We’ve been working on a new project for a few weeks now and I can finally announce it here. Ubisoft has asked us to create a special four page comic to go along with the new Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon game they are releasing next month. The opportunity to tell a story in that world, with those characters is a real honor. Our comic stars Li Mu Bai and his famous blade Green Destiny. We’ve had a lot of fun working on this project and I’m super excited for you guys to see it. I’ll be sure and let you know when it becomes available online. Be sure and hit the Crouching Tiger website if you haven’t already.

If you live in Seattle and like to watch plays, Brenna is in one coming up for the Fringe Festival - I've read the script, and it's pretty Goddamn funny. It has dates running for about a week starting this Saturday, and I guess she does some kind of sensual dancing or something in it. Please cover your eyes during that part. The rest of it, however, you may watch and enjoy.

Gamespy has their latest adorable attempt at relevance up, a list of the 25 most overrated games of all time. You can go look at it if you want, I'm certainly not putting a link to it here - suffice it to say, where it is obvious it is obvious, and where they attempt to be brash and iconoclastic it's just insulting. We've done a comic on it, I'll take it frame by frame it.

Some interesting news regarding everyone's favorite imaginary videogame console.

Now that's something to celebrate. Also, can I just say how impressed I am with 3D Gamers' adoption of Bit Torrent? It is the perfect solution to distributing larger, high-demand files - and game demos are virtually a textbook case. If you haven't already tried it out, grab the client and try to download some file you've been meaning to get. If community sites started working together to offer and promote Bit Torrent for downloads, no-one would ever want for files - even on the first day. In fact, especially on the first day.

I am working today on a new comic book project and I am having some issues with my Wacom tablet. I was hoping I could tell you guys what was going on and maybe get some advice. The mouse pointer shakes whenever I am using the pen on my tablet. No matter how still I hold my hand the pointer shakes like mad. It started doing this a few days ago but today it’s super bad. The tablet itself is about four years old. I have the latest drivers and all that jazz. Anyone have any ideas?

The "Christmas in September", aka my birthday is fast approaching and I hope you are all feeling the excitement. This is what Tycho had to say about my special day last year:

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has - among many, many other things - a system of laws and judges that govern the methods used to achieve victory in each battle. And when I say the methods, I mean your methods, because the huge lizards you must sometimes conquer don't give a flying fuck about the rules. I had seen a screenshot once that I thought showed a representation of one of the judges, and it looked like a young vulture. I understand now that judges are (in fact) huge armored bad-asses who ride vicious chocobos, which makes more sense. I couldn't figure out why you would do something just because a bird told you to.

Yeah, you know the elation you're feeling right now? You could have felt like this your entire life.

When it rains it pours and it’s fucking pouring at my house. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking but I was at the store today looking through the strategy guide for FF:Tactics and I started drooling. I was high off of another marathon session of Disgaea and all the stats and items and jobs in Tactics started looking like an all you can fucking eat buffet at the Sizzler. I had to get in there with a knife and fork and do some Goddamned damage. So I broke down and bought the game and the guide but told myself I wouldn’t start it until I was finished with Disgaea. So of course I crack it open as soon as I get home and now four hours just fell out of my life in what felt like two seconds and I’m craving more. I splashed some cold water in my face and took a hard look at myself in the mirror. What the hell is going on? Am I really trying to play four RPG’s at once. I’m nearing the end of the second disk in FF IX. I’m obsessed with making sure every character learns every possible ability from every single item I get. I’m almost forty hours into FF:Crystal Chronicles. It’s hard to stop thinking about what new evils await our party in the unexplored continent we just discovered. I’m eleven hours into Disgaea and I feel like a baby taking his first wobbly steps into a new and exciting world. I have dreams about transmigrating characters for God’s sake. Now I’m sitting here writing this post by the dim light of a glowing GBA that sits paused on my desk. I can see a tiny moogle there waiting to continue his conversation with me and God help me I am dying to hear what that bobble headed little fucker has to say about Jobs and Judge points. I’ve got so many RPG’s just begging for my attention that I don’t know whether to shit or go blind. This could be the end of me.

I find myself waking up early so that I can get a head start on playing Disgaea. People kept sending me e-mail telling me that I needed to play this game. I had never heard of it before but I was willing to take their advice. I decided to use it as a test for the Gamefly service since I wasn’t ready to purchase it. Now I’ll probably just end up keeping it until I can buy it used from them.

In days of old, I established the parameters of Gabriel's affection for RPG in a two strip series entitled The Cycle. He has been my project in this regard, a sort of rogue protege, but until a game came out that combined Star Wars and role-playing my lessons never took root. Immediately after Knights of the Old Republic, he started playing Final Fantasy X, then he moved on to Final Fantasy IX, and now - joy of joys! - he's moved on to the tactical battle game everyone seems to love, Disgaea. Not only is he playing it, he beat me to it. I'm trying to figure out if that makes me mad or not.

Some kind of program that blocks known RIAA jackholes from diddling your computer with their hideous mutant prongs. Oh, that's right! I guess PeerGuardian does that.

If you are into digital freedoms at all, might I reccomend Canada? I hear the liberty is nice there this time of year.

Lots of you are asking how I got the image on the side of my case. I actually used my connections with the experts over at GBA MOD. I asked them make me a big ass glossy sticker. Well actually two stickers that I then put together. It’s not perfect since you can still see a little line where the two halves meet. It’s pretty fucking sweet though and I’m happy with it. As for us offering something similar for others to purchase, I am not sure yet. As of right now I wouldn’t feel right about selling stickers this size unless we could make them in one piece. I’ll look into and let you guys know.

This weekend’s event is shaping up nicely. If you would like to partake in some Crystal Chronicles you don’t necessarily need a GBA. It would be cool if you brought one but we will have some extras on had if you can’t find yours or whatever. A few people asked about what sorts of limitations there will be on what I’m willing to sketch on Saturday. Someone requested an intricately detailed illustration involving multiple characters in various states of undress cavorting in a magical forest full of wood nymphs and water sprites. Yeah, that’s probably not gonna happen. See I’m gonna have a sharpie and you can ask me to draw any character from the comic strip and I’ll go ahead and do that for you. For example at the San Diego comic con I drew lots and lots of Fruit Fuckers some Cardboard Tube Samurais and even a couple Claw Shrimp. I’ll have plenty of paper there so you don’t need to bring anything but your smiling face.