… along with books, pint glasses, and more.  Get up in this.

• Chris Onstad at Achewood features an irreverent, but ultimately affectionate, strip explaining the basics of D&D to those who are unfamiliar with it.

• Giant in the Playground imagines Gygax’s arrival in heaven.

• Full Frontal Nerdity thanks Gygax “for saving us all a place at the gaming table.”

• Dork Tower remembers Gygax with an incredibly sweet, earnest cartoon.

• The undie band Uncle Monsterface (which defies description, but in a wonderful, wonderful way) offers a free download of their new song “(thank you) Gary Gygax.” (Via Wired.)

• At the Rooster Teeth blog, Burnie Burns writes: “He was born with a space alien’s last name; he was destined for nerdom at birth. D&D didn’t exist so he had no choice but to invent it.”

• Penny Arcade features an unbelievably touching, and perfectly executed, tribute to Gygax.

It’s easy to understand the outpouring of emotion from the undependents — Gygax was an undie pioneer, creating not just an original work of art, but an original form of art as well. He created D&D out of whole cloth, and he did it himself, releasing the very first editions of the game himself, without help from major distributors. He was almost a godfather to generations of creative types, and the undependent scene wouldn’t be the same without him. Rest in peace, Gary.

Time Magazine’s Lev Grossman calls webcomic Achewood (which is, perhaps, the best comic strip in American history) the best graphic novel of the year, noting “(i)t’s not a graphic novel in every, or maybe any, traditional sense, since its primary venue is the Web, but Achewood is so profoundly genius it would be a crime to put it anywhere but on this list, and at the top of it.”

I can’t disagree, and judging by the amount of “What We Need More of is Science” shirts I see in the office, I’m not alone. Not only is the content genius, but creator Chris Onstad also offers some of the most innovative merchandise to ever be inspired by a comic strip about cats and teddy bears living in Southern California — shirts are a no-brainer, but you can also buy hot sauce, umbrellas, and pint glasses with the Achewood seal of approval. (Or, in the case of Roast Beef, the Achewood seal of apathy and dysthimia.)

Also, check out the reference to Achewood in a recent Cat and Girl strip. Dorothy Gambrill, the creator of Cat and Girl, is another undependent hero — we’ll talk about her innovative Donation Derby idea in a later post, but for now, take a look at her own original merch, including a t-shirt written in Icelandic, an Ozymandias trophy (score!), and a sticker with perhaps the best observation about the World Wide Web ever: “If television’s a babysitter, the Internet’s a drunk librarian who won’t shut up.” My birthday’s December 27. I’m just sayin’.

featuring Nicholas Gurewitch (site, store, Wikipedia entry) and possibly Chris Onstad (site, store, Wikipedia entry).