Month: March 2009

I’ve had no less than three e-mails, this past week, from husbands who gave their wife a Sheldon Original Art for their “paper” anniversary, and my first thought was: “Hey! That’s pretty cool!”

My second thought was: “Man, as far as husbands go, I have NO IDEA what’s on that list of anniversary gifts.”

My assumption is that the list was put together specifically to remind husbands that, not only did they forget their anniversary, they further forgot what *specific thing* they were supposed to get that year. So! to be helpful, I’ve put together the first ten on the list PURELY FROM MEMORY, to help other husbands out there:

Year 1: Paper. Year 2: Copper Pots. Year 3: Selection of Bulgarian Shoes. Year 4: A Small Marmot. Year 5: Radial Tires (and/or snow chains, if needed). Year 6: Gift Certificate to Chuck E. Cheese. Year 7: New Keyboard. Year 8: Jewelry that you picked up at the last minute by walking past the case at Macy’s and going “That’ll do.” Year 9: Selection of Tropical Fish. Year 10: Entire “Where’s Waldo” book collection, including the very rare last book: “HE’S RIGHT THERE.”

So there you go! Help from one husband to many others! Congratulations on your anniversary!

Librarians! Researchers! Savvy readers! I need your help finding this answer: When did Sheldon first go online?

TWICE, this month, I’ve had a journalist ask me when “Sheldon” went online, and I had to hedge my answer…’cause I honestly don’t know. I had to tell the nice lady from Forbes it was “Fall of 1998…or, um, thereabouts”, because I can’t find any official answer in web archives.

So let’s put the patented WISDOM OF CROWDS to use, and see if thousands of heads are smarter than one!

When did the first Sheldon strip appear online?

WHAT WE DO KNOW:

1.) Sheldon didn’t start out on “davekellett.com” (archived page from ’99) or on “sheldoncomics.com” (archived page from ’00).

2.) It actually started out a year earlier — somewhere in the Fall/Winter of 1998/99 — while I was studying WWII cartoons at the University of Kent, Canterbury England.

3.) That student webpage, as far as I can remember, was “http://www.ukc.ac.uk/php/djk3”, or perhaps “http://www.ukc.ac.uk/djk3”. Kent, however, has long-since deleted that student page, and changed their own URL to “kent.ac.uk”.

4.) If we can find *any* archived page from that student site, we’ll know the start-date, since the “First Strip” link will exist in hand-coded html.

WHAT WE NEED TO FIND OUT:

1.) While archive.org captured the latter two sites in ’99, it didn’t capture the (obscure) student site of mine in late ’98. Is there any web archive that was active in late ’98 or early ’99?

2.) Might there be a UK-based or university-based archive of student sites from that era?

3.) Is there even one (!) Sheldon reader who’s been following the strip the entire time, and would have some personal record of when it first came online?

4.) Is there some other resource that the search-savvy among us might know?

Figuring out the start-date is so important to me, that I’d like to offer this up to the person who finds *the* definitive date: I’m offering ANY Sheldon Original Art in the archives, plus the entire 6-book Sheldon collection, plus a Sheldon t-shirt of your choosing, plus a personalized sketch of your favorite character! It’s the least I can do, since you’d be doing me such a huge kindness.

…THANKS, ALL!

I had to share this with you.

Sheldonista Jeremy P. absolutely bowled me over with pics of an Arthur sculpt he made. They make me smile in a way few things do. Probably because — and I’m being honest with you, here — whenever *I* try to create a 360-degree view of Arthur, I fail.

But! Along comes Jeremy, producing what in my mind is an absolutely spot-on, 3-D Arthur. With a wonderfully goofy, Arthur-esque facial expression, no less! Jeremy, you nailed it.

Jeremy says that if he has time, he’ll tackle Flaco next. If you do, Jeremy, I’d love to see the pics. ‘Cause these made my week!

To give Sheldon Store customers a little somethin’ extra with their purchase, starting today every store order comes with 8 free wallpapers! With a purchase as small as one bumper sticker, you get all 8 designs:

All 8 designs are available in these resolutions:

…And, it’s super easy for us to add a design — so if there’s a wallpaper you’d like to see, let us know!

Sheldon reader Brandon sent in this photo of he and his pug Roxie “reading through the archives of our favorite comic”.

It’s a great pic…and I believe Brandon when he say he was enjoying the archives. But closer inspection shows that Roxie was less than impressed….

I missed it by three days.

I was poking around the back-end of the Sheldon site, today, and noticed that we’re on Sheldon strip #2,503. That ain’t too shabby!

Seems like an awful lot of strips, looking back on them. Assuming it takes me 2.5 hours each to ideate, draw, cleanup and post, that’s 260 SOLID days of cartooning. Lordy Lord!

Anyway, what I really wanted to do, after looking at that number, was thank you guys for everything you’ve given me over the years. I doubt if I would’ve made it past a few hundred strips without your kind words via e-mail, forum posts, and in-person convention high-fives. (I’m including the low-fives, as well, just for statistical reasons.)

Every day, I get e-mails from one-to-two dozen Sheldonistas, all over the world. You send in kind words, links, funny stories, pictures, or how today’s strip reflected your mood for the day. And I have to tell you…that’s an amazing gift. The kind of gift that feeds an artist’s soul. It’s the reason why a cartoonist does what they do.

So thank you, my friends, for helping make 2,500 strips possible! Here’s to 2,500 more!

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Postscript: Quick! Someone who’s good at calendar-math: If today is #2,503, what date will we hit 3,000 at a seven-strips-a-week rate? My liberal-arts brain tried to figure it out, but came up with May 5th, 1973…and I know that ain’t right. 🙂 [Edited to note: Almost instantly by e-mail, Twitter, and posts, folks let me know it’s July 12, 2010!]

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Post-to-the-Postscript: How many of you have read through the entire archive of 2,500?