I often get asked, “What makes a Cheese a Cheese?” And so long as we’re assuming you’re cool kids, you refer to the comics on Hello With Cheese as “A Cheese.”

Well, this comic is a pure “Cheese.” I had this pun stuck in my head – just the line, sung to the song, on a loop. And it made me giggle. So I sent it to O. And it made him giggle. And he got a mental picture going, so he drew it.

We’ve been doing this a lot. What we haven’t been doing is collecting all this silliness into a book. Until now…

Announcing Hello With Cheese: The Cheesen One.

This book collects over 100 comics from O and me over the past four years, including luchadores, Business Squirrel, Salebot9000, puns, wordplay, groaners, mash-ups, mess-ups and dress-ups.

And how much would you pay for such an amazing collection, with 100 pages using the dark magic of color printing, plus the far more traditional supplement of 20 wholesome black and white pages? A million dollars?

Wait, seriously? That seems a bit high. But if you want to, please contact me immediately, crazy millionaire reader.

And if you don’t have a million dollars, know that we’ll let you less-moneyed individuals purchase this masterpiece for only $20. That is, if you’re a slow and lazy less-moneyed individual. Why, I dare say if you’re a get-up-and-go-getter, then you should order your book today! Because until July 4, we’ll have this book up for a preorder special of $15 here!

Four shows and many more years ago we started doing conventions. Here’s where the Scallywags International gang is heading:

June 12-16 – Origins (Columbus, OH): The Scallywags are setting up copies of Scurvy Dogs and Postumo and are ready to game.

June 28-July 1 – ALA (Chicago): The American Library Association has a small artist alley called Graphic Comic Con, and Scallywags will have Dern in Booth 2355. It’s 20 tables packed with some of the best comic talent out there.

July 12-14 – ConnectiCon (Hartford, CT): For the seventh straight year, Dern makes his journey to CTCon. And we just might have a surprise announcement in the works here. Look for us in the OMG.

Aug. 9-11 – Otakon (Baltimore, MD): Also hitting the seventh time in a row, Scallywags International will be at Booth U-06 in the Dealer Room.

Aug. 15-18 – GenCon (Indianapolis, IN): More gaming! Scallywags International will be testing out and showing off some new items, bringing in a special guest, and even hosting a tournament.

The unofficials:
Just a head’s up on the shows we’re working on. We fully expect to be at Baltimore Comic-Con. And finally, there’s two mystery shows towards the end of the year that we might add, pending a strong start to the year.

NOTE: While we’ll still be doing the comic, Dern will be taking a break from Conventions in November for Paternity leave.

I really can’t believe that I didn’t think of this comic a year ago. Seriously.

I was incredibly late to the A Song of Ice and Fire bandwagon, reading through all the books immediately after watching The First Season of Game of Thrones. Hold on a sec, let me put in those Amazon ad thingies for these, as I recommend both of those products heartily.

NOTE: I’m not linking the second season. I really kind of despise the inexplicable changes made during that season. However, I’m loving the third season, which had gone to great lengths to undo the messes made by the second season. My only complaint is that it looks like we’ll not get to see Strong Belwas. Apparently, he let them cut him from the series once.

Every now and then, I start punning on twitter. You can also follow O there, and watch me annoy him with my abuse of Twitter. Or watch him post pretty pictures. He does that too.

And sometimes my puns are truly awful great enough that they need to be a Cheese.

We now have an official Zombie store on Swag Shark, which makes buying all things Postumo a bit easier.

And we’re still taking preorders for Scurvy Dogs: Treasure and Treason here.

You guys. No, really, you guys. Really.

We’re launching a ton of new things through Swag Shark this week.

First up, Póstumo, our deck of zombie playing cards, is now officially out of pre-order status. That means you can buy the green, red or pewter decks HERE. You can buy the dice HERE. And for a very limited time, you can buy uncut sheets of Póstumo HERE.

Second, Scurvy Dogs: Treasure and Treason is available for preorder HERE. This 54-card expansion adds in secret Missions, while also arming the pirates with some lethal new Cargo cards. It will normally cost $12, but during this month’s preorder, we’re dropping the price down to $10.

Finally, because we’ve got to do this stuff in threes, the Monster Numbers is now officially open for pre-order HERE.

OK, weird tangent thought: When I used to be a sports reporter, I had an affinity for school mascots. I absolutely loved a good one, and was incredibly annoyed by schools that picked the same mascot as a school one county over.

Well, I used to occasionally write about a high school called Wilde Lake, and their mascot was the Wildecats. Because that spelling was so incredibly idiotic, I had to only assume that their mascot wasn’t a mutant wildcat, but instead the house cat of Oscar Wilde.

Also, I do realize that the text probably should read “Picture” instead of “Portrait.” It’s my fault in the scripting, not O’s.

So instead of actually talking about gaffes, lets talk about our favorite sports mascots in the comments.

This has to be the weirdest side-effect of going full-time webcomics: days of the week have become almost meaningless. I no longer understand why Garfield hates Mondays, or why TGIF is a thing. We just barely remember to update the comic some days, only because we honestly have no idea what day it is.

If anything, my calendar has become more of a countdown clock. Today isn’t really Friday, it’s 39 days until Origins. I’m not sure where our booth will be, but you’ll have a tough time missing the Scallywags International banner with both me and O on it. We’ll have a slew of playing cards and posters and prints and shirts available, but the real gem of the booth will be the demo area, where you can get in a game of Scurvy Dogs or 3v3.