Seriously, why are you reading this, American readers? You should be eating pie!

Anyway, quick bit today, as I received in the mail this week a Stuff Sucks skin for my iPod. As near as I can tell, Liz Greenfield is the first to put webcomics stuff on a iPod skin, and I’m surprised that others haven’t jumped on the bandwagon — it’s a great combination.

The actual manufactury is by the folks at GelaSkins, and not having been previously familiar with their products, I gotta say that it’s pretty nice, but a slight pain to apply. It took some patient attempts to get the skin to wrap my Nano with no overlap, and the screen insert took a while to give up its air bubbles. Also, there are almost vanishingly-small strips that need to be peeled off after applying the clickwheel & select button overlays, or the controls don’t work smoothly (you can see the white rings in the photo above, but this was not well explained in the product instructions).

But none of these concerns are major, and none of them detract from Greenfield’s killer art; I feel confident that my tunes are now sexily protected against all smears, scratches and minor bumps. It’s so nice, in fact, that my wife wants one with T-Rex and/or Utahraptor for her iPod (Are you reading this, Ryan North? It’s not a holiday for you today, but you can still have pie if you want!). Anyway, the totality of field testing from Fleen Labs has resulted in a rating of Unequivocally Worth Your Money for the Stuff Sucks iPod skin. Before we wrap (ha, ha!), let’s hear from the creator herself about recent goings-on:

One great thing about making webcomics in Manchester England, as I’m sure John Allison would agree, is that it never requires you to leave your house on a cold day in November while it is invariably raining buckets. I made a dangerous exception this [past] weekend to launch my first British art show, alongside four other creators from across the land! A wide array of traditional media was used including lumps of wood, heavy drinking, and vandalism. The turnout was enough fun to last me throughout the wet winter season.

(Rumor has it that Greenfield will be venturing afield again for the Birmingham International Comics Show, Dec 9 & 10; if you see her, tell her the skin rocks hard.)

Editor’s note: Yeah, we saw that the graphic didn’t upload. It’s a holiday, we’ll fix it eventually. Sorry. Fixed!

Things is happening over Dumbrella way; many people seem to think that Jeff Rowland doesn’t actually like Garfield. In other news, Rich Stevens is picking his battles; two shirts are going away on Friday, one may be hanging in there, but final disposition remains to be seen. On the positive side, Pixelween starts today with a little animation action.

Speaking of action, Jon Rosenberg‘s got an action figure, and if you pre-ordered one, you possibly have it now, too! At least, I do — waiting on my front porch when I got home last night. My wife was very amused by the back-of-the-box copy, and thinks that the little tiny Necronomicon (2nd edition) accessory is the funniest toy supplement ever. As an added bonus, I now have proof positive that as he was autographing my toy’s box, Jon ordered pizza. Bringing you the nutritional habits of your favorite webtooners is what we’re all about here at Fleen.

Speaking of my porch, I’m carving my annual webcomics–themed Halloween pumpkins this week. One will be an Andy Bell design (and some day, I hope to be able to manage a devil bears and Esther tableau), and one is a mystery until I see if I can make it work the way I want to. Pictures coming soon.

Update: Howard Tayler reports that the beta was so successful that as of about 10:00 AM EST today, testing has concluded. If you didn’t get in on the bargain price already, you missed it. On the bright side, pre-orders for SM book 2 will open at 10:00 AM EST on 17 Oct.

Ever want to be a beta-tester, without all the tiresome NDAs?

Howard Tayler is testing a new storefront, and he needs your help. Between now and sometime Monday, order the first Schlock Mercenary book and you’ll get a third off the regular price, plus you’ll help Tayler shake out any bugs in the system.

Joanna, you may be dead, and you may have a bit of a drinking problem, but if only for your brave battles against the Catcoon, I must have a representation of you!

Also, whoever bought this before I was even aware that it existed: I hate you and everything you stand for.

Some few items you may have missed …

Over at Something*Positive, it’s question time as Randy Milholland looks for seven reader questions that he can answer in-strip (as seen previously here). If you have something that’s been burning a hole in your brain about S*P, drop him a line. As an added bonus, Milholland has added links for the previous five installments, which helps to keep storylines accessible.

Christopher B. Wright is overcoming recent Job-like travails that have beset him to kick said travails square in the ‘nads. Or at lest, update Help Desk regularly, which is almost as good.

John Allison is making me fall in love with Scary Go Round all over again today. You have a clash of good vs. evil, a girlfight, Scott Pilgrim-esque videogame visual shorthand (similarly seen in PvP recently), and a punch that’s a total justification for why Esther is my new favorite character. PLUS a panty shot! It’s like fan service just for me.

And if that weren’t more fun than humans should be allowed to have (and my goodness, don’t you think it should be?), Allison informs us that although he will not be in attendance at SDCC next week, copies of SGR Book 4, The Retribution Index, will. Note to self: bring another $20 to Comic Con.

Walking to work this morning, I passed a rather attractive young lady wearing this shirt, which seems to me to be as good an excuse as any to discuss the forthcoming line of ZLIKS figures from Dead Zebra. “But who is this Dead Zebra?” I hear you cry. DZ is the toy-making and merch-producing subsidiary of the demonically creative Andy Bell. Let’s let him tell the tale, shall we?

The ZLIKS are coming! Finally! I got the good word that the boat has landed and that they will be offloaded and through customs by tomorrow! Wow, two years of work almost over … what a ride it’s been.

There will be a ZLIKS promotional site going up tomorrow on dyzplastic, and I will start pre-selling a limited quantity of 6 variants on shop.deadzebra.com tomorrow to a select few. The bad news is that I won’t be able to ship them until mid-August when I return from a wedding in Europe.

If you are coming to comic-con I should have a few sets to sell there!

Since Andy wrote his notice two days ago, you’ll kindly note that the promised site is now live and awaiting your attention. So go forth, my minions, go forth and CONSUME!

Speaking of merch, Diablo action figure pre-orders are now open! And, like all good action figures, it comes with a variant:

Pre-ordered Diablo is available in two flavors, a regular chicken-flavored variety and the special “personalized” variant. The personalized figure comes with some bonus stickers and is signed by Yours Truly, and the first 250 people to order one of these will get an extra Super-Bonus Glow-In-The-Dark Ecto-Skull in addition to all the other groovy accessories Diablo normally comes with. This skull can replace Diablo’s normal head; I cannot stress enough how radical this is.

How cool is this? Read on, my friend:

Diablo has four points of articulation, at the waist, wings and neck.
Diablo’s head is removable, just like in real life.
Diablo comes with accessories:

• one (1) Human Skull
• one (1) Satanic Whoopee Cushion
• one (1) Necronomicon, 2nd. Ed.
• three (3) pc. Oversized Novelty Bacon

Diablo’s head can be replaced with his Human Skull for awesome skull-chicken action.
Diablo is approx. 3″ tall, and will be to scale with future Goats action figures. [emphasis mine]
Diablo comes in a neato collector’s box.
Diablo will bring you everlasting joy and peace of mind.

Serious collectors, speculators, and dealers are urged to stock up on plenty of both versions. I just ordered mine, how about you?

From a January discussion on webcomics merch:

The only attempts at quantities of actual action figures (with accessories!) that I’m aware of are from Messers Bell and Rosenberg. And these are fraught with delays, as the only manufacturies are a) far overseas; b) speak a different language; and c) hate you and want to make you suffer.

Welp, it looks like the manufacturies in question might hate you just a little less than before, as a color proof of Diablo the Chicken has made it past snarling dogs, razor wire, US Customs, and the postal service to end up in the hands of Messers Bell and Rosenberg. Rumors abound that there may be a couple cases of these bad boys at San Diego, with the bulk of the order arriving later. Price point is still to be determined, but keep an eye on the Goats newsbox for further info.

When that info comes out, buy one! Buy two! Get your Christmas shopping done early! Success on this experiment means that someday I may have other Goats figures. Seriously, Oliver with deathbot? Or being able to watch the look on Jon’s face as he sells figures based on his cartoon alter-ego (with short-packed gray variant) to random fanboys, knowing not what they’ll do with it? getting a genuine Phillip figure (with sentient lemon accessory) in close proximity to — dare I hope? — a Penny Arcade Fruit Fucker 2000? Count me in!

The image you see above is from yesterday’s Heart of the City newspaper strip by Mark Tatulli; full-size image here. Ignore the larger gag, it’s not why we’re here today. Let’s zoom in on the 2nd guy from the left here. And a lil’ reminder of one of Colonel Kurtz‘s pieces of merch here.

Coincidence? Or has the influence of webcomics finally made it into that safest of all possible places, the Sunday funnies? This could be even scarier than network TV or VH1 infiltration. Dare we hope that the webcomics revolution is nigh?

This page has written before on the topic of webcomic advertising. You got your tightly targetted ads whereby producers looking to meet up with a certain demographic craft campaigns with loving detail. You got creators who will offer up their own characters — within limits — for your message (or possibly even themed strips to carry that message). In a form of sorta-advertising, you can do product placement in the form of your own self. And then there’s Google’s various programs, including the rotation that you see on many webcomics.

These work by selecting keywords from text that appears on the page, serving up ads that are (presumably) of interest to the page’s audience. Sometimes, this means that ads contrary to your message sneak through … Scott Kurtz has written several times about how Google ads for gold farmers have snuck through, even though he’s opposed to them and their ilk.

But forget all that. I just want to know what combination of words on this page resulted in this ad showing up this morning. If nothing else, it’s given me an idea for how to choose new writers for Fleen in the future.