And now the 2022 Christmas Card

Here’s this year’s card. Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope 2023 is an awesome year for us all.

And remember, if you want to receive these cards in the mail, too, just join my mailing list here.

Merry Christmas, One and All!

It’s time for my yearly Christmas Card! Some of these are still en route since I use a bulk rate mailing house to send everything so out. So don’t click through if you don’t want to be spoiled.

And I hope you and yours have a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

A Cold New Frontier

This is a collection of my Tweets about my trip home from Orlando. I’ve edited them so they read more like a story and less like a series of tweets. Content is edited for clarity and spelling errors, because weirdly, my spelling skills are not rock-solid at 3:00am.

So, I was once told my most interesting tweets were when I was stuck in an airport. WELL GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE. 

Except for you, Frontier Airlines

So, Emily were invited by friends to go to Disney World and see that rarest of things: the one week Epcot wasn’t holding a festival. It was like it’s un-birthday. We had a lovely time. I braved the death trap that is the Skyliner with grace and aplomb. Well, with gritted teeth and Hail Marys. And we had incredible food at La Cellier. Or as the Canadians call it, FOOUD. All was well. 

Then we tried to leave. And, not to spoil the ending, but we still haven’t left yet.

So, we got to the airport in plenty of time thanks to Mickey’s Marginally Less Magical Express. I miss when my bags would leave my room and wind up on baggage claim in Ohio. But I’m grateful it currently exists at all. (Angry eyes at you, there, Disney.)

We got to the airport and, here’s where you come in Frontier Airlines, your line to check our bags was as long as Rise of the Resistance, but with less clever theming. We were in need of a FastPass, even with two hours until our 830pm flight. Thankfully, you had automated kiosks. I thankfully, they wouldn’t print out our baggage tags. They SAID we were checked in and didn’t need one. But this was a machine of lies.

Armed with a screenshot saying we were good, we went to what I assume was your audio-animatronic flight attendant and had a Kafkaesque conversation. 

“You need baggage tags.”

“Yes, but your machine won’t print them.”

“Yes, but you need them.”

“But you won’t give them to us.”

“You’ll have to get in the huge line.”

“But your machine won’t give us the tags. And that line is as long as the one for Rise of the Resistance.”

“Please. It’s Star Tours length at best.”

“THATS NOT THE POINT!”

“You still need tags.”

Fortunately, my aged eyes manages to see the glyphs that read BAGGAGE TAG PRINTED on a completely different bank of kiosks. I had Emily

 go over to see if that would give us the magical tags while I waited in line. 

Don’t worry. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Obviously, this was a long shot. I mean, we’d just talked to another Cleveland-bound passenger who had the same problem. There was something wrong with the machines, right?

And here hope enters. (Ted, it’s the hope that kills.)

But my crazy plan worked! We got the tags and even helpfully pointed out to the previously mentioned robot drone that the bank directly in front of her actually worked and she would need to tell people that. She seemed uninterested in doing that. 

Cut ahead three hours and we talk to another couple who missed their afternoon flight because the kiosks wouldn’t print the tags and the line they waited in was an Avatar-length one so they missed their flight.

I screamed like a banshee, or as they call it, an Ekron, when I heard this.

The bad machines had been a problem all day. Did anyone mark them broken or tell people to use different ones? No, why ruin the surprise?

So, we walked past the two open food places (at 7pm, which seemed odd for a major international airport) to brave the TSA, planning to get food on the other side by our gate. 

Be prepared for an M. Night Shamalan level twist ahead.

WE HAD NO PROBLEMS WITH THE TSA. 

Shocking, I know. I wouldn’t have expected that either.

Safely by our gate we decided to get food. Our flight was at 830, we wouldn’t be home until 1130, and those Morimoto Sticky Ribs in my tummy wouldn’t last forever. But we still had an hour and change.

Twist the second! Only two places were open. A Mexican place with too long a wait. And a Burger King with a line that looked like Frozen plus Avatar multiplied by Toy Story Mania. (Look, I was at Disney. I waited in a lot of freakin’ lines this week.) So I got in line while Emily searched for other food options.  

Meanwhile, whoever ran this Burger King read Kafka, and programmed the Frontier Bot, said “But wait, this will be my masterpiece!” You see, to order food at this Burger King, you don’t go to the register. No, you go to the app. No, not the Burger King app, you fool. The HMS Host app. And how do you know to do this, you don’t. BECAUSE NOTHING TELLS YOU TO DO THIS.

Fortunately, some… and I don’t use this word lightly… some goddamned American hero… found out that we needed to scan a QR code on a sign that had been removed and she got the manager to put it back so that we could order. In the thirty minutes before they, too, closed.

Yes, I was in a race against time against the dozens of people in line, and the clock, and my flight. Emily texted to say there were no other food options and I said we’re going ride or die here.

I managed to order the food online. And I watched the least effective product line I’ve ever seen get our orders ready. I know they were under stress. But man, that manager should have said “large fries for everyone” rather than hand checking every artisanal order to make sure they had the right size of crispy potatoes.

Emily even got in on the fun when she said, “Oh, see if they have ketchup.” WE GET WHAT WE GET, BABE!

I knew enough to get bottled drinks because who knew how long that one working soda machine I saw would last before it joined its dead fellow soldier next to it.

Got the food. The drinks. Even the ketchup. And then I did a perfect Martin Riggs Lethal Weapon roll under the *closed gate* and, with Emily, we went to our gate. Fifteen minutes to spare. The unmanned Frontier Airlines said boarding at 8:00.

At 8:01pm they announced that, whoops, our flight crew was still in Atlanta and wouldn’t be here until 10:00pm. Weird that they didn’t know their flight crew was in the air before 8:00pm. I think that this lack of coordination will make more appearances in this story.

So Emily and I found a better place to wait with something resembling a table and had our delicious Airport Whopper and Chicken Sandwich on the Wrong Bun and waited for our new departure.

Smash cut to she and I talking to another couple at 1010pm. The STILL UNMANNED kiosk helpfully told us we were had boarded ten minutes ago. With my keen powers of deduction, I figured out that we were still in the airport.

Obviously, I was concerned for the Frontier customer service people who should have been there to give us updates. Had the Rapture occurred? Were we living through The Langoliers? Who knew? But eventually, the customer service person broke out of their Russian detention center to tell us, half an hour later, that we could now board. 

Victory!

Oh, you poor deluded fool not realizing that I’m still tweeting at 3am. There would be no victory.

Instead, we sat on the uncomfortably warm plane while our valiant crew tried to take off. Eventually, our flight crew arrived! And victory!

Now, about ten years ago I was stuck in Miami after a convention. That experience is riddled with all sorts of unpleasant memories. But I did learn two things from that experience. Well, three, but the third isn’t important at this juncture.

What I learned was:

1. Flight crews can be on duty too long and time out. 

2. In case of a medical emergency, the airline is not required to get you a hotel.

Because you’re not stupid, dear reader, you’ve figured out that after we pushed off from the gate there was a medical issue and we had to go back. Now, I certainly hope that person is okay. But I’d also like to know their social media so I know the magnitude of their issue. If they staved off a heart attack or brain aneurism, awesome. If they had a bad case of indigestion, I might be a little less charitable. But that’s a curiosity that will never be answered.

Of course the ill passenger had checked bags and they had to go back to the gate, unload ALL the bags to get to them, and then reload them. The crew said we could get off the plane and stay by the gate. No fool us, we got off.

We immediately dove for an empty electrical outlet. And, because Andy Ihnatko taught me well, I set up a multi port charger so multiple people could charge. Because that’s what gentlemen do.

And that’s when the flight crew timed out.

Let me say that the flight crew and flight attendants did every darn thing they could for us. They were kind and professional and when my reign is complete, they will have a place in the new order. 

Now the counter crew on the other hand…

So, we all got into line to try to sort out this situation. Our flight was cancelled. It was after midnight. Who knew when we would leave if ever. The ghosts of the Haunted Mansion were looking for a one more. Was it me? Was this Disney Hell?

(Of course not. Disney Hell is in Disneyland located in Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.)

As we waited, I knew we wouldn’t get a hotel covered by the airline. But I’m a Hilton Member with lots of points from booking lots of SDCCs. And we’d call customer service at Frontier Airlines while we waited because that could be faster. And just in case, I’d see if my reliable Southwest could get us home.

The phone support was less than helpful. They couldn’t do anything until the flight was actually marked “cancelled” and not delayed. They also told Emily that only the counter could make accommodations like hotels and food vouchers and the like. The counter, of course, would eventually tell us that only the phone people could do that.

Before they unhelpfully broke the lines into REFUNDS and REBOOKINGS (so if the rebooking fails, I have to go to the end of the refund line) I’d gotten a hotel and a second flight out. Which is when they announced there’d be a new 6am flight.

This came with strings. 6:00am meant that, at best, we’d only get a couple hours at the hotel. Even so, we couldn’t leave and maintain our place on the flight because of security issues. And of course they left the bags on the plane.

Which was an issue. Because Emily has this eye condition and needed contact lens solution in her bag because it was too big to check. Because terrorists know that pretending to have keratoconus is the gateway to the success of their evil plans.

I, of course, pointed out that this was a medical emergency and I knew Frontier Airlines

 cared so very much about these. So they would get her bag off the plane. 

Well, no. There were a lot of bags you see. They couldn’t just get one bag off, after getting the one bag off for the sick passenger. Finally, they told Emily that if she came back to the counter at 3:00am, they could take care of this for her. 

The counter crew left at 2:55am. No one ever came back until they were boarding our new 6:00am flight.

Now, the counter crew did manage to secure a single box of Nature Valley granola bars to give out to some of us. Do you know what goes well with granola bars? Me neither, since they couldn’t even get us water. Not bottled water. Not plastic glasses to fill at the drinking fountains, Just dry granola bars.

With our current plan to be on the new 6:00am flight, I had to try to cancel my non-refundable hotel and replacement airline tickets. And both Hilton Hotels and Southwest Air well, they know how to take care of their customers. It’s all good.

Bonus points to my Southwest Air rep who didn’t say, “Well, your first mistake was not booking with us.” Because they’d be right. But they didn’t gloat. Class acts they are.

So, I’m sitting here on the floor of gate 14, hungry and tired, my own normal contacts fusing to my eyes, waiting for our new crew to arrive and board a plane which, given everything else that’s happened, will doubtlessly board right before any restaurant or store opens up.

So pauseth the Ballad of Thom and Emily’s Attempt to Leave Orlando. Updates, unlike 

Frontier Airlines’s policy, as they occur.

EPILOGUE

Getting on a plane again. Let’s see what happens. My money is on winding up on an island with John Locke.

Obviously, there were lots of other stories in this adventure that I didn’t touch on. This includes the woman complaining she couldn’t get six standby tickets and saying the plane was smoking when she saw the AC condensation. Or the people who saw people sleeping around them and said “I’m sure they want to hear this YouTube video, too!” Or the new Frontier flight crew who never apologized, never said word one about the inconvenience that we’d all gone through. In fact, they seemed offended that this sleep-deprived, ragtag group of DIsney refugees were frayed and had shorter tempers. And they had to know that this was a surprise flight, right? Because they were all called to staff a flight that didn’t exist until 1:00am that morning.

But there were also people watching each other’s stuff, and jokes and smiles and acts of kindness all around, too. People are inherently good.

Unlike Frontier Airlines.

Love and Capes Vol. 5 Contest!

Love and Capes: The Family Way comes out tomorrow! And I could use some help promoting it.

So… from now until December 1, 2020, post on Twitter or Instagram and use the hashtag #lncfamilyway and I’ll pick a random entry and you’ll get a free sketch from me. Bonus points if you post of photo of the trade.

This helps a lot, so thank you very much!

The End (for now) of Cupid's Arrows

As I type this, it’s been about 12 hours since the last episode of Cupid’s Arrows dropped on Webtoon for all audiences. And, unfortunately, it’s the last one. Webtoon has decided not to renew Cupid’s Arrows for season three.

Things get cancelled. Good things get cancelled. (See also, most of my DVD collection.) And while I’m sorry Webtoon made the decision they did, I’m overwhelmingly grateful for the time we had and the work we did. And it doesn’t mean I’m done with Webtoon, either. I’ve got other pitches in with them, and I hope we can partner more in the future. 

It’s been a wild ride. Being on Webtoon has been one of the highlights of my career so far. I’ve reached so many people, made so many friends, and had so many awesome experiences. I’ll never not be appreciative of what Webtoon has made possible, and I’m hoping to be back sometime soon.

As far as Cupid’s Arrows… first, let me apologize for that cliffhanger. I got cocky and broke my rule of having clean endings. I decided to believe I’d get a season three and I wrote this big cliffhanger ending. When Webtoon did tell me that a next year wasn’t going to happen, I was already setting up this finale. Webtoon gave me some extra episodes, too, which gave me the space for a softer landing. For instance, I would have had to cut the Lora flashback, which I really wanted to do.

But there was never going to be enough space to have the cliffhanger and resolve it. So I decided to set the controls and steer into the center of the sun. If I was going to end this way, I was going to do it the best way I could.

Now, as for what happens next…

I’m not necessarily done with Cupid’s Arrows. There are lots more stories to tell. Every year I was expanding the universe. Season three would get into more of what happened to Cupid. Four would delve into that more. And the five… well, things just get bigger from there.

I’m sure you saw my Kickstarter. That went really well, and it opens up possibilities. I could do Cupid’s Arrows as a series of Kickstarters, or try to do it in print, do it through Patreon, or put it up online and collect it. I’m not in a position to do that today, but I’m exploring those things. (And, if you missed it, there’ll be more chances to buy it soon.)

There was a point, years ago, when I said that I was done with Love and Capes. I’d told the story that I meant to tell and thought I did it well. I didn’t want to overstay my welcome, but always promised that if I had another story to tell, I’d be back. And a year back, I announced the return. So, nothing’s ever gone forever. Stories find a way.

Thank you everyone, for being part of it. You will really never know how important and amazing you all are to me. I never expected the success of Warning Label, and when I created Rick and Lora, your support let me spread my wings in a different way. I got to write something more open-ended, something that would let me let the story breathe and find my way as I went. It’s been a great experience and I hope to figure out a way to keep it going.

Until then, I’m still around. I’m writing more issues of My Little Pony, the aforementioned Love and Capes: The Family Way is coming out in a month or two. There’s more stuff unannounced and irons yet in the fire. I’d appreciate it if you’d join the mailing list I’ve set up. And yeah, I’m taking commissions, too.

One last time (today, at least), thank you, thank you, thank you. I can never say that enough. Stay safe, and I’ll see you all soon.

New Product for Retailers - Love and Capes: The Family Way

For the last year, I’ve been working on the new “Love and Capes: The Family Way” series, and selling small print run single-issues at conventions while IDW will collect them in trade this summer. But, conventions are obviously on pause, so I figured out something I could do to provide new content to comic shops.

Working with Jones Printing Services Inc., here in northeast Ohio, I can offer tiny print runs of entire six issues of my new “Love and Capes: The Family Way” and sell them directly at a wholesale price of $2.75 for a $5.00 comic. (Creators, if you're interested in something similar, reach out to them, too.)

Also, because of the way we’re doing it, we can customize the covers, too. So, if you would like, I can put your logo on the issues as a [STORE NAME] Exclusive, too. I’m calling it the “Local Heroes” edition, because you’re all heroes to me for staying open in whatever way you are.

(And, I can also make available my Kickstarter-funded Warning Label trade paperback at $10.00 for a $25.00 retail book. It was never offered through Diamond.)

Now, I do have to gang the printing together; so, what I want to do is take orders through noon on Friday, April 17 and start fulfilling them the week after.

1. If you can pay up front, you can order through my Squarespace site.
   https://thomzahler.squarespace.com/localheroessale
   Password: CORONASUCKS (and use that password to clear the shipping cost, too)

2. If you need terms, you can order through my Google form.
   https://bit.ly/LNClocalheroes

3. Or, you can fill out this PDF and send me a scan or picture:
   https://www.dropbox.com/s/ha1b21t7zb307j7/localheroesorderform.pdf?dl=0

In all three cases, we’ll figure out shipping based on the order size. I don’t have a good way of managing that online. United States only right now.

I hope this helps a little bit! Stay safe, everyone!

The Game is Ahoof!

Earlier last year, my girlfriend and Sherlockian Emily S. Whitten took me to the Baker Street Irregulars Weekend in New York City, which included the Baker Street Babes’ annual charity ball. Every year, the BSB focuses on a particular Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story for their event’s theme. I’m not deep on the Sherlock canon, so I read the featured story, The Adventure of Silver Blaze, before I went.

And then there was a moment of inspiration as we were at dinner. “Hey,” I thought, “Silver Blaze is a horse. You write about horses!” Well, ponies. And so I decided to figure out how to adapt Silver Blaze as a My Little Pony story. Full disclosure, Emily says that she made the suggestion, too. There was alcohol at the event, so either or both things could be true.

Either way, it eventually became My Little Pony #83.

The story went through quite a few changes. It featured Twilight Sparkle, then Pinkie Pie, then Twilight Sparkle again. Spike was always in the John Watson role, since he writes the letters in the series. Originally, it hewed much closer to the source material, but the final product took more liberties.

In the original, Silver Blaze is a racing horse that goes missing. His trainer, John Straker is killed. And then it is revealed that the horse had run away and was taken in by Silas Brown, who disguises the horse to run in the Wessex Cup. It turns out that Straker was trying to cut Silver Blaze to make him lame and then bet against him to cover his debts.

I originally toyed with having Silver Blaze be a pony that loses his memory, but that seemed too complicated. So I changed it to a tortoise race and created “racing shells” that would cover the existing shell and disguise the missing Silver Blaze tortoise. Obviously, I couldn’t kill anyone in a Pony story, but I could still frame Fitzroy Simpson, the trainer initially suspected, for his disappearance.

I decided that in place of making a horse lame, the racing tortoise would be fed arugula to give it a stomach ache. And with that, we were literally off to the races. 

Other Sherlockian references in the story include…

P. 1 The story starts with Twilight and Spike on a train ride, just like Holmes and Watson.

The backstory given mentions Auteur Cone (Arthur Conan) and Baker Streak (Baker Street).

P. 3 Leigh Stride is obviously Lestrade from the Sherlock stories. He doesn’t appear in this Conan Doyle story, but he was too good a pun to pass on. (I also gender flipped a lot of characters.)

P. 4 Twilight refers to her services as a “consulting detective”, which is what Holmes called himself.

Downey Burn includes “Downey”, a reference to Robert Downey Jr., who played Sherlock.

Millerspoke references Johnny Lee Miller, who plays Sherlock on Elementary.

P. 5 Alder Brown reference Silas Brown, who took in Silver Blaze in the original story.

Her racing tortoise Scarlet Study, (a.k.a. the disguised Silver Blaze), is a reference to the story A Study in Scarlet.

P. 6 Millerspoke is wrongly accused, as was Fitzroy Simpson in the source story.

P. 7 Twilight Sparkle’s chilliness is so that she can put on Holmes’s deerstalker and cape.

P. 8 Twilight mangles the “Eliminate the impossible” quote. (In fairness, this could have been a typo on my part.

Nock Pointe is a reference to Nocking Point wine. Which I enjoy and often have when I’m writing.

P. 9 Nock Pointe’s doll habit is to replace Straker’s mistress and expensive dress bill. Adultery is not appropriate for stories about pastel ponies.

P. 10 Spike stubs his toe so that he can walk with a cane, as John Watson does.

P. 13 Pole Story refers to my good friend, Paul Storrie. His usual spot at the Baltimore Comic-Con has a pole in it, and we’ve jokingly called him “Pole Story” there.

(This also includes a deviation from the story where the race was about to be cancelled. This also allowed me to stitch a friendship message into the story.)

P. 15 Emily and I make an appearance as the ponies in panel three. She’s the one with a hamster flag.

P. 17 Copper Beech and Blue Carbuncle are references to the Sherlock Holmes stories of the same names. And Conan Boil is Conan Doyle. So his full name is broken up between two characters.

P. 19 Downey does get kicked by Silver Blaze, like in the original story.

P. 20. Twilight’s last line is a pun on “Elementary, my dear Watson.” And the last image includes a dog not barking, to reference the famous “Dog that didn’t bark.”

My Little Pony #83 is available at better comic shops everywhere, as well as at Comixology, Amazon, and other retailers.

SDCC 2019

So, another year, another San Diego. Where will I be? What will I be doing? Why am I so tired already?

So, I’ll be at Booth 2000 along with Luke Daab almost all of the show. But I’ve also got some signings…

FRIDAY

Graphite #2707

Noon-1:00

SATURDAY

Under the Sails with Pop Culture Hero

2:30-3:30

SUNDAY

IDW #2729

1:00-2:00