Mike Dawson Comics

I’m back from last week’s break with three new Jack & Max pages. Check them out.

Or, to read from the very beginning, click here.

I was alerted to a recent episode of the podcast Frank and Erik Internet Famous. In this episode (which I enjoyed), one of the hosts tells a story about being on the subway with a copy of Freddie & Me, and getting into a conversation with an attractive girl reading A Thousand Splendid Suns.

According to the storyteller, he was doing very well striking up a conversation with the girl, talking about her book, which he had also read, until, he claims, he showed her Freddie & Me. Apparently, she saw he was reading a comic-book, and became repulsed and he ended up striking out. He frantically attempts to salvage the conversation, but the damage is done, and she gets off at the next stop.

Normally I would have a problem with this, because seriously, is this 1988, or 1995, or even 2004 or something, and comics still aren’t considered cool/acceptable by the mainstream? Didn’t she get the update? Hasn’t she ever heard of MAUS or PERSEPOLIS or even the Dark Knight or Iron Man movies? Does she think only creepy man-children are going to see these things still? Shouldn’t reading a “graphic novel” make you seem more interesting/sophisticated/with it/etc? Come on now.

But, I am OK with this, because whether or not she was wrong to dismiss the guy because he was reading a comic, according to the story he was very attracted to her, so it’s all fair-enough. I just feel bad that F&M was such a lousy wingman for the fella. Maybe if he was reading John Grisham’s The Firm or something, things might have gone his way.

Jack & Max Escape From the End of Time: Chapter 2 begins today, with seven brand new pages posted online. Some burning questions are answered, such as: do Jack and Max get along OK with the neighborhood kids? Click the picture below to see the new pages!

Or, to read from the very beginning, click here.

Note: I’ll be out of town next week, and unable to post new pages. Hopefully this extra-long installment will hold everyone over until I return two weeks from today.

I read this review of a book called “Why We Make Mistakes” on my subway ride this morning.

Key quote:

In the first chapter, for example, Hallinan posits that people take information in on a purely need-to-know basis, without even thinking about it. He then mentions an experiment conducted at Cornell University, where participants were instructed to ask strangers for directions; the twist was that the conversation would be blocked, literally, by two men carrying a door. In that split second, a door-carrier switches with the stranger, and the directions-giving continues as if nothing went wrong. Hardly any of the experimentees noticed the change, and Hallinan follows with evidence that you, the reader, wouldn’t have either.

An interesting little anecdote. It made me think a little about character design in comics. I’ve sometimes worried about my own inconsistency in that area, especially because I tend to design the character “on the page”. By this I mean I draw them almost for the first time when I get to the page when they first show up, and develop/evolve their look as I progress. A particularly egregious example to my eye is in Freddie & Me, the character of my friend Rob in High School. He had appeared in quite a few scenes before I felt like I really got his design down, and the character started looking more consistent.

The quote above makes me wonder if readers even notice stuff like that though. They probably don’t. Nobody has ever asked me why the Rob character had a longer head when he first appeared, and a potato shaped head later on. I think as long as a reader can always tell who’s who, then the small changes in character design probably don’t register much at all.

It’s Friday, here’s a picture of my girls. If you look closely you can see The Baby has a fine stream of drool hanging from her mouth. She’s so cute!

Another sketchbook page. I think this one is interesting because of what I wrote on the right-hand side. This was back in 2004 or 2005, and I’d just started posting some pages from F&M online, after I’d been working on the book for a long, long, time. Heidi MacDonald linked to me from The Beat, and I was psyched that this sent a bunch of traffic my way, as well as leading to my first real publishing offer (which was from a French publisher who did a lot of US translations).

As you can see, I wrote “Have to remember that not every day is a positive day” underneath. This is a little embarrassing, but it’s was a good thing to remind myself. For me, writing could be tough, and there are definitely days when it seemed like a pointless thing to be doing. I think it’s important to never let those days overwhelm you, just as it’s important to not let the days when you feel like great things are happening go to your head either. Same thing with reviews. Don’t take the good or the bad ones too seriously (except for when I got a really positive review in the London Sunday Telegraph. That one counted!).

Finally, it’s kind of fun to see that I must have been gearing up for the scene in F&M where I imagine myself singing “Somebody to Love” in the cafeteria, judging by the doodles of me wearing Freddie Mercury clothes.

In an effort to actually draw in my sketchbook more often, I am going to start posting pages from it from time to time.

Two new Jack & Max pages posted to ACT-I-VATE today, bringing the first little story arc in this tale to a close. Click the image below to see the new stuff.

Or, to read from the very beginning, click here.

I have a new book coming out from AdHouse in April, entitled “Ace-Face: The Mod With the Metal Arms“. It’s a 96-page collection of short stories, mostly featuring the titular character Ace-Face, everybody’s favorite well-dressed crime fighter, doling out super-powered justice with his bionic limbs, and handling crisis’s at home as a husband and father.

Here are links to a few interviews with me, discussing the book:

The Pulse: Dawson’s Mod of Steel, ACE-FACE
Newsarama: Going Inside Ace Face with Mike Dawson
Comic Book Resources: Talking Comics With Tim
Comixology podcast – recorded at the New York Comicon

And some pages from the book can be seen at Publisher’s Weekly.

A few places posted online excerpts from Freddie & Me. These are the ones that can still be found online:

Pop Candy
NPR
Publishers Weekly