“Goats” is, as you may guess from the title, about some guys who eat God and thus trigger the apocalypse. The latest volume in the very shiny Random House/Del Rey series is called The Corndog Imperative. If you pre-order it from us right now (we get ‘em in a few weeks) you will automatically get free bookmarks! But you won’t even use them because the book is downright unputdownable. Also as a public service we are offering you a stress lemon and a squeeze potato so you can work out the tension that will inevitably arise, borne of sheer professional jealousy, at the excellence of The Corndog Imperative.

We also got a new “Goats” shirt about turtles and the Foundations of the Universe! Like all of Jon’s work, it contains no actual goats, but it does accurately and with a high degree of scientific rigor portray the fundaments of the firmament and the wriggling pillars of livestock that comprise it. Click through to see the jokey part.

Now, at this point I’m sure you’re suitably impressed with Mr. Rosenberg’s fine offerings, and that’s without even mentioning the many colorful prints he has newly made available against the better judgment and non-binding censures of the Spartan Wall Decorators Association of Greater New York State. I hardly even have to mention that for a limited time, personalization is available for Corndog Imperative books and even, against all reason, on 2-book discount packs as well. And I should surely bite my tongue rather than state the obvious fact that Jon totally wants to do Ayn Rand. All these things are evident at the slightest glance. The Corndog Imperative rolls into the world on December first and all orders will ship promptly and blessedly thereafter.

Not YOU though! You are thoughtful. You are reasonable. You plan ahead AND you have remarkable taste. That’s why you’re doing your holiday shopping at TopatoCo. You’re going to pay attention to the shipping deadlines and you are going to get your gifts in plenty of time to slap some dollar store wrapping paper on them and tuck them under the tree/menorah/kinte cloth/aluminum pole/log.

If you order by the following deadlines, your package should have plenty of time to get where it is intended to go. Please keep in mind that we here at TopatoCo do a lot of things, but actually deliver your package is not one of those things. Once the package leaves our warehouse, it is up to the postal service to get it to you. Also, if you live outside of the US there will most likely be customs fees. Those are on you, dude.

USPS INTERNATIONAL FIRST CLASS = November 22 (Not Guaranteed. It SHOULD get there but there’s a 10% chance it will arrive after Dec 25. USPS International First Class is HELLA flaky).

USPS DOMESTIC EXPRESS = December 21

Shipping times for UPS vary, depending on where you are located, but are guaranteed. For information please visit the UPS web site to calculate shipping times and plan accordingly.

Now let’s get to consumerin’! The more discerning people on your shopping list literally don’t want anything from any other merchant. Don’t ruin Christmas. Again.

Don't mess with The Postmaster. POSTMASTER SMASH

But we also got things! And now is the time to point out a bunch of them specifically. Up there you see a picture of the Poop Sign, by our friend and mankind’s enemy Chris Yates. If somehow its image does not immediately convey its meaning, perhaps this video will clear your sinuses of confusion:

So that settles that!

ALSO we got unique holiday cards! Now, for the first time in basically ever, via one single convenient hyperlink you can buy greeting cards from Dinosaur Comics, Sheldon, Cat & Girl, Wondermark, Little Gamers, Sam & Fuzzy — we are your PLACE for HOLIDAY CARDS. The holidays are coming up! Do not wait to buy these, in honesty we will probably run out at some point and you will be left high and dry.

Do you like animals? How about non-living animals you can cuddle with? Bohda Te’s got two new plush animals which were never even alive, ever, so chill out, anti-taxidermy activists. It is a regular and understood thing for there to be animals stuffed with cotton or other that can be cuddled with and adorabled. Here is one and here is the other for your enjoyment and purchasing and forever-love!

And we also got some very good new messenger bags! There is one from A Softer World talking about zombies and one from Wondermark talking about knitting, but both presuppose a situation of emergency and both are good for carrying basically any goods that need carrying over a shoulder or being slung jauntily across a body. These are rugged canvas, super stylish and handy for messengers or really anyone at all with a suitable torso. I’m looking at you-oo-ou!

Sam Brown found out the hard way that the US Postal Service does not appreciate a package that says, “Exploding Dog” on it – even when you try to explain that it’s your comic and you’re famous on the internet. So he hitched his wagon to the TopatoCo wagon train because somebody told him that we know where we’re going. If you walk up to him and say a random phrase, he will make a comic out of it! This proves awkward for Sam when he is walking through New York City as he ends up handing out a lot of comics to hobos.

Andrew Hussie is a mad genius who lives in a secret lair under the MBTA tunnels of Boston. He spends all of his waking hours updating MS Paint Adventures and plotting revenge on his nemesis, Ryan North.  Eschewing food and sunlight, he will not rest until MSPA is so huge that it takes over the entire internet. He is about 45% of the way there.

Local Hero Jeph Jacques was recently thought missing, until his wife heard a muffled crying coming from underneath a pile of fancy guitars and pulled him to safety. He chronicled his brave journey in the Oprah’s Book Club selection “A Million Little Picks”, and is now back from sailing around the world in time to hang out with us and resume work on his opus. Coming in  from out of town?  You can take the Questionable Content Tour through downtown Northampton while you are here. I am told that is a Thing.

Jeffrey Rowland is the creator of the popular webcomics Overcompensating and Wigu. He accidentally built an innovative and successful business with the webcomics merchandise distribution juggernaut TopatoCo, and now he doesn’t sleep very much. He lives in Massachusetts in a fortified bunker that he keeps stocked with taco fixin’s and the kind of beer that only old men drink. He’s pretty happy as long as those stupid butt cats keep quiet.

fiesta!

WHAT IS MAXIMUM FUN? You mean you don’t know? Maximum Fun is the internet home of Jesse Thorn, who has a show on the radio and the podcasts called The Sound of Young America, on which he interviews everybody ever in the world of comedy, music and entertainment. Like, literally everybody from Andrew W.K. to Zach Galifianakis. Then he’s got a thing called Jordan, Jesse, Go! which is a comedy podcast where John Hodgman is a recurring character as an all-powerful judge. That is just par for the course in Jesse Thorn’s world.

Also he is a nerd about dressing nice so all his products are printed on the super-duper-premium Alternative Apparel brand. He’s got our first-ever embroidered polo as well as a hoodie he claims you will want to know carnally, it is so freaking soft.

Also Jesse’s doing some of his comedian friends a solid and offering products for them too: Andy Daly’s Mustache TV, which is America’s Number One Television-Based Mustache Game For Parties, and a logo shirt for Kasper Hauser, who are sketch comedy geniuses.

Now, here is the thing. As a public-radio person, Jesse is used to doing pledge-drives and asking for donations. We’re pleased to guide him on this critical step away from Communism and into the vagaries of the free market. LET US MAKE IT HAPPEN AT ONCE

At TopatoCo Central we’re gonna have: Matt Boyd • Joey Comeau & Emily Horne • Meredith Gran • Chris Hastings • Jon Rosenberg • Jeffrey Rowland • Zach Weiner • plus favorite merch from our other creators who can’t make the trip due to outstanding warrants or other similar reasons.

Also we should mention that Kate Beaton will be in the building, but not at our table — she’s over at table 440. And even good ol’ Brandon Bird will be right nearby at table 258! That’s all noted on our map though so don’t even worry about it. UPDATE: Now we even got Aaron Diaz on that thing holdin’ down table 251!

all right now we got to figure out if we need a passport to get into San Francisco and what kind of extradition treaties they got just in case of, you know

trouble

(APE 2008 photo above by lobraumeister, used under CC)

And we ain’t no second-rate ham-shop runnin’ T-shirts out the back of an off-label methadone distillery either — we’re the world’s largest graphical internet entertainment licensing firm, and we got literally twenty dozen different designs that we throw away on a daily basis. We are straight-up and down-low professional and the side effect of all this legitimate-businessin’ is that we got tee-shirts in every orifice and stacked up to reach the danged rafters.

Solution? TAG SALE. We’ve got bins, crates and barrels (curiously, no boxes) full of limited, discontinued, overstocked and/or clearance merchandise that we want to get rid of. This Saturday, September 26, we are opening our doors and urging you, a bunch of strangers, to come paw through a giant stash of our clean cotton miscellany. That’s right — the TopatoCo offices will be open to the discount-loving public for a one-day bargain-basement housecleaning hootenanny.

Everything will be marked down to prices that may make us cry — but as our intrepid leader Jeffrey continually sneers, “We have to give them bargains so they will like us!” This is an important step in our social development so we just ask that you please not bring any airhorns or we may become spooked and bolt.

So join us on Saturday from 10 AM till 7 PM. The address is: 116 Pleasant St., Ste. 203, Easthampton MA 01027. Google’s got a map of it right here. It’ll be great bargains on a pile of great stuff for you, and maybe finally clearing enough space to meet the fire code for us. Sounds like a win-win.

I just come up with a few designs you might be interested in.

We got a shirt that just says “Dang” on it, because that’s what you’re thinkin’ all the time.   I put it in cursive to represent “polishin’ turds.”  Think of this design as if John Wayne spent half a day on something tryin’ to make it look pretty.

I made a shirt that’s about the scariest thing in the world, flyin’ in airplanes.  I put a smiley face on the plane because people love that, when not-alive things smile at them.

I made tee-shirt design about not wantin’ to get shot.  Now I am personally in favor of every American being forced to own at least 100 guns, that they would be required by law to carry with them at all times, but I am completely against getting shot by guns.   It’ ain’t necessary.

And then there’s a shirt that’s about a touchy subject.   There’s only two types of people out there, those that knows what the hell is goin’ on with this thing, and those that don’t.  And the ones that don’t that don’t probably don’t got their phones tapped.

Those shirts are all up for pre-order right now and everybody who pre-orders is gonna get a surprise gift.  And you will be surprised.