How’s about a roundup? I feel like a roundup today.

• New comics, each with fewer than ten updates, which I feel confident in recommending to you: on the one hand, what looks to be a first foray into webcomickry by Priscilla Tramontano, whom I’ve not heard of before, with the whimsical and charming My Roomie, The Dark Lord. Theoretically a weekly (just RSS it and you’ll be fine), a nameless girl (unless her name really is “Vermin”) shares a flat with a standard (if nameless) evil fantasy-world Lord of Power and Doom and Badness. They seem to get on great, and it’s the little touches, like the Dark Lord’s jammies or the girl’s utter nonchalance at his malevolence that drive the humor. There’s a lesson in roomie relations to be found as well, as any two people, no matter how different, are sure to have aspects of their personality that the other can value. I’ll be watching this one.

  On the other hand, acknowledged master Doug TenNapel is worldbuilding with Nnewts. It’s about, well, newts, those little amphibian critters that undergo all kinds of metamorphoses on their way from egg to tadpolish swimmy deal to moist-skinned quadruped. Only these newts have magic, and society and adventures and it’s pretty. Readers may recall TenNapel’s previous webcomic, Ratfist, which ran for a year and got ever’body good and hooked before completing in print; no idea yet if Nnewts will do the same, but dang if there’s not something appealing in the idea of a creator running a story for a while, wrapping it up, and moving on to something completely different.

• Speaking of “wrapping it up”, both John Allison and Kris Straub are killing it as they bring stories to a close. For Allison, The Case of the Fire Inside has delved ever deeper into the minefield that is the psyche of Tackleford Teens, what with hormones starting to bubble and opposite sexes getting noticed and wondering who you really are, oh, and seal girls also. The conclusion was stepping along smartly, with everybody possibly getting what they wanted, (if not necessarily what they needed) in a bittersweet fashion and then … wham. Punch in the gut.

  Meanwhile, all the pieces that Memnon Delphius Vanderbeam put into place were coalescing, as he died in his own arms his plans to save the now by canceling the future via the past came together with the promise of his heart’s fondest wish. I’ve been wondering how Straub would take an act of supreme optimism born of despair and make it pay off without cheating. Now we know.

• Portland, ho, where one should note some books on the horizon. As previously noted, Bucko is getting a print treatment in September, and should you have an interest in purchasing it¹, the Diamond order codes are now available to take to your friendly local comic shop. And just across the aisle at Periscope Studio, Dylan Meconis is prepping up print versions of her three most prominent out of print/never been printed works: Bite Me!, Danse Macabre, and the Eisner-nominated (Best Digital Comic, to be determined in a month in San Diego) Outfoxed, which you may peruse via the requisite Kickstarter².

  My only dilemma — I already have a (signed, sketched) copy of Bite Me! and very little shelf space, so I don’t need another copy. Which level of support (it’s a given I’m going to support any project that gets Meconis’s work out in print) do I pledge at to get a copies of the other two, and not get a superfluous copy of Bite Me!? Modern problems, y’all; might just have to bite (so to speak) the bullet, get all three, and give the spare BM! away.

• I don’t know why it’s not at their website, but at least some of this week’s books from The Big i feature a house ad of Jim Zubkavich, all around nice guy and walking creative explosion. Fortunately, Mr Zub has a copy of it at his site, and it’s damn good photo with some damn good words. Nice one, Jim.

_______________
¹ Which should be akin to remarking, “You like to breathe.”

² Which features the best video I’ve seen this week, and that includes Neal Stephenson’s video for Clang.