We all love random notes! With FUBAR, TMNT, a Hulk haiku, Franks and Beans and more!

I've got a little bit to say about a lot of things.  Who wants to hear them?  All of you?  All right, then let's get started.

- The last day for comic shops to order the FUBAR: Summer Special one shot is almost upon us!  I put this above flyer together and FUBAR head honcho Jeff McComsey did a lot of legwork in contacting individual shops about the book.  We're both very excited about the chances of this single issue doing well in stores.  It's got stories by Chuck Dixon, Tim Truman, Michael McDermott and...me.  So ask your local comic shop to order a few copies!  The Diamond order code is JUN12 0760.

- The number of page hits I'm getting per month continues to grow pretty steadily.  With a few days left in June, this has already been the most popular month for the blog (thanks, everybody...and also Google Images).  A big reason for that was a link that someone posted on Reddit, linking to a post I wrote last year about Bernard Krigstein's "Master Race".  It's a fantastic short comic, and I've got the whole sequence posted, so if you haven't gotten around to reading it yet, do it!

- I took a trip to Goodwill a few days ago and landed a Franks and Beans prop and a component for a Comic-Con costume (a great haul!).  While there, I spotted Venom hanging out in a collection of some random junk.  I'm not sure what his scheme is, but rest assured that no good will come from it.

- After my spring semester ended at school, I posted awful pictures my students had drawn of the Hulk.  My good friend Lauren, formerly of the Grouchy Gastronome website, sent my a Hulk haiku in celebration of this event.  Perhaps in direct violation of her wishes, here is her poem:

There's no Hulk picture
For I am not an artist
Enjoy this instead

Well, Hulk, what do you think?

Oh, Hulk, you're such an idiot.  The Thing is so much better than you.

- Fullfilling a wild and long-standing fantasy of mine, a picture I took has been seen and shared by others on the Internet, as the "The Shredder is Dead" picture I made and took at school was posted to the TMNT Tumbler page and reblogged by several dozen others!  YES!  Viral images!  Please share with your friends, Internet.

Oh, and Paramount shut down Michael Bay's live-action Ninja Turtle movie in hopes of finding a better script.  Heh.

- Click here for a nice and wildly positive review of this year's XCon Myrtle Beach.  There are lots of pictures from the event, including the above one.  It's funny because this is my table from the convention...before I showed up.  Ha!  That happened a lot.

- Facebook is getting eerily specific with its ads, as I found this waiting for me one day when I incessantly casually checked my page.  Really?  There are enough Weird Al fans out there that Facebook can run an ad specifically catering to them?  Wow.  And the guy in this ad looks dumb.  Get with the times, man.  Weird Al shaved his mustache years ago!

- Finally, here's a programming update on Comic-Con's film festival!  Franks and Beans didn't make the cut.  Oh, heck.  It was a long shot, I guess, but that's still a bit of a bummer.  I'm sure there will be plenty of good entries on display.  In the meantime, here's an extra new episode of Franks and Beans with special guest stars - from this summer's Dark Knight Rises - Christopher Nolan and Joseph Gordon-Levitt!  Maybe.

A nice Teddy and the Yeti review, plus other references

I was recently made aware of this review for the first three issues of Teddy and the Yeti; John Norris at the "Comics in the Classroom" website was gracious enough to talk a little bit about the series and he had some nice things to say - and he noted the fact that the title is cool if for no other reason than the way it sounds...which, come on, is absolutely correct!  You can read the full review here.  Check it out!

Speaking of online references to Teddy and the Yeti, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention some of the other folks who are helping spread the word about the characters and the book:

- Henry at the "I Love the Yeti" blog has been a big supporter of Teddy and the Yeti, posting updates about the book and Wagon Wheel's convention appearances.  If you haven't been to the site yet, check it out, if for nothing else than the sheer volume of yeti references collected.

Teddy and the Yeti centric blogs can be found here, here, here, here, here and here!

- Xavier at the "My Paper Heroes" blog created Teddy and the Yeti paper heroes and wrote a nice article about them (and the book) here.  As I've mentioned before, this very website has had a lot of traffic flow over to here from the link Xavier has on his site, so do me a favor and reciprocate.  There are a lot of really cool paper heroes you can download and build over there, so be prepared to find a new obsession.

Click here to download Ted's paper hero!
Click here to download the Yeti's paper hero!

- Yesterday's blog about Superman ice cream (I had some immediately after writing it, by the way) reminded me of the blogs I wrote at intermittent times for the blog "The Grouchy Gastronome".  Regular columns on that site have been put on hiatus for a while (WHY?!?), but it's still worth checking out to see some angry writing about food.

If anyone would like to read what I wrote for the website, you can find my posts here, here, here, here, here, here and here!

- Also...um...I'm trying to shoehorn this in here, of course.  But I'm allowed to do that.  Since we're talking about other websites with references to Teddy and the Yeti, why not plug my online sketch comedy show, Franks and Beans?  Why not, indeed?!  Here's an episode with a cameo of the first issue of Teddy and the Yeti - I think I already posted the original episode, so this time I'll go with the episode commentary, which is equally as hilarious.  Well, it's funny, in any case.  Oh hell, just watch the video:

A Mile High salute and other notes

- Mile High Comics placed an order last week for copies of Teddy and the Yeti #3, meaning that the online retailer (they also have physical locations, most notably in Denver, Colorado) now has all three issues in stock.  Other online stores have ordered copies of certain issues of T&Y, but Mile High is, as of now, the only store to order all three.  My thanks go out to William Moulton and all the rest at MHC for their continued support of the book.  I'm really not sure how to ask about the coincidence of a guy named William Moulton working in the comic book business (the creator of Wonder Woman was William Moulton Marston) - perhaps it's a nickname and other people working there take the pseudonyms "Joe Shuster" and "Jacob Kurtzberg".

You can click here to see Mile High's Teddy and the Yeti page - the first two issues are listed, and the third will be added soon.

- I've made some looooong overdue updates to the main website.  The main page no longer says something ridiculous like "preview the upcoming second issue!".  I've also update the store page, so you can buy both the first and second issues - I even made sure that combined shipping stays in effect if you purchase different issues.  The third issue isn't up for sale yet for two reasons: one, I'm a jerk, and two, I don't have any copies on hand right now.  Once I get ahold of some, I'll make sure that's there as well.

This blog page (...the one you're looking at right now) also got a minor update - along with listing online retailers that carry Teddy and the Yeti, I've compiled a list of physical comic stores that sell issues of the book as well.  For stores like Olympic Cards & Comics in Lacey, Washington and Evil Genius Comics in California, PA that have websites, I linked directly to those.  For stores without websites like Impossible Dreams in Bridgeville, PA and Gary's Comics & More in Morgantown, WV, I linked to at least the address on a map.  The list is over on the right somewhere...check it out.

- The website The Grouchy Gastronome has published another one of my blogs on food: the most recent one is titled "Hell Sandwich", which I think was a great naming decision on the part of she who runs the site.  Apparently I like to cheat places out of sandwich giveaways, and I finally stopped to think about some of the more lasting consequences.

- Finally, because this has become a regular feature here apparently, here's the latest episode of the popular Internet show Franks and Beans, "Rip Off".  I'm quite proud of it.

That's blog-tastic!

I thought about opening this post with some April Fool's Day joke, like "I'm quitting Teddy and the Yeti!" or something similar, but I find that I'm never very good at them because I can never see them through.  Because of this, and because everyone is expecting them, I tend to avoid them altogether.  Now that that's out of the way, I am quitting Teddy and the Yeti forever.  APRIL FOOLS!  HA!  That was actually pretty fun.

Anyway, I realize that sometimes coming to this blog every day just does not satisfy your need for my random thoughts, and there are times when you would enjoy hearing what I have to say on things other than just comic books - shocking, I know!  That is why I sometimes write about other things...and then blog about them.  It's both a gift...and a curse.  But perhaps you can be entertained by them, so I will give you the heads up below.

First on the list is an old favorite, The Grouchy Gastronome.  I've published things before on this site dedicated to food and anger (perhaps not in that order), and I'm at it again.  In the coming weeks you'll find semi coherent ramblings from me on topics like burning in Hell and why people decide to eat food in Wal-Mart without paying for it, but for now there are my less inflammatory posts regarding Futurama-themed cupcakes and a suspiciously similar one on Spider-Man and his infatuation with wheatcakes.

Next up is Franks and Beans.  We all know that Franks and Beans is the place to go for videos that relay the inherent humor in growing a mustache, but did you know that I also write about WHY mustaches are so funny?!  Well?  DID YOU?  Now you do.  The blogs I write for that site are thorough to the point of being obsessive, and as such no one but Larry reads them, but I have fun with them just the same.  The latest one I posted has to do with our 26th episode, "Replacement Larry", which I'll embed below.

These are just some of the ways in which I help you waste time on a daily basis.  You're welcome.

It's amazing - sometimes I write things other than comics.

Sometimes, in fact, I write a blog about comics. And sometimes, just sometimes, I write (in traditional bloggish fashion) about food on my friend Lauren's themed website. The site is called "The Grouchy Gastronome", and the author pretty much exclusively blogs about food that she hates or makes her mad in some form or another. It's like a therapy session with Denny's as the mediator.

In any case, my friend was kind enough to write a blurb promoting Teddy and the Yeti, so I'm returning the favor by advertising her site to my millions and millions of readers. I've got a blog up there right now about Dairy Queen ice cream or some such noise, which is reason enough to check it out, though the other entries are okay, too...I guess.

The website is www.thegrouchygastronome.com, and it's definitely worth a few minutes of your time. SO DO IT!