So I’ve left Nat Gonella here, in the laboratory of mad Doctor Rognvald – more or less – because my current stint on the illustrations for Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS has come to its end.

For the past week I’ve been working on another web project that’s still a ways from being ready for prime time. That one’s a commercial site for all of my Celtic art merchandise, just as I did with the Retropolis site for the retro-futuristic side of my brain.

I had meant to finish the Celtic Art Works site before the holidays last year… but Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual just wouldn’t let me go. This year, I’m making a stand.

A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

But on Wednesday I plan to sit back down with The Lair of the Clockwork Book, where I’ll remain for a couple of months as I keep illustrating weeks out ahead of what you see on the Thrilling Tales site. With the occasional diversion into the ten million sidebars I have to write for The Celtic Art Works, I should get where I need to be on time, on all fronts. I think.

I hope to be able to (soon!) show you a pretty neat thing that I hinted about back in April – a tie-in with something that’s so much more popular than I’ve ever been that I feel a little funny about showing up with it at the dance. Shouldn’t be too much longer. I’m sure I’ll have this cummerbund figured out by then.

On the slopes of the volcano Fremrinamur in a remote and ashy part of Iceland where only mad scientists thumb through the real estate section of the local paper, the Space Patrol has established its camp around the well defended tower of mad Doctor Rognvald. Here we’re very near the beginning of Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS… although in a total refusal to conform I’m actually about a quarter of the way done with that story’s illustrations.

You can click the picture above to initiate an explosive form of embiggification which, although terrifying, is Entirely Safe When Used as Directed.

This is the second illustration in the story. I still haven’t managed the first one: I guess I can’t take the pressure. But anyhow I’m nearing the end of this weeks-long excursion into TWO BRAINS so soon I’ll reset my own brain, and get back to The Lair of the Clockwork Book.

Come to think of it, during those last anxious weeks of the Clockwork Book I never realized that I’d passed the halfway mark. Over half those illustrations are done now… when I include a bunch that you haven’t seen yet, but I have.

There is a web project that I really need to make some progress on, and I’ve been asked to do an illustration for something else, too. So once I’ve finished two more of the TWO BRAINS pictures I’ll probably try to race through those two things before the big reset.

Today’s the debut of The Mercury Men, that long-awaited retro science fiction web serial that’s found its home at syfy (sic).

Synopsis: Edward Borman becomes trapped when deadly creatures from the planet Mercury overrun his office building, killing anyone in their path.

That happened to me once, too, except that they turned out to be FBI agents.

It looks like the next episode is slated for tomorrow; so, viewers, don’t change that channel!