The Little Vampires get excited when it’s back to school time. Their favorite classes are Blood Orange Eating 101, Bleh for Beginners, and Long Black Robe Maintenance.

We had a great time at PAX! I got to play a ton of awesome games with James, our bud Brooooose, and Alina Pete. We rocked out to Rock Band 3 with UberLunatic Angie. We had dinner with Stacey and his Band of Geek Brothers, and with the I Love Bees crew that we love so much. We played music games with indecipherable Japanese instructions with Neal and Kristen. We went to the Seattle Geekly Tweetup and won some awesome swag. And we got amazing seats at the MC Frontalot / Paul and Storm / Jonathan Coulton concert. Too much awesome to list!

But nothing was more awesome than winning little green army men at Gameworks. Sorry friends and fans, I love you . . . but little green army men!

I got two snipers, bitches!!!!

This week’s strip is inspired by our upcoming trip to PAX, the Penny-Arcade Expo, a celebration of all things gamer geek. This is the one convention that we attend as actual attendees. Craziness! If you happen to be attending, and if you happen to find us before we run out of them, we’ll give you this pin specially designed for the event. I suggest looking for us hovering around the Rock Band games and Dungeons and Dragons related stuff. ‘Cause we’re neeeeeerds.

My parents are to blame for me being a gamer. They’re the ones that had us all playing the Atari. My older brother and I played endless hours of Pitfall and Breakout. The whole family would play Atari Bowling. For those of you too young to know of the days of simpler console controls, like the one the Little Vampire is holding, use teh internets and Google Atari, then get off my lawn.

Speaking of how amazingly old I am, and speaking of my parents, James and I went to Kentucky this past weekend to celebrate my parents’ birthdays, see my bros, and attend my 20th high school reunion. This did, indeed, make me feel old, but not in a bad way. It was more of a “wow, I’ve been around awhile, and that’s allowed me to know all these awesome people.” Looking at it like that makes aging not so bad at all.

Speaking of awesome people, the awesome Hannah from the Life’s a Witch clan was reading my book, in public, while wearing the best hat EVAR. Her awesome mom snapped this awesome picture. Awesome!

The world of the Little Vampires has it’s own public library system, where little monsters can read and reflect in a quiet environment. Most of the time.

We were in Texas for the small but mighty Dallas Webcomics Expo this past weekend. Even the heat couldn’t keep us from having a great time there. Thanks to everyone that came by the table! Big Little Vampire love to the founders of the event, Thomas Overbeck, Michael Moreno, and Jonathan Caustrita. Thanks for putting me on that amazing Webcomics Economics panel, guys! And hugs to Randall Milholland for making me feel like I had a right to be on that panel with him, Jonathan, Joel Watson and Rob Denbleyker. Even beardless, Randall is a classy dude.

Samantha Wikan and Barry Buchanan and Chris Jeffrey were there, and get the fellow webcomicker love. It thrills me to no end to actually know such awesome people and their families! Thanks for the fan art Gracie and Emily Buchanan! I think you two should do a webcomic.

Big love to Barbara! She bought my piece in the art auction, and helped support some awesome charities. That’s why she got a mermaid with a ray gun sketch. ‘Cause that’s just what you get when you support awesome charities.

There’s a reason why the Little Vampires practice being fierce on the cat. Those teddy bears are stoooooone cold.

We’re packing up and heading to Texas this weekend for the awesome Dallas Webcomics Expo. We had a blast at last year’s show. This year I’m entering the following piece into the art auction. Be sure to bid on it if you’re there! It benefits some great charities and it will make me happy. And who wouldn’t want to make me happy?

Fan Larisa Park made the Little Vampires happy with this awesome photo.

The Little Vampires have as much trouble with household appliances as I do.

I’ll be posting the technicolor-rainbow-awesome version of this strip in a few hours. Thanks for your patience, all!

UPDATE: Hey folks! This week’s strip will be posted just a little later than usual. It should be up around noon PDT. Sorry Europeans and east coasters!

The Little Vampires practice being fierce every chance they get. The cat is often the target of their exhausting practice sessions, and the Little Vampires like to reward him for his patience whenever they can.

This strip is triple dedicated! It’s dedicated to my friends Randy and Ann, who are standing strong despite the loss of beloved pets. And it’s for my cat, Matt, who is continuing to survive cancer by staring it in the face and purring. No disease can withstand the might of his purr. It’s also for my older brother, Jim, who’s having a birthday this week. I’ve never bought him a can of birthday tuna, but would gladly do so if he was a cat. Which he is not.

They may be little, but they have big imaginations.

Alina Pete, creator of Weregeek and Moosehead Stew, penciled and inked this most awesome guest strip! Her inspiration? Being stuck at San Diego Airport. “They just want to fly. And so do I.” Alina and the fabulous Layne eventually made it onto a non-paper airplane and sped away home, leaving me with this awesome strip to color and a big heap of “Miss them!”

The Weregeek crew shared the booth with us at San Diego Comic-Con International last week, which helped make our fourth year exhibiting there monstrously geektastic. But there was lots of icing on the cake that was Comic-Con.

-Randy and Ann of Strange Matter Comics – Super coffee icing!

-All the fans that stopped by the booth – Rainbow colored icing!

-All the friends and former students that stopped by the booth – Rainbow colored icing with sprinkles!

-Daniel and Dawna of Monster Commute – Pork flavored icing!

-All the incredible creative people that we got to hug and fist bump  - Pencil lead and ink and paint flavored icing!

-Margaret, Phil, and the crew of Phil Davis Books and Treasures – Fabulous hat flavored icing!

We are at the monster mother of a convention known as San Diego Comic-Con! We’re sharing Booth 5015 with the fabulous Alina and Layne of Weregeek. Concentrated monster geekly goodness!

The Little Zombies also love Pin the Tail on the Undead Donkey.

San Diego Comic-Con begins next week. The Little Vampires and their friends from Weregeek will be at Booth 5015, near Artist Alley and (thankfully) close to the convention center Starbucks. Be sure to make time to come see us! (Map below)

After you come give us the love, be sure to visit these awesome creators. Would I send you to the non-awesome? Of course I wouldn’t.

We’re not too far from our friends at Monster Commute, who are at Booth 4207. The publishers of my comic book, Project Elohim, will be premiering issue 7 at the Strange Matter Small Press table, K04. While in Small Press, take a gander at the amazing work from A Wave Blue World (K11), Binary Winter (K08), Monkey Minion Press (N13), and Super Searnold (K03). And, of course, make sure you spend lots of time at the Webcomics Pavilion. There’s too much awesome there for me to list here.

]]> http://lunasea-studios.com/2010/07/13/lv20100714-2/feed/ 0 http://lunasea-studios.com/2010/07/06/lv20100707/ http://lunasea-studios.com/2010/07/06/lv20100707/#comments Wed, 07 Jul 2010 06:44:57 +0000 Rebecca http://lunasea-studios.com/2010/07/06/lv20100707/

Now I know better than to be hatin’ on Twilight. But the whole sparkle thing is just sooooo easy to poke fun at.

I apologize for the lack of color. The hard drive on my desktop machine melted like a wet witch in Oz, vaporized like a red shirt on the Enterprise, and shuffled off its mortal coil like a Norwegian Blue parrot.

It done died.

Like my vampire friends, my desktop machine will rise again! Until then, I’m going to learn how to use Photoshop efficiently on my laptop. Right after I stop hyperventilating about losing my main computer two weeks before San Diego Comic-Con.