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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.

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Blondie, 12/14/15

The funny thing here is that Dagwood seems to genuinely believe that it’s “weird” that he liked this repulsive-sounding concoction, as if he were not an infinite appetite, a bottomless maw with a thin layer of human meat wrapped around it. But somehow it’s necessary that he remain un-self-aware on this point. “Gosh, this is kind of good!” he says as he pours the latest combination of barely digestible garbage down his gullet, just like he said all the other times with all the other combinations.

Pluggers, 12/14/15

I’m not going to lie to you: this panel terrifies me. The typical structure of this particular Pluggers subgenre goes something like this: “Pluggers remember when [word in common use] meant [former primary definition, which has now been superseded]!” The difference today is that I have no idea what other meaning of “recall” they might be contrasting this with. Like, obviously nobody actually ever used “recall” in the sense depicted here, but are we meant to understand that there’s some … higher tech definition now in use? Like with the computers and such? Smartphones? Snapchat? Is this a Snapchat thing? Oh, God, has my persistent refusal to learn more than the bare minimum about Snapchat turned me into a plugger?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/14/15

Oh come on, Heather, next to Sarah and her grotesquely spherical head, lots of babies would look beautiful. Pretty much anything would, thanks to the contrast. Crumbling factories, dead animals, you name it, it all looks good next to Sarah.

Momma, 12/14/15

Well, so, Francis seems to be identified correctly again, but, uh, that is still very much his sister MaryLou, who may be role-playing as “Cindi” or whatever, but this is all very gross and disturbing.

Edge City, 12/14/15

Oops, I guess Edge City isn’t going to end with Colin’s elevation to YouTube stardom after all! Nope, it’s going to end with the rise of the machines.