In a whorish attempt to up the number of Twitter followers I have, I'm going to be posting most of my sneak peeks through my Twitter account. If you really hate Twitter, you can still see the links to the sneak peeks from this page in that little Twitter box over there.

Not counting act of God, I can actually guarantee an update tomorrow at noon (-8 GMT) since it's already finished.

As always, thanks for reading.

~Thunt

The sneak peek that's under the vote button (to the lower right of this blog) is not actually in 3-D, but it's close.

As always, thanks for reading.

~Thunt

Under the vote button, we see a sneak peek of the upcoming update, starring Minmax, Forgath and a gathering crowd.

As always, thanks for reading.

~Thunt

All thieves suck.

The idea of taking something away from someone else really pisses me off. However, stealing something that someone else not only owns, but also worked hard to create sends me into a molten, poptartian frenzy (to me, Poptarts represent anger, just go with it).

Typing the phrase art thief doesn't really describe these "artists" properly, so let's call them, oh I don't know... doucheparrots. Parrots copy others and douche is not only insulting, it's fun to type in a rant.

A few days ago, the folks over at hottopic.com were caught selling a tshirt that had a barely altered version of this image which was drawn by Vera Brosgol (check out her very cool site for more of her work). Vera sent Hot Topic an email and in all fairness, they got back to her pretty fast and promised to take the shirt off of their site, which they did. We'll never know for sure if Hot Topic knew that the image was stolen, but we certainly know that the doucheparrot who "drew" it knew. He (or she) is talentless, scum.

Okay, so everything was worked out. The shirt disappeared and Vera (who is obviously much more mature than I am) quietly moved onto doing what she does well, creating original art. End of the story, right? No.

Today, Hot Topic was caught again. This time they were selling buttons with art stolen directly from Meghan Murphy (whose very cool comic can be seen here). Now before we grab our pitchforks and torches, let's remember that Hot Topic might legitimately have no idea that they've hired doucheparrots. Maybe they genuinely want to sell original merchandise and they're victims of the doucheparrot people, who are dragging the good name of Hot Topic through the mud. If this is true, they had better take a close look at how they're doing business and make some much needed changes. Maybe fire whoever is responsible and start printing "We're sorry we were Pooheads to the real artists" tshirts.

And just because I'm really angry at these art thieves right now, I (or rather Mike Tyndall) present to you, Todd Goldman the King Doucheparrot. This guy deserves something angry and stinging to crawl up his pant leg. Also note that the doucheparrot in question not only stole artwork from dozens and dozens of artists, but he then threatened legal action against Mike Tyndall for making "defaming, derogatory and malicious statements" about him on that page. Now, even though I'm talking poorly about Todd Goldman here, I can't be sued because Todd Goldman is a name I just made up.

It's original, I swear.

I created that name and it's my work.

Not stolen, totally a Thunt original.

As always, thanks for reading.

~Thunt

I've been getting emails and requests on Twitter for me to explain just how the door solution worked. To see how the solution was found, check this out.

I think that it would have been much better if I'd set up the password to be something recognisable instead of a gibberish word. Some people got the word, but weren't sure if it was correct because seriously, what is a leafoof?

In other news, I am nominated for an Aurora Award! In Canada, this is actually a big deal. You get a huge trophy and your very own TARDIS! Okay, maybe not a TARDIS. Here's how the Auroras work...

The five artists who get the most nominations by Feb. 15th end up on "the ballot". From there, a voting system starts in May at Keycon 27. So if you're a Canadian citizen living in or outside of Canada or a permanent resident in Canada, then you can make me feel like a big shot by nominating me here in the catagory of Artistic Achievement - 2009.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go shower off the stench of vote-whoring.

As always, thanks for reading.

~Thunt

It's weird how much flak I've gotten for Wil Wheaton's mention of me. Everything from stand-offish sarcasm from a few emails, to others angrily using Twitter to contact both Wheaton and myself. What's the big deal? I'm a fan of his, so I drew him into my comic and twittered about it. Yes, I twittered about how I wanted him to see it. I didn't start a spam campaign or pass out his email address or anything. I twittered that I wanted the guy to see my work. Now before you start painting "Thunt was getting his readers to spam Wheaton" on a sign and waving it above your head, let's take a moment to look at some important numbers.

-Wheaton has close to two million followers on Twitter.
-He Tweets dozens of times a day, often with inane/entertaining questions to his followers.
-I currently have a meager 1,450ish followers and when I ask them a question such as "can condensed milk go in tea" I get maybe 30-50 responses in the space of a couple hours.

So if (1,450 Twitter followers + inane question = 30 to 50 tweets) then (1,638,000 Twitter followers + inane question = somewhere around 49,000 tweets) I actually can't imagine him getting 49,000 responses every time he asks a question on Twitter, but lets just say, considering how many times he tweets with fun questions or "look at a picture of the waffles I ate for breakfast", that it's a lot. Wil Wheaton is clearly not a man who minds getting Twitter traffic.

Does my mentioning on Twitter about how much I'd like Wheaton to look at my comic, get people to send him tweets? Yes. Does it flood him with spam? Of course not. The tweets he got about my comic from Goblins readers is nothing when compared to his usual daily traffic, which as I've mentioned, he encourages. Let's also not forget that we're talking about Twitter here. Twitter. It's not his email or his website, it's Twitter. The same social networking site that people use to show pics of their cat sleeping or their lucky D-twenty. This is the site that is primarily used to tell the world that your shoelace broke or that the guy in front of you at the bank has body odour. Twitter is simplistic, pseudo-intellectual tripe and I freaking love it. It's the perfect place to say "hey geeky celebrity, check out my backwater, Canadian comic in which you appear cause you rock".

One email that I received talked about how Wheaton only linked to me on Twitter to "shut me up". However, Wil also copied a snip of my comic and posted it on his Tumblr account along with a comment about how funny he found it and how he liked the shirt I'd drawn him in. This doesn't seem like the actions of a guy who just wants to shut me up or who feels like I'm flooding him with a tidal wave of spam.

Now that that's said, let me take this moment to recommend his books. They're pretty much mandatory reading for any geek and you can find them along with a huge amount of other brilliant and hilarious material over at his site. Along with my recommendation to buy his books, I'm aggressively asking all my readers to go over to his Twitter account and tell him how awesome he is. Tell him he's intelligent, tell him he's funny. Make him smile. In fact, I also want everyone to go over to Neil Patrick Harris' Twitter account and compliment him for rocking our worlds. Then when you're all done there, head to Girl Genius' Twitter and thank the Foglios for making such great comics. Then onto Lar deSouza and Ryan Sohmer for their inspiring work. Wait a second... my call to spam is starting to look an awful lot like social networking. Hmmm...

You see, as much as I'd like to think that I have the kind of tspamnami powers that some angry folks claim I have, I'm just one more person having some fun on Twitter, and what some people call "encouragement to spam", I call respecting someone I look up to by telling folks about him in my own way.

As always, thanks for reading and following me on Twitter.

~Thunt

Audio ads, as you probably know, are those ads that spew out annoying sound while you're trying to browse a site. It's been brought to my attention by a few annoyed readers that Goblins sometimes shows an audio ad.

I hate audio ads. I hate them more than I hate brussel sprouts, and I hate brussel sprouts. Keenspot manages the ad rotation on my site and they hate audio ads too, that's why they've blocked them from Goblins and their other sites. However, some audio ads are still getting through and somehow making their way onto my comic. I hate this more than I hate brussel sprouts with an earwax center, and I hate brussel sprouts with an earwax center. I've contacted the Keenspotian Gods about this and I'm going to do everything I can to stop this from ever happening again, because I hate this. I hate it more than I hate brussel sprouts with an earwax center dusted in powdered glass, and I hate brussel sprouts with an earwax center dusted in powdered glass. In the meantime, please bear with me.

As always, thanks for reading.

~Thunt

PS - Brussel sprouts are yucky.

For the last day and a half, I've been without electricity. A wind storm knocked down a whole bunch of trees in my area, taking out power lines all over the place. Although this looked pretty cool, it stopped me dead as far as finishing the update that should have gone up on Monday.

Power lines and cable lines were all repaired and now I'm back in the realm of heated food and light!

In other news, one of the maple trees in our front yard fell over during the wind storm and did some minor damage to the front of our house. I'm going to miss that tree. :(

I'll try and have the update up sometime on Tuesday night.

As always, thanks for reading.

~Thunt

I don't want you to think that Goblins has become stuck in a 'one page a week' schedule, because it hasn't. Not permanently, anyways. If you haven't already caught my complaining on Twitter, I had some yucky dental surgery done, which lead to some gross complications, which lead to me going back to the dentist today. It's been a painful, whiny week. If you add Tempts Fate and the recently passed holidays in there, you get one page per week. Very soon though, I'll be able to do more as well as finish cleaning up the site.

Also, Book Two is a hobbit's hat-rack away from to shipping out! Hang in there, peoples!

As always, thanks for reading.

~Thunt

On Tuesday morning, I have a dentist appointment to remove a wisdom tooth that is apparently right on a nerve. What is the difference between removing this tooth and removing a normal wisdom tooth? This will cost more, hurt more and take longer. I'm not sure exactly how this is going to go down, as soon as my dentist said "Okay, we're going to separate your jaw from..." was when I started watching old cartoons in my head so i don't know everything about the process. I do know that my dentist is against knocking his patients out, so I'll be awake for this.

I'm not sure how much drawing I'll be able to do tomorrow, but I know I won't be broadcasting any of it. In the meantime...

Dear Dentist who is about to torture me:

Dantooine. They're on Dantooine.
Shire! Baggins!

As always, thanks for reading.

~Thunt