At the very end of this article about wearing yellow shirts in Thailand (an interesting discussion of patriotism vs. the free market if ever there was one) we find the following paragraph (emphasis added):

“As a teacher, I was so embarrassed and felt pretty guilty for notwearing a yellow shirt while everyone else had one on,” said WanchaiKondongnok in the southern province of Chumporn.

I’m not sure what it means in Thai, but I’m sure I don’t want to find out what it means in English…

–Howard

I just read about this foiled Toronto terror plot, and they ran the following picture next to the article, describing the items that were seized:

Let’s see… a semiautomatic handgun, a soldering iron, and what appears to be a voltmeter. I have all three of these things in my house.

What I do not have is three tons of ammonium nitrate. Personally, I think that would have made a better picture.

–Howard

This morning I sat down to sketch out the project plan for the next Schlock Mercenary Book, Schlock Mercenary: The Blackness Between.

The story runs from August 24th of 2003 through March 14th of 2004, which is 29 weeks plus a Sunday. That’s 88 three-row pages, which will require something like 45 sketches, margin bits, or new footnotes in addition to the 15 footnotes already running during that story. With the introduction and sketch page, it’s a 90-page book before I add the bonus story or any other materials.

100 is a nice round number. It looks like this book will be a full 20 pages longer than Book I. I’m okay with that, provided I’m not “padding” to hit the number.

I’ve got about 20 rows of comics from February and March of 2004 that will need to be recolored, I need to create the cover art, and obviously I have to create the bonus story and other materials. I’ll be doing the principal layout myself, and probably having Steve Troop tweak it for me when we approach our print deadline.

All that, plus feeding the buffer, is how I’ll be spending my summer. Those of you who bought books have paid my wages for at least that long. I may have a quick family vacation, and there’s Comic-Con to attend, but other than that, I’ll be a busy guy.

–Howard

… you can now place regular orders here. We’ve ironed most of the kinks out of this mailing thing, so the (few, but still annoying) cases of bent books should be a thing of the past.

Don’t keep Sandra TOO busy with mailings, or she’ll neglect to nag me to get to work on Book II.

–Howard