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I intend to make up for the lack of News the last two weeks (due to illness) by dropping one really big News bombshell: Giant in the Playground Games has entered into a strategic alliance with Paizo Publishing, LLC, publishers of Dragon and Dungeon, to publish and distribute The Order of the Stick books and other products. You can read the full details here. Then, you can go and preorder either book from them here. Yes, I said EITHER book; On the Origin of PCs is now on sale over the internet for the first time. (It's a preorder even for the older book because the actual stock is still in transit to their warehouse.) I am officially out of the shipping business, I'm just finishing up the reshipping and that's it, the GITP store will close. All book orders will be handled exclusively through the very professional, very capable www.paizo.com. Oh, and OOTS? Will be in Dragon Magazine starting in December. I am so sick. I am, like, redefining the meaning of sickness in the modern age. And when I say that, I mean I absolutely am not doing anything even remotely similar to that, and in fact just have a bout of the flu. But my head weighs 3000 pounds and is made of solid concrete. Except, that it isn't really. Anyway, combined with being a transient, that was what resulted in there not being a comic Friday. The good news is that I will have a place to live, starting October 1st. Yay for having a home! Except for a few odds and ends, the outstanding orders have been shipped. I'm now waist-deep in the reshipments--those books that I am sending again to those customers that requested them. Those that have shipped so far have gone smoothly, showing up less than a week after they're sent. So, just a little more patience for those waiting for their replacement books, I hope to have them finished this week. And then, I'll be out of the book shipping business. Around the end of the month, I'll be announcing a new deal for book ordering that will leave me with more time to do what I'm best at: creating comics. And yeah, it will include information on how you can finally order Origin of the PCs over the internet. OK, so, the quick version of why there was no strip on Wednesday? The fact that my landlord broke in twice in two weeks has caused a chain reaction that has included police reports, apartment searches, and three days of rushing to pack up an entire house and put it into a storage unit. I am now moved out of my rented house and staying with my girlfriend's parents until we find a new home. The downside for you is that they don't have internet access here, so the strips will be posted when I am able to get out to a Kinko's or a friend's house. This might go on for a few weeks, too, so don't be surprised if the posting time varies wildly. For that matter, this means I can only check my email irregularly as well, so if you are contacting me about something important, it might take a while to respond. The good news is it gives me plenty of time to pack outstanding shipments, plus begin to pack the reshipments for overseas customers. Of course, the emails telling people that their shipments are on the way will be delayed, so you might get your book before you hear about it. Now, I've had a pretty rough week, but I watched the news last night and realized that I've had it pretty easy. The people in New Orleans have lost their home in a far more permanent way than I have. While we were watching, Margie turned to me and asked if there was anything we could do, and this is what I've come up with: Anyone who donates online to the Red Cross should get an email receipt from them. For the month of September, forward that receipt to GiantITP@gmail.com, and I'll send you the OOTS wallpaper that I've been sending to people who donate to the site. (It might take a few days to get it out, due to my email issues). Or, if you still want to support OOTS, donate directly to me, and I'll send half to the Red Cross. It may not be much, but if I can give one person sufficient incentive to donate something, then I'll feel it was worth it. So yeah, there was supposed to be a new OOTS today, but we came home from GenCon to find that our house had been broken into. Luckily, I still had the guest strip I should have posted yesterday but couldn't because we were on the road. It's from Bernie Hou of Alien Loves Predator. Since I missed posting links to all of them, Monday's comic was by Liz Walsh of The Tao of Geek, Friday's was by Jeff Mumm of Obscured by Species, and Thursday's was by Abby Lehrke of The Green Avenger. And GenCon? It was good. Exhausting, but good. More details later, but suffice to say that all Thursday morning, the line to buy the new OOTS book stretched from my booth back to the wall and over to the doors. I'm just happy the printer was able to get us a few more than the 1000 books I had originally announced! Well, for some reason the script for the guest comics screwed up, and Eric's comic was up for Friday through Monday. Good news for him, I guess. Rather than screw over Chuck, I gave him Tuesday and pushed all the other comics back. Which brings us to today's rather esoteric entry from Rob Balder of PartiallyClips. Old school NetHack players should get a chuckle; anyone who thinks of the original Unreal Tournament as an old computer game will not. I am actually in Indianapolis now. I have the new books. They look fantastic. I also have the blue "Basic Set" t-shirts, which also look good, but the "DMs Beware" shirts are Missing-In-Action. Hopefully, they'll show up at the hotel sometime tomorrow. Is it wrong that the convention hasn't started yet and already I wistfully pine for the days when I was not denied sleep's loving embrace? Time to be on our way to Indianapolis. A few quick notes: I didn't make it clear in the last post that we will be having one guest comic every weekday this week, and again next Monday. So that's 7 guest strips total. Today's is by the very talented Chuck Rowles of The Gods of Arr-Kelaan. Incidentally, Chuck was nice enough to ship me a box of his first book, The Gods of Arr-Kelaan: Going Home, Volume 1, for me to sell at GenCon, so if you like what you see here and what you find at his site, pick up the book this weekend. My email has been out since Friday. Anything you sent me has bounced back to you by now. If it's an absolute emergency, try GiantITP@gmail.com; otherwise, just wait until Ray gets it sorted out. In a similar vein, don't expect me to really have time to answer anything or ship anything until next week. About half the Elan buttons finally shipped on Saturday. I wanted to ship them all before the convention, but it didn't come to pass. When next you hear from me, I should be in Ohio, picking up the new books. Well, if you checked the comic, you'll see that Guest Week (and a Half) 2005 has begun. While we're busy at GenCon, I'm having some of my favorite webcomic artists fill in for me. Today, we start with Eric Nault, who draws Hellbound. Yeah, I know we just had fan art when I sprained my wrist, but that was unplanned, whereas I solicited most of these strips months ago. Also, I was supposed to announce it today and start on Monday, but life has kicked me in the balls today in an very unexpected way today, so I needed to move it up. Apologies for it being so unexpected. New OOTS should return Wednesday, August 24th. Oh, and I forgot to mention last time that the "DMs Beware" t-shirt is going to be sold by our good friends at Pandemonium Books starting this week. Thanks to Tyler (the owner over there) for helping me get the shirts produced in time in the first place! We're leaving for the convention Monday morning, so we have plenty of time to round up the books and head out to Indianapolis. Wish us luck! I'll try to keep the News updated on new strip days while we're gone, too. OK, I promised more products, and here they are: TWO new t-shirts on DARK COLORS, and two new buttons. Feast your eyes, folks.
For more information on these products, OOTS at GenCon, and where GITP Games will be located, click HERE. It should be pretty exciting. (The convention, not the webpage.) I'm gonna dive right into the news here, because there's a lot of it: 1.) Regarding people who ordered in January and February and did NOT receive your books yet (delayed from Friday): Most of you should have gotten an email from GITP Games concerning the establishment of a procedure for requesting reshipment or refund for lost books. The text of that email can be read here, in case you did not. Some of these emails have bounced back to me due to invalid address, so if you fall into that category, you should contact me. If your book is missing but you ordered AFTER March 3rd, it is either a.) in the mail already or, if you ordered less than 4 weeks ago, about to be, b.) returned to us or otherwise rejected by the postal system, in which case we will contact you, or c.) an international order which we were holding until we were sure we had the order system straightened out. I am reasonably confident that if we send these orders priority, they won't suffer the fate of the Jan/Feb overseas orders, so I will begin shipping these this week.
3.) Thanks to everyone who has donated so far; while I've still got plenty of bills, your support has really taken a good size chunk out of the hospital bill. And as far as the bandwidth goes, while I've still got a big bill, Ray says he's going to update the message board software soon, which will supposedly drastically improve its efficiency. Whew, that's a lot of news. But hey, I haven't even talked about the other products we'll have at GenCon, such as the new limited edition buttons. Hmmmm...guess that will have to wait until Wednesday. So, as I'm sure you all are aware thanks to Ray's charming filler art, I spent a little time in the hospital this past week. Nothing life-threatening, or so they tell me, but a little scary nonetheless. I'm not going into the details of what was wrong, but I apologize for abruptly missing Friday's strip (and being a day late on Monday's).
IMPORTANT! There will be two big announcements coming up in the next seven days (they would have both been this week, but my hospital stay delayed them). The first, on Friday, will concern those people who have not gotten book shipments from January and February yet, particularly (but not strictly) international orders, and how they should go about filing a claim with me for a lost book. The second, next Monday, will concern the next book and when it will become available. Note that I'm deliberately announcing that second to minimize the "I didn't get the FIRST book yet!" backlash. So watch the News page carefully in the next couple of days. Just a reminder: Today is the LAST DAY for ordering the first book until at LEAST October 1st (and that's assuming we don't sell out at GenCon and/or order a second printing). When I wake up tomorrow, I'm shutting the shop down, so you have until then. Also, since there have been questions, we will still be fulfilling all paid orders placed before that point, so if you didn't get your book yet, it's still on its way (probably stuck in customs somewhere). Also note that any order that was placed but not paid will be canceled when the orders are cut off, so if you haven't made payment yet, do so immediately. For postal orders, we'll give it another two weeks to get here if you placed the website order before tomorrow, but after that, we might not have the books to fulfill, so you might get your check mailed back to you. We're working on some new products for GenCon, but they will not be available for internet sale until we fix our shipping process, which I won't even be able to start addressing until the convention is over. I don't want to put items back on sale until I'm sure I can ship them properly, so it's possible it might be a few months before the GenCon merchandise will be for general sale. In other words, if you know someone going to GenCon, have them pick stuff up for you. More news: apparently, OOTS has won a "Webcomics Choice Award," an award voted on solely by other webcomics artists. Actually, I tied, and for Best Fantasy Comic. Mind you, if anyone from the awards had bothered to email me to inform me that I was nominated, I could have voted for myself and thus won, but whatever. Oh, and before I forget: I DID get emails from customers in Australia who confirmed that they have gotten their books. All were in Melbourne, so it might still take a bit for the rest of the country to get theirs. But this is also good news for customers waiting in other countries, because it means these books are DELAYED, not GONE. So hopefully, the logjam in other nations' customs will break soon. Well, I hope #200 makes up for the week without OOTS. I apologize in advance for the load times, but that's four comics worth of stuff there. Enjoy. In other news, the book will go OFF SALE on July 15th. There's a couple reasons for this. First, we need to have enough stock to bring to GenCon, and we need to hold some back if we end up needing to reship to anyone. Second, we need to completely overhaul our ordering and shipping process so that screw-ups like these don't happen next time, and we can't do that if orders are still trickling in. Third, I'm not going to have time to pack up still more books in late July and August, again due to GenCon preparations. So if you can't make it to GenCon and you want to be sure to get a book, order before next Friday. I can't guarantee that there will be any first printing copies left after the convention, but internet orders should return when we've gotten a new shipping company and possibly made a second printing. By the way, I've gotten an unconfirmed report of an Australian who has gotten their book. If you are in AUstralia, and you HAVE your book in your hand, email me and tell me ASAP! It will soothe the spirits of your fellow Aussies. Latest news: I've decided to take the rest of the week off to let my hand heal. I just don't want to rush it, and the hundreds of "Get Well" emails I've gotten tell me you guys understand. Instead, I'll post a previously-unposted fan comic or piece of fanart every day this week, and start fresh with next Monday's comic. If you ever wanted to do fanart for OOTS and see it posted for everyone to see, now's your chance. So sit back and enjoy a week of what I like to call (drumroll please)... Sprained Wrist Theater! OK, so here's what's going on: For anyone who doesn't know, in addition to working on OOTS, for the last two months I have also been moving from Queens, NY, to the Philadelphia area. This week was our last big furniture-moving trip, on Wednesday and Thursday. While moving a Ludicrously Heavy Dresser on Thursday night, I lost my grip on it and it bent my right hand back in a way that nature did not intend for it to go. I thought I had broken it, and didn't return to Philly Thursday night—and as a result, didn't complete Friday's comic. I went to the doctor instead in NY on Friday. Now, the good news here is that I did NOT break anything in my hand--I just sprained it kind of bad. It hurts. A lot. And right now, drawing with a mouse is kind of out of the question. Heck, typing only works with my left hand (this is taking forever to write out!) So, there is not going to be a Friday comic (obviously). If, on Sunday night, I find it still hurts too much to draw, I'll post some kind of filler/guest comic or something. It should be feeling better in time for the Wednesday comic no matter what, unless I'm dumb and reinjure it. As compensation, I'll leak that strip #200 is coming up, and it should be at LEAST double length (and maybe triple length). Just to keep international customers updated: I've gotten emails in the last three days from customers in Austria and Brazil who have JUST received their books now, and they mailed at the same time as the German customers who got their books weeks ago. This is actually good news; it means that it is probable that many of the missing books are being held in customs or the like. If you are an international customer from a nation OTHER THAN Germany, Italy, Canada, Austria, or Brazil, and you get your book shipment after today, drop me an email to let me know so that I can inform your countrymen about it. Also, note that if you placed an international order AFTER February, we may be holding your order until we get the earlier ones sorted out. My feeling is it is better to delay orders personally and know what is going on with them then to dump them in the mail when we are having so many problems and risk them being lost. OK, so here's the latest on the international orders: Turns out the printer subcontracted the job to yet ANOTHER company without informing me, and the date they gave me for mailing of the international orders (April 12th) was NOT the date they went into the mail--it was the date they dropped off the packages to this third party company. Apparently, May 9th-12th are the actual dates that packages went to each country, after which they are being handled by that nation's internal postal service. Thus, the packages have only actually been in the country of their destination for 3-4 weeks. Now, I still questioned this, since I was under the impression that I was paying for a 7-10 day shipping service, and was told that the third party company choose to ship the packages "as cheaply as possible." This is extremely frustrating, since international customers know I charged enough to cover fairly expeditious shipping ($16 a book!). I am assuming this is a case of everyone involved wanting to squeeze more profit out of me, and am reviewing my communications with the printer to see what I can do about recouping some of the cost paid to them. Also, in case anyone is interested, certain countries seem to have delivered all of their books while others have yet to see any orders arrive. UK, Australia, and the Scandinavian countries seem to have yet to get any orders to customers, while German, Italian, and Canadian customers have gotten most (in some cases, all) of their orders. In other news, the last domestic orders placed before May 23rd are shipping tomorrow. I'm hoping to get caught up on notification emails by Friday (I've been concentrating on shipping over notifying). Oh, and Elan buttons will not be mailed until next week at the earliest. I thought it more important to get the book shipping caught up. Lots of news today. First, sorry about the screwed-up script that prevented yesterday's comic from being seen today. Ray worked most of the night on it, but then he had to restore the strips from server back-up, which didn't have the most recent strip on it. I was away from the computer for two days, so I couldn't do anything about it until this afternoon. By the way, 253 people emailed me to tell me there was a problem--scary! OK, next: A batch of ordered-in-February books mailed two weeks ago apparently did not get scanned in by the US Postal Service's tracking confirmation people. That means the tracking numbers I provided are showing that the books haven't been dropped off at the post office yet. However, I have confirmation from a few customers who had previously informed me of this that yes, they got their books anyway. So, if you got an email with a tracking number, and that tracking number isn't working, there's a good chance your book will show up on your doorstep before the USPS website knows about it. Also, if you received MORE books than you ordered, please contact me immediately. I need to get these back and ship them to other people, it turns out. It's more than a little frustrating, as I'm sure you can imagine. Don't forget: BaltiCon 39 this weekend! Look for our table in the dealer's room. My plans to attend San Diego Comic-Con have been dashed, however, so no love for the West Coast OOTS fans. If I don't make it out earlier, I should be at GenCon SoCal in November. Sorry about the missed comic update for Friday. Basically, I've been staying up so late trying to get back on track with shipping that I wore myself out and have caught a pretty unpleasant sickness. I'm awake enough to write, but not to write WELL, and after like 18 tries at writing a script for the comic--none of which were even mildly amusing--I decided to "call out of work". But there is still plenty of news for today. First, a convention appearance. BaltiCon 39 is a science fiction and fantasy convention in Baltimore, Maryland, from the 27th to the 30th of May. I'll have a table there where you can buy the book, get it signed, and pick up a button or two. Second, a book signing. Jester's Playhouse in Northfield, NJ, has invited me to sign (and sell) the book on Saturday, June 4th, starting around 1:00 pm. They're also having a D&D Miniatures Regional Qualifier that day, as well as a cookout/barbecue of some sort, so why not make a day of it? Third, with all these appearances, I thought a convention calendar was in order. If you look at the link above, you'll see that I've added a simple list of appearances that I've scheduled for the rest of the year. Updates: OOTS Extras: Holy crap! I finally put up the BuzzComix voting incentive images! Wow! Even I'm surprised. Convention Calendar: I put it up. When I get new appearances to announce, I'll list them as updates here. The worst thing is when I'm so busy with newsworthy stuff that I don't have time to update the News page. Most importantly: SHIPPING UPDATE! As of today, May 2nd, we have shipped ALL of the following:
IMPORTANT: The confirmation email process is a little backed up, so you might not get your email for as much as 48 more hours. Please don't email me asking the status of an order that falls into one of these two categories until at least Thursday morning. Still waiting to ship:
As you can see, we focused on getting the huge number of early-January single-copy orders out first, since it was easier that way. Now we've mailed 1388 out of about 2100 orders, so I really feel we've gotten the shipping under control. Thanks to all of you who have been so patient waiting for your book, and thanks also to those who haven't been so patient. Now on to other news. The book signing at Pandemonium Books was a huge success. We had about 100+ people show up, which was slightly unfortunate since we only had 75 books! Stupid airline luggage weight restrictions. Anyway, while some people did go away empty-handed, most people got a book and a sketch in it, and we had a great time. Don't be surprised if the next book sees us back there for another appearance. My convention appearance schedule is shaping up more every day; maybe next time I get a moment, I'll post a calendar for the rest of the summer. I'm pleased to announce my first (and so far only) scheduled book signing appearance. Next Wednesday (April 27th), I'll be appearing at Pandemonium Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts from about 6:00 pm to whenever. The fine folks at Pandemonium were the first to ask to carry the OOTS book in their store, and are the only retailer in New England to stock the book at all. So if you live within driving distance of Boston, want the book, don't want to pay shipping, and do want me to sketch for you, then show up at Pandemonium Books next week. Or, if you just want to meet me for some odd reason and aren't a stalker or ninja assassin, come on out too. It should be fun. Oh, and even if you can't make it, Pandemonium is still the place to get the book, if you haven't ordered it already.
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Of course, hospital trips come with medical bills attached, and I don't have health insurance. Which really sucks, because I'm already pushing it to try and come up with a means to reship lost books until I manage to wring money out of the printer for it. Further, the days of missing strip did a number on my bandwidth usage, as fans flooded the message board for news on my status. So it should come as no surprise that I'm starting a new donation drive to help cover my medical expenses. It works like this: donate $5 or more using that lovely PayPal button on the sidebar (or click