It’s that time of year again, my friends. The time of year when the stores are full of crappy chocolates and over-scented fake roses, and the radio ads continually remind us how much we want to buy diamonds for that ‘someone special’. Pssh… Yeah. Like some hunk of rock could compete with a geeky present!! (Unless said hunk of rock happens to be gemstone dice…)

So, since it went over so well last year, I’m bringing back the Valentine’s Day Commission Sale! Give your S.O. a picture of their beloved D&D character, or treat yourself! (We don’t stand on ceremony here – Valentine’s Day is a silly holiday, but at least we can usurp it for nefarious geeky purposes!)

I’ll be drawing these commissions live on February 11 & 12, and everyone will receive a digital copy of their commission before February 14th. Any genre (steampunk, anime, etc.) is welcome, and I’ll draw pretty much anything (as long as it’s PG-13!).

For further details, please visit the Commission Sale section of the Store.

Will you be in Victoria, B.C. this weekend? Do you want to play a ton of games AND meet some webcomics people? Well, come out to GottaCon! Both myself and Sam of Sam and Fuzzy will have a table in the main room, where we will have a variety of geeky t-shirts, books, and high-fives for everyone who stops by. Look forward to seeing you there!

Here’s our two new t-shirt designs: Orc Love & Displacer Kitty

But the new shirts aren’t the only new thing in the store – there’s also some ORIGINAL ART for sale! More original art will be posted over the next few days, so please check back often. And, if there’s a piece of original art that you’ve had your eye on (either a particular strip or some of the Friday sketches), please send me an email!

These particular drawings were just me futzing around with my sketchbook and a ballpoint pen, but now that I’ve got the basics worked out, I really want to try a watercolor piece in her style. I think the dragonfly fairy could be particularly ethereal and malicious looking with a little work on the design.

My comic has not gone black, but a lot of the internet has and I support them fully. SOPA & PIPA are a poorly thought-out bills that will have a huge impact on small business like the webcomics you enjoy on a daily basis – even ones not based in the U.S, like mine! As I Canadian, I don’t get a say in whether or not these bills pass, so it’s all up to you, American Weregeeks.

Here are a few easy things you can do:

- Educate yourself about how SOPA and PIPA work.

- Print and mail letters to your state’s senators and representatives, urging them not to support this. Physical mail is harder to ignore than email. It piles up. You can find representatives’ addresses here and senators’ addresses here. Remember that PIPA is a Senate bill and SOPA is a House of Representatives bill.

- Call your senators and representatives on the phone and urge them not to support the bills. See above links for phone numbers or click here to get a quick list of representatives based on where you live.

As you can see from the bottom two drawings, the sketches I do before I draw a comic are VERY rough. They are really just to work out the different character’s placements, as well as to rough in a background. I also rough in where the word balloons will go, since I add them once the picture’s been drawn and scanned in. See if you can guess which two strips these thumbnails belong to!

The image at the top is not a thumbnail, as you can probably guess. It’s more of a joke, actually. You see, while at a friend’s wedding this past fall, there were several comic-y type people in attendance, and as happens when artsy folks all get together, we all wound up sketching together. Mostly, we were drawing random caricatures, but since one of the guys wasn’t overly familiar with my strip, he asked me to sum it up in three panels and about 10 minutes.

This “comic” is the result. I still think it’s pretty hilarious, if only because it makes no sense at all!

I actually had to stop wearing my really awesome spiked bracers because I’d forget about them while dancing and nearly take out my own eyes, or go to hug one of my friends and gouge them in the spine. And, in one particularly painful incident, I managed to crack my funnybone against a nearby dancer’s spiky shoulder piece. Owwwww!!!

Thankfully, I’ve never danced with anyone skinny enough that their mere flesh was a hazard, but I *did* lift Ravenia’s description from one of my RL friends, who described her dancing partner rather similarly.

But, after recounting a few D&D adventures to him, as well as a few stories about particularly scary Unknown Armies moments, he was grudgingly willing to admit that creating interesting stories with your friends might be a worthwhile pass time, after all.

What does that have to do with these sketches? Not much, but it’s a good story, and this picture reminds me of the rain tapping on the windows while we talked.

I dropped a lot of plot on you all last chapter that I decided to do another D&D interlude before the next chapter starts, in order to give you all a little breathing room. (And some terrible puns!)

This time around, though, not all of the puns are my fault. We are going to have two strips that were submitted by Weregeeks like yourselves! If you have any puns that you’d like me to use, please drop me an email at weregeek comic at gmail dot com, and I might use your joke in a future strip. Please make sure to leave a name that I can attribute the joke to.

I still think that the beak-mouth in the middle looks vaguely like a Muppet… But maybe that’s just me.