Hello darlings! I am traveling, but shall return to amuse you next week. In the meantime, here are a few things to tide you over.

• I don’t usually consider myself prone to envy, but I can’t read Hark, A Vagrant! without turning green and wishing I’d thought of it. There’s a guest post on the front page at the moment, but dig back through the archives and you’ll find all kinds of fiendishly demented cartoons about Jane Austen and fat ponies and the discovery of Canada and Crazy Nancy Drew. OK, not all in the same strip, but maybe SOME in the same strip. You’ll have to look and find out. A mild language warning for those of you who get the vapours at the idea of St. Brendan the Navigator cussing at Jacques Cartier. That is kind of disturbing, frankly, since they lived in different centuries.
• That very first guest strip was written by my old friend Jim Ottaviani and illustrated by Leland Myrick. The pair have a graphic about Feynman coming out from Macmillan at the end of the month. If I know Jim (and I think I already mentioned that I do), it’ll be a great read. I’m excited about it.