1) This is West of Bathurst's 900th in-sequence comic.

2) The title of the book Marie is aggressively reading at Evil Marie is almost too small to read, but so that you won't automatically assume that it's one of the Harry Potter series (which doesn't really involve geeky wizards per se; Harry himself is more of a jock), I can tell you that there's a clue to the real identity of the book in the final panel. It's So You Want to Be a Wizard from Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, and it appears here because it's always been one of those books I return to when I am feeling extremely low and need everything to be right with the universe. The whole series is very much worth reading, and no, the books are not Harry Potter rip-offs unless Duane is, in fact, capable of travelling in time. The first volume was published in 1983, fourteen years before Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone saw the light of day.

3) The Canada Day header has now moved to the Miscellaneous page.

4) Re. the Write-a-Thon: Liz Argall, one of the write-a-thon organisers and participants, has mentioned me in her blog as someone who is doing crazy, crazy comic-related stuff to raise money for Clarion. The linked blog entry also details some of the other creative methods people are using to gain contributions. I am pleased that Liz has pointed out my donationmeter thingy. Rise, donationmeter thingy! Hit $200 and go ding!

5) I've managed to reduce my manuscript to 94, 922 words. This is quite a lot of words, of course, but it is fewer than the100,000 or so I had at one point. Now I need to do some more work on the synopsis. Stupid synopses. We hates them, precioussssssss.