Vancouver Fan Expo this weekend!

For added effect, you can always re-read today's montage panel while listening to the theme from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture. (Thank you, twitter friends, for reminding me what that song is!)

In other news... holy smokes, Fan Expo Vancouver is this weekend! I will be sharing a booth with my pal Alina from Weregeek... booth 513, to be specific! I'll have a truly impressive swath of Sam and Fuzzy swag in tow -- including our new Steam Power: 100% Practical for Everything shirts. And of course, as usual, I'll also be signing and drawing stuff. If you're going to be at the show, be sure to swing by!

-Sam Logan

Steam Power shirts have arrived

They're here, they're here! Our new Steam Power: 100% Practical for Everything t-shirts have arrived, proudly sporting famed cat inventor Theophilus and his various inventions, including the world-famous steam-powered sandwich.

The whole thing is based, of course, on Miracle of Steam strip from a few weeks back. A lot of you really wanted to see that strip morphed into shirt form, and I hope the finished design scratches that itch with maximum effectiveness. If you'd like to nab one, you can find it in the Sam and Fuzzy Topatoco store, along with all our books, shirts, whiteboards, magnets and other swag.

In other news, our latest twitter Sketch-Off was a big success! You can see all the pics I wound up drawing -- all of them based on reader suggestions -- right here. It was a ton of fun, especially now that we could video-stream the drawing process. (There are archive videos of the drawing sessions here, if you are actually interested in watching someone silently draw to music for four hours.) We'll have to do it again sometime!

-Sam Logan

(PS: At the moment, all of the originals are sold or spoken for except for "Samus Devahi", which is up for grabs for $25 to the first person who emails me about it. Lies! It's gone, too. Thanks!)

Twitter Sketch-Off Today, Starting at 11AM PST!

Today's the day! Starting at 11, you can tweet (or email, if you don't have twitter) me your suggestions of Sam and Fuzzy characters cast as various other fictional stars, and watch as I draw some of them live! (A video will be streaming here, barring any technical difficulties.)

I'll be sticking to one or two characters per drawing, then selling the finished drawings for the abnormally low price of $25 each (+shipping), either to the original suggester or first-come-first-serve to whoever asks for it.

Can't wait to see what you all come up with this time. It was certainly a lot of fun the last time we did this!

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

"You said you've been using a custom font based on your own writing since 2004), but do you ever think of doing a few word bubbles by hand? "80S" in today's strip is kind of hard to read so it made me wonder if you still love the aesthetic of uniformity all the time." -Matt

I actually do use some hand lettering, usually when I want the words to have some kind of special visual emphasis. But you're right, that "80s" was computer-lettered and it does look kind of weird, probably due to the lack of lowercase letters in my dialogue. I'll probably go back and tweak it later.

Acronyms and abbreviations can also be an issue in all-uppercase lettering. After all, when everything is uppercase, you can't use capitalization to distinguish them from regular words! That's why you'll spot me using weird cheats, like writing NMS as N-M-S.

""MCfishypants"? As in "mc fillet-o-fish" or "M.C. Dr Dre"? " -Dave

See? See? There's another one!

I mean Mc as in McJagger, the famous Scottish rock star.

"At what point does Aaron become Jackson, or vis versa? I assumed Aaron was a name change to avoid the Ninja Mafia, like Sam becoming Crush and so forth. " -Jackson

Well, Jackson -- if that is your real name -- there are two possibilities!

One is that "Aaron Mills" (the name he currently goes by) was always his real name, and "Jackson" was just his fake ninja codename. The other is that his real name was "Aaron Jackson", and that he changed his last name when he went on the run at the end of the "Empire" storyline. I like the first option, better, but... it's not like it really matters one way or the other. Choose your own adventure!

(Side note -- Sam didn't change his name to avoid the Ninja Mafia. "Crush" was just a roadie nickname he earned after dropping an amp on his foot. And his change in appearance can be chalked up to weight gain and attempting to impress Nicole, rather than trying to hide himself. Becoming "Crush" may have been an effective disguise, but it was also a totally unintentional one!)

Anyhow, that's a wrap for this week, team. Come back on Monday for our next comic!

-Sam Logan