For the best experience reading that headline, adopt the accent and vocal patterns of the faux German baker¹ in the old Pillsbury Toaster Strudel commercial: Strudel … zum toasten? And yes, there are new Kickstarts of which you should be informed.

• Sam Logan cannot be accused of thinking small. He’s been drawing Sam and Fuzzy for just about eighteen damn years, through four distinct eras, wrapping up the last arc after more than 1700 pages and ten years. He took time for a little introspection, and some shorter stories that won’t turn into the behemoths he’s been known for (probably).

  Along the way, he published books, including five great big tomes for the final arc, ranging between 368 and 606 (!) pages each. A’course, the fifth book only contained the story up to the October/November 2015 time frame, meaning four solid years of story remained unpublished in dead tree form.

  For now:

  After 17 years, the Sam and Fuzzy saga’s epic, hilarious, earth-shattering conclusion has finally arrived. And this grand finale is so big, it took two books to contain it all: Volume 6 and 7: Race to the Bottom Part 1 and 2!

  Race to the Bottom is the two-part conclusion to the series, and is jam-packed with over 1100 pages of surprises and mayhem.

  US$45 gets you the two new volumes in softcover, which is a ridiculous value in terms of per-page costs. US$65 upgrades you to hardcover (ditto), and you can get all seven volumes for US$159 (softcover) or US$175 (hardcover). If you’re an obsessive completist and have about a linear meter of bookshelf space, you can get the print versions of the earlier three eras (pre-2009 or so) as well as all seven modern books for US$195 (softcover) or US$229 (hardcover). The bundles also come with a suitable amount of bonuses — pins, bookplates, everything in PDF, etc.

  Impressively, even the largest of those instant libraries doesn’t appear to charge more than about US$25 for shipping (to the US, at least), which makes me wonder it it arrives via freight. The whole thing is under the Make That Thing umbrella, so you know it’ll get done on time and reach you when promised, subject to the possible complete destruction of the US Postal Service to meet the whims of a narcissistic sociopath. In that eventuality, I’m pretty sure the MTT magical elves will find a way to get it to you about three weeks later, possibly by unicorn.

  Anyhoo, as of this writing the campaign is a little under US$24.6K of a US$37.5K goal, which is pretty damn good for a project that launched earlier today. Look for this one to fund out by a more than comfortable margin.

• Speaking of comfortable margins, you’ve seen Madi: Once Upon A Time In The Future, right? Launched yesterday, presently 378% of its US$50K goal, the third part of Duncan Jones’s distopian trilogy (the first two parts being the films Moon and Mute, co-written with Alex de Campi (for my money, the most broadly capable writer in comics today), with sections of the story drawn by a murderer’s row of artistic talent? No? Well, here’s the first 19 pages available for you to download now.

  Artists include two of my absolute favorites, Pia Guerra and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, mixed in with a few names you might recognize: Stokoe, Fabry, Bisley, Fegredo, and more. The artistic contributors are paid their full asking rate² and will receive royalties. These 260 pages (and various bonus pages in the fancier form factors) will be done on paper period. To quote the campaign, No digital version of MADI will be made available at this time, or indeed maybe ever.

  This book is going to sweep a lot of awards. The free preview has its hooks deep into my brain, and I cannot wait to get my copy come November. Check this one out at the first opportunity.

Spam of the day:

Metformin and 3 other big selling diabetes drugs are under secret review.

Let me know when they’re under double secret review. Until then, you’re full of crap.

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¹ This introductory paragraph is dedicated to my old college co-conspirator John Costain “Thrice” Knight III, with whom I would occasionally lock eyes and intone Strudel knowing that he would always reply zum toasten?

He also barfed over the counter in Hardee’s one post-midnight Saturday night, because when you’ve been drinking after exam week and need food at that hour no other place is open. Eventually he became responsible for standing watches to ensure that the nuclear reactor on the John C Stennis (CVN-74) did not melt down despite the fact that he was part of the pre-commissioning crew and the reactor was not yet loaded with fissile material. I’d chalk it up to weird-ass military thinking but it honestly just kind of made sense for Thrice.

² I’m now remembering some tweets from Jones, maybe end of last year, asking how much he should expect to pay for the art for a graphic novel of ~ 200 pages, because he didn’t want to be an exploitative jerk and underpay people. He didn’t know, he asked, and he didn’t pitch a fit when large numbers were quoted at him. I made a mental note of Jones’s approach then, and I’m excited to see what comics can do when a writer of expansive vision partners with a writer super skilled in the medium, with and with visual artists of supreme ability, and nobody’s getting screwed.