And the Halloween horror: today marks the final syndicated My Cage. Took a little while to catch onto its tone, but the strip quickly stood out for its humor and inventiveness and found its way into my favorites. Others have already said, and better, what a shame that a smart, contemporary strip gets cancelled, while humorless zombies continue to fill the pages. Writer Ed Power has a post on the comic's end (?), along with revealing all sorts of other important and troubling news. We wish him the best and look forward to future projects.

Another Halloween treat.

Happy Halloween — celebrate with Kate Beaton's awesome Dracula.

Hm. Via Raph, this obit of (unknown to me) legendary graphic designer, S. Neil Fujita. Note how they didn't even need to show that The Godfather cover — you know it.

The secret origin of Squirrel Girl. Via Raph. BTW, I've got sketches and my pitch for Ultimate Squirrel Girl, you need only ask.

Our friends Jeff and Courtney have their graphic-novel-in-progress Peoplings — Autism, Education and the Savage of Aveyron posted at Kickstarter. Consider sending some funding their way, please.

ComicsAlliance points to the entry at Letters of Note about the original designs for Wonder Woman. Looking at the larger image, what I like best is the gestural line quality in the figure, the mixing of pencil and ink. Via Project: Rooftop.

New computer's arrived and it looks like — thanks to Mozy — so has the backup of all our data.

In the meantime, Molly Lawless' Frog and Owl has been a welcome distraction.

Shirl's going public with her Mistral project.

"Busted!," notes Marc. Note: my first tip-off to the conspiracy was back when I was living near the Pentagon, in a neighborhood full of squirrels, and my car's hoses started going. It wasn't tough to do the math.

"Time to make that much-delayed next issue!" — The Revenge of Print. Sorry, it's a Facebook link. But we're in.

From the rest of their manifesto, not on the page:

Aren't you sick of hearing folks glibly forecasting the death of print?

We are. Folks have been declaring the end of print in some form or other for longer than there's been an Atomic Books (Baltimore) or Quimby's (Chicago) (that's about twenty years).

"Books are over." "Magazines are over." "Comix are over." "Zines are over." "Newspapers are over." Bah! We're over things being over. Let's make things happen!

So we're declaring next year to be: 2011: The Revenge Of Print! (Frankly, next year was going to be 2011 with our without our declaration anyway. But that "Revenge of Print" part, that's all us.)

Here's the idea - what if everyone who ever made a zine, a mini-comic, a journal, a chapbook, a magazine or any kind of self-made publication of any kind vowed that in 2011, they'd make another? And then they did it! How awesome for us readers would that be? And if that happened, perhaps it would also make for a nice response to all those publishing doomsayers.

"Print is alive if you want it."

Rob, doing some maintenance at — as Raphael corrected me about the designation — SQRL Station A, was caught on a surveillance camera.

What makes Greg Rucka so awesome? In part, research. Clearly, his experiences seep into the stories, and they're all the better for it. Just completed a re-read of the complete Stumptown, where Matthew Southworth's artwork benefits from the same kind of work ethic, detailed at the end of each issue.

This just in from the temporary SQRL station in Puerto Rico. Let me know if you want one of your own.

As Scott McCloud points out in Understanding Comics — works of visual art can be considered high culture, works of text can be considered high culture, but put them together and it's somehow not worthy. And children's picture books are the latest victim; a shame, because it seems to me, having been buying for kids for the past few years, there's been an explosion of really good ones recently.

Hey, count down the days with me until I find out if our stolen computer's data is really backed up — it's Gone and ForgottenWeen all month and Francesco Francavilla is celebrating 31 Days of Halloween.

Burglary at the Squirrel household yesterday — dog was locked off into a room, causing some panic. Only major loss was the desktop computer with pretty much all our important data, hopefully all backed up offsite. Look for me to either start cursing or singing the praises of Mozy.

Don't let that bring you down — head on over to 24 Hour Comics Day from 7000 BC and follow along.