After being dicked around by Verizon for two weeks I finally told them to piss off and I got myself a new internet provider. When I moved into my new place Verizon told me I'd be up and running in five days. That was apparently a lie from the pits of hell. They hooked my phone up just fine but my DSL never kicked in. After a week I called their technical support. Now I don't know a lot about computers. I pretty much just use mine to play games and draw. I'm not teh hax0r by any stretch of the imagination. With that said I do know enough to know that the woman on the other end of this call was full of shit. I explained that my DSL modem ready light was simply flashing repeatedly which I understood to mean that I had no DSL. She had me go into internet explorer and delete my cookies. This sort of thing went on for about 45 minutes culminating in her telling me that the problem was with my router. I told her that I didn't have a router hooked up but this didn't seem to faze her. My imaginary router was not supported by Verizon and so the problem was my own fault. It was my use of phantom electronics that meant I would never again surf the world wide webs. So I told her to go fuck herself and I immediately called Comcast. Four days later I'm back online. The point of this story is that if you tried to send me a mail anytime in the last two weeks I never got it. I'm golden now though so if you still need to talk feel free to mail away.

Oh, it's quite true - Dr. Raven Darktalon Blood has been optioned and will now be smeared across movie screens worldwide, with no thought of how they will eventually remove it. I'm speechless, in the way that makes a person go on and on. And what's more, he must have had the foresight to cut me out a year ago, because I'm nowhere to be found in that strip's credits. I said I'd go down with him to the studio and see how things are coalescing, but told him that if his "vision" manifests itself as boiling human waste it's only because it tried to stay true to the source material.

Rob Liefeld has a new website. I honestly don't know how he keeps getting work but whatever. He has his own online comic called "Shrink!" that you can check out on his site.

My friend Steve over at Hypothermia slash HardOCP is giving away Earth PSPs to five lucky organisms! I understand that these PSPs each have a single dead pixel, but I've got three on mine and it's not the sort of thing that should keep you up at night. One can obtain "the infos" from here, were one so inclined.

The strip has a sharpness to it, something mean, but speaking for myself the idea that I could just watch an Oddworld story without having to twiddle a gamepad is something I'm genuinely looking forward to. Stranger, what would eventually come to be called Stranger's Wrath, was my favorite of the bunch - and I was still toiling from cinema to cinema. The desire to slide into noninteractive entertainment has always been there - their Big Brand aspirations being clear from the first Abe manual - and I think it's also clear that he would enjoy it more anyway. For an extremely intense interview with Lorne Lanning on closing down development and the realities of business as a third party, clicka this link.

I thought of myself, a select group of friends, and a minority of Penny Arcade readers as the only people who would find something like Silent Storm delicious - but I guess it's possible I was wrong. Somebody is buying these, at least, enough to sustain a niche title, and they appear to be

I don't know what characters look like long term in Guild Wars, just because I haven't played it enough or seen high level characters floss for real on the avenues of Ascalon.

We did a one page comic for Empire Earth II, and it's just been made available over at the main site - check the news.

It is true that, sometimes, things which are truly fresh will find their way to the office from this or that PR department. Most of the time they're just odd, for example a cat carrier or wildflower seeds. In numerical terms, Nintendo's heartfelt missives tend to promote the most eyebrow raising.

Usually when we make a new shirt, we end up with tons of them left over because we never ask anyone what they think we should make and end up crafting shirts based on evil line dancing troupes. It's a lesson I'm not sure we'll ever learn. Let's see if these do any better:

I'm sorry to say it's not true - Gabriel wasn't actually able to see the film - but a healthy number of people will be watching it next week while I wail and clutch my boxed set. I clicked the link the moment I knew about it, but by that time a wave of browncoats had already crashed over the limited supply and absorbed every ticket.

New images from the PSP version of Hot Shots hit a couple days ago, and I had to place a cotton ball under my tongue just to absorb the excess saliva.

I'm not dead, just busy. I'm working on some new advertisements for the page. We also just wrapped up a one page comic for Empire Earth II that you should see soon. Then I've got to crack out the cover for our next book. After we settled our legal bullshit we were free to sign with a new publisher and that publisher is, drum roll please...Dark Horse! That's right, Dark Horse will be making books and toys for us. How fucking awesome is that? Expect more announcements as we get closer to the San Diego comic con.

You might have seen that slice of Merch on my "desk" over on the right side of my photo above - that was hand-made by Cathy Keeble and given to us at SakuraCon. I have a number of one-of-a-kind items of this sort that should be given a greater degree of exposure on the site, I'd imagine. That is the new policy.

The disparity between our working areas could not be more pronounced. Observe how Gabriel gets it done: