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My novel, The Enthusiast, is available for purchase! Check out the first chapter, then buy:

• The hardcover or softcover edition for $25 or $15
• The ebook edition for $8, which includes files for all devices
• And if the mood strikes, you can put some money in my tip jar

Order soon to get yours in time for Christmas. Thank you very much!

Judge Parker, 12/16/15

I don’t know why, but I can’t stop giggling at the phrase “died tragically in a Mexican jungle.” I know there are several noncontiguous rainforest areas in Mexico, but “a Mexican jungle” just sounds hilariously cagey. “You know, one of the jungles they have down there. Whatever the most murder-y jungle is, I forget the name. Probably it’s in Spanish or Mayan or something. The important thing is that he’s dead, and not at all living in our newly fortified guesthouse, OK?”

Momma, 12/16/15

I also can’t stop giggling at today’s Momma, mostly the part where Jim is erotically fixated on Tonya’s sexy, frilly hemline. Jim seems to like a gal who shows some calf, MaryLou, so you shouldn’t be dressing in plaid pants like some kind of prude if you want to maintain “squatter’s rights.” You know, squatter’s rights? Like, sex … squatting? Is that a thing? Distasteful as this is, at least this strip has stumbled away from accidental incest jokes.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/16/15

I think when Mason Jarr was first introduced as a character, back when they were going to make Les’s Lisa book into a terrible made-for-cable movie, he was presented as some dumb washed-up actor, but then he stuck around and generally became more sympathetic and also was supposed to have a somewhat higher-profiled career, I think? Anyway, that career is now over because he’s going to move to a depressing, economically dead town in Ohio with his wife! Funky and Holly are 100% correct to be completely gobsmacked by this.

Crankshaft, 12/16/15

Meanwhile, over in the “fun” Funkyverse strip, Crankshaft is supplementing his meager pay with a Santa Claus gig, and he has a tech-savvy elf named … Twitter! Get it, Twitter? The same name as the popular Internet website? Mercy!

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Hello, everybody! Remember three and a half years ago, when I had a Kickstarter to fund The Enthusiast, a novel I wanted to write? Remember how I promised it’d be done in like 18 months, and then that didn’t happen, and then I didn’t talk about it here or anywhere else for a long time, and then all of the sudden four months ago I started talking about it again and couldn’t stop talking about it, and you were like, “Jeez, Josh, when can I buy this thing already?” Well, good news: you can buy this thing already. The book is about trains, soap opera comics, and a stealth marketing agency that infiltrates groups of enthusiasts, online and in real life, to try to sell things for their clients. I’m very proud of how it turned out and am excited for you to read it. If you like this blog, you’ll probably enjoy it.

• You can buy the hardback version for $25 or the softcover version for $15 over at TopatoCo. Only a limited number of hardbacks are available, so act fast!
• You can buy the ebook edition for $8. This is a DRM-free bundle that includes Mobi (for Kindle), EPUB (for everybody else), and PDF (for any device) files.

The printing process came down to the wire in December, so if you want to give a copy of this book as a gift, you need to buy now! to get it by Christmas. Here’s a handy chart with info on shipping times from TopatoCo, the people who are doing the shipping. (If you buy the ebook edition, you can download it immediately after purchasing it, obviously.)

If you’d like to get a sense of the book before you decide to buy it, I’ve put the opening chapter up on Medium, and you can listen to me read chapter three on the Catapult podcast. You can also read this extremely positive review from Gary Tyrrell, creator of the Fleen webcomics blog.

And, finally, I’ve decided not to run my usual fall fundraiser this year in order to focus more on promoting my book. But if the mood strikes, you can always throw a few bucks in my tip jar, in addition to/instead of buying the novel. Thanks so much!

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Hagar the Horrible and Wizard of Id, 12/15/15

Most comic strips begin their existence as the singular creation of an artist or artist-writer pair; but once it runs for long enough, it becomes an institution, and often hired hands are brought in to do the actual day-to-day work on the strip. The personnel decisions that happen behind the scenes — at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC, say, or the lesser known Parker Hart & Associated Anachronistic Whimsy Professionals responsible for the unholy B.C.-Wizard of Id-Crock trinity — are opaque to us, and all we’re left with, if we’re regular comics readers, is the occasional disquieting realization that “the strip looks different.” Which is a long way of saying that Hagar the Horrible and Wizard of Id look different to me this week. Is this true for anyone else? Anyone? At least we can take solace in the evidence that the writing of the strips is staying true to their original vision: to put references to contemporary issues in imagined versions of our brutish past, in order to show that our present remains just as violent beneath its thin veneer of civilization.

Dennis the Menace, 12/15/15

Dennis is self-aware enough to know that he’s constitutionally incapable of pleasing a monotheistic God who judges humans against some absolute morality, or even of currying favor with a watered-down version like Santa. He’ll be happy to make a deal with a much older form of folk spirit, one with an agenda at once more opaque and easier to accommodate. The tooth fairy doesn’t care if you’ve been bad or good; the tooth fairy operates on a plane entirely removed from whatever ethical system you use to define those terms. The tooth fairy just wants your teeth.