The massive onslaught of Dr. Horrible-related coolness has begun, with this tie-in comic about his arch-nemesis, Captain Hammer called “Captain Hammer: Be Like Me.”

Written by Zack Whedon and illustrated by Eric Canete and Dave Stewart, it’s a civic-minded piece that serves to instruct children in the straight, narrow, and violent.

It’s also free, part of this month’s Dark Horse Comics “MySpace Dark Horse Presents.”

Cool? Free? The new paradigm is working! Joss, where can I send you all of my money?

Firefox announced today that their bid to secure a Guinness World Record for most downloaded software was a success.

Mozilla today announced it set a new Guinness World Record for the largest number of software downloads in 24 hours. The record-setting 8,002,530 downloads coincided with the launch of Firefox® 3, Mozilla’s major update to its popular and acclaimed free, open source Web browser.

I fully expect all of us to be named and credited, making the 2009 Guinness Book of World Records the largest book ever offered for commercial sale. Which would be another record, so they’d have to amend it and release it again. And that edition would then break the previous record…

Teaser from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Joss Whedon likes to create things. He likes to share things. He especially likes to create things that become obsessions with lots of people. And recently, he started thinking about how to create and share things without having to deal with any of the big studios. What he came up with, with the help of his briothers and fiance-in-law, was “Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.”

It’s three minisodes, designed to be posted online. It stars Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion. It’s a super-villain musical. And it’s coming online for free starting July 15, with new episodes every couple of days, and then paid downloads and an upcoming massively-packed DVD. All without studio involvement.

What it needs now is attention. They have the website, the MySpace page, the Facebook page, and the Twitter account. They have banners and buttons. They have a Digged page climbing higher in the ranks. They have T-shirts on the way. There will be a Dr. Horrible panel at the San Diego Comic-Con. There will be a comic coming from Dark Horse at their Dark Horse Presents page on MySpace. And they have Joss waxing hilaric about it.

All they need now is for you to tell everyone you know (but not in a stalkery way, unless they’re cool with that). This will be huge, and fun, and gioofy, and a slap in the face to the networks, and none of that is not fun. Spread the word, my people!

Well, we have the battle I was really hoping for: Obama/McCain. I didn’t think I’d get it, but I’m really looking forward to the next few months. I was really, truly terrified we’d have a Clinton/Giuliani race and I figured that was about it for bi-partisanship in the United States.

However, while I have said in the past that I favor Obama but wouldn’t mind McCain in the president’s chair, I may have to retract that. McCain has apparently changed his views on presidential power in the last six months. Where he condemned warrentless wiretapping before, now he seems to be condoning it. I want a president who will return the executive branch to being only 1/3 of the government.

At mythadventures.net:

Robert Asprin (1946-2008)

On May 22, 2008, Bob passed away quietly in his home in New Orleans, LA. He had been in good spirits and working on several new projects, and was set to be the Guest of Honor at a major science fiction convention that very weekend.
He is survived by his mother, his sister, his daughter and his son, and his cat, Princess, not to mention countless friends and fans and numerous legendary fictional characters.

He will be greatly missed.

The first look at Joss Whedon’s new show “Dollhouse” is out; this is the trailer presented to the advertisers today.

Coming next January. Comments?

Joel Watson of HijinksEnsue.com was away this week and asked Adam and myself if we’d be interested in supplying a guest comic to his geek-friendly strip. We were, and we did.

(Note: our comic today is entirely SFW, previous comics in his archives include NSFW language)

PRESS RELEASE

The Network and What’s the Use Productions have jointly announced that the episode of Hiatus that aired April 18, 2008, will be the final one. Production on the show has halted, and there have been no public plans to carry on with the show in any capacity on The Network or any other venue.

“Hiatus has been an important part of The Network’s history, and Manny Ulrich’s visionary show has broken the boundaries of what television is capable of,” said Cornelius Snyvel, Presidential-Adjunct of Entertainment, The Network, in a prepared statement. “We’d like to thank Manny, the incredible cast, and the talented workers who put their hearts and souls into this engaging creation that nonetheless made us less cash for the time slot than a re-rerun of ‘Midgets, Midgets, Midgets.’ It was not an easy decision for us, but we had to go with what was best for our stockholders.

“We hope Manny will make more shows for us,” Snyvel said, before slamming his door and pulling his shades down.

Manny Ulrich could not be reached for comment and may not be aware of the current status of his show. The creative genius of “Mars Cops” and “How Can I Be Pregnant?” is on a sabbatical in the Honduras and should be approached with caution.

Hiatus was introduced as a mid-season replacement in February to cover lost programming during the writers’ strike. Despite being broadcast out of order and regularly pre-empted, Hiatus quickly earned a devoted following of enthusiastic fans. It is unknown at this time what the future holds for this franchise.

***

And we’ve already seen what it’s being replaced with.

Teres is curled across the top of the bed, surfing the web on the laptop. I come in and lie down perpendicular, with my head touching hers. She’s lying with her head on her right arm; her hand is now in front of my stomach. She tickles it, and this happens:

“I do believe I was just tickled.”
“Did you get a good look at the culprit?”
“I’m still waiting for the field team to finish their work, but I’m pretty sure that it was… you!”
“No, I’m sure you were mistaken. It was a wooly worm.”

I grab the offending finger and hold it (carefully) up.

“You are a wooly worm? A four-foot-eleven wooly worm?”
She pouts. “All the other wooly worms made fun of me. They wouldn’t let me join their wooly worm gam–”

Now we are both giggling, trying to get our words out.

“You’re remarkably woolyless, for a wooly worm.”
“I thought you’d prefer it if I shaved.”
“That’s very thoughtful.”
“Thank you.”
“So you’re like, what, the Godzilla of wooly worms?”
“It’s a lonely existence.”
“So there should be a young Japanese wooly worm that will become your friend, and then be the only one who can stop you.”
“Why would I want someone to stop me?”
“Good point. If a wooly worm comes up to you and speaks Japanese, gish him.”
“I don’t know if I’d recognise Japanese or Chinese or Korean or… or… any other…”
“…ean,” we finish together, giggling again.
“So any wooly worm that speaks anything to you other than American, gish him.”
“What about an English wooly worm?”
“Better play it safe.”
“Canadian?”
“You can let him go, he’ll be more polite than the American ones. In fact, come to think of it, the American wooly worms are as likely to shoot you as any oth–”
“This is how Godzilla gets started!”
“Excuse me?”
“I totally get it. You never know which tiny creature is going to betray you and it gets easier and makes more sense to just start gishing all of them until you get fed up and go back into the ocean.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, outrageously indignant and red-faced from holding in the giggles. I hugged her and assured her that I would protect her from all the attacking wooly worms who would dare treat her wrong. She would be free, I promised, to do whatever she wanted without fear of military reprisal.

She said, “Oh, good” and started tickling me again.

This sort of thing happens a lot.