Minions #324 - Lesser of Two Evils

Click Cartoon for a Bigger Mess!

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Greetings, Plungers and Low-flows!


Today's cartoon is brought to you by "Westward Weird," a great collection stories that put science-fiction and fantasy spins on tales of the old-west, including my steampunk western story, The Clockwork Cowboy!

Though I wrote "Clockwork Cowboy" as a stand-alone story, Liberty Brass, the damaged Confederate clockwork artilleryman hero of my story was too good to just let be.  While "The Clockwork Cowboy" takes place later in his adventures, it raised so many questions about his past that I decided to skip back to his origins and start writing forward from there.  

The first follow-on story, "The Unwinding of Liberty Brass," is a prequel, flashing back to just after Liberty Brass parted ways with the Army of the Confederacy after the battle at Gettysburg.  He's a broken man, literally, and figuratively, but a chance encounter will change his life, force him to choose between death, and the path that will lead him to become the Clockwork Cowboy of legend.

Click to order from Amazon

And I'm happy to report that in just a few weeks, the next installment in the adventures of the Clockwork Cowboy will start appearing in ebook stores, and it's his biggest and wildest yet!

As Liberty Brass and his amazing clockwork horse, Piston, make their way west, they are first attacked by a clockwork highwayman.  They have no sooner subdued their attacker when they are all taken prisoner by a mysterious pair of clockwork men named Copperpot and Kettle, and taken to a forgotten plantation house deep in the Kentucky hills, ruled by the wondrous Steam Man.  At first it seems a utopia, where mechanical men live in peace, free from the wars of men, and work for their common good.

 But there are secrets here, deep as a mine shaft, and dark as Kentucky coal, and Liberty learns that the price of truth just might be the loss of his freedom -- or his mechanical life!

A Preview of the Cover for "The Steam Man's Plantation/"

Watch this space for further announcements!

See you folks back here next week!

            - Clockwork Minion Master Steve

Support starving Minions in Lair-land! Your donations support Minions at Work!

Minions #226 - Gravity is Not His Friend

Stand by, following the usual freefall for a sudden drop from your Minion Master!

Your interminable wait is important to us. To serve you better, a supervisor may feed the representative assigned to serve you to the crab parasites just before they can answer your call. It's just one more way of saying, "we care, just not about you."

SUPPORT THE FORCES OF EVIL, WITHOUT WHOM YOU'D HAVE TO LIVE IN SOME BORING UTOPIA OR SOMETHING! HELP FINANCE "MINIONS AT WORK" BY BUYING STUFF YOU WERE GOING TO BUY ANYWAY! IT'S LIKE STEALING, ONLY LEGAL! We're now Amazon.com affiliates, which means that if you click on the Amazon link in our sidebar and make purchases from Amazon, a tiny little sliver of what you spend goes to support these fine (maybe even near-mint!) cartoons! Or visit our Amazon Lair Gift Shop for Minions-recommended merchandise featuring villainy from across pop-culture! Minions at work is inadequately supported during this financial crisis by your purchases from our web stores and our advertisers. Feed the economy and help us bleed green just a little more slowly by purchasing tee-shirts, buttons, calendars, hats, undies (we kid not!), and other fine Minions at Work items at one of the following stores.

While waiting for your impending doom, pick up a Minions at Work tee-shirt or other great souvenir of your visit to the Lair: THE MINION'S LAIR OF MERCHANDISE "Satisfaction guaranteed or we'll make make you buy something else!" and NUMBER TWO'S HOUSE OF NAUGHTY (For very small values of naughty.) Or just click on our "Donate" button and send us cash add to our "Buy the Minions a Camera Fund!" 100% of your contribution goes to allow starving orphans to buy blankets for kittens. Nah, not really, it all goes to ME, in order to further the cause of EVIL, and the photography thereof. Join the Minions Reminder Email List. It's free, it's easy, and you'll never miss a Minions at Work cartoon (or if you do, it won't be our fault!) Or become one of our followers. See the follower box in our Mighty Sidebar! Or join our "Minions at Work" group on Facebook. And yes, I'm finally on Twitter. Follow me. I'm JSteveYork there (clicking on the previous link will take you straight to my profile page.) Eventually I'm getting No. 1 his own account for Minions-related-business, but one thing at a time. Still: We're everywhere! We're everywhere!

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Greetings, Pitfalls and Bottom-feeders!


We're in California at the moment, enjoying the sun and plotting our evil plans.  This afternoon we have tickets to see a taping of "The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson," on CBS.  As a fellow-practitioner of the hollow-volcano business, we're going to be studying his robot skeleton sidekick for evil technologies that we can steal -- uh -- homage!


Anyway, off to Hollywood (America's "Axis of Evil") and we'll see you back here next week.

                                            - Vacation-master Steve

Support starving Minions in Lair-land! Your donations support Minions at Work!

Minions #182 - Practice Makes Imperfect

Stand by, following the usual long drop for a sudden stop by your Minion Master!

Your interminable wait is important to us. To serve you better, a supervisor may launch your representative orbit before into they can answer your call. It's just one more way of saying, "we care, just not about you."

SUPPORT THE FORCES OF EVIL, WITHOUT WHOM YOU'D HAVE TO LIVE IN SOME BORING UTOPIA OR SOMETHING! HELP FINANCE "MINIONS AT WORK" BY BUYING STUFF YOU WERE GOING TO BUY ANYWAY! IT'S LIKE STEALING, ONLY LEGAL!
We're now Amazon.com affiliates, which means that if you click on the Amazon link in our sidebar and make purchases from Amazon, a tiny little sliver of what you spend goes to support these fine (maybe even near-mint!) cartoons!

Or visit our Amazon Lair Gift Shop for Minions-recommended merchandise featuring villainy from across pop-culture!

Minions at work is inadequately supported during this financial crisis by your purchases from our web stores and our advertisers. Feed the economy and help us bleed green just a little more slowly by purchasing tee-shirts, buttons, calendars, hats, undies (we kid not!), and other fine Minions at Work items at one of the following stores.

While waiting for your impending doom, pick up a Minions at Work tee-shirt or other great souvenir of your visit to the Lair:
THE MINION'S LAIR OF MERCHANDISE
"Satisfaction guaranteed or we'll make make you buy something else!"

and

NUMBER TWO'S HOUSE OF NAUGHTY
(For very small values of naughty.)

Or just click on our "Donate" button and send us cash add to our "Buy the Minions a Camera Fund!" 100% of your contribution goes to allow starving orphans to buy blankets for kittens.

Nah, not really, it all goes to ME, in order to further the cause of EVIL, and the photography thereof.

Join the Minions Reminder Email List. It's free, it's easy, and you'll never miss a Minions at Work cartoon (or if you do, it won't be our fault!) Or become one of our followers. See the follower box in our Mighty Sidebar!

Or join our "Minions at Work" group on Facebook.

And yes, I'm finally on Twitter. Follow me. I'm JSteveYork there (clicking on the previous link will take you straight to my profile page.) Eventually I'm getting No. 1 his own account for Minions-related-business, but one thing at a time.

Still: We're everywhere! We're everywhere!

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Greetings, Twitter Trainees!

We've been busy here at the lair. Spent some time yesterday painting some new set pieces that you'll doubtless see lots of in cartoons down the road. I just love my increasingly complex "build a lair kit." I love the smell of "Aluminum" spray paint in the morning. It smells like...well...not victory so much as a kind of nasty chemical smell. It's paint!

Hey, have you guys ever heard of the "Wilhelm Scream?" Maybe no, but you've certainly heard the Wilhelm Scream, more times than you can count. For over half-a-century it's been the universal sound effect when people fall to their doom. Like from, say, a catwalk. Read all about it here on Wikipedia.

And after you've done that, enjoy this little YouTube compilation so you'll understand just how common this little scream is:


Well, I know this will come as a terrible disappointment for you, but I'm not feeling terribly talkative today. It's rare, but it happens.

See you guys next week...

- Silent But Deadly Minion Master, Steve

Support the forces of evil! I mean, it isn't like the forces of good are going to give you working national health care or anything! We aren't either, but at least we're up-front about it. Your clicking on the handy donation button will help support Minions at Work!

Minions #126 - Easily Discouraged

Stand by, following the usually commercial jibber-jabber for a secret message from your Minion Master!

CLICK ON IMAGES FOR LARGER VERSIONS

Your visit is important to us. Please give all your bank account and personal information to the nearest Minion and stare mindlessly at the screen for a end-of-summer message from your Minion Master, following the usual commercial interruptions.

Minions at work is inadequately supported by your purchases from our web stores and our advertisers. Help us bleed green just a little more slowly by purchasing tee-shirts, buttons, calendars, hats, undies (we kid not!), and other fine Minions at Work items at one of the following stores.

While waiting for your impending doom, pick up a Minions at Work tee-shirt or other great gift:
THE MINION'S LAIR OF MERCHANDISE
"Where the beatings will continue until all customers are satisfied!"

and

NUMBER TWO'S HOUSE OF NAUGHTY
(Oh, come on. You know you want to be naughty!)

Join the Minions reminder email list or we will send a presidential candidate to kiss all your babies!* It's free, it's easy, and you'll never miss a Minions at Work cartoon (or if you do, it won't be our fault!)

*Actually, we're just going to send Minion Number Two and he's just going to bruise the little tyke's face with his gas-mask. This, however, is still better than being kissed by the candidate.)


Greetings, Poor Fading Sunburns!

Yeah, it's the end of summer, a time which we greet with especially mixed feelings here at the lair. Yes, it means the good weather will go away soon, and we can look-forward to whatever surprises climate change has added to our already gray and wet winters.

But on the other hand...

THE TOURISTS ARE GONE! THE TOURISTS ARE GONE! WAHOO! WAHOO! THE TOURISTS ARE GONE!

Yeah, we live in a resort town, and man, am I glad to see them gone! Yes, we depend on them for the local economy, but unlike you guys, I can't just convince them to drop their wallet at the door and go home. No, they've got to hang around, clogging the roads, and the theaters, and the stores, and every place that serves any kind of food, and inconveniencing us by killing themselves on the beach in stupid ways.

(It's not like we want them to die. Really. With the outside voice anyway. Really, we do our very best to warn them about the rip-tides and the sneaker waves and the zillion ton beach logs that can roll over and crush you. But do they listen? Noooooooooooo! It's like in every horror movie when somebody says, "don't go in the basement!" So we're kind of fatalistic about it all. We figure, at least it's taking them out of the gene pool, which over thousands of years may either lead to smarter tourists, or more likely, stupid tourists with gills, blubber, and arm-muscles the size of the Hulk's.)

So anyway, I'm looking forward to the piece and quiet that will take over our little town starting tomorrow. Maybe I can enjoy the sun and blue skies we have left.

A Word -- actually, lots of them -- from Mrs. Minion Master:

New in stores, a great new fantasy anthology with a new story by Mrs. Minion Master, Christina F. York. It's called "Enchantment Place," edited by Denise Little. It's 17 original stories about a magical shopping destination in Chicago where the really unusual people shop for items you can scarcely imagine. And no, we don't mean Hot Topic!

Find it now at your local bookseller, or order from Amazon.

Minions #12 - Feeding Time

Houston, we have a dozen...

Don't forget "Mechwarrior Dark Age #20, Trial by Chaos," now in bookstores.