book-launch party and books themselves later in the week. For now, a huge, huge thank you to everyone who came out to SDCC!