This strip represents the culmination of Further Songs Of Sorcelation, but if you seek greater closure on the imaginary film itself, that is something I can provide.

I crave these things.

We stopped by Gameworks on Sunday night before heading over to the Video Games Live concert. We had heard that they had a Street Fighter 4 machine and we all wanted to check it out. They did have the machine and when I saw it I was instantly transported back to my youth. The arcade culture that surrounds a new machine like this was in full effect and it was something I hadn't witnessed since I was a kid playing fighting games like Virtua fighter and Killer Instinct. Chairs had been scrounged up and placed around the cabinet. There was a steady stream of people going up against one guy who had been running the machine for a while. It was like watching people being fed into a chipper shredder. He dismantled each new player without ever giving up a single win as long as I watched. I snapped this picture because I thought it was so awesome.

I don't know how much longer we can lash you with this scourge and still retain our alignment. I would expect a reprieve shortly.

We'll be heading out to New York Comic Con in just a few weeks. It's been years since we were over on that side of the country and our first time at this particular show. We'll be sharing a booth there with Scott Kurtz which should be a lot of fun. We'll have tons of shirts,posters and books. You have to give us money for that stuff but as always I'll be doing sketches for free.

Making something that is bad on purpose - and not bad inadvertently, which is my usual process - is a whole-body thrill. It goes hard against every natural instinct to write this way. It has the delicious and irresistible texture of sin.

TwistedPixel's The Maw was the PAX 10 Audience Choice winner at this year's convention, and it just hit Xbox Live Arcade for purchase.  If you stopped by the booth and liked what you saw, I'm sure they'd love it if you queued up the demo.  

Revel as the first of many revelations is revealed! Not reveling is also an option. You could also just kick back and listen to some Ravel.

The Song continues, ringing with the moon-drunk ululations of that animal Franzibald. Inconceivably, his cult endures. What succor this gruesome spectacle must be for them, this Goddamned moth-eaten pageant. Something to occupy their mealy forebrains while they shuffle through the forest, prying grubs from stumps.

It is my pleasure to announce this year's winner of the Penny Arcade Scholarship, also known as the coveted "Here is Ten Thousand Dollars" Award.  Diane Melville of Babson College, if you are able to retain even a portion of the optimism on display in this application, you will have been an incredible investment.       

I got a lot of requests for a larger version of the SOTS cover. Here you go.

Further compounding the madness of Gabriel playing - and running - Dungeons & Dragons, I am now being told that he is reading Dragonlance. Yes, that's right. The books you read in Junior High, the ones you might read in the library, forgoing lunch altogether because the threat of physical violence was very real. I can't really be angry at this process anymore, and besides - if he's at Dragonlance, his archaeological trek through my formative age must nearly be complete. I read Neuromancer and Fahrenheit 451 before I ever got into Weis and Hickman, so he may be in for a shock near the end.

Andrew Lloyd Webber (or his clever handlers) are looking to position his ouvre in an interactive context, and they're approaching publishers in that regard. It's almost certainly going to culminate in some SingStar-type bullshit when it could be so very much more.

When we received the initial exploratory mail from Pork, asking if Gabe had room in his campaign, it was like being plunged into an icy stream. Once blood began to flow again, it seemed to us that his mental alacrity - which severely complicates normal conversations - may have a natural home at the table. If properly mitigated.

It's like when you rub a puppy's nose in the shit he left in your living room. Just think, in a few years when the comics from 2009 become a book. It will go to print like that. 

Gabe won't change it.  He's punishing me for letting it slip in there.