...actually at Midsouthcon right now, but I took a moment to post some thoughts about Knights of the Old Republic #26, on sale now.

Also dig ye the latest Sword & Sarcasm strips for the week!

If the Diamond chart does not deceive me, then Knights of the Old Republic #26 is on sale this Wednesday, featuring the next chapter of "Vector." Spring has sprung — and there's something growing!

I wasn't expecting to be able to make Midsouthcon this year, but I find myself in town and will be able to keep my string of recent attendances unbroken. There are five panels on the tentative list I'll be either speaking on or attending:

Opening night: Friday, 9 p.m.: My annual comics panel
Saturday: 11 a.m. : Creating engaging characters
Saturday 2 p.m.: Webcomics panel
Saturday 3 p.m.: Legends Lost — memorial panel on Clarke, Gygax, others; (I'm really glad this came together)
Saturday 6 p.m.: Films of George Lucas — last year's panel was so fun, they did it again

Check the Midsouthcon website for updates. Sorry for the site outage here this past weekend: The servers went down at the host.

This is hard to write — the news was harder to read. Arthur C. Clarke has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

Clarke was one of my favorite authors, period — and his works are one of the reasons I'm writing today. As I may have mentioned earlier on Roy Schieder's passing, the 2001 series of novels had a major impact on my imagination — as did Childhood's End and Rendezvous with Rama and so many more. And lesser known ones, like A Fall of Moondust — and I had just finished rereading another of his short story collections the other day. Plus his straight science books, which I've turnedto again and again...

I wish I had something inspired and eloquent to say right now... I hope I will later. This is going to take a while to digest. I guess I'll suffice for the moment to say thanks, Sir Arthur, for the many, many journeys. You are already missed.

One of the things about working in the creative world is that you have a lot of projects working at different paces — there are the ones you spend most of your time on, and there are the slower-boil ones you develop for a long time before releasing. Which brings me to Sword & Sarcasm, the new medieval fantasy webcomic by Chuck Fiala and yours truly, kicking off today.

Chuck (in period dress, there at right) and I have known each other for a long time — first at Comics Buyer's Guide Picnic-Cons, though I knew his work from Fandom Confidential and the Comics Reader long before that. We'd collaborated some with him illustrating my Longbox Manifesto columns for CBG, but we always wanted to do something that recalled the humor comics we grew up on. Anyway, what seems eons ago, we worked out something that would bring together some of the screwball elements we liked into a reader-friendly story with a broader continuity — and with Chuck doing the heavy lifting in the art department, he built up enough advance work to make a webstrip a go.

The strip follows two main characters in our first story arc: The protagonist, Duke Benedict, is a hateful popinjay; in our first episode, his long-suffering wisely subjects throw him out on his ear. That doesn't stop him from trying to change the equation, of course — which he does by hiring a traveling mercenary to help him reclaim his power. But Herbert the minotaur (or cow — there’s something fishy in his family tree) is more than the simple warrior he seems — and, well, it’s not exactly a match made in heaven for either of them!

I haven't done strip writing in a long time, but I've done it off and on for years — and it's fun seeing what Chuck's come up with. At least at the beginning, Chuck is planning on two strips a week — Monday and Thursday — and we have a pretty good head-start to make that happen. Bookmark SwordandSarcasm.com and check in with our pilgrims' progress!

While I'm still contributing to Comics Buyer's Guide and the Krause book line as time allows, I've been branching out with hobby projects like The Comics Chronicles, Newsarama, and, now, a contribution to the king of all price guides: The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. In advising the guide for this year's edition, I wrote one of the cover features (there are multiple covers) — mine dealing with Star Wars comics history and getting into some of my past research on circulation.

If you were wondering when Doug Wheatley and I would be paired on the same project, the unexpected answer is here — as Doug drew one of the two variant covers for the comics shop market. The book is out on April 1 and you can get it from your local shop or order it directly from Gemstone. Be advised that there are multiple covers, and you must request the one you want. (Actually, the Marvel Villains cover is by my pal Mark Sparacio, so you should get two!) And note that the Star Wars cover is just for the comics shop market, so if you click the Amazon link below, it'll take you to the order page for the mass-market edition, instead.

In the news game, "30" means the end — and that's exactlty what it looks like Zayne Carrick is facing in the blockbuster 30th issue of Knights of the Old Republic! Check out the Dark Horse site for more on the latest issue in KOTOR's most tumultuous year yet!

I never met Gary Gygax, but I played his games — and was very sorry to learn of his passing this morning. Starting way back with that dragon-on-the-cover basic set by him and Dave Arneson, Dungeons & Dragons provided me many hours of enjoyment — and sparked an interest in the genre that continues today. I still recall most every encounter in Keep on the Borderlands, his module that, perhaps more than any other, showed thousands of budding dungeon-masters "how it's done."

Not many people start an entire industry -- much less one based on imagination. Gary was one. My condolences to his friends and family.

And, because we were all in danger of running out of pages to visit on the Internet, I now have a Myspace page. I can't imagine how often I'll get to it, but it is there!

I've been asked about what's on my reading list, film shelf, etc. — so here's the first part of what will be something possibly always in progress: the first few films on the movie page. In no particular order, and more to come...

I've seen the fan action figures and costumes inspired by the Knights of the Old Republic comics series; now, a music video? A work in progress from an anonymous fan on YouTube...

And if you weren't up for this morning's Good Morning America, you can find the new Indiana Jones trailer at the official site  and on Yahoo! Enjoy!