Today’s strip starts a little storyline taking us back to the ol’ the Sheldonsoft offices. We haven’t been back to Sheldon’s billion-dollar software company for a while now, so this should be good times.
Here’s some of my favorite strips from the Sheldonsoft offices:
1997. The term “weblog” is coined. Netscape is the browser of choice for 72% of users. Titanic crashes into theaters. And David Willis posts his first “Roomies!” comic.
2007. It’s now called a blog. Netscape hit an iceberg of its own. And our hearts are still going on for “Shortpacked!” — the popular daily comic that arose from Willis’ first comic production.
On the Web, ten years of regularly-updated entertainment is a significant achievement that precious few can boast. Blank Label Comics is proud to salute David Willis as he celebrates his tenth anniversary in webcomics.
Shortpacked! is ringing in this occasion with two special events. First, its first book collection, Shortpacked! Brings Back the Eighties, has arrived and is ready for order! Second, Roomies!, It’s Walky!, Joyce and Walky! and Shortpacked! are commemorated with a limited print, seen on the left. See The Shortpacked! Blog for details!
To help celebrate close to 3000 strips, here’s a Top 10 List of the all-time favorite storylines year-by-year from David Willis:
1997: “Obligatory Flashback Sequence”
1998: “Liberation and the Modern Joyce”
1999: “Beer Necessities/No Regrets”
2000: “Puppy”
2001: “Guess Who’s Coming to Denver”
2002: “Round Two”
2003: “The Best I Could Do”
2004: “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”
2005: “Mrs. Greg Killmaster”
2006: “The Drama Tag”
People often ask me, “Dave, what’s the secret to writing comic strips that people will enjoy?”
And I always answer the same way: “Make sure you include as many random references to Benjamin Disraeli as possible. If there’s one thing the world is clamoring for…it’s more random references to Benjamin Disraeli.”
Today we wrap up the Saturday-Only Storyline as all good stories should end: with a Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s.
If you’d like to read through the series again — or missed it the first time around — here are all the installments for the Saturday-Only Storyline. Click them open in new tabs are read ’em 1-2-3:
My apologies for the late strip on Saturday…that was my error in uploading the file incorrectly.
And by “incorrectly”, I mean “forgetting to do so”.
In case you haven’t checked it out yet, Scott Kurtz, Brad Guigar,
Kris Straub, and
myself have launched an ambitious weekly podcast
filled with comics shop talk — the how-to and pro-tip
stuff you can’t find anyplace else.
Every cartooning instruction book and how-to out there is focused on “getting your strip into the whiz-bang world of newspapers”, which is great, if you live in 1975. But the future of comic strip cartooning is online, and there’s a scarcity of information out there on how to make the art and business aspects work.
So this weekly podcast will be our answer to that void: shop talk and tips from four cartoonists making their living online.
You can follow the
RSS here.
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So far, we’ve recorded three episodes. Check ’em out:
Episode
Three: How to legally protect your work, picking
the appropriate resolution for your scanned work and
more tips and tricks.
Episode
Two: What happens when someone doesn’t “get” your
joke. How to get new readers. Tips and Tricks.
Episode
One: Brad Guigar, Dave Kellett, Kris Straub and
Scott Kurtz outline their new weekly podcast about the
ins-and-outs of making comics for the web.
My apologies to the college editors who have written me about putting Sheldon in their newspaper — my replies in the past few days have been slow.
I’ve been reworking the signup/download process to be much, much simpler. And now — huzzah — it is! Just go here to sign up your paper. You’ll have Sheldon strips in tomorrow’s issue! Bam!
And hey! If you’re a student who wants Sheldon in your college paper…go here to make it happen!
[EDIT: I’ve already had a few non-college papers/magazines/newsletters e-mail me to ask if they could sign up for Sheldon in their publication. The answer is yes…but depending on your profit/non-profit status, there may be a small fee. Questions? Just e-mail me!]
1.) This note, sent in by Sheldonista Margaret C. from her granddaughter, is possibly the cutest e-mail I’ve ever received:
…Margaret says she wears her Lucky Duck shirt as a dress, which is, c’mon, adorable.
2.) Sheldonista “phosler” has put up a neat modification of the Sheldon wallpaper, over on the Sheldon forums. Check it out!
3.) The recent cowboy toons made me think of this strip. Oh, and this one.
Ladies and gentlemen: it is here, finally!
The O-fficial, 2007 San Diego ComicCon Report!
Click the first thumbnail and follow along with the notes!
[EDIT: You’ll also notice, once on the photo album page, that I’ve added links to pics from other Sheldon events….like New York Comic-Con, gallery openings ‘n book parties, and more. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be adding pics to this new, centralized Sheldon photo album….so check back for more stuff.
Also! I want to add photo albums for your Sheldon Fan Art and for past Sheldon TV appearances. So if you have fan-art pics that you’d like to submit (or submitted previously, but have wisely concluded that I’ve misplaced), send them in! Thanks!]
If you’re heading out to the movies this weekend, allow me to humbly suggest one to put on your consideration list: The King of Kong. It is, perhaps, the funniest movie I have seen in five or six years.
I should back up and explain how I heard about this movie. A friend of mine, Joe Manganiello, and I have an not-unusual habit whenever we’re in a play together: backstage, we’re constantly trading movie quotables back and forth. We treat them like an 18th-Century French-Canadian furrier treats beaver pelts…as things of immense value, to be cherished and admired.
Well, last week, as we were wrapping up the run of a breast-cancer benefit play in Hollywood (which I completely forgot to blog about….hey-o, Mr. Forgetful!), Joe started throwing out lines from “King of Kong”. And these quotes were hilarious — BRILLIANTLY hilarious. They were…they were like rare diamonds from the De Beers family vault that no one’s seen in 85 years. That good. And the quotes alone sold it: I wanted to see this movie like few in recent memory.
And, having just come from the film, I can tell you that it does not disappoint. It is, in almost every sense, a perfectly crafted humor documentary. But it’s not just straight humor: it has heart and soul and story and character arcs that read like a Christopher Guest/Ken Burns joint project.
The first 15 minutes are worth the price of admission alone. I laughed out loud at almost every line.
So do yourself a favor: treat yourself to a little King of Kong, which is playing in most independent and arthouse theaters around the country. And take friends that like to laugh — it’ll be infinitely more fun.
