EDIT

Surprise! The Sam and Fuzzy Are Very Famous book collection is available to buy RIGHT NOW, slightly ahead of schedule!

And man, if you're a fan of the strip, I heartily encourage you to pick on up, either online or at San Diego Comic-Con. They're gigantic (400 pages!), they're gorgeous, and they put food on my table and pens in my hand. Plus, if they do well, we can make even more books and eventually collect the entire archive... my greatest dream!

Once again, we'll be doing a full year of extra Book Club bonus goodies for everyone who picks up a copy of the book. In fact, the first bonus comes right with the book itself! If you order now, a free Fig Pig is on a Bookmark bookmark will be included with your copy. I had a lot of fun designing a real Fig Pig paper product in the style of SanPresto's endless Fig Pig product line.

But it's not just new books in our Topatoco store! We also have a brand new t-shirt... Tanuki Plumber! Sometimes, an idea just comes to you in the middle of the night, and you have to make it a reality. This shirt is one of those things. I'm super excited by how it turned out. And like the new book, we'll have these at San Diego Comic-Con, too!

In conclusion... new stuff! I hope you all dig it. And if you do, anything you could do to help spread the word to other folks who like comics and goofy gamer tshirts would be majorly appreciated.

Half full

Yes, believe it or not, there might actually be a couple honest-to-goodness one page comics in this volume! You could say I put them there because I was trying to balance out all the extra three and four pagers. Except there are a lot more of those. And a lot less of these. So basically, you'd be saying I was a failure. And you'd never say something that mean about me, would you?

...Right?

Truth be told, I just try to chop up these stories into the chunks that make the most sense. Sometimes that means going over, and sometimes that means going under. And sometimes it means going completely crazy. Which I'm good at!

San Diego Comic-con is only a week away! As always, I am psyched and terrified. But mostly psyched, because I'm going to have some exciting new items to debut at the show! (And online too, of course.) Anticipate!

-Sam Logan

Woosh

I'm back! Of course, you may not have even realized I went anywhere, but rest assured: I was away this weekend. 15 hours of solid driving away, to be precise, at a friend's wedding (which was lovely). Now to be fair, that's still not as much driving as our the infamous "accidental" San Diego road trip of 2010, but even so... I am pretty exhausted! It's a good thing I drew today's comic in advance. Because right now, I'm not sure I could even remember how many corners to put on a square.

Proper brain function returns Wednesday. See you then!

-Sam Logan

Sam and Fuzzy Q & A: Serious Edition
Got a question you want answered? Just drop me an email with "Q & A" in the subject line!

"I can't help freaking out a little bit... but having just finished reading the books, I have to ask: Is your latest storyline a reference to The Hunger Games? If so, whoa!" -Jen

Let's just say it's my tribute to every "force them all to battle to the death" tale, from the Hunger Games to Battle Royale. I even tried to work in some slight visual references to each as a joke. (Although Hunger Games doesn't exactly have the world's most recognizable visual iconography.)

But unlike those stories, mine was established, executed and resolved entirely in only two-and-a-half comics. That means my version is the best.

"I completely had Mr. Gillespie pegged as the organizer of some kind of underground arena style 'the deadliest prey' media extravaganza from Monday's comic, but it's not him! Do you plan to rectify this by revealing him as a close relative (or something) to our favorite underground philanthropist? I have a Gillespie shaped void in my heart now." -Amy

Alas, it was not to be! Mr. Gillespie, everyone's favourite pyramid scheme building, strip club running, information booth manning background character is unlikely to ever possess the resources for such an operation. Except, perhaps, in Mr. Gillespie fan-fiction, which I'm sure is every bit as rampant as one would expect!

"We see Devahi totally-definitely shooting Sam, and then we wait a few days or so to find out what actually happens. But do you ever dream a of dream of something where they show you main character A shooting main character B because it does actually happen? And now A is dead forever and huge ramifications for the work and so on and so forth?" -Russell

Oh, I don't know... I feel like I have horribly murdered a fair number of characters already! Maybe not lately... but really, all that means is that you should probably start worrying about who's time is almost up. (My money's on Fig Pig.)

"Are you ever going to bring back Future Fuzzy? Your comic's gotten so serious nowadays, we could probably do with FF's innate silliness." -Jack

There are some... let's say "nods" to Future Fuzzy in the comics to come. But bringing him back outright, in the same manner as his early appearances? Probably not. At least, not in the actual main story! (But if I thought of a good gag for him, I could always do it in one of the occasional goofy one shots I run as filler.)

The interesting thing is, I think some other readers have visions of Future Fuzzy coming back in some sort of grand way that integrates him with the big serious narrative. But to be honest, I'm not sure that would be a good idea. FF is one of those concepts that only really works when his appearances are essentially completely inconsequential and meaningless. Otherwise, you will wind up writing a story about actual time travel. And man, time travel would be one layer of complication too many for our current story!

That said, I don't think you ever have to worry about the comic getting too serious! Sam and Fuzzy's dramatic side will always be balanced by it's goofier side. Some chapters just lean more towards one end of the spectrum. And some reach for the absolute extremes! I think that's part of what makes Sam and Fuzzy... well, Sam and Fuzzy. (Or at least, what's made it Sam and Fuzzy for the past half decade or so!)

That's a wrap for this week! See you on Monday, team.

-Sam Logan