I’ve added this new Samson coloring page to the Dowloads section. I was approached by a fellow about doing a life of Samson coloring book but, unfortunately, things fell through. This unused sketch was just laying around otherwise, so I inked it up added some text and here it is for someone’s coloring pleasure.

After a prolonged battle with cancer my mother has passed away. Except for this webcomic I, more or less, stopped living my life to help take care of her, alongside my father. Watching my mother die a slow, dwindling death these past 18 months has been a kind of living nightmare, a bad dream I was unable to wake up from. Yet, she’s free now, free from her broken body, at rest and restored before her Lord.

Despite the hardship and heartache of it all I would do it again. My mother needed me. I didn’t shirk my responsibility, didn’t force others to fulfill my task. I did my duty as a both a son and as a man.

I find that I have thousands upon thousands of words and yet I have none. My mother has gone to meet her Maker and I return to my life, battle scarred and weary but hopeful as well. A new chapter in my life begins.

I face it willingly.

This trailer for the new season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars was released recently. In it a character, who may or may not be Darth Maul’s brother, is introduced with the utterly ridiculous name of Savage Oppress. Now, the Star Wars universe is already filled with a host of horrible names that sound like baby’s first words, Dooku, Boba, Jar Jar, so what happens when they actually have to put some effort into naming a big, important bad guy? ..Savage Oppress?! Really? That’s obvious “character naming by thesaurus”.

I can use a thesaurus too. Here’s a list of other would-be Star Wars bad guys.

Harsh Murderous- A Gungan murderer who’s goal in life is to wipe out his whole race. He receives a massive amount of unsolicited donations supporting his cause.

Brutal Severe- Going against the pacifist ways of his people this Ithorian assassin kills his marks with crushing blows of his head upon theirs, forever earning his people the nickname of “hammerheads”.

Cruel Noxious- A savage Wookie bounty hunter who’s infamous stench is more dreaded than his raking claws.

Gory Harass- A pushy Rodian thug well known for the oozing sores upon his body rather than his skills as a fighter.

Nefarious Dire- This former Twi’lek dancer escaped her master to become a ruthless hunter of…escaped Twi’lek dancers.

Rude Callous- A former protocol droid turned ill-mannered mercenary and complainer.

E’vilo Deviltry- An Ewok warlord driven mad by fleas and endless tribal warfare with a conquering eye aimed to the stars above.

You can have those for free Lucasfilm, give your thesaurus guy the day off..

I’ve added a sparkly new “downloads” page. Right now I have posted there 6 Heroes of the Bible coloring pages that have been very popular for me lately. Eventually I’ll have some Saga of Samuel wallpapers available and whatever else I can come up with. Click the menu bar above or just go here.

Almost as much as I’m looking forward to this game..

I think your geek credentials get revoked if you’re not interested in at least one of these games.

Well, here I am finally getting around to part 2 in my Quest for the Lego Luchador. The second attempt at scoring this particular mini-figure was performed by my long suffering wife. I still haven’t been able to find these limited edition Lego mini-figures anywhere but my local Border’s bookstore. So when my wife took our rascally son to a Toy Story 3 event at Border’s (yes, these events actually took place a couple of months ago, let’s just say I’m going for the title of the internet’s most intermittent blogger) she decided to try and finish my quest for me. If you remember from the first installment these figures are “blind boxed” so you don’t know what you’re buying when you buy it. After my wife had bought about 7 or 8 packs, with no Lego Luchadors to be had, she called me up “spitting nickels” as old timer might say. No good deed goes unpunished I suppose. Anyway, here’s the new figures she managed to pick up for me.

..and here’s those figures,  the doubles she ended up getting and the original batch of figures from my first attempt.

I was really disappointed to have triplicates of both Divers and Zombies. At least until a 3 on 3 grudge match came to mind, leading to…

..DIVER vs ZOMBIES!!!

After this fight I was really liking the Diver team. So I fished out some different Lego heads, to customize the team a little, and ended up with…

The Brick Devils: Elite Lego diving squad (and occasional zombie fighters) From left to right we have Dash Deep-Six the reckless daredevil, Rick Riptide the Fearless Leader and Cid McCarbuncle the Master Mechanic. Lego’s are fun.

Next: The anti-climatic ending to the Quest for the Lego Luchador!

What’s this? I managed to get 2 pages done in the same month? That’s what I call progress. I tried to come up with some kind of heroic exclamation for Samuel as he leapt from the cave, something classic like Superman’s “up, up and away!” or the Sub Mariner’s “Imperious Rex!” but the only thing I could think of was him once again exclaiming that he was too old to jump out of caves, like say “…too old!”, but that wasn’t all that heroic so I just left him exclamation-less…for now.

With page 9 we’re finally leaving this dang cave. Man, I regretted having to draw those cave walls over and over again. Let’s just say that what takes place on the next few pages was originally set in the cave but I managed to devise a way out, so I went for it. Page 10 (maybe page 11) it’s blue skies and green grass..yay!

In other news: I created an official “cover” for the comic (not that a webcomic needs a cover exactly, but it seemed the right thing to do) The new cover page replaces the image I had there, which was a placeholder I put up when I was building the site. The cover was some art I originally intended to us as a promotional image but was never really happy with. Since I really wanted to solve my “cover” problem I revisited the piece fixed what I didn’t like, changed the layout and here we are:

Now, I like the piece so much I deem it worthy of being the first ever Saga of Samuel poster! Since the comic is still in it’s earliest stages I’m going with trusty (and less hassle for me) print on demand companies. In the future I hope to oversee the printing process and do limited edition prints and such but that time ain’t now.

If you would like to have for yourself a shiny, first ever Saga of Samuel poster you can buy one at either:

deviantART or Zazzle (click the storename you wish to buy from)

..or since Zazzle has the better ready-made promotional tools just click the image below.

The Saga of Samuel Cover by ArtistXero
View other artwork at zazzle.com

As the father of a 6 yr old I’ve had legitimate reasons to reacquaint myself with everything LEGO. The variety of themes LEGO has for kids these days is staggering. Space Police, Power Miners, Atlantis and such, not to mention the licensed properties like Star Wars and Harry Potter, appeals to both kids and full grown geeks like myself.  Half the fun of a good LEGO kit are the little mini-figures that come with them. So, when LEGO announced that they were making unique limited edition ”blind boxed” mini-figures I’m pretty sure they knew geek dads (or geeks in general) would be easily suckered into buying them.

As you can see the first assortment of 16 figures has a pretty cool variety going on there, but the one that appealed to me instantly (as the title of this post suggests) was the luchador or, as LEGO calls him, the Super Wrestler. Now, as stated above, these guys come “blind boxed”, which for you non-geeks means that you can’t see through the packaging so you don’t know what you’re getting when you buy it.  With only a 1/16th chance of getting the figure I do want, the possibility of getting figures I don’t want is high. (Crash Test Dummy..really LEGO?)

Knowing that they were finally being released this month I eagerly began my quest. Dragging my son along (the Sancho Panza to my LEGO seeking Don Quixote) we hit Target first and met with total failure. None to be found. Next was Wal-Mart and still nothing. Thinking that maybe these guys weren’t going to be found in those all-purpose stores I went to the obvious place to buy toys: Toys R Us and…nope. “Toys R Us” has been and always will be an oxymoron of a name for the average toy collector.  Leaving Toys (what R those?) Us we went next door, on a whim, to Borders and there, in the kids section, was my elusive quarry!  Two boxes full with about 30 packs per box. I was only willing  to buy 5 packs in my first attempt, since, at $2.99 a pop (at Borders at least) these guys aren’t cheap and we’re looking at $50+ for all 16 not including any doubles you’d end up getting with the blindness and such.

I picked my 5 packs (trying to figure out which figure was in each pack with indiscrete man-handling) and we (mostly me) ripped them open soon as we got home. The first figures I scored were..

…the Clown, Diver, Magician, a Zombie and another Zombie. My favorite of this batch is the Magician with his wicked little handlebar mustache. The other four I’m rather indifferent towards. While it may get my geek credentials revoked, I’ve never been that big a fan of zombies, though the zombies accessories of a shovel and a chicken(?) leg are chuckle inducing. That leaves the Diver and Clown which are just..meh. (though my son has since taken to the Clown constructing some intricate LEGO maze for the Clown to work his way through..cause that’s what clowns are known for?) Anyway, I was mostly disappointed with this batch..at least till I started mixing and matching pieces…

Beware the dreaded horn honking Clown Zombie!

Tremble before the giggly Shovel-wielding Hobo Clown!

Their unholy union shall bring Doom to us all!!

…my son didn’t like these guys at all and quickly righted my wrong.

Killjoy.