I really wasn't happy with Conrad's exclamation in Monday's strip -- the bold type today nails it a lot better I think. 

Today's strip is based on me, last week, pouring through old notebooks looking for ideas for strips. Occasionally something will happen in life and I'll say "dag, I gotta write that down. That's going into the comic someday." This happens quite a lot, and dates back a year now. So please believe me when I say I have no idea what happened to cause me to write down the words "Newton has a client who is a stalker..." but we're going there anyway.

I hope everyone enjoyed the tribute to the spookiest of holidays, and my selfish homage to The Spooky Old Tree. The Halloween Spectacular started off as a Clue-like murder mystery, and at another point (during the plotting stage) everyone was going to start getting murdered with various supporting characters from the strip popping up. In the end, I'm really happy with the way it went down, and the last panel of this eight-parter is one of my favorites I've ever drawn.

1PT.Rule will be back to it's regular, non-Halloween schedule on Wednesday. I need a little time off after this endeavor to refresh (and wrap up a children's book).

Looks like we're going to get a Saturday, proper Halloween episode after all! Be sure to tune in tomorrow -- SATURDAY -- for the exciting conclusion!

Boo!

The Meat Puppets poster by the good fellows at Aesthetic Apparatus has long been a source of the feelings of both love and hate within my peer group. Basically it's a poster-child (no pun intended!) for meaningless, clip-art driven design, and yet you can't deny the thing is a beauty, and it kinda looks like the mask is made out of hamburger. So that's hot. So for me I have days that go one way and days that go another, but I'll bet you never knew what he looked like beneath that mask. As the piece that I can most directly tie to the resurgence of the gig poster as an art form, I have no trouble putting it along side the other works in this story, that's for sure.

Matt outed me in the comments of yesterday's strip -- this whole thing has been building up to a parody of the greatest scary book of all time, The Spooky Old Tree, which does, in fact, star the Berenstain Bears. This riveting piece of illustrated fiction is a high-bar for the entire publishing world, as far as I'm concerned, and while my copy has long since been destroyed, the story sticks with me to this day.

If you're no Lester Beall fanboy today's strip may be a bit obtuse. Start here and come back whenever you're ready.

Of some sort, I think.

Be sure to tune back in tomorrow, yes that's right I said tomorrow, for the next chapter!

Drawing every line of Milton Glaser's most famous poster (is it? Now I'm not sure) gave a surprising amount of insight into how he drew that image. Which shapes he began with, which he filled in. It reminds me that we can call it design until we're blue in the face, pour over every contour and detail and dissect them, but really that all started out as a man drawing. And if you're a designer who loves to draw, there's something very inspirational about that.

Have a good weekend. Freelancers keep those pens up --

Yeah that happened yesterday. I'd be interested to know, at this point, what you my dear readers think were the high points and the low points of the past 134 strips, sketches, and that big fat full-color Special that never got it's proper follow-up (which is sitting now, patiently waiting, penciled in a pile next to me). 

If you haven't partaken yet, try out our 1PT.Rule Facebook Quiz! So far I'm seeing a lot of Newtons out there, which tell me a lot of you are choosing the responsible answers, not the answers you would necessarily choose in real life.

Today's blog post has nothing at all to do with today's comic, so for those of you that count on that, here's something: Vonster's texture packs show up in the details. That's a little 'making of' there for ya. Much love.

--nv--

This shames me a little bit, as the very next day after my return I received a very nice e-mail from one of the main stage speakers who I talked to for... oh, about 30 seconds total, saying it was nice to see us and thanks for the encouragement. There's a reason some of those people are up there, and a part of that reason is that they are awesome people (except for that lady at the end, but I'm not wasting space on her).

That said, just because I haven't sent out a letter or facebook or twitter to you doesn't mean I'm not trying desperately to do so. You'll probably see them pile up in your inbox one after another with sent-dates of the same minute. Or so I can hope. --hugs--

Sorry there was no Wednesday strip. The catch-up from being out for a few days coupled with the regular workload of finishing a children's book (and a handful of other slow-burning projects) pushed my schedule unexpectedly. Also I didn't really have a joke. I summed up my week this morning into this joyous little pill for you to swallow and I hope you enjoy it.

Rocking it LIVE LIVE LIVE from the show floor -- three days ago. Our efforts to bring you the AIGA Make/Think Conference were routed by our shotty server-to-wi-fi connection at the convention center and hotel. Everything else worked great, but when it came to uploading the files, we tasted bitter defeat time and time again. Eventually the stress became to great, and we decided to bring this show back and launch it from the comfort of our own studio chairs.

This show was taped directly following the second day's (sure it says Day One up there, but our number system is not encumbered by facts) festivities, and with Steve Hartman and Justin Ahrens running the room while we spoke to the passers-by, we crammed an amazing amount of talent into these 25 minutes. In no particular order:

So give it a listen -- more shows are coming this week!