Two quick reasons to point you to Unshelved today:

1.) Klingons! Always fun.

2.) Unshelved topped 20,000 e-mail subscribers today, which is great. Congrats, fellers!

Speaking of e-mail signups: Sheldon has been tracking a (roughly) 5% monthly growth rate in e-mail subscribers…which is nice. But man! The Sheldon RSS feed is growing by about 10-15% a month. I don’t use RSS, myself. I am the oldest man alive on earth, clearly. But just based on the growth rate for the Sheldon feed, RSS must be a great way to work the web.

Dave Kellett: possibly about to dip a toe into the wonders of RSS.

Actually, since it’s the weekend coming up…

Dave Kellett: about to mow his lawn, and then, come Monday — should he remember — will possibly dip a toe into the wonders of RSS.

Time to vote for the funniest dog in the Sheldon pug contest. Head here by July 8th and cast a vote for your favorite. Remember: winner gets a personalized copy of “The Good, The Bad & The Pugly”…PLUS a sketch of their pug!

You’ll need to be a registered forum user to vote, but now’s the perfect time to sign up…’cause there’s big-time, high-falutin’, dog-votin’ at stake! Click to sign on up and vote!

And the added bonus is, signing up means you’ll be able to chime in on the ridiculous discussions we have on the forum!

Hey! I totally forgot to thank the (immensely) funny Josh Fruhlinger for his “Sheldon” shout-out over at Yahoo’s Pick of the Week.

Thanks, Josh!

Oh, and also: if you haven’t yet come across it, you have to check out Josh’s site, The Comics Curmudgeon. It’s kinda one of the funniest sites on the web.

Also, also: why did I put “immensely” into parentheticals? Odd choice, that.

1.) The biggest news of the morning is that the shipping company may not have the new book here in time for San Diego Comic-Con. Which, for an independent cartoonist like myself, is kind of devastating news. That convention is the biggest one of the year, financially — so not having it there is a bit of a groin-kick. It…phwew…it gives me a headache to think about. I’ll be so bummed if it arrives two days after the convention. But c’est la vie, eh? In the great schema of life, this is but a passing moment. All I can do now is hope that some trucker somewhere takes an extra “No-Doze” and makes my day.

2.) It’s good to start with the bad news…cause then we can focus on the good news. Sheldonista Derek Pedersen has animated Saturday’s toon, and it is pretty darn awesome. Please check this out…it looks so cool! Click to watch.

Derek is an artist and designer whose work can be seen at Happy Leaf Studios. Please check out his site and show him some love. And note: having tried this out on Sheldon, Derek’s interested in working with other cartoonists. So especially show him some love if you can use his services!

3.) Reader pics continue to trickle in over at the store…and I’ll be adding them in when I have a free moment. So if you have a fun pic you’d like to share, by all means mail it to me!

(Sheldonista Margaret C. and her framed Sunday original.)

4.) I got the chance to watch an early “Transformers” showing with about 1,000 other nerds, yesterday. It was pretty fun, I have to say. But my opinion was totally clouded by the crowd I saw it with. To give you an idea of the crowd’s caliber, people were literally standing and applauding the first time Optimus Prime transformed…or spoke…or twitched an eyebrow. It was though someone had found the lost Shakespeare play “Loves Labours Won”, and was performing it for the first time in 500 years. It was that sort of crowd.

So was the movie good? Who knows. It’s a Michael Bay film. But I had a blast watching it with the collected uber-nerds of Southern California.

5.) But one movie I can wholeheartedly recommended is the Irish independent film “Once”.

You’ve either learned of this movie from all your friends, or you’ve never, ever heard of it. I heard about it from all my screenwriting friends in LA, who praised it to unbelievable heights of hyperbole. And the scary thing is…they were right. This might be among my top five films of all time. I kid you not. It’s a wonderful, intelligent, moving, funny film…with one of the best original soundtracks you’ll ever hear.

In most big cities, you’ll find it playing at smaller theater houses and independents. But please…take the time to seek it out. You won’t regret it. In fact, if you go to see “Once”, and don’t like it, here is my guarantee: I will personally refund every cent of your money. Every cent.*

[*Note: Refunds only valid if you live on my street, and your name is Skip, and you have an old football knee injury which flairs up in humid weather.]

[*Special Note: No one on my street matches this description.]

I got a lot of nice e-mails about Saturday’s cartoon, so I thought I should comment on it. Because the size and shape of Saturday’s strip reflect a conscious decision on my part…and the reasons for it are worth sharing.

Which requires that I step back in time to explain.

As many of you may remember from the launch of the Sheldon website, newspaper comic strip syndication was always my hoped-for dream, growing up. Which makes sense: In post-WWII America, newspaper syndication was the best way — perhaps the only way — to make a consistent living as a comic strip cartoonist. So, if you wanted to create comic strips, it followed that you wanted to create comic strips for newspapers.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the newspaper. A.) Folks my age and younger stopped reading newspapers B.) Newspapers themselves took increasingly fewer risks in launching new strips, and C.) Newspaper comic strips themselves got increasingly stale as they catered to the realities of points A and B.

But in the last 5-7 years, more and more cartoonists began sharing their art and making their living online. These were cartoonists who were producing fantastic, interesting work; who were talking directly to their readers by e-mail, blogs, and forums; who were taking a direct hand in the way their characters, books, and licensing were being handled; and who were taking risks with their strips that traditional newspaper syndication never would’ve allowed.

For me — a cartoonist who had been chasing that nirvana of newsprint, but then “saw the light” on internet cartooning — it’s taken me a while to break the mindset of newspaper formatting. But in the last few months, I’ve started to dip a toe into formats, sizes, and shapes that wouldn’t have been possible in traditional newspaper strips.

So, with strips like the “Crotchley Labs” jokes (#1, #2, #3), I was able to use an odd shape and grayscaled images to help convey the feel of cheesy, 1950’s newsreels. And with the recent Home Depot strip about standing in a never-ending line, I was able to string out the strip’s physical size…reinforcing the point of time’s passage. And finally, with Saturday’s strip, I was able to play with a larger negative space…showing the fall of the baby duck in a way that a “normal” strip sizes wouldn’t have allowed.

These experiments have been fun to do, and I think they’ve benefited the strips in which they were used. So, on that front, I’m inclined to use such experiments in the future.

But I’d be curious to hear what you’d have to say on the matter, as a Sheldonista reader. That’s far more interesting than what I have to say on the matter. So, if you have a thought to share, swing by the ol’ Sheldon forum, or let me know via e-mail.

If given some magical chance to swipe someone’s artistic ability, I could narrow down my preferred list real quick: Paul Southworth of Ugly Hill, Scott Kurtz of PvP, or Paul Taylor of Wapsi Square. Taylor’s art style is simply amazing. Every time I’m at a comics convention, I’m in awe, watching Paul draw. So allow me to share a bit of exciting news from Paul’s world of Wapsi:

Wapsi Square: Book 2

Blank Label Comics is excited to announce the release of the “Wapsi Square: The Demons In My Back Pocket” by cartoonist Paul Taylor. This is the third “Wapsi Square” book (the first volume was released last year and a collection of early strips was published by Keenspot).

The book is 8.5″ x 11″ / 160 pages, with perfect binding and black-and-white interior ink. You can order one right now through Lulu. Sample pages One Two Three Four Five

Pug Owners! We’re almost at the end of June, which means there’s only two more days to get your pics in our photo contest: “Is Your Pug the Funniest?”

Tell your friends, tell your friends-friends, and spread the word over at Pug Village and the Pug Community! There’s just two days left to get your photo entries in — and I don’t want anyone to miss out by a day or two.

Reminder: the winner will be getting a personalized, frame-able drawing of their pug, plus a personalized copy of “The Good, The Bad & The Pugly”. So get your pics in!

And if you haven’t seen them, check out the pics submitted so far!

This morning, I received the production samples for the third Sheldon book…and they look amazing. Really, really amazing. I’m a stickler for details, and this book exceeded all my hopes.

So, even though copies aren’t available in the store yet, I wanted to share a few quick pics with you.

The final look, weight, colors, and baby-soft vellum cover all came out great:

And check out how nicely all three books hang together. My buddy Katherine did a really nice job of giving all three a “line look”.

And here they are from the side. Hangin’ out together. Livin’ the dream. You know how it goes.

And finally, a shot of all three from the back.

I can’t wait ’til you guys get a chance to see ’em!

And don’t forget…if you were hoping to get a limited Artist’s Edition, those will be put on sale to newsletter subscribers first. So if you haven’t yet, sign up!

(Note: Sheldon by E-mail subscribers will get the newsletter automatically, so no need to sign up twice.)

Submitted by Sheldonista Nikola N:

A few quick things to note on the Sheldon Wallpapers:

1.) On request, I’ve added 1600 x 1200 to the list of available resolutions. So now, the full list includes…800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

…that should cover 99.9% of folks. But if you have a random, Bulgarian-made computer screen with a resolution not seen above — I’ll happily add that resolution to the list!

2.) Also, the dead link for 1920×1200 has been fixed. Sorry about that!

3.) Also, also: I’ve added the wallpapers to the Sheldon Store checkout process. So now, every Sheldon purchase also gets you these wallpapers as thanks! (Just click on “Return to Merchant” when you’re finished with your Paypal checkout).

4.) Also, also, also: you guys are rad. I put these up under a donation system of “any amount” — but “any” in my mind meant “small”. A few of you Europeans were far too giving. Which either means the dollar is trading favorably for you, or you’re entirely too generous. Thanks, in any case!

Didn’t get your wallpaper yet? Pick up yours by clicking here!