What would you call the product that described in the comic? And what if you could see everyone’s farts? I wonder what color you would want them to be…

Store News: The Coffee Filter Shirt is still in preorder, and you should preorder it! Not only do you get an awesome shirt, but it shows what a great patron of the arts and of caffeinated beverages you are. PREORDER NOW »

Site News: The RSS feed issue you guys have been having? I’m still working on it (with the help of techier people than myself). I have the problem too, so it isn’t lost on me. Bare with me.

Contest News: Did you see Wednesday’s comic about lattes? Fancy yourself a barista? I’m running a contest on the site for you! Details will be up in a separate post later today. When it is, I’ll add a link to the details here. Here are all the details on the contest! Make coffee-related art, win shirts. Check it out »

UPDATE: Since Reddit is the reason the coffee comic mentioned below was so popular, I posted this one there as well. Yeah, I posted my own comic on Reddit.  I was “that guy”.  Still, if you want to vote for it on there, it would make it infinitely less lame.  Like when you throw yourself a party and nobody shows up.

Is your life less complicated than your latte art? Feel free to discuss in the comments about this, coffee in general, etc. Speaking of coffee, now might be a good time to check out all the other comics on the site about coffee. There are more than a few.

Speaking of which, coffee fans! A NEW SHIRT HAS ARRIVED.

One of the most requested designs I’ve ever had. Based on the most popular comic ever featured on The System (in prints, comic form, etc), “My Body is Just a Filter”. Now available IN PREORDER from the HilariAwesome.com store. GO PREORDER IT NOW »

Why preorder? Why not just order? Preorders is how I can tell how many people really want this thing, and how many I should order. In the case of the last shirt to go up on the site (the “Beards Turn Laziness into Awesomeness” shirt) the preorder was able to pay for the first run of inventory (thats tens of shirts, not hundreds. I’m not running H&M over here). Now’s your chance to get a shirt with coffee on it and support the site until I can finish book 1, or at least work more on it so you can give me money in exchange for that.

So do your part, Systemics. Especially you newcomers. Show your appreciation and invest in the site by investing in a t-shirt. Check out this shirt and the others from the HilariAwesome store »

Happy bad pun Friday!

COLOPHON: The tattoo font used is Tattoo Ink, a Freeware font by Ryan Splint. The extra flourishes are courtesy of Adobe Wood Type Ornaments, designed by Barbara Lind and Joy Redick. The rest is all set in Helvetica Neue, a 1983 reworked typeface based on the original Helvetica drawings and updated by Linotype to have more consistent letter heights and spacing.

It’s now totally too late to enter into the CUPCAKE SANDWICH contest. A whopping TWELVE amazing and totally valid entries have crossed the inbox!  While we are figuring out how to best tally the votes (some special ideas have been planned) here are a few errata that have come up on the topic of cupcakes and sandwiches that can hold you over as we produce some final judgments:

First up is Systemic Rachel “ROFLcon” Mercer’s link to the Cupcake Hamburger Sandwich. It looks amazing and if she’d sent me some of these little goodies, I’d be hers forever she totally would’ve been in the running for the grand prize. LINK »

Next comes a link from Systemic Kate, an article on Jezebel titled Bakery Backlash: It’s A Cupcake, Not A Puppy. Clearly some people haven’t tried THE SANDWICH yet.  LINK »

Finally, via Systemic Cledwyn via Soon-to-be-Systemic Andrew Sullivan (once SOMEONE can find me his address and I mail him a BEARDS shirt) comes a blog called Dudes with Beards Eating Cupcakes. Combines my love for the CUPCAKE SANDWICH with my love of BEARDS. LINK »

This is my gift to the world. A way of fully indulging in the joys of the cupcake without any of the drawbacks. A way that balances every bite with frosting, cake, and the joy of knowing you have truly proven yourself to be an enlightened and practical individual. I know what you’re thinking, there must be some drawbacks! Here are some common questions about THE CUPCAKE SANDWICH:

Won’t the frosting get everywhere?
While some frosting does leak out the sides at times, this is a perfect opportunity to have a bit of frosting by itself without having to have globs of it all at once. Don’t consider this a drawback, but an opportunity.

How is this any shorter than it was before? Won’t getting it in your mouth still be a problem? And your math sucks, cupcakes are not 2x the height of my mouth.
First of all, you are probably the same detractors that found flaws in the Full Gadget Ratio. Nertz to you. Second, no this will not be a problem. The cakey bottom, once placed on top, creates a “safe zone” for your hands with which you can compress the size of the cupcake at will, without getting your hands covered in frosting. As for the height of the cupcake vs mouth, it may not be perfect but sometimes the best things in life aren’t.

How have I never thought of this before?
This is why I’m an internet humorist and you’re a reader. We all have our roles to play.

UPDATE: Systemic Brownpau sends word that others have come up with the same idea…

Time for a contest, Systemics!

You have ONE WEEK (until the end of 4/1/2010 EST) to send me a photo of you and your friends enjoying a CUPCAKE SANDWICH. These must be emailed to systemcomic at gmail. Points will be given based on:

• Amazingness of the cupcake
• Composition of the photo
• Number of people eating CUPCAKE SANDWICHES in the photo
• Originality

What’s on the line?

• A print of the CUPCAKE SANDWICH comic you see above from HilariAwesome.com
• A shirt of your choosing from HilariAwesome.com, including the fresh new “Beards Turn Laziness Into Awesomeness” shirt (which is still on preorder sale through tomorrow!)
• A post on the site all about you and your CUPCAKE SANDWICH experience

UPDATE: You can even buy this as a print from my store!

Today’s comic was largely inspired by two things:

1. Loldwell’s awesome comic on his cycle known as “An Earful of Nothing”.
2. The entirety of my professional career.

If you haven’t checked out Loldwell yet, you really need to. I linked to it a while back and it is always worth the read. He also does comics / illustrations for College Humor, but they don’t need a link cuz they are doing juuuuust fine.

You know who COULD use your help? ME! I could still use your help by preordering the new BEARD SHIRTS. They are only $17.00 plus shipping and preordering helps me figure out a lot about how many to order. I’m running preorder through the end of this week so be sure to PREORDER NOW!

CHECK OUT AN AWESOME SHIRT »

PRE-ORDER THIS SHIRT! »

Since starting up HilariAwesome.com, there are a series of shirts I knew I wanted to do straight away. Kinda like how Pixar planned out their first 5 movies in one big lunch meeting, here is my Wall•E. The best shirt ever. Based on this comic, here is a shirt for people who have beards, love them, or just like awesome shirts.

Speaking of awesome, I cannot take full responsibility for this shirt. Fellow beard enthusiast and amazing illustrator Bryan Prindiville is the hand that actually drew the final product. How amazing is that?

Right now the shirt is in PREORDER, which means that:

• It’s cheaper.
• It will take a little longer to get it to you.
• Ordering it helps me order more.
• You are in on the ground floor of awesome.
• It helps me afford a better bottle of scotch to “pay” the illustrator.

PRE-ORDER THIS SHIRT! »

UPDATE: The feed has not been working for some people. As far as I can tell this is due to the lag it takes to slowly get it all to feed / propogate. The link that should work is http://feeds.feedburner.com/systemcomic . This now works for me to add it to Google Reader, let me know if you’re having trouble.

Howdy, Systemics! I don’t know what you think goes on behind the scenes of this comic, but I’m going to try and start being a little more up front and see how that goes. Hopefully you guys appreciate seeing how things really work here either as fellow creators, voyeuristic readers, or just because you like reading crap while you’re bored at work.

Did you know I would like to make money off this comic? I know, that’s crazy talk. The first part of that comment you should realize is that right now, I don’t make money off this comic.  Sure the HilariAwesome store is available and I get a sale or two a month, but the only real revenue ever seen is when I go to conventions and get to deal things in bulk. I love doing that, but it would be great if the site at least paid for it’s own hosting, maybe even a little extra. That could really take the edge off and help justify the time I put into things around here, as well as help out with the upcoming site redesign and The System Book 1 printing costs. So I’m trying to optimize / revitalize the way I try and make some cash on the site.

No, I’m not going to start charging for the content you’re used to getting for free. But If I can find ways to get the site to pay for itself or maybe even earn me a few bucks without having to inconvenience you the reader too badly, I figure I should give it a shot. As such, today starts the Great Feed Experiment. I would like to be pretty up front about this so here are all the details:

Readership on this comic is around 3,000 – 5,000 readers a day, depending on which stat tracker I look at, what sites are linking to me, what StumbleUpon feels like doing, and what I’ve been doing to update lately. It’s been there for over 6 months and it’s a great number though I’m not a fan of the plateau. From what I understand a comic running under 2 years this is a great number. I’m certainly proud of it, though of course it would always be nice if it was growing. Unfortunately, it’s not a big enough number for web ads to really do that much good. You need orders of magnitude more in the way of readers or amazing ad networks to do anything near good money with ad traffic.

However, there’s a silver lining. For a site this size, we have a HUGE number of RSS feed subscribers. Google Reader alone shows 1,398 followers as I write this, which as far as I can tell is really big for a site this size. That’s only the Google Reader ones, not to mention people subscribing through other means. After talking it over with my internet brother from another mother Marty, I’d like to know more about it and possibly utilize it a little bit, so as of today I’m starting to run the feed through FeedBurner to better track how many people are subscribing, and adding Google Adsense to the feed. I know that Adsense is one of the worst ad networks in terms of revenue because they are so general, but it’s a start until I can get on some better networks.

If you are a subscriber through the RSS and something I’ve done in this process has effected the way you read the comic and made you want to STOP reading the comic, let me know. (systemcomic at gmail) I’d rather have readers than money hands down. (systemcomic at gmail) If it is simply messing with the way you read the comic or possibly breaking anything, let me know that too. (systemcomic at gmail) I’ve tested and it seems to all be working but I won’t know for sure until you tell me what’s going on.

Anyway, thanks for understanding and of course reading the comic. It’s often easy to forget that looking at the numbers relates to real people who have taken time every day to follow what I write / draw here, which is why I always encourage you to get in touch with me. (systemcomic at gmail) Hopefully we are all building to something together. As it says in the masthead, comics will keep being posted until morale improves.

Thanks all.  Feel free to leave any thoughts in the comments, message me on The Twitters, or email me at, you guessed it, (systemcomic at gmail).

I know there was no comic Monday or even last Friday, so I’ll be spending the rest of the week trying to catch up to the schedule. Stick with me, Systemics. Big things are on the horizon.

Btw if you like this and are looking for some cycling revenge, you may want to check out the Bike Sniper shirt from our store, HilariAwesome.

Quick note: The last few comics apparently skipped a number, so I just went through and cleaned up what was 337-339 which is now 336-338 (and now this is 339 and not 340). Thanks to Systemics Suiken and Zethreal for pointing it out!

I think anyone who rides the subway / metro / light rail often enough has had operators like this. Especially here in DC, where WMATA has blessed us with some real gems. Have any good stories about train operators? Share ’em in the comments!

Heads up, preorders are going to open up for a new shirt at Hilariawesome.com! What will it be? This should give you a hint…