Well, it’s been quite a while in production but it looks as though we can finally see the new serial adventures of The Mercury Men at syfy.com, starting on July 25th.

I wrote about the previews for this production back in August of 2009. There have been some bits and bobs of news since then, but this is certainly the biggest and best news of all.

It’s great to know that they’ve found a home for it, hopefully (but not likely) bringing in great big bags of money and popcorn. My guess is, the popcorn’s a lock.

And until the 25th of July you can amuse yourself by browsing the project’s digital props like, for example, the entirely imaginary action figures, the entirely printable papercraft characters, and the entirely unnecessary vintage newspaper ads. What? Did I say unnecessary was bad? Some of my best friends are unnecessary.

Anyhow the syfy link above goes to their home for the episodes; but the production itself has its own site, here.

From now through July 5 you can get five dollars off any order at all from The Retropolis Transit Authority, Saga Shirts, and Hot Wax Tees by entering the coupon code STARSAVINGS during your checkout. There’s no minimum order, so that’s five dollars off an order for a single shirt or, of course, thirty shirts, which you’re actually more likely to want.

This includes those brand new (and extremely flattering) Thrilling Tales T-Shirts from The Lair of the Clockwork Book which, once you own them, will be the envy of all your friends and neighbors. Be the first on your block!

Along with all the other things I need to do as I work on these illustrations, at the end of each batch of them I re-render a few in a higher resolution in order to slap them on archival prints, t-shirts, and other gimcracks as Thrilling Tales merchandise at my Retropolis web site.

This time I was more clever than usual, in one way, anyhow: I set up scheduled renderings for about five of the new Clockwork Book illustrations – so that when I got to this point I’d only need to do the Photoshop work on them. That has helped. But these are likely to trickle out over the weeks since I’m also working away at the new illustrations for Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS.

For now, anyway, I’ve added a couple of T-Shirts – The Astro Diner shirt shown above, and another shirt with Osgood Finnegan’s airship. In fact there are also diner mugs and airship mugs, along with a poster and an archival print of Late Night At the Astro Diner.

Along the way I’ve noticed a subtle but annoying problem in one part of the Retropolis store. It’s not a problem for you – not functionally, anyway – but the breadcrumbs and sidebars aren’t doing the magical things they used to do. I have an idea why that is, but I can’t fix it at the moment.

But there it is: some new bits of the Thrilling Tales on neat things, presented almost neatly. More to follow, if on an erratic schedule.

As you see, our friend Osgood Finnegan is sailing off in his airship and that, I have decided, is my cue to switch back to my work on The Toaster With TWO Brains.

I haven’t completely filled the Clockwork Book buffer – I’m constantly banging my head against Zeno’s paradox, here – but in order to do the next two illustrations (thereby to catch up) I’d have to create two new characters. Due to the length of time I’d spend on that, by the time I’d "caught up" I wouldn’t, in fact, have caught up. I’d need to do several more illustrations to make up that time in filling my ever-dwindling buffer of complete illustrations.

It’s just bad luck, really. It’s got to do with what I’d need to build right now. Over time the hours would average out, I’d be happily caught up in all actuality… while the birds sang, and the bees buzzed, and Osgood’s airship would sail on with its favorable wind.

But I’m tired of chasing the buffer. I’m going to swap over to my other story while I’m still two pictures short, and just take a week off The Toaster With TWO BRAINS at the end of its part of the schedule.

If I hadn’t had to model the airship I’d have been back on track this past weekend: but after that, the two new characters are just too much to bear.

This is my decree.

Here’s somebody else’s robot, called Rosie; she’s one of a cast of characters for Thomas E. Kyzivat’s project, Americana, whose eponymous heroine we see on the right. He describes the story:

… it’ll follow Americana as she travels across a retro-future America to find her destiny at The City of Tomorrow! Sort of like the Wizard of Oz crossed with Huck Finn, but on Route 66. And with more robots.

Which, you know. sounds pretty swell to me.

Apart from these character sketches Kyzivat doesn’t seem to have made available much information about Americana, either at his DeviantArt account or on his nifty, streamline moderne web site, Murderous Automation. So I guess we’ll just have to wait!