Yeah, yeah, I usually mix “good news” themed posts with some visual reference to Professor Farnsworth; I just felt like it was more important to use tentacles today.

• Sad news from Portland, Oregon to share with you: one of the most brave, brutally honest journal comics is wrapping up:
  

  Hey dudes, good news!

  Or maybe good news?

  I’ve decided to end DAR!

  Okay, bad for me, good for Erika Moen … let’s get some more of the announcement taken care of:

  [H]ere is my Official, F’reals Announcement. The final strip will air on December 28th, 2009.

  I’ve been working on this project for about six years old now. It started my sophomore year of college as a 20 year old student and has seen me through my first love, finding my queer identity, my first heartbreak, my first rebounds, traveling to another country, depression and medication, having stupid adventures, meeting the man I’d eventually marry, re-structuring “my identity”, graduation, working in the real world while struggling to keep making art which brings us to today where I’m a 26 year old self-employed happily married woman.

  Oh, and I guess there were some dick ‘n’ fart jokes in there too.

  I’m extremely grateful for the wonderful opportunities and experiences and connections that have come into my life because of this ridiculous comic. After six years, I feel emotionally and mentally ready to move on.

  But don’t worry! DAR! was not my first comic and it is so far away from being my last. Making comics has been my passion for over a decade now (Hell, I even graduated from college with a self-made degree in comics) and I can’t see a time when I’ll ever stop.

  So that’s all right, then; Moen is still putting out a second volume of DAR! comics, and at the link above, you can sign up for an email notification when each of her new projects gets off the ground. I’m going to miss the crap out of DAR!, but I’m really interested to see where she’s going, and will enjoy the ride. The link to DAR! will remain in the sidebar for as long as the comics exist, or until a new project is even awesomer. Thanks for sharing so much of yourself with all of us, Erika — it was extraordinarily generous of you.

• As long as we’re talking about good things (and if Hurricane Erika decides that wrapping her comic is a good thing, I am officially On Board With That Shit), how’s about the cover of Hope Larson’s next graphic novel, Mercury? Two immediate thoughts:
  1. That’s freakin’ beautiful
  2. I am reminded of when Larson and husband Bryan Lee O’Malley both started getting notice for their early comics work, and my assessment was that it was Larson that was headed for superstardom; I Heart Scott Pilgrim’s Head as much as anybody, but seeing this cover makes me stand by my original judgement more than ever
• Know who’s got the weirdest career arc out of webcomics of anybody? Steve Troop. Just as Tiger Woods is getting all radioactive and dropped by sponsors, Nike busts out a new set of commercials that don’t feature humans (with their tendencies to attract the wrong sort of attention), but rather puppets. Puppets designed by Steve Troop, that is. The video of the first commercial can be seen hereabouts, with another six (and another 20 or so puppets) on deck for release as basketball season progresses. None of Troop’s signature aliens sighted yet, but one may hope … one may hope.
• Finally, it’s my understanding that a new Dresden Codak has been sighted in the wild; I can’t verify from the handheld but interested parties are urged to check for themselves.