Mike Dawson Comics

Sincere thanks to everyone who showed up at the Troop 142 book release party last Friday night. The event was a greater success than I’d dared hope it would be. I was very concerned that the Holiday weekend would mean nobody was in town, and a lot of my friends were unable to make it to the party. So, I was shocked by the turnout. We sold all of the books that we had, gave away a bunch of Troop 142 patches, and drank beer and had a nice time. It was a great evening.

Here are the pics that were taken with my phone camera:

I created this trailer for Troop 142. The song I found cracked me up to no end.

Final reminder: The book release party is tomorrow night, from 8-11PM at Bergen Street Comics in Park Slope. I’m getting excited for it. There’ll be copies of the book, bubbly refreshments, and (I have decided) me, but not in my Boy Scout uniform. Let’s have some self-respect people! This is a serious book, about serious things.

Here’s that party flyer again, showing Tony holding a carved wooden dildo.

A brand new comic posted this morning: a short story about a working mother who has a secret. Read the full thing here.

And, a reminder: The Troop 142 book release party is going to be held this Friday, September 2nd at Bergen Street Comics in Park Slope, from 8-11PM. The event is open to the public, so please come on out. There’ll be drinks, good times, and advance copies of the book. Troop 142 officially debuts at the Small Press Expo in Bethseda, Maryland, on September 10th which I will be attending.

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Reminder: The Troop 142 book release party is going to be held on Friday, September 2nd at Bergen Street Comics in Park Slope, from 8-11PM. The event is open to the public, so please come on out. There’ll be drinks and good times.

Also, I should note, the book won’t be available in stores until sometime later in the month. It officially debuts at SPX on September 10th, so the release party is a good opportunity to get a copy early. I’ll also be signing and sketching in them. I’ve got this idea for special book-plate sketches, which I’ll post about later this week.

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Expect some drum-beating around this for the next couple of weeks. The book officially debuts at SPX, but will be available a week early at Bergen Street Comics, on Friday September 2nd. Bergen Street is located in Park Slope Brooklyn, it’s a fantastic comic book store, which has hosted a couple of comics and Ink Panthers events with me in the past. Please, come on out!

This is what the front of Troop 142 looks like. The image actually wraps partially around to the other side, and there are some more illustrations on the back cover, as well as an amazing quote from one of my favorite cartoonists, Dylan Horrocks. I will post that stuff soon.

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The book went out to the printers last week, and I’m hoping to be clutching an actual copy in my grubby little hands sometime in the next couple of months. I can’t wait!

The news that my book, Troop 142, is going to be published this Fall through Secret Acres, has finally been announced.

I’m so psyched about this. I met the Secret Acres publishers over the course of the past year, as they were distributing the Troop 142 minicomics on their site, and we really hit it off.

I love what they did with the cover, even though this image is technically still not the final image. I’m thrilled at the way they were able to capture the look and feel of an old Boy Scout handbook with the coloring and the fonts. It’s so great!

This version was put together for the purposes of starting to get the word out, and was created by using drawings from inside the book. I’ve yet to start working on the final illustration, but I’ve got some good ideas percolating. It’ll probably be one of the things I tackle next.

There’s still a lot of work to be done between now and September, including revising/editing/expanding the story from what’s been posted online. I don’t intend to change any of the pages on the website, they’ll stay as they are, so the print version will be different from the webcomic. Some scenes might get cut, and new ones will definitely be added. I am definitely going to be busy, busy, busy.

But for now, Hooray! I, for one, couldn’t be more excited for SPX 2011.

I’ve just posted the Troop 142 epilogue to the website, which of course means that we’ve reached the end of the story! Check it out, won’t you?

I saw that they were accepting submissions to the Eisner awards yesterday, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to send along the Troop 142 link in the digital comics category. While I was putting that together, I took a look back at my site to see exactly when I started posting pages from this book. The first time I link to the micro-site from here was in the beginning of December 2009, so that makes it a little over one solid-year of weekly updates to post this entire book online.

Of course, I think I’ve mentioned many times that this story really took me much longer than one year to write. I’d been working on it off and on for a long, long time, and had completed pages and pages of material that would eventually get scrapped. I remember in 2002, I was taking a silk-screen class at SVA, and working on making a cover for what was then called “Boy Scout Story”, and I’m positive I’ve got attempts going back even farther than that. Maybe I will dig those out at some point.

And also, in reality, I’m not really even done. My plan is to take some time away from the story (a month? I’m not sure), and then come back to it with fresh eyes, and start working on revising, editing, and expanding the story, to get it ready for it’s forthcoming print release. There is a concrete plan for getting this book published, and I am really, really excited about it. I ought to have news to announce about that in the coming weeks.

New pages have been posted to the TROOP 142 website, wrapping up the the Saturday morning awards. Wait, what’s that you say? Saturday concluded already? Is that the end of the book? No, don’t worry, there’s still an epilogue, which will begin next week.

Five new pages posted to the site. Who wins the (not-so) coveted Grunge Sponge award? How happy are they about receiving the honor? Check it out.

And, a reminder, I’ll be reading pages from Troop 142 at KGB Bar, this coming Sunday night, the 28th, at 7PM, along with Kate Beaton and Lisa Hanawalt. I hope everyone comes out, as I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.