Howdy all! First off I want to remind you that holiday ordering deadlines for the Goats Store are looming. Here they are:

USPS INTERNATIONAL PRIORITY = December 8

USPS DOMESTIC EXPRESS = December 21

Please make your orders accordingly, once those dates have passed there's not a lot we can do. Physics prevents most of our more creative solutions to this dilemma unfortunately.

Also I want to apologize to all of you for today's missed strip. My daughter has been sick since Monday, and while I've been trying to keep up with my workload by working nights, I've fallen behind considerably. Rather than post a rushed strip late today I'm just going to pick things up on Monday and hope for a better week.

Once work on Book 3 is completed (still working on the last few copyedits) I'm going to try and rebuild my long-vanished buffer to try and prevent these things from happening again. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

I'm about to head out the door to drive up to Topatoco HQ to sign and sketch in a whole mess of new Goats books. If you'd like one of your very own, please go ahead and order yours now! We'll still be taking orders until the end of the day.

Howdy! I posted a graphic with images of most of the new Holiday 2009 product line but figured I'd follow it up with a few textual-type words to convey just how awesome these products are and how strongly I feel that you should purchase them.

First up is the new book! The Corndog Imperative is book two of The Infinite Pendergast Cycle, serving up full-color Goats chaos and mayhem from 2006 and 2007. Published by Del Rey, this is my second mass-market release. It'll be available at your local comic shops and bookstores and online in various places but if you'd be kind enough to preorder it directly from us you'll be helping to support the strip. You'll also have the opportunity to order the book signed and sketched by Yours Truly for a few extra shekels and we'll also toss in an Overclocked Lemon or Psychic Potato stressball (also available separately) if you so desire. And every preorder ships with a free full-color plastic bookmark, for place-savin' while you're reading.

If you never picked up the first book, or you're buying Christmas presents for someone new to the strip, we've knocked the price of book one, Infinite Typewriters, down to only twelve dollars. That's a two dollar savings off the cover price! And you can get both books together for only $25, for a combined savings of like, seventy dollars probably.

I'd like to stress that it's extremely important for me to sell as many of these books as possible if I would like to please my corporate masters and have them continue to print more Goats books in the future. Please help if you can and consider giving them to your friends and family this holiday.

Next, we've got two new t-shirts available for wearing! Check out the new Turtles All The Way Down and I'm Feeling Randy. Both instant classics. Both available in your size. Both guaranteed to make you more attractive and/or fiscally savvy.

We're also offering prints in a variety of flavors, including Showcase Showdown, featuring art from the cover of the upcoming Book 3, Team Force Alpha prints Danger Jungle: Swamp Action and Graveyard of Death, and the full Jonathan Livingston Seagull comic. There might be some others. I can't be bothered to check.

That's about it for store hoohah. Friday's strip finishes up the Status Quo storyline (and the content for the mostly-theoretical Book Four), and I'm going on mandatory vacation (i.e., working on copyedits to book 3 while everyone else travels repeatedly to one of several nearby identical Target stores to buy diaper paste) to Florida, Land of Jewish Grandparents next week, so this seems as good a time for a break from the strip as any. Brock will be contributing Teh Nerdzors strips for the next two weeks. Please be gentle with him. I'll be back on December 7th with a new storyline to kick off Book 5.

Holy crap this week has gone quicker than hot molasses through an internally-buttered weasel. I meant to tell you about APE earlier but plum got caught up in workin' and other things. it's this weekend in San Francisco! All the details can be found here at Topatoco HQ. I'll be at tables 254-256 with a whole mess of other people. Come say hi and get a signed book or some other trinket that will remind you of our short, sweet time together.

Howdy all. I'm coming up against my deadline for delivering Book 3 to my publisher, and there's a few things still left to do. Rather than try and crap out a strip for you while I'm scrabbling with that I'm going to focus on finishing the book and getting that done so I'm not distracted from the task of making the best comics I can.

So, no strip for Monday, and probably Wednesday (although maybe a guest MG strip?), but I'll do my best to be back on track for Friday. Sorry for the disruption of service, and I hope to be back in front of the Cintiq very soon.

UPDATE: Taking over the stripping duties for the time being is none other than our very own Brock Stalkley! Brock will be honoring us with his comicking efforts, entitled TEH NERDZORS minis and starring Brock and his roommate, Scott the Miniature Elephant.

TEH NERDZORS minis is the sequel to MEGAgamerz and the prequel to Goats. Scholars are still debating whether or not it is canon.

It's time for SPX! I'm headin' down Maryland-wise tomorrow to meet up with John and Rich and sell the crap out of some books and prints and assorted other items. Please come say hello, crazy people! You are my lifeblood.

If you're closer to Easthampton, Massachusetts than Bethesda perhaps you should check out the TopatoCo Tag Sale instead? I hear there will be super-cheap t-shirts and such which were designed by artists who know how to make t-shirts that look good on you.

Doughboys are now available in the store! We only have 33 of 'em so act fast.