Mike Dawson Comics

Three new Troop 142 pages posted to the site. I must admit, these pages don’t move the story forward too far, but they set the scene for the big farewell campfire where all of the Troops gather to sing songs, watch skits, and say goodbye to another great summer up at Boy Scout camp.

The Panthers are back in The Lair! And there are plenty of things to talk about: Humiliating Secret Diary fall-out; New York Comic Con and the “Do Indie Comics Even Matter?” panel; a special surprise guest; and more. This episode should win a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the most jam-packed podcast ever! Comments welcome.

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A few months back I came across a book called “Love You Forever” in the children’s section of Barnes & Noble. It’s about a mother and her little boy and the song she sings to him. I was thinking I should buy a copy of it, because it seemed so unusual, but luckily it’s on the internet in it’s entirety, so I don’t have to.

It starts off nice enough, with the Mom singing songs to her newborn:

She continues to sing to him as he gets older:

And older:

Eventually the boy grows into a man and leaves home:

But some nights the mom gets in the car and drives to his house:

And still sings to him:

Annd, it ends with the Mom growing so old she can no longer sing to her son, so instead:

She dies after that, and the book ends with the son singing to his own baby daughter.

Good night! Sleep tight!

UPDATE: I have been informed that this is actually an insanely popular children’s book – a Canadian bestseller, which of course makes me feel like a world-class jerk for poking fun at it. I wonder why I’ve never heard of it before, though. Is it the parenting circles I move in?

I had a good time today drawing a very crowded picture of all of the scouts from all the troops up at Pinewood Forest gathering for a farewell campfire. For most of Troop 142, I’ve focused on a small group of Scouts from a single Troop, but occasionally I want to remind readers that there are a lot more kids up at the camp than just my main characters. Anyway, I used my phone camera to record some of the stages in my drawing.

Here’s a quick clip at the beginning:

Drawing some of the Scouts in the foreground:

More progress:

Drawing more Scouts, with embarrassing Meatloaf soundtrack:

Once I finished inking, I scanned it:

Here is is after I finished things up in Photoshop:

And here are a few details:

Four new Troop 142 pages posted to the site. Mr. DeMaria sits down to have a chat with Jason about what happened in Lifesaving class.

I was briefly at New York Comic-Con this past weekend. I was scheduled to be on a panel about “Indie” comics at 7:30PM, so got to the show about 6 o’clock, with the intention of walking around and checking out the floor for an hour. This turns out to have been about an hour too long for me. I’m not sure what it was, but the whole atmosphere filled me with anxiety, so I took a quick loop around part of the show, and then found a quiet spot beneath a stairwell to hideout in for 45 minutes before the panel. It was pleasant enough to observe the con-goers from inside my nook, and see some of the costumes and so on.

Part of my apprehension might have been about the panel, as I wasn’t sure how well attended it would be, being scheduled to take place after the con closed at 7PM. It took place way, way out in the furthest reaches of the conference rooms, well past the large crowds that were assembling for the Stan Lee signing, and whatever else was happening in the main area where lots of people were gathered.

I shouldn’t have worried so much. At about 7:20, the doors to the panel opened, and the conference room filled up. It was a pleasant surprise.

The talk itself started off pretty rocky, as we were asked to introduce ourselves, and if anybody knows me, they would know that I absolutely suck at talking about my comics-work in any way that doesn’t make it seem like what I do is worthless and stupid. And I had to go first! I mumbled something about having been drawing comics for 12 years or so, and that I had a book out in 2008 and that was it. I had to be prompted to mention the name of the book (Freddie & Me). I didn’t mention my online comic, my podcast, or anything. Ugh! Awful.

The other panelists did slightly better than me with this, and then the conversation got going. I think it ended up becoming a pretty good talk – the themes that I took away from it were that you shouldn’t become an “Indie” comics creator unless you truly loved writing and drawing comics that may or may not ever find an audience, and were OK with the fact that making a living doing this was far from guaranteed.

I don’t know if this sounded pessimistic or not. My feeling about making comics is actually the opposite of pessimism: I do it because I love doing it. When asked the blunt question “Why do you do this”, I mumbled something or other along these lines, but what I wish I’d said in a more concise manner was that “writing, drawing, and discovering stories and characters is an exhilarating process that I absolutely enjoy”. And it’s true. I’m coming towards the end of my first draft of Troop 142, and for me I feel like the entire thing has been a process of learning to write better, more effective stories, enjoying myself, and really having fun composing a story. I’m really excited to do it again with whatever I work on next.

Anyway, I didn’t say that, I said something else, but hopefully the message was halfway conveyed.

There were a lot of audience questions, which was really nice, and at the end of the hour I felt good about the panel. It was then really nice to get some dinner with friends Alex, Chris and Vania, GB Tran and Jamie Tanner. I went home after, and that was pretty much it for me for NYCC 2010!

A quiet week here, update-wise. Alex has been away in Poland and Holland, so there’s no new The Ink Panther Show (T.I.P.S. for you super-fans). Look for a new episode early next week. I’m excited to hear Alex’s Komiks Festiwal con-report. I want to know what was the book of the show? Was there any buzz about online comics? Should they move the convention out of the Holiday Inn on the highway and closer to downtown? Should they curate the exhibitors? Should they let attendees in for free?

I’m also not planning a Troop 142 update this week. I’ve been cross-posting the comic over at ACT-I-VATE, but there was a bit of a lag between the two. I’ve caught up at AIV now, so from now on I’m going to try to stick to a strict Tuesday update at both sites for the remainder of the story (maybe another 30 pages?[!]).

I was at my parent’s house this past weekend, and came across this photo of myself as a toddler, sometime in the late 70′s. It reminded me of a picture I’d taken of my own toddler just this past summer.

Three new Troop 142 pages posted. Some status checks – what’s happening with Danny’s can of Spam; what happened with the boy’s merit-badge classes?