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My all-time greatest Halloween costume: the mighty stegosaurus!  As you can see, my brother was a pterodactyl.  The close second was the year I was Ms. Pac-Man.  I was very lucky to have a grandma who can sew.

Whereas I was the spoiled eldest grandchild in my family, Andrew was but one of dozens of kneebiters in a vast Sicilian clan.  He and his siblings generally made do with the classic grocery store smock-and-mask set.  And the greatest of them all, of course:

And this is just a cute kid drawing.  No excuses.

We’re starting a new feature!

Every month we’ll be posting a selection of sketches from the Couscous Collective to give everyone a little behind the scenes peek at what happens when we’re not churning out finished comics.  Some of them are just doodles or quick sketches, some in progress shots of bigger projects and some of them the land somewhere in between. Below Chloe explains a typical Kinkos run before cons, Liz sketches on her vacation, Shaenon shares some antics her cat gets up to in anticipation of our upcoming anthology Kitties and Karen shows of some in progress shots of a new project.

A semi appeared on Mission Street today:

A semi hauling FOUR PALLETS OF BOOKS:

About 100 boxes of books:

Two thousand books:

Eight hundred thousand pages’ worth:

Copies will be available from the Couscous Store soon, once the original Kickstarter orders have been filled.  We’ll be selling copies at Stumptown in the spring of 2012, and maybe a few other conventions here and there.

Here are some character sketches for my OCEAN story that Shaenon and I did at Stumptown last year. One of the reasons I like tabling at these small cons is that I feel really creative stuck behind the booth, and often come up with my next anthology story right there.

Blorg!

This is my sketch of some hard-partying whales.

BLARG

Shaenon’s sketch of a puking whale.

You’ll be able to read the story in OCEAN, debuting in October 1st at APE. OCEAN will also be available on our store a few days after the con if you can’t make it or are outside the Bay Area.

The Couscous Collective is going to be at SF ZineFest this weekend! Come by and see us at table 56. The fest is at the San Francisco County Fair building, 1199 9th Ave and Lincoln Way in Golden Gate Park from 11 am – 6 pm on Saturday and Sunday.

Pancha asked me to do a sketch of Tip as a kid, so here goes:

Character sketch requests for the Narbonic Kickstarter drive:

Helen: 29
Dave: 20
Mell: 13
Artie: 7
Professor Madblood: 6
The Girl at the Bar: 5
Zeta: 5
Caliban: 3
Helen’s insanity sprite: 3
ANTONIO SMITH: 2
Dave’s insanity sprite: 2
Dr. Narbon: 2
Artie’s personality sprites: 1
The backer as a lobotomized hippie driven by Dana: 1
Dana: 1
Dana as a human: 1
Dr. Noah: 1
Emily Post-quoting slime mold: 1
The Girl at the Bar’s mirror-universe double: 1
Girl Dave: 1
A historical (not Victorian) Helen: 1
Lovelace: 1
Madblood Robot #3782: 1
Octavius Winter, Evil Attorney at Law: 1
Random gerbils: 1
Seth: 1
Sir Pounce: 1
Titus Misanthropie: 1
Ur-Gerbil: 1
Victorian Artie: 1
Victorian Martian Soldier: 1
Victorian Mell: 1

I’ve lowered the price on The Looney Tunes Treasury! For $35, you can get a signed copy, sketched with the Looney Tunes character of your choosing. That’s $20 cheaper than we had this book just yesterday, so act now before we come to our senses. Woo-hoo!

I’m going to be a GOH at Intervention in September, along with my Skin Horse collaborator Jeff Wells. Come see us!

Also in completely unrelated news, I started a blog, Tiki Weekend, for my collection of tiki memorabilia. No, really. I’ve got a bunch of tiki stuff.