The DANDY annual is out in stores now, and I’m pleased to report it’s bragging over 20 pages of exclusive Desperate Dan funs, including one special 8-page story. If you’re in the UK (or even abroad, sure it’ll be on amazon) please do pick up the book and have a look, its pretty tasty (incidentally, Asda are selling all their annuals for £4. proper bargain!).
I even did a front and back cover for the annual, but alas they didn’t make it to the final book (woulda been a real buzz to see them, shame), so here they are anyway.

kfanksisntit!

Also, i’m sorry to say Kochi may not be ready in time for January 2010 like i originally said. i’ve spent the last five weeks working on this book full-time, not on the drawings (they’re all done) but on bringing it all together into a cohesive whole and trying to make it, yuh know, purdy. And I’ve still got a fair amount to do. Fact is this book has taken about four years to get here, so I want to get it right. I’m determined it’ll get out in 2010, and my plan to serialise it as a webcomic still stands, but stick with me a little longer?

jx

Well it’s been a busy year filling up the Topatoco store with some lovely gubbins, but now we’re circling the Christmas shutdown already they’ve posted up their final delivery dates. if you want something and you’re outside the US, make sure you order before november 22nd (for cheapest delivery), if you’re in the US its december 15th. you can leave it a little later if you wanna pay for priority delivery, all the details hhhherreee

and here’s a reason why you might wanna bag something soon! The first TEN people who order the Looshkin ‘fwap’ tshirt, will not only receive their fwappy fwappity tshirt…

but as a chrimby present i’ll also send you the EXCLUUUSIVE bohda te Skull Rock Death Army gold badge

(seriously this badge is the tits, and i’m running out for good now. they’re about 3.5 cm wide and satisfyingly heavy)

Also i’ll throw in a signed copy of Ubu Bubu issue 2 (arguably the best one :p), and if i can find anything else to chuck in i will. not sure if i got anything though, i’ll look.

If you wanna win these things, email me (sixtyfootmonkey@yahoo.com) your order confirmation email which proves you’ve ordered a Looshkin Fwap tshirt. Soon as I get ten confirmed, i’ll post up here that the competition has ended. If you’ve already ordered the tshirt, email me your order confirmation email and you’ll be one of the ten winners. i’ll try and send all the prizes out before xmas, but don’t blame me if post is y’know, all bananas and ting.

blam! BLAMMO! That aside, there is some awesome stuff piling up in the Topatoco store, we gots Bear toys, books, a whole range of tshirts, and the massive 1,242 panda print poster! Come have a look in the store, and if you wanna get anything for christmas make sure you order soon! Yay! Fuck yay!

****NOTE - the FWAP contest in the previous post is now closed! all winners nabbed, prizes sent out soon! if you wanna get in late feel free, i may have a few things left i can send thanks to all who entered!*****

Alright maybe its an unflattering analogy, but it was a really great sandwich. And even though its green and moving, there’s still a bit of egg or something egg-shaped in it, and it tastes pretty nice mainly because it brings back nice memories of what it was like when you ate it before. then you feel a bit wonky for a couple of days and have to keep excusing yourself. brrrap. sorry. brrrap. sorry, really sorry.

I sat down to write some new Bear today, something I haven’t done for about 3 years? maybe more? I will quite happily admit Bear is far greater than I what does write him, he and Loosh became their own entities and I owe them a great deal. But inevitably, towards the end of the series, writing their ladel-based hittings was starting to become 5% less enjoyable than when i started. After 300 or so pages, i guess you expect that. Which is why I pulled it to a halt, and wanted to leave it while it was still interesting.
But when you’re so fond of a character, you never want to leave him alone anymore than you want to needingly poke his corpse for ideas. Writing Bear was writing me, it was probably the most honest I’ve ever written, the closest to what’s in my head. That probably sounds pretentious, but i paid a therapist every week to tell me the same thing until I worked it out. So the idea of writing and drawing new Bear has always been appealing, but not something I wanted to rush out with. Besides, I’ve got a bazillion other sandwiches in my head that need finishing.

I’ve been rebuilding bearfoo.com from scratch for the last two weeks, and it’s looking good i think. the main site is built, now i just need to get all the comics on there. It will update regularly with a Bear story taken in chronological order from the comics. But clearly, this was a chance to do something new and immerse back into Bear for a little bit, and working on the site made me really nostalgic for the furry bugger. So I’m working on an all-new four-pager, exclusive to bearfoo.com.

It was strange stepping back in, it took a little while to get my head back into the right mindset. Most notably, making the words flow rather than just slamming a couple of ‘buhhh’ ‘wheeee’ and ‘rahh gumba’s in for effect. But the story itself rambled along pleasingly well, and I gotta say it feels like I’ve never been away.

‘Welcome Back You Poor Bastard’ will go online with the relaunch of bearfoo.com, hopefully next month. It features child slavery, snapped limbs, cat clowns and pig sick. Thank fuck ^_^

Hey, do you like webcomics? do you believe in time? do you like things more when they’re naked? if you answer YES to any of these, then you wanna pick up the Tastefully-Done 2010 calendar ho yus. Filled with tasteful nudes of some awesome webcomic characters you may know, you’ll also find a cold and lonely WHUBBLE shivering over on December! Ahh cold weather, you always make a man’s shares go down.
Best of all the profits go to Cancer Research! So please do go buy a copy, it looks proper mint. ^_^

also, these are the last few days for international shipping from Topatoco. So if you fancy any of my tshirts, bear books and toys, the panda poster, the Skull Rock pin badges, whatevvvver, and you live outside the US, better order now if you want em before Xmas! Thank you if you do! You get +20 HP!

lastly, theres two things happening at the moment that i really want to announce, but not sure i can. but they’re so exciting my head might explode (that would be a third exciting thing)

jx

The bodies have been hidden, the fur has been shaved and arranged into crude hairy pictures, and the pigs have been over-revved. Yes, i think bearfoo.com is very nearly ready. What I of course mean is the site has been kicked into place, the exclusive NEW Bear 4-pager is drawn and finished, and all thats left to do sort through the Bear issues and prepare the artwork.

I’m hoping it will go live on monday. Hoping.