If you wanted to shake a stick at a bunch of calendars, well, this might be too many of ’em. I’m trying to decide if this is a gaggle of calendars, or maybe a passle of calendars, or (I hope not) a lamentation of calendars; it might be a spiral valley of calendars, or even, possibly, a conspiracy of calendars.

It is, anyhow, more calendars than any one of you is likely to need. But like someone I knew once said, "It takes all kinds of flowers to make a garden". So maybe just one or two of these would look good in yours. Next to the hydrangea, I think.

So, as you’ve guessed, it’s calendar season once again: that season when you get to spread twelve months of wall decoration and timeliness, not to mention dentist’s appointments, out in front of you so you can admire just how much time and novocaine lies ahead. And as I do every year I’ve tried to give you options, there, from the Thrilling Tales to Retropolis to Celtic Art and vintage graphics.

A special note this year is the new "Lair of the Clockwork Book" calendar, from my ongoing serial at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, with airships, rockets, robots, and the Clockwork Book itself.

Anybody who does creative work on the Web has to have a special place in their heart for Felicia Day and her web series The Guild. This ragtag dream team of filmmaking guerillas, starting with basically nothing (and continuing with basically nothing) has somehow managed to survive for five seasons in their adventures across the dangerous seas of sponsorship, promotion, merchandising, and whatever you call the craft of making a series with what amounts to two potato peelers and a large helping of good will.

We’d all like to be Felicia Day and Kim Evey when we grow up.

So when I heard a call for donations of merchandise for the upcoming fifth season of The Guild, I was all over it. What’s not to like? On the one hand, I could contribute something that – like so much else – The Guild just didn’t have a budget for; while on the other hand it can’t hurt to be associated with something whose karma is as good as The Guild’s.

The problem the Guild team faced was that this season features a very large number of background actors. Most of the scenes take place on the floor of an imaginary convention (MegaGame-ORama Con!) and they were shot on the floor of an actual convention at the Long Beach Convention Center; but those 140-odd extras all had to be dressed like con-goers and – I assume – there could be problems if they were wearing graphics from licensed, franchised films and books. So the Guild crew needed lots of T-shirts in all sorts of styles, colors, and sizes.

A whole bunch of those T-Shirts, as it turned out, came from me.

It all came together very quickly – at the last minute – and it wouldn’t have happened at all if my printer, Printfection, hadn’t stepped up to the plate and turned out the shirts at a frantic pace, and even upgraded the shipping so the shirts would get there in time. Seriously: this would never have worked out if the elves at Printfection hadn’t done some special magic. Thanks!

Season Five of The Guild is now up to its ninth (of twelve) episodes, and it’s featured some astonishing cameos from the likes of Nathan Fillion, Neil Gaiman, Eliza Dushku, and others. All through the season to date I’ve been watching the background for something I could point at and say "Hey! I did that!"

But since my shirts are mostly on the background folks, I’ve nearly waited in vain; back in episode one I got a full-screen eyeful of my Celtic Knotwork Biohazard T-Shirt from Saga Shirts; but on the whole, there hasn’t been much that was obvious – ’til this week, anyhow. I’m happy to see that the grim sentinel of The Game’s own booth is sporting my "This Is NOT Rocket Science" shirt from The Retropolis Transit Authority. My shirt has lines!

So unlike most of those who are watching The Guild this season, I’m spending a lot of time staring at the chests of everyone on screen. At least, I think that’s unusual. With three episodes left to go I’m hoping for another major squeeable moment.

So, okay, that Neil Gaiman scene counted, too. The guy was incredibly funny. He just need a different shirt. 🙂

There’s a long standing feature over at the Whitechapel Forum in which artists each do a "remake/remodel" of an obscure (or even a well known) character from the history of comics and genre fiction. This week it’s Spurt Hammond. Yes. You got that right. Spurt Hammond.

You should know in advance that there will probably be no spurt joke left unturned and if spurting phallic symbols upset you, you probably shouldn’t look… but on the other hand you might ask yourself just how symbolic a phallic symbol is if it never, ever… well… spurts. Food for thought.

But I digress: the whole reason I even mention this is that I was so taken by this non-spurting, nearly non-phallic drawing by Tim Hamilton, who’s also the illustrator of the recent graphic novel version of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Our steampunk Spurt here seems to travel by airship (which is always a plus) and the rendering has a slightly scratchier than Moebius flavor that I really like.

And if you’d like to understand what on Earth the original Spurt Hammond was all about, this link probably won’t really help; but it’s a snarkily-commented version of an original Spurt story from Planet Comics in 1940.

Mister Doortree has been at it again at Golden Age Comic Book Stories with two collections of pulp magazine covers by Frank Tinsley and a cast of several.

This time I’m not digging the cover paintings themselves; these have me admiring the typography of the titles. Lovely stuff, especially this one from the first bunch and, in the second batch, The Whisperer.

The first collection is here; the second collection, here.