Presidential Address

We return on Friday with the finale of Bonus' latest opus, and a brand new round of reader Q and A! (If you have a question you'd like me to answer here on the site, just plunk it in an email with "Q and A" in the subject line!)

Meanwhile, all but six of the Halloween Sketch Off originals remain! You can have a peek at the full gallery -- including a bunch of newly coloured pieces -- by clicking here!

-Sam Logan

New T-shirts on sale now!

It's that time again, my friends. Time... for new t-shirts!

VOTE DOG is inspired by Bonus' Pretty Puppy President. Hilariously, it wound up arriving when half the Puppy President strips I've made haven't even run on the site yet! (They were pushed back by the unexpectedly long Sin's Gambit chapter, and then interupted by the Halloween strip.) But I had a ton of fun doing these comics, and a Puppy President shirt felt basically mandatory.

I've been selling BULBATHOR postcards and posters at conventions for the last year, but everyone kept asking "When are you going to make that a shirt?" The answer is NOW! Now it's a shirt! Sorry it took a year.

And finally, HEY! LISTEN! is based on an idea I came up with while sketching at this year's Rose City Comic-con. Somewhere in Portland, someone has an original drawing of what essentially became the draft version of this shirt.

I hope you guys dig these suckers! It's been a long time since I've launched three shirts at once... but because the next book isn't going to be coming out until early next year, I wanted to make sure I still had lots of cool swag for the rest of 2015.

We return on Wednesday, when the saga of Pretty Puppy President continues. See you then!

-Sam Logan

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

"How long have you known where you wanted the story to go? Writers sometimes talk about stories taking on lives of their own -- so do your characters still surprise you sometimes?" -Lauren

Compared to some of my other webcomics cohorts, I definitely fall on the "plan everything obsessively in advance" side of the spectrum. (You can actually hear me yammer on about this on this episode of the Writing Excuses podcast, and hear my friend Jeph talk about working with a more freestyle approach in this one!) But even so, there's still room for charaters to surprise me... particularly minor characters who weren't a major part of the broadest early story planning.

Jess Star is one good example. When I introduced her, I didn't really think of her as being especially morally dubious. She's such a light and goofy character! But it seems like she'll go along with pretty much any scheme she's being employed to participate in without a lot of qualms. (Actually, I feel like I once read an interview with Jeff Smith where he said the same thing about Smiley Bone.)

"I have started to write a story, and I have realized that the story is better told in a visual format, than a written one. And I can't draw. This is not a question of desire or skill, but a result of a childhood injury. As a result, I am writing to you, one of the few web artists I know of, if you know any starting artists, who could possibly help." -Maxwell

I don't actually have a good answer to this question, Maxwell. But I thought I'd post it anyway, because I get asked variations of it quite frequently! I hear from a lot of creators looking for comics collaborators... usually writers looking for artists. Unfortunately, I don't have any great advice about how to do it. I've never worked with an illustrator myself, so I don't know much about the process of finding one.

In general, it does seem like there are a lot more writers looking for artists than the reverse. I think it's because the drawing half of the process is a lot more time consuming than the writing -- writers can (and generally do) work on multiple projects, but illustrators can usually only keep up with the workload of one regular comic at a time.

But of course, it's not impossible! It's probably just a difficult search. Sorry I can't be more helpful! Good luck finding your future collaborator.

"Are you going to do another stream when you draw more Halloween pictures? This last one was the first of yours that I saw, but I really enjoyed it!" -John

I am not sure! I do want to draw a few more, but I'm not sure exactly where it's going to fit into my schedule yet. I might be drawing them spread out, doing individual pieces between other work, which wouldn't work out for a stream. But I'll try to do at least one more stream event before the end of the year!

Incidentally, there are now only 9 of the original batch left unsold! You can check 'em all out here.

That's a wrap for this week, team. Come back on Monday for more exciting Bonus comics!

-Sam Logan