I’m nearing the completion of this look back at Dr. Ugofandian, which connects to Ugo’s story. Don’t forget that next week will also have 3 strips – another bonus on Wednesday. Strip 185 will bring us back to the present, and you’ll have a pretty good idea about Ugo’s origin and what he is.

That will only leave the unanswered question of what became of the Geborga’s plan. That’s not something that will take 10 strips to tell, however. I will answer that question too in the near future.

This has been something a little different than the normal Marooned fare, so I’d like your input. While I’ve had some comments behind the scenes, I’d like everyone to weigh in if they can. Simply rate the story 1-5 stars on the widget below. If you’d like to leave a comment as well, I’d love to hear it. Thanks!

I’m totally ecstatic to announce that ex-Disney animator Eddie Pittman of Red’s Planet is joining our little team over at WishTales! Eddie’s graphic novel Red’s Planet, full of gorgeous art, fantastic storytelling and a color sense that just won’t quit, is the perfect addition to our stable of books. More info at WishTales.

(Note, regarding the Poll I just put up that was somehow closed – it’s now open again.)

So over the weekend I blogged about the art I was sending Ben, the winner of the new reader contest. Specifically, I showed this item I put together – a piece of original art with the text as an overlay. (Click to view full size)

It got me thinking about a way to raise money for my next printing project. How about a Marooned raffle? There’s a few ways I could do it, but the essence of it would be I would put together a package of Marooned stuff, like the piece of artwork above on a popular strip as well as other things such as one copy of all the Marooned books I have (including Rag) buttons, and a custom 5 x 7 illustration of any character you like.

You could buy as many virtual tickets as you liked, and at the end of a specific time period, I just randomly pick a number and that ticket wins the package.

I’d like to gauge the interest in the idea. Would you buy one or more raffle tickets in order to win a package like that? Figure you might only buy a couple tickets, spend $2 and win everything which is a pretty sweet deal. If you don’t win, well, you’ve helped support Marooned.

I’d only do it though if the interest seems significant. I’m also interested in seeing if people like the artwork above and might be interested in buying some of those. Let me know if the comments. I might do a few ebay auctions for those if there’s interest. In the past, there hasn’t really been, so I haven’t done it.

And one more for today – below is picture of all the buttons I’ll have available at the Expo in April.

I didn’t have the original art handy for the two on the right, so that’s an old picture. The buttons are all the same 1″ round size.

As I mentioned, bend6000 was the winner of the contest for the original art. Here’s some pictures of what he’s getting. In particular, I finally got to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I got some transparency overlays and had the text printed on it. Then I taped the overlay onto the art. So it’s kind of like an animation cel, where you have the art on the bottom with the overlay on top. So you can look at the strip with or without the text.

Here’s the finished product. Click on the image to see it full size.

Here’s the rest of what Ben gets:

What I’m thinking about doing is having a raffle to help support the comic. I’d put together a package like this – only with more stuff, probably including the new Asimov book, maybe even Out of Orbit. Then you buy a raffle ticket for a couple bucks and the winner gets the whole package.