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Good evening, everybody! Just wanted to start off by saying an enormous THANK YOU to everyone wh has pre-ordered my book through my Kickstarter. I’ve already met my original goal and my stretch goal (which means that the book will have illustrations) and I’m cooking up some new stuff (including new, comics-themed rewards!) for next week. I’ll give you a break from the sales pitches this weekend, but rest assured that the banners will return Monday!

And now, your comment of the week!

“J. Jonah Jameson looks like Hitler as envisioned by mid-90s Duracell ad executives.” –sporknpork

And the runners up, very funny!

“I bet ‘We trust you, Tommie. Don’t we, honey?’ is always met with a loud groan, even when she’s just asked to order a pizza or pick up doughnuts.” –Ed Dravecky

RMMD: “You know the story arc is almost over, because everyone is smiling. ‘My father died in a drunken scuffle with his wife that I hate. I haven’t come to terms with my own alcoholism or my complete loathing and mistrust of that evil old woman. But because of your generosity, I might get enough from his inheritance to cover my plane ticket and a few drinks at the airport bar! Thank you, Dr. Morgan, for enabling my dysfunctional family!'” –Hogenmogen

“Put everyone in Apartment 3-G into leather straps and ball-gags, and the dialogue still works surprisingly well. Better, even.” –Izzy

“Nina looked down. Get on my hands and knees? she thought. But that means… going into the void. The void had always been there, for as long as she could remember, below her waist and above… whatever was below her waist. They had all come out of the void, in their teen years, but no one ever knew or remembered what went down there. It was said that, to there they would all one day return. But Nina wasn’t ready. ‘Okay,’ she said, mustering her courage. ‘I’ll try. But you’d better be telling the truth!’ Trembling, she got to her knees. Oh god, she thought, as she lowered herself off-panel and toward the unseen ground. The voices.” –Black Drazon

“Who wants to see Nina’s baby zing out and whop Scott in the head?” –Lynn

“If anyone can get a hernia lifting a memory stick, it’s Peter Parker.” –But What Do I Know?

“Chip thought mowing the lawn would be a one-time thing. He’s not really a high achiever, academically.” –Doctor Handsome

I must thanks to all who put some cash into my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our advertisers:

• The Hole Behind Midnight: Royden Poole is having a very bad day. “… fast, profane, full of joy, deeply intelligent, and just a lot of damn fun to read.” –Colin McComb, author of OATHBREAKER. “… like the fevered brainchild of Warren Ellis and Kenneth Hite. Smart, dark fun.” ––Matt Forbeck, AMORTALS and VEGAS KNIGHTS.
• Die a Stranger: Betrayal. Adventure. Mystery. A plane lands on a deserted airstrip. Five dead bodies are found the next morning. Read the new Alex McNight novel. “STEVE HAMILTON is the master of suspense.” -Lee Child. “A sensitive exploration of tragedy and redemption.” -PW (starred)

To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.

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Click the banner to help sponsor Josh’s novel and to reserve your copy! Details here.

This post is going to be a little on the long side, so I’m going to start up front with the short version: Hey, remember when I told you all that I quit my job and hinted vaguely at several “projects” I had in the works? Well, here’s the first big one: I’m writing a novel called The Enthusiast, and I need your help to make it happen. It’s about marketing and trains and capitalism and soap opera comic strips, and there will be a love triangle! You can read the rough cut of the first chapter to get a sense of it. And the way you can help make it happen — as well as make sure that you’re one of the first to get the book when it’s published — is to support my Kickstarter campaign.

If you’re unfamiliar with Kickstarter, it works like this: Someone who needs money to complete a project asks for sponsorship, and offers rewards in return. They set a minimum level of cash they’d need to make the project happen; if they don’t meet that goal, they get no money, and sponsors’ credit cards are never charged. If they meet or surpass the goal, they get the money and use it to bring the project to reality.

In my case, the project is the book, and the rewards you can get are, for the most part, copies of the book when it’s done. Depending on your level of support, you can get an e-book, a paperback, a hardcover book (only Kickstarter supporters will be able to get hardcover books), a signed hardcover book, or a bunch of books that I will fly to your home and hand-deliver and then read aloud to you and your friends. (Really!)

I’m self-publishing, because I feel like I have a strong personal relationship with you guys that doesn’t necessarily map onto how traditional publishers think about a first-time author; so, I’ll be using the money I’m raising to print the books, and to pay for editorial and design help. (I’ve already got an editor lined up: National Magazine Award winner Emily Gordon.) I’ll also be using the money to live on while I write the book: as the following video explains, there’s nothing that’ll kill a writer’s focus like the Internet, and since all my freelance gigs involve being on the Internet, the more sponsors I get, the longer I can turn the Internet off and write. (Don’t worry, I will never abandon my faithful Comics Curmudgeon readers; it’s the other, more boring stuff I’m talking about here.)

You may have noticed that it’s been an unusually long time — almost 10 months — since Uncle Lumpy last ran one of our occasional fundraisers here; that’s because I’ve been planning this for a while. So if you normally contribute to one of the semi-annual fundraisers, I would humbly request that you treat this Kickstarter as a pledge drive, and contribute to it what you normally would — and hey, this time you actually get some creative work out of me for it! You can contribute any amount of money that strikes your fancy, and in return you’ll receive any reward you want at or below the contribution level that you chose. (If for some reason you want to give me money but the thought of receiving a book from me disgusts you, you can opt to receive no reward as well.)

That’s about it! The Kickstarter will be open for contributions for three weeks, and believe me, I’ll be reminding you of it fairly regularly. And if I meet my goal early in the process, I have some ideas for stretch goals — ways I could make the book even better with extra funding. Stay tuned! And feel free to e-mail me at bio@jfruh.com for more details or if you have questions on how Kickstarter works.

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While we in the northeast prepare for further heatpocalypse, I offer you your comment of the week.

“I don’t know … maybe you’re process servers! Or maybe you’re here to steal my limited-edition Droopy Dawg bookend.” –Esther Blodgett

And the runners up! Very funny!

“I just want to know who Smokey and his lover are burying. Only YOU can prevent exposure of your dirty little secrets.” –LUJBEM FEJF

“So which will come first: Nina’s baby or Luann’s first orgasm? Yep, I went there and now you can’t unthink it. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” –Apeman

“What travel brochure just shows a random road? ‘Have a nice relaxing stay on Highway 42!'” –Dartpaw86

“Why do I get the feeling that this isn’t the first time Tommie has thought, ‘There is another way, but I’m totally inexperienced’? It wouldn’t surprised me if she has it stitched into a sampler.” –Pozzo

“Come on, Dawn, don’t you realize that Italian cuisine is famous primarily for its fresh vegetables? It’s not as if you can find fresh vegetables back home in California.” –Samuel PG

“Look, Tommie. You’re never going to learn if you don’t try. What’s the worst that can happen: your client and her baby dead on the floor of a Manhattan apartment with a major trauma center only a few blocks away, that’s all. So you have to make some mistakes, but that’s how you get better. I think it was Thomas Edison who said, ‘Yes, I invented the medical X-Ray machine. But no one talks about the fact that I poisoned dozens, including my loyal assistant to get there.’ So I say go for it!” –geekwhisperer

“The United States flag has 5 rows of 6 stars and 4 rows of 5 stars (5×6+4×5=50). The flag does NOT have 10 rows of 5 stars, except in the police state that Dick Tracy pledges allegiance to.” –Mysterion

“I forgive you for acting like a jealous nincompoop. I still need time to come to terms with you being such an indolent limpdick moocher, though.” –Doctor Handsome

“I hope Giorgio turns out to be Mary Worth in an elaborate latex mask.” –Drew Funk

“I’d always thought that ‘bighorn’ were a type of peaceful and cute mountain dwelling sheep. In fact their appearance in the Lost Forest is apparently a semi-annual terror-fest. ‘I wish Mark was here … We could go take pictures of the bighorn as they come down the mountain to feed … on brains and human flesh'” –Inkler

I must thanks to all who put some cash into my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our advertisers:

• The Hole Behind Midnight: Royden Poole is having a very bad day. “… fast, profane, full of joy, deeply intelligent, and just a lot of damn fun to read.” –Colin McComb, author of OATHBREAKER. “… like the fevered brainchild of Warren Ellis and Kenneth Hite. Smart, dark fun.” ––Matt Forbeck, AMORTALS and VEGAS KNIGHTS.

To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.