If you’re ever looking for something to do on the days when I don’t update, here are two comics worth checking out:

The Mighty Monkey-Men

My old friend Terry Biddle has been illustrating and drawing comics for a long time, but just recently posted his first online. The Mighty Monkey-Men, a 12-page story, has some really great art and a fun story. He says he’ll post more soon, so if you like it, post him a comment on his site and tell him you want more. I’m sure that’ll speed things along. LINK »

The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal

Back when I used to be much more of a LiveJournal user, I would follow the work of E.K. (aka BigBigTruck). She was a great artist who would post some music mixes every once in a while. She frequently posted sketches from a comic she assured everyone she was working on, a road trip story about two guys named TJ and Amal. Comics and music, I could get behind that. After a while I lost track, probably around when I stopped using LJ so much.

Flash forward to earlier this week, when I see that she’s bid on the Project Wonderful advertising space on this here website. I was thrilled and immediately went through all 10 chapters of the comic currently available on her site, and downloaded every music mix I could find therein. The story is still mounting but the artwork is great and she clearly has this all worked out in her head. She has, after all, been writing this story for something like 5 damn years. Go check it out, tell her Ross sent ya. LINK »

I did a guest comic today for my friends over at Explosm.net, creators of Cyanide and Happiness. These are the first two panels. Click the picture or here to see how it turns out!

To those C&H fans who have come over, hi there! Welcome to The System. Check out the growing comic archive, comment on posts, and generally enjoy. If you’re looking to become one of the true fans, here’s a post I put together the other day about how new fans can get involved on the site. Just take everywhere it says “Slashdot” and replace it with “Explosm”. Or you and the Slashdotters can fight it out like something out of West Side Story.

You can start by commenting on this post and saying hi. What did you think of the guest comic?

Hey Systemics! How many of you are in the tri-state area? Come to Wild Pig Con this weekend! I’m going to be joining my Super Art Fight crew for an amazing show at 4pm on Saturday, but there will also be tables to buy and meet people such as myself and a ton of comic friends including:

• Ami from Glass Urchin
• Danielle from Girls with Slingshots
• Joe (and I’m hoping the rest of his gang) from Digital Pimp / Joe Loves Crappy Movies
• Dern from Hello With Cheese
• Kev and Blondie from Caf-Fiends
• Caldwell Loldwell Tanner
• James from In His Likeness

and a bunch of others that, while worthy of your time, are not people I’ve met and can claim to know. But they’ll be there too. Here’s the guest list.

Details? Oh, okay.

WHEN: Saturday, May 15th from noon to 8 PM, and Sunday, May 16th from 10 AM to 5 PM

WHERE: The Springfield Holiday Inn on Route 22 West in Springfield, NJ.

HOW MUCH: Only $5 to get in. That’s really cheap!

Here’s their website for any more info. Let me know in the comments if you plan on attending! Mention the secret phrase when you come by my table and I’ll give you FREE STUFF. What’s the secret phrase you say?

Jimmy is out to get me.

What’s the free stuff? You’ll have to come by the table and find out. Also, a special guest! RossMom from the comments (yknow, my mother) will be coming by too. See her and me and my dad too! See you this weekend!

Picture courtesy Staeiou

A little over a week ago I had the chance to travel as part of Super Art Fight to ROFLcon as a guest. A guest at M.I.T., mind you! It was a great time and we had a great show. Thanks SO MUCH to Tim, Rachel, George (who owes me a $*&@ pen!) and the rest of the awesome ROFLcon people who helped bring us out and make that happen. For those that are interested, lots of little things have bubbled to the surface since, so here’s a quick roundup.

There’s a great writeup of what SAF is like over at GeekingOutAbout. LINK »

While we weren’t interviewed by Attack of the Show, they did most of their filming in the room we were selling merch. If you squint, you can almost make out me standing at our table with Jamie Noguchi trying to shill wares and get people to go to our show. You can watch the whole video here, but here’s a screen shot of what I’m talking about:

If you want to watch our actual show at ROFLcon, it will eventually be up on Archive.org. In the meantime, some diligent SAF fans recorded and posted most of the show in both photos and video. Photos are all on Flickr under the superartfight tag, and here’s a video of the ENTIRE SHOW (via the awesome Kurteng):

The trip was definitely an amazing one for Super Art Fight and The System, though it can be a little tricky to wear both hats at an event like this.

Luckily we had the show to do which went very well for all those involved. We had the honor and privelage to host more than our normal share of guest stars this time out including SAF roster regulars Chris Impink, Jamie Noguchi, Yuko Ota and Jamie Baldwin as well as newcomers to the canvas Zach Wiener, Tak Toyoshima and guest commentator extraordinaire Kris Straub. I’ll be honest, I love having SAF as a chance to talk to and work with other artists whose work I respect and enjoy. Sometimes, it even leads to other shows and projects, but more on that another time…

If you want more than this, Marty (and sometimes me but mostly Marty) keep all this sort of info about our Super Art Fight things over at SuperArtFight.com, which is the real place to keep up with all our upcoming shows and the like. You should go there and sign up for updates.

Anyway, hope you like the roundup! These things take me forever to write so if you enjoy reading it (or don’t), be honest and let me know in the comments.

(Photo courtesy Brian Slaski)

Since getting into the webcomics biz, I have had one friend the entire time that I could count on through it all. That man couldn’t be reached for comment, but it’s Jamie Noguchi’s birthday. Jamie is one of the unsung heroes of comics whose stuff you have undoubtedly run across.

He started drawing comics back in 2001 with a horrible comic called Titanium Moose. He’d kill me if I linked to it, but it comes up when you Google. It’s just amazing to see how far it’s come.

He spent two years as a professional colorist with Udon Entertainment collective, but left after rough hours and no chances to draw his own things made him seek other opportunities.

He was the awesomely amazing artist and half the team behind Erfworld, which under his time there was named one of Time Mazine’s top 10 graphic novels of 2007. Because he’s that awesome.  Again, he left this project as it was starting to become more about the rules of the world and less about the story he wanted to tell.

He’s worked on countless projects with and for other artists including Applegeeks, Goats, Johnny Wander, coloring a poster for Axe Cop, doing a guest comic for me, doing poster art for Peelander Z, and who knows how many others.

He runs more blogs than I know what do do with including his latest comic endeavor, an office comedy romance strip starring an annoyed asian graphic designer named Kane. It’s called Yellow Peril and you should be reading it Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Oh, and after having helped him move a few years back, I can testify to the fact that he owns more little figurines and toys than anyone I know in his tiny-ass apartment.

The man is one of the unsung heroes of comics. I mean how many times do you have to be almost-famous until you’re making it happen full time (like I know he wants to do?) I feel for the guy. I really do. And on this, the anniversary of his birth, I invite you to check out the man’s work. Follow him up. Consider buying some of his things, or at least keeping your eyes out for the man. He’s going to be famous soon and you’ll want to be able to say you knew him when. SO GO READ HIS COMIC NOW.

Happy birthday, Jamie Noguchi. Go get that shit.

The first in a possibly exhaustive series on how to be an expert.

HEY EXPLOSM FANS! Thanks to my good friends Rob (the drinker), Kris (the “Funniest Man on the Internet”), Matt (the other drinker) and Dave (possibly another drinker) for posting The System on their site as “Stuff We Like”. I noticed right off when people started commenting on early comics. That’s generally a pretty good giveaway.

For those of you who are fans of Explosm, while I suggest you bookmark the site and read it religiously, I may also suggest you might want to check out some comics in the past on Jimmy the Murderdog, Explosions, Batman and possibly farts. Of course there’s plenty more on biking, coffee, typography, and (my favorite) rules and terms that may just tickle your oh-so-refined fancy.

A little behind the scenes: Apologies for the late-in-the-day updates, the lack of consistency, etc. While there is always the RSS feed, the comic is still being churned out as fast as I can. A little bit of real life has trickled into the process, but rest assured more are coming and I’m trying to keep to the Mon / Wed / Fri schedule as best I can. Of course with none from last Friday, I’ll try to make that up this week as a show of good faith to you loyal Systemics out there.

A couple days ago I had quite a beard, but instead of just shaving the whole thing off I did so in parts, with pictures along the way. Past the Chester and the Wolverine I made my way to The Cop Stache. What a wonderful reason to send a photo to Axe Cop, right?  Well the brothers Axe Cop deemed it worthy of posting on their Head Choppers page. Call me X-Acto Cop! Click through to see me with a killer ‘stache. LINK »

A couple days ago, somehow, I caught wind of a Twitter contest run by fellow graphic designer / webtoonist Carolyn.  Somehow I won, and this is the resulting piece! A great comic full of graphic design humor and bad puns, both favorites of mine (and most of you). LINK »

Do you know who Ryan Estrada is?  (HINT: He wasn’t on C.H.I.P.S.) He’s a cartoonist, a webcartoonist at that, and has been around and had more projects than anyone I know (probably most famous Ryan Estrada Day, where he pretty much took over the internet). The man must draw faster than I can copy and paste, I swear. Well two of his projects need your help!

First up, Ryan has a comic up for voting at Zuda Comics.  Now that the dust has settled after everyone decided to hate on Zuda, and it turns out it isn’t such a bad deal. So help a brother out, check out this comic, and vote for him.  If you do and put a comment on the site, he’ll even do a drawing of whatever it is that you comment for FREE.  Because he’s that CRAAAAZY. Apparently last time out he lost by 2 votes. TWO votes! Don’t let one of those be you missing out. LINK.

So why is he working with Zuda? Turns out he’s going to turn around to use the money to help get voice acting for his feature-length animated film that he’s working on.  It’s a love story about a werewolf, and beyond that you can read more on the website. I can’t release names, but he is in talks with some big name actors, and ones that are fans of The System will be sure to appreciate. By putting some money towards it, you can even make an appearance in the movie.  Here’s all the details on getting involved.  LINK.

I got this in the mail a few weeks ago, which means I just finally got around to seeing it at the bottom of a pile today.  Thanks to Caldwell (who does some awesome comics) for this awesome drawing on this great postcard. The card is from a series that has so many of my friends involved that I’m amazed I didn’t hear about it sooner! Go webcomics!

As for the content of the card itself, it says “Plumber X-ing” and is what I suppose goes on traffic signs in the Mushroom Kingdom. Well done, sir.

A 5-year old kid writes a comic. His 29-year old brother draws it. Together, they fight crime. It’s been everywhere in the last week but it’s worth posting here to, if only to visually throw my support behind it. Because it’s amazing. I just wish the site wasn’t in flash, so I recommend clicking “Non-Flash” in the top right the minute you get to the site. LINK.

On a personal note, this comic honestly makes me want to try harder. To come up with more original ideas, and let go the way a 5-year-old writing gets to. There is a joy in being able to concentrate on one part of things (the writing or the art) that lets you take things further than they could otherwise. That’s why I put so many rules into creating The System. The more rules, the more fun I can have seeing how I can manipulate them. I think that’s part of what makes the art of Axe Cop so fun, he gets to interpret a 5-year-old’s ideas into visual form. Not to mention, it narrates like a child would write it.  And there’s some video proof on the site, in case there was any doubt in your mind an adult would write Flute Cop turning into Dinosaur Soldier turning into Avocato Soldier (to say nothing of Uni-Baby).