Category Archives: NEWS

SQUIRMISH! The reviews are in… the best new game nowhere to be seen at Gencon 2016!

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Squirmish is on sale this week! Save $5 or more off the Deluxe Edition! The best new game nowhere to be seen at ‪#‎gencon‬ 2016!

crowd_sale

Don’t believe us? Check out the reviews!

“Overall, I’ve had fun with Squirmish both with my kids and with adult players. I think it’s a lot of fun for families. The dice-based abilities mean that there’s still a good amount of chance involved, which gives less-experienced players a chance to take on more-experienced players, so gamers who want something with pure strategy may not like it quite as much. And don’t forget to shout your battle cries as you enter the fray!” – Jonathan H. Liu at Geekdad.

“It’s a simple card game, but it has a lot of meat to it… If you’re looking for a battling card game that you can introduce to people to maybe even get them into bigger and deeper games, this is a great introduction to do so.” – David at Sit Down Standard.

“It’s pretty straightforward and it’s quick to learn, but there’s a lot of different beasts and abilities.” – Alyssa at Sit Down Standard.

“I get several requests for Kickstarter previews every week. Recently, I was sent a request for coverage for a game called Squirmish that was designed by a gentleman named Steven Stwalley. My heart sunk a little bit when I saw the words “card” and “combat” in his elevator pitch, but that all went away when I looked over the art assets he gave me. Squirmish’s art is juvenile, obnoxious, and maybe even a little gross. In other words? I loved it.” – Stephen Duetzmann at Engaged Family Gaming.

“This game is made in direct response to collectible card games aimed at the pre-teen age group, such as Pokemon. There are battling monsters in this game, but unlike a collectible game, everything you need to play is included in one box. I’m a Pokemon Professor and Judge for the card game, so I was really very interested to try this out. It did not disappoint and actually exceeded expectations.” – Chandra Reyer at TSR’s Multiverse.

“I don’t know what to say other than you might like it and maybe others won’t. I am one of those who like it. I don’t think it will replace Pokemon for me, but it is much easier to carry around around than all my Pokemon equipment! It is not cute. However , there are some cute Squirmish monsters. Cawfeather, Opossrat, Killgor the Conquerer, Cupcake, and a few more. I say anyone 2nd grade to 9th might like it. The Battle Cries are really funny! But don’t attempt to make a Donald Duck voice for Pompaduck. Oh, and be sure to add Googly eyes. 😉 Heheheheheheheheh 🙂 (^._.^)/ Keep on Gaming! Meow!” – Chandra Reyer’s Daughter at TSR’s Multiverse.

“It’s a really good game! I like the fighting.” – Ty (age 9) at Board Gaming at Home.

“Ty’s age, absolutely brilliant game. If there’s one downside, it’s the sheer variety.” – Russell at Board Gaming at Home.

“I like all the little characters that have been made up… they’re great fun.” – Kelly at Board Gaming at Home.

‪#‎tcg‬ ‪#‎squirmishgame‬ ‪#‎squirmish‬ ‪#‎game‬ ‪#‎games‬ ‪#‎gaming‬ ‪#‎gamers‬
‪#‎cardgames‬ ‪#‎cardgame‬ ‪#‎tabletop‬ ‪#‎tabletopgames‬ ‪#‎tabletopgame‬ ‪#‎tabletopgaming‬

Squirmish: The Card Game of Brawling Beasties

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squirmish_linkedin

(FYI, this blog is dead. You can find my new blog here.)

A card game called Squirmish that I’ve been working on for the last year and a half is currently on Kickstarter (ending June 12th). Please check it out! I’d love to hear what you think about it. It is a 2-4 player beast-battling card game for ages 7+, and it takes about 30 minutes to play.

Here is the video for the kickstarter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAYRv7jswLs

Here is what the reviewers are saying about it:

“Overall, I’ve had fun with Squirmish both with my kids and with adult players. I think it’s a lot of fun for families. The dice-based abilities mean that there’s still a good amount of chance involved, which gives less-experienced players a chance to take on more-experienced players, so gamers who want something with pure strategy may not like it quite as much. And don’t forget to shout your battle cries as you enter the fray!” – Jonathan H. Liu on Geekdad.

“I get several requests for Kickstarter previews every week. Recently, I was sent a request for coverage for a game called Squirmish that was designed by a gentleman named Steven Stwalley. My heart sunk a little bit when I saw the words “card” and “combat” in his elevator pitch, but that all went away when I looked over the art assets he gave me. Squirmish’s art is juvenile, obnoxious, and maybe even a little gross. In other words? I loved it.” – Stephen Duetzmann at Engaged Family Gaming.

“It’s a really good game! I like the fighting.” – Ty (age 9) of Board Gaming at Home.

“Ty’s age, absolutely brilliant game. If there’s one downside, it’s the sheer variety.” – Russell of Board Gaming at Home.

“I like all the little characters that have been made up… they’re great fun.” – Kelly of Board Gaming at Home.

“Want battling beasties that you don’t have to find in blind packs? Want the world’s best collection of creature designs, names, and battle cries (that provide +1 damage if shouted aloud during your turn) that I have ever seen? Want a kid’s card game you’ll actually want to play with your kid? Back this very modest Kickstarter and get the whole 108-card pack (plus stretch goals)! Highly recommended.” -Zander Cannon (Eisner-award-winning cartoonist behind Kaijumax, Heck, and Top 10)

The initial deck is 54 cards… it goes up to 108 cards if we hit $15,000.

Thanks for listening! Please tell your friends!

News of Stwallskull: Twin Cities Book Festival This Saturday, October 14th, The Dead Living in Double Barrel, Freaky Tiki, Monkey’s Paw News, and The Roe Family Singers

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As you can probably see, my site is all messed up… it got hacked this week. I’m attempting to restore it from backups, but this is proving more challenging than I would have hoped for various reasons I won’t bore you with.

Below is a sketch I made of the wonderful Roe Family Singers setting the woods on fire at the 331 Club earlier tonight… boy, do they make some beautiful music. They play there every Monday to the most unbelievably enthusiastic Monday night crowd you are ever likely to see. Two of the members of the band, bandleader Quillan Roe and Adam Wirtzfeld on the saw, are also excellent local cartoonists. I can’t recommend checking their show out highly enough.

I also posted the image on Ken Avidor‘s fantastic group sketch blog, Urban Sketchers Twin Cities, which he was nice enough to invite me to participate in. There are lots of wonderful sketches of the region there to check out.

I have a table at the Twin Cities Book Festival this coming weekend. I will have pretty much everything I currently have in print there for perusal. I’m always delighted to draw something in copies of my Soapy the Chicken book with purchase, fyi… just ask if you’re interested.

I’ll be premiering two brand new mini-comics:

The first one is The Dead Living, a horror story I did that will also be in this month’s issue of Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon’s incredible digital anthology Double Barrel, coming out this Wednesday from Top Shelf. If you haven’t checked out the other issues of Double Barrel, you really, really should… and I would do it before you pick up the one my comic is in, as the brothers Cannon are doing some extremely engaging serials that you will want to start at the beginning (a sequel to Kevin’s brilliant Far Arden called Crater XV, and Zander’s paranormal pulp opera, Heck among many other wonders). Double Barrel is the first digital comic I’ve purchased, and it is one hell of a deal… many of the issues have over 100 pages of some of the best comics around for a buck (the most recent two issues are $2, but back issues go down to $1. If you are like me, once you start, you won’t be able to wait for them to drop in price). Anyhow, getting back to The Dead Living… I’ve never done a horror comic before, so it seemed like an interesting challenge to attempt. Horror and humor seem like two of the hardest things to pull off well in comics. I went off of Steve Bissette’s advice/requirement to contributors to his wonderful horror anthology of the 80′s and 90′s, Taboo… I tried to draw something that I found genuinely frightening. So, if I succeeded, hopefully you will be in for an unpleasant read.

The other new mini-comic is called Freaky Tiki. It is a collection of drawings of strange and obscure minor island deities that perhaps exist. I made it for inclusion in the upcoming Lutefisk Sushi Volume E show that the Cartoonist Conspiracy is putting together with our friends at Altered Esthetics Gallery. It is our fifth Lutefisk Sushi hand-silkscreened, limited-edition box set of Minnesota mini-comics (the first was in 2004). So, if you plan to come to the opening for that on November 2nd and buy a box, you will not want to purchase this mini from me… you’ll get one included in the box.

Note that, of much greater interest than me at the Book Festival, noted genius Chris Ware will be there, and he will be giving a presentation on his incredible new box of books, Building Stories, at 12:30 in the Taxi Room.

Please note that if you have been waiting for updates to Monkey’s Paw, my ongoing webcomic collaboration with Ben Zmith… they will, unfortunately, be slowing down. They will continue, but we can no longer maintain the every Friday schedule. Ben and I were drawing them on our lunch breaks every day, and, alas, Ben got a new gig so now we can’t draw together as frequently. That said, we did every Friday for something like a year and a half… which is a pretty damn good uninterrupted run of free comics, I think. Anyhow, while you wait for updates, you can always check out the archive here. Soapy the Chicken remains in hibernation, but will be returning again one of these days.

MIX Links

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This morning I was sent a link to an huge quantity of interviews with exhibitors at last month’s delightful MIX convention (including one with me) by Fancy Pants Gangsters. You can check them out here.

That made me realize I don’t believe I have yet posted a link to Tom Spurgeon’s amazing and enormous MIX link roundup at the Comics Reporter. You can check that out here.

I should also highlight this wonderful round-up of the Twin Cities comics scene that Tom Kaczynski did for the Comics Journal.

Only 23 months until the next MIX!

COMICOPOLIS Opens in Minneapolis This Friday (August 28th)

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Comicopolis, a gallery show featuring the work of a number of Minneapolis cartoonists (including me) opens this Friday… hope you can make it!

Please join us Friday, August 28th for food, drinks and music!

Comicopolis:
Low life, high art

Opening reception:
Friday, August 28th from 6-9pm

Location:
FrameUps Minneapolis
4325 Nicollet Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55409
(612) 870-1292

Featuring comic art by:
Kirk Anderson
Ken Avidor
Shannon Brady
Kevin Cannon
Will Dinski
Roger Lootine
Brittney Sabo
Andy Singer
David Steinlicht
Steven Stwalley

Wanna help promote the event? Have a chicklet!

COMICOPOLIS Facebook Page

EXTRA! EXTRA! BIG FUNNY DEADLINE EXTENDED! SAVE TOP TEN! FAITHMOLE IN CITY PAGES! SUPER FANTASTICA COMICS REVIEWED AT AIN’T IT COOL NEWS! I MISSED FREE COMIC BOOK DAY GODDAMMIT! May 4th, 2009

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EXTRA! EXTRA!

BIG FUNNY DEADLINE EXTENDED!

If you missed the BIG FUNNY deadline, we have an extension going until Friday. We have a lot of incredible submissions… it is going to be pretty damn amazing, I think. So, if you want to submit, you still can… but you better hurry! Read more here.

SAVE TOP TEN!

My friend Zander Cannon at Big Time Attic has been authoring a wonderful run on Top Ten, a series he was a co-creator on with Alan Moore and Gene Ha. Unfortunately, it is looking possible that DC Comics is going to cancel the book after it’s first 4-issue arc… and Zander has a second 4-issue arc written.

To say that Alan Moore is a tough act to follow is putting it mildly… Zander has done a wonderful job taking the book in new directions and making it his own, while maintaining the integrity and voices of the characters. Gene Ha’s art is beautiful, as you would expect if you are familiar with his work. The Moore issues were excellent… and these issues are just as good. You don’t want to miss it… and if you already read it, you’ll want to contact DC to support it!

Email DC here to voice your support for the series: AskWS (at) dccomics (dot) com

On the Big Time Attic blog, Zander posted the following:

This week saw the release of Top 10 Season 2 #4, the supposed end of the 4-issue series. As people read it and wonder why all the plot lines are not resolved, here is a semi-official statement from Wildstorm through me:

The series was originally conceived as an 8-issue story with 2 standalone specials. The first special, focusing on the courtroom dramas in a superhero city, is coming out next month with art by Da Xiong. Wildstorm and DC are looking at the sales and response on these 5 comics and using that to determine how to continue the series.

We’re hoping that the responses to the special will be good so that we can continue this series, which seems to be relatively well received, critically. Here is a new review of #4, from Comic Book Resources:

Top 10 Season 2 #4 review

FAITHMOLE IN CITY PAGES

A drawing from a Cartoonist Conspiracy jam that my friend Ken Avidor and I worked on was in this week’s issue of the City Pages… you can see it above. It is a satire on Dan Lacey’s Faithmouse, and accompanies an article on Mr. Lacey. They mis-attributed it to just Ken in the print edition, so they are printing a letter to the editor I wrote about that in the next issue… I’ll link to that when it is up (probably in this post).

UPDATE: Here it is the edited version on the City Pages website.

Here’s what the letter I sent to them says:

Hi there,

I noticed in the Dan Lacey article in this week’s City Pages that the “Faithmole” illustration was incorrectly attributed to my good friend Ken Avidor, when it was actually part of a Cartoonist Conspiracy (cartoonistconspiracy.com) jam comic that Ken participated in. Ken had passed this information on the the author of the article, but apparently it was forgotten or misplaced, as often happens.

I believe Ken and I were the only ones who worked on the page, although I may be wrong… anyone is welcome to draw anywhere in the jam at our twice a month jam comics sessions (first Thursdays at Diamond’s Coffee in NE Minneapolis, third Thursdays at Cosmic Coffee in St. Paul). Jam comics, for those who don’t know, are collaborative comics drawn by passing pages around a table and having different cartoonists improvise what happens next on them.

I drew Faithmole, her dialogue, and some of the logo, and Ken did everything else, I think (including the gorgeous coloring, which you can see on the Conspiracy site). The piece is actually just the cover of a 21-page jam comic that can be seen here:

http://www.cartoonistconspiracy.com/minneapolis/images/2007jams/mnjam050307.pdf

Many of the participants signed the last page of that.

It is worth noting that The International Cartoonist Conspiracy is not a partisan organization… we would just as gladly skewer Tom Tomorrow* as we would Faithmouse. Faithmouse was one of the topics of the jam… I can’t remember the other topics. We usually pick about three to give the jam some loose cohesion… often by opening up City Pages to a random page and plopping a finger down on a random word (although Faithmouse was simply chosen as a topic because it was funny).

“Membership (in the Cartoonist Conspiracy) is open to all cartoonists regardless of gender, race, age, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, attractiveness, wit, or talent.”

While our local membership is largely liberal, we would gladly welcome Mr. Lacey to come draw with us if he was inclined (as we would any cartoonist). I can think of few things I would enjoy reading more than a Faithmouse Vs. Roadkill Bill jam comic drawn by Avidor and Lacey, come to think of it.

Best wishes,

Steven Stwalley
stwallskull.com

* As long as I’m writing, I’ll add my voice to the legion… when are you guys gonna bring Tom Tomorrow back? You should have MORE comics, not less! At the pathetically meagre sum most cartoonists get paid for a comic to be published, there can’t be a bigger bang for your buck out there. Comics are the last thing to cut in a budget… not only are they the first thing a lot of people want to read in any paper, but they are so cheap it doesn’t even make a dent!

SUPER FANTASTICA COMICS REVIEWED AT AIN’T IT COOL NEWS

The new issue of the Super Fantastica Comics 2009 anthology has a Tech Toad strip I did, and the first part of a comic I’m doing with my friend Danno called Phenomenal Tangents (the chapter is called “If This Be My Skycycle”). Danno also drew the cool cover pictured above. I haven’t got my copy yet, but it was reviewed the other day at Ain’t it Cool News. Here is an excerpt:

The theme of this one is “Science Fair.” And it’s another fun trip. Contributors include Jesse Gillespie, Daniel J. Olsen (who also edited the book), Ryan N., Mike Sgier, Jon Sloan, Jennifer R. Pedro, Brad Foster, David Sandberg, Alex Arbit, Josh Blair, Ben Z., VAnessa Littlecrow Wojtanowics, and Lupi Miguinti; with stand-outs like Lewis Tuck’s whimsy-laden “Science Fair Scare,” a memorable short from Jenny Bunny Bunns Young (about bunnies, of course), Steven Stwalley and Danno Klonowski’s sci-fi epic “If This Be My Skycycle,” the simple genius of David Steinlicht’s “The Science Experiment,” the infectious madness of Adam Hansen’s “Leaves Falling In the South” excerpts, and Ryan Dow’s science fair slugfest “Kid Science.”

Go read the full review here.

Go read more about Super Fantastica Comics here, and order yourself a copy here! I have work in the Winter 2008 and Summer/Fall 2008 issues as well, if you’re interested.

I MISSED FREE COMIC BOOK DAY

Dammit! I’m too late to let you all know about Free Comic Book Day… it was Saturday. I missed it too (other than emailing for a free copy of the wonderful mag Hogan’s Alley at the last possible hour, which was offering them for the day). I think I’m gonna cry. It’s like missing Christmas. Let’s go next year, yes?

EXTRA! EXTRA! BIG FUNNY DEADLINE IN ONE WEEK! VOTE FOR BEECORN! MICROCON THIS SUNDAY! April 24th, 2009

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EXTRA! EXTRA!

BIG FUNNY DEADLINE IN ONE LITTLE WEEK

Get draw’rin already! I can’t wait to see everything!

STILL TIME TO VOTE FOR BEECORN ON THREADLESS

You still have three more days to go vote on my Beecorn t-shirt design, if you’re inclined to do me the favor… thanks much to those of you who have already voted, and also who have passed it on to your friends! It has been very gratifying getting all the comments over at Threadless… I’ll definitely be doing this again regardless of whether they make my design into a t-shirt or not.

Beecorn - Threadless, Best T-shirts Ever

MICROCON THIS WEEKEND

MICROCON is this Sunday! should be a great time! I am unfortunately going to miss it this year, as I will be in Toronto attending Flash in the Can. You won’t want to miss it if you are in the Twin Cities… it is always a great time thanks to the wonderful Midwest Comic Book Association.