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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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Slylock Fox, 7/9/12

Because my brain doesn’t work the way one might want it to, I have a terrible time remembering my family’s birthdays without programming them into my phone’s calendar, but upon reading this strip I instantly remembered that it was the not the first Slylock Fox whose solution revolved around anteater toothlessness. At least this one’s an actual anteater! In a world of anthropomorphic animals, many of which are carnivores, I expect Slylock needs to resolve exactly this kind of dispute relatively frequently. “Waah, the birds ate my pet worms! Waaah, Cassandra Cat ate my sidekick!” This is what comes of overthrowing humanity, animal-rabble! Not the eating of other animals of course, but the ultimately unfulfillable sense that there ought to be some kind of justice to how it happens.

Shoe, 7/9/12

Shoe generally has its characters wildly overreact to punchlines with goggle eyes of horror, which makes the Perfesser’s numb, heavy-lidded stare in the second panel here all the sadder. “Yeah, I guess I should have expected that my attempt at serious emotional intimacy with a good friend — and my attempt to understand how other people find fulfillment in romantic relationships, something I’ve tried and failed at all my life — would be deflected with a dumb joke about HAW HAW AGING STRIKES TERROR INTO WOMEN’S HEARTS. Welp, back to silently dying inside!”

Spider-Man, 7/9/12

Speaking of facial expressions, it should have been obvious to everyone that Clown-9 is a crazed maniac bent on revenge against everyone who’s ever wronged him. Thus, I’m assuming that MJ’s look of shock in panel three is not a reaction to Peter’s suggestion that she might be on the target list, but is rather justified horror at the image in panel two of Peter making a sullen, hideous kissyface and jabbing a chunk of blackened meat at his lower lip.

Apartment 3-G, 7/9/12

I feel like I’ve been spending too much time dwelling on the weirdly off material in this storyline about attitudes towards and medical knowledge about childbirth, and not enough time discussing the fact that Tommie, Scott, and Nina are all wearing identical white shirts. So, Tommie, Scott, and Nina are wearing identical white shirts, everybody! Are they in a cult? Probably yes — specifically, a cult that practices human sacrifice via botched home births.

Crankshaft, 7/9/12

“Used to be you could make a gal cry by showing her your wang whenever you felt like it! Now you’ve gotta have one of them telephones you carry around with you, I guess.”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/8/12

Ha ha, Rex, even when you’re sort of doing the right thing, you’re being a dick! I’d like to think that he let a long, unpleasant silent moment go by after saying “It’s already gone, Iris! I cashed it on the way home,” just so everyone could imagine what was coming next — “I bought $25,000 worth of wax for that powerboat that we were just randomly given three or four storylines back” — before finally admitting that he’s giving it back to Iris and Foster’s body, because honestly, what would Rex even do with a paltry five-figure sum, am I right? Nice of him to throw some money at Mabel so she isn’t bankrupted by the false criminal charges against her, but isn’t the reason she was so desperate about the money is that she’s been saddled with all of Foster’s old gambling debts? Too bad for her, Foster needs the fanciest coffin money can buy, and Iris needs to pay a guerrilla marketing agency to “build buzz” for her film script! Look, she’s already posing for her publicity photo.

Meanwhile, good job on everyone concerned for not considering the tax consequences here: A $25,000 inheritance would have been well below the threshold for the estate tax, but it’s high enough to trigger the gift tax, so some of that money’s going to Uncle Sam. Note that when I say “good job” I’m not being sarcastic. I’d much rather this money be spent on corn subsidies and sacrilegious art and flying death robots than on whatever any of these clowns have planned for it.

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 7/8/12

In these throwaway panels, Dennis may not actually be menacing, but at least he’s giving off a pretty menacing vibe. He’s practicing for true menace later on, like when he sassily responds to criticism by waggling a pistol or severed hand or something.

Panel from Mary Worth, 7/8/12

By popular demand, Mary Worth brings you “Wilbur Weston: The Total Immersive Experience.” Sadly, comics technology has not yet advanced to the point where you can smell him, so you’ll have to take our word for it that he’s redolent of scalp polish and ham.