You’ve read her fanfic, now see the illustration!  RebLaw envisions a world where Joyce and Billie can maybe share some special time together.  If you know what I mean.  She visited me in person at Wondercon and gave me the rough draft of this art, and it’s great to see it finished and in color!

I kinda dropped the ball on building up to this con this week, what with the double-whammy of the Ethan statue preorders and my SP! book 4 fundraising blitz, but I’m gonna be in San Francisco this weekend for Wondercon! I’ll be there with Kel McDonald (Sorcery 101), and we’ll be in the Small Press area, at table SP-29, I believe.  I’ll have books and prints and some new posters!  The one of particular interest to Dumbing of Age readers is the “Monroe Lake” poster, which is 11″x17″ and printed on thick glossy paper.  And if you’re not gonna be in San Francisco this weekend, you can order it from the store. It’s my first convention in the city where Shortpacked! takes place!  (Is there one in Bloomington, Indiana?)  I’m excited!  It’s also my birthday this weekend.  On Sunday I turn 32.  If you’re there, feel free to drop me some extra booze money.

Preorder it here.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hello at C2E2 last weekend in Chicago!  This was the first convention that I had a bunch of people come up and say they enjoyed Dumbing of Age while completely neglecting to mention Shortpacked!.  That’s exciting to me!  It means this little comic’s starting to come into its own.  (What’s the point of doing two comics with exactly the same overlapping readership, anyway?) I also got a lot of Dumbing of Age character sketch requests.  I’ve uploaded one of them here for this blogpost, and the others were simple medium shots.  It makes me happy to be asked to draw Billie.  (And sometimes by herself, not only while being strangled by Ruth.)  These characters are old and dear to me, and part of the reason I started up this strip was because I wanted them to be loved again. Thanks everybody for coming out to see me!  You’ll be able to see me again at Wondercon in San Francisco in a week and a half. If shipping schedules aren’t lying to me, there should be a new beach-themed DoA poster going up in the store tomorrow night…

As I pack for an undoubtedly fun weekend in Chicago for C2E2, have some belated photos from Emerald City Comicon:

I’m going back to C2E2 for its second year this coming weekend (March 18-20), and I’m bringing some pals.  You can find me sharing a table with Danielle Corsetto (Girls with Slingshots), Randy Milholland (Something Positive), and Joel Watson (Hijinks Ensue).  It looks like we’re in booth 862, which is a corner booth in the back of the hall facing Artists Alley and the Webcomics Pavilion. You can still buy tickets to C2e2 online, but only for the next two days (plus eight hours as of this writing).

Man, I am freaking out!  I’ve never been the Pacific Northwest before, but come Thursday, I’m hopping a plane. Hopefully my books will be there when I arrive, and not half of a blender?  *cross fingers* Please, Washington Staters, do not hurt me!  I am but a humble cartoonist. I’ll be exhibiting this weekend with Blank Label Comics (duh) at booth 210.  I will have things with me!  You can have them.  But, you know, for money. Argh how did convention season happen so sooooon. (Pssst, you can see me ustreaming tomorrow’s comic over on the BLC hub.)

This is how you know you know shit is just about to get real!  My new convention display banner for Dumbing of Age arrived by FedEx today, because convention season is… imminent.  Frighteningly imminent.  Oh my god oh my god. Anyway, there’s a new DoA banner because I previously didn’t have one!  And I figgered, hey, well, maybe I should probably definitely.  I’ll bring this and last year’s Shortpacked! banner, the one that interlocked with the older banners, but from now on it’ll just be that banner and this one.  …or until I make a new SP! banner, anyway.  I had planned to do a new one along with this new DoA banner, but I couldn’t get a good composition, so I shelved it for a while. If you want a better look at the DoA banner art, I have it up on my DeviantArt account.  You can also find my brainstorming doodles for it, as well. …man, I should put a Convention Appearances box somewhere on this site like I do back over on Shortpacked!, shouldn’t I?  Regardless, I make my first appearance of the year faaaaaaaar over on the west cost at Emerald City Comic-Con.  That’s from March 4-6.  See you there!

Brian Daniel is doing his best to become King of Dumbing of Age Fanart.

Yay, more fan art!  This one’s by Jared from the forums.