Category: Blog

This past weekend was the triennial “Festival of Cartoon Art” at Ohio State University, and the weekend was an absolute joy.

I told the Festival organizer, Jenny Robb, that it was the single greatest cartooning event I’ve ever attended — and I meant it.

The weekend is designed for pro-cartoonists, historians, academics, and passionate comics fans. It’s the perfect mix of academic talks, professional talks, beautiful museum exhibits, cartoon library tours, and big headliners like Matt Groening and Art Speigelman.

I was honored to be one of the guest speakers this year, especially among such an amazing list of folks.

If the video of the speech came out all right, I’ll share it with you guys… or, I’ll pass along the transcript to Fleen.com as I promised.

Since giving the talk, though, I’ve had two other cartooning organizations ask me to give the talk again, though — so it may be coming to a town near you. 🙂

Wednesday’s strip about getting astronauts to Mars without boring the spit out of them generated a great e-mail from NASA engineer Lee S.:

I am an engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and I work on the telemetry processing systems that handle the current internet connectivity for the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. I have forwarded this particular strip to a number of engineers and controllers here for their amusement, and promptly received a hardy LOL from one controller. Good stuff! Keep it up!

No word yet on whether they forwarded the strip up to anyone on the space station: Most of the station’s internet time is dedicated to LOLcats and Facebook, purely for scientific reasons.

Sheldon reader Ben M. has been fighting the good fight against cancer for a while, now. And he just let me know he’s moving to Houston for further, specialized cancer treatments. As part of that move, he asked if I’d be comfortable mentioning the eBay sale of his prized original art from this Sheldon strip.

This is a strip that a *lot* of you have asked about over the years, so I know one of you will be overjoyed to snap it up. More importantly, I’m happy to help Ben out in this moment — as he’s been one of the kindest, nicest people a cartoonist could ever hope to meet. I first met Ben at Emerald City Comic-Con, what, three years ago? Four? And he’s always, always, always been quick with a kind word or a helping hand. So this is the least I can do for a genuinely good guy.

Ben’s framed up the strip in a really cool way, as well: Go have a look!

Just a heads up for those following our Saturday-only scifi feature: There won’t be an installment of Drive this weekend, with apologies.

But it’ll be back, rarin’ to go, next weekend! All tanned and rested and in fightin’ shape.

If you are on the internet, and have a working mouse and keyboard, then THIS MESSAGE IS FOR YOU:

You have until Friday to save $15 on the Sheldon 3-pack of books!

The 3-pack combines books 1, 2, and 3 — three books that would otherwise cost you $45 –but until Friday it’s just $30 for all of ’em! Plus there’s a cheap, bundled shippin’ fee for gettin’ them all at once, so you’re saving there, too. Wa-BAM! Savings!

Sheldonista Kathy M. just e-mailed me with a reminder: Since it’s Fall, that means it’s the Sheldon anniversary: 12 years of the strip online!

Neat!

Attention, Pasadena! This Friday night I’m a guest at the big ol’ Pasadena Art Night, which takes place in all the big cultural building around the city.

The young David Malki and I will both be signin’, sketchin’, sellin’, and sayin’ “hi” to readers…from 6-10PM in the cool 1920’s room in the Central Library. Come on out! Bring the kids! Bring the cat!*

*Provided the cat likes cultural events, and gettin’ cool, free sketches from cartoonists.

Hot buttered ham! All this week, save $15 on the Sheldon 3-pack of books!

The 3-pack combines books 1, 2, and 3 — three books that would otherwise cost you $45 –and this week it’s just $30 for all of ’em. Plus there’s even a cheap, bundled shippin’ fee for gettin’ them all at once, so you’re saving there, too.

Another way of looking at it: That’s 408 pages of Sheldony goodness for just 30 smackers!

Along with today’s installment of DRIVE, I thought I’d give you an update on the new website for the comic.

The site’s design is all done, as are all the assets…and now it’s just a matter of applying all the coding (for archive navigation, etc., etc.) and configuring all the backend stuff. This part of the process is always sorta Murphy’s Law, but we’re gettin’ super close. No guarantees, but I think it’s just a few weeks away. 

…I’m excited for you guys to start usin’ it: Thanks for your patience in the meantime!

I just found this pic on my hard drive from a year or so ago, and laughed at it again. Forgive me for not remembering the (pictured) Sheldon reader who submitted it, but it’s probably the best use of this Sheldon shirt I’ve ever seen.

As a side note: We should have a contest at some point for the funniest/best use of a Sheldon shirt in a photo. You guys would probably be awesome in a contest like that. The intensity is what cracks me up: Totally sells the moment.