BIG HOLIDAY SHIPPING ANNOUNCEMENT the cut off for standard shipping of domestic orders to arrive in time for Christmas is DECEMBER 10TH. That's Tuesday! Place your holiday orders now before it's too late! Or place them later and just get them, y'know, after Christmas. It won't be the end of the world.

Now, about them comics.

No, there's nothing wrong with your monitor or eyes.

Or, hell, maybe there is, how would I know?

But in the specific case of this here website and the comics we put upon it, the recent crop of black and white pages is entirely intentional.

It goes like this: we knew as far back as Ring of Fire that we were going to introduce Alan with a new crop of young Action Scientists in training. And that became Dawn of a New Era. As we worked out who these characters were, how they would get along, what sorts of hijinks they would create or fall into, Scott and I pitched each other little scenes. Just throwing cute moments or visuals at one another to see what we liked as Alan and the New Kids took shape.

It was stuff that we enjoyed and wanted to share with you folks, but it was also stuff that would make no sense in the midst of a regular volume. Particularly our next volume, Atomic Robo and the Vengeful Dead, which uh, hmmm, not to spoil anything but that sure doesn't sound like a nice relaxing romp.

So we're doing these Quickie Quomics. These Kwickie Komics. We're doing these simple comics to share a bunch of scenes of Alan, the New Kids, Robo, and the rest hanging out around Tesladyne. These are totally canonical. Orientation, for example, takes place maybe an hour after the final page of Dawn of a New Era. They'll be short stories, most of them are only four pages. They're sketchy, black and white, and use minimal backgrounds so we can make them without interrupting our regular production schedule.

So, sit back and enjoy.