Mike Dawson Comics

Three new pages posted. It’s Tony’s turn to save the bowling ball from the bottom of the lake. How does it go for him?

Three new TROOP 142 pages have been posted to the site. It’s the last day of the week, and the final day of Merit Badge classes. What requirements are left to fulfill?

This year’s Ignatz Award nominations were announced this morning, and I was shocked and surprised to learn that TROOP 142 had received a nod in four different categories. The Ignatz Awards are a festival prize voted on by the exhibitors and attendees of the Small Press Expo, held every year in Bethesda, Maryland.

If anyone is going to the show, and is a fan of my work, please consider voting for me in any of these four categories:

Outstanding Artist
Outstanding Series
Outstanding Mini-Comic
Outstanding Online Comic

If you’ll excuse me getting all “emo” for a minute, this is actually a really big deal to me. I’ve been around comics for a while, but my work has never really been nominated for anything before.* Also, SPX is such an important show to me personally, and played a huge role in my development as a cartoonist. I first traveled down there in the late ‘90s at a time when I was only just learning about a wider-world of comics, outside of the Mainstream companies. With the exceptions of the cancelled 2001 show and 2009, I’ve never missed a year. SPX introduced me to so much work I’d never seen before (a more difficult feat to pull off in those dark-pre-internet days), as well as so many great cartoonists.

So yeah, this is super-exciting – and even if I don’t win anything, I really do feel great to have been nominated!**

Three new TROOP 142 pages have been posted, dealing with some of the fall-out from the previous night’s hair-spray incident.

Friday gets going over at the Troop 142 micro-site with three new pages.

A small two page Troop 142 update this week, bringing the fifth chapter, Thursday, to a close. Wow – it’s kind of unbelievable to me to be starting in on what’s really the last full chapter, as Saturday’s going to be more of an epilogue, kind of like how Sunday was the book’s prologue.

I feel like I’ve said elsewhere that while I’ve only been actively writing and drawing this version of my Boy Scout comic since last November or so, I’ve been working on variations of it off and on for over ten years now. I remember when I first met Aliza, in 2002, I was taking a silk-screening class at SVA where I was making covers for a different version of this story I was working on then. So, it’s definitely been a long time.

Speaking of that SVA class, I also used the equipment there to make the cover of another little “graphic novella” that I had out at the time called CABARET. It was a semi-comedic, sort of dramatic slice-of-life story about some recent college graduates. I haven’t read or looked at this comic in years now, but gave it a re-read the other day, and had to say that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I dunno what I’m going to do once I finish Troop 142, but was thinking maybe of revisiting some of that material. At the very least, I’ve become a better cartoonist in the past 8 years, so could make a much better book now. I guess we’ll see.

Four new Troop 142 pages posted. I love the word “wuss”. Is it regional to the New York area, or is it widely used? I used it around my Scottish Uncle once, and always thought it was amusing how he pronounced it (woose, like “Moose”) with his thick accent.

In other news, Troop 142 #4 got a mixed-to-good write-up over at The Comics Reporter. Obviously I wish the review had been 100% totally positive, as Tom Spurgeon is one of my favorite writers about comics, but I’m still psyched to get to read his response to the book. And, he’s not wrong about some of the criticisms he made, especially that scene where the Dad’s discuss Scouts and atheism. It felt clumsy when I wrote it, and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt totally confident about it.

Having wobbly scenes like this go out into the world is one of the big downsides to my approach to writing combined with how I’m releasing the pages (online and in print) as I finish them. I’m certainly look forward to the day I start editing/revising this thing as a whole.

Four new Troop 142 pages posted. What’s been going on back at Lenape while Danny and Tony have been caught out in the storm? What do the Scouts do when there’s violent thunder and lightning? Do they hide under trees or in their tent? Or do they have to find something more sturdy to huddle under?

Three new Troop 142 pages posted. Unfortunately for Tony and Danny, who are spending the night sleeping under a lean-to as part of a merit badge requirement, a violent storm has suddenly rolled in!

Two new Troop 142 pages have been posted. What had Tony discovered when he went inside his bag looking for his second hit? How does Danny feel about it? Let’s see!