Mike Dawson Comics

Studygroup Comics head honcho, Zack Soto, creeps into the Lair this week for a wide-ranging discussion: Friday Night Lights, Friday Night Lights, and Friday Night Lights. Plus: some mean-spirited jabs at the aging Baby-Boomer population, coupled with the question of When Will Generation X Wise Up and Start To Respect Their Elders (also coupled with the question of How Much Will The Millennial Generation End Up Hating Generation X?) Also, writing reviews on Goodreads, and one of the toughest pop-culture quizzes we’ve ever featured on the show.

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Kathleen Gros! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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It’s frustrating, because while I still draw all the time, I never have anything to post up here on the site, except for the occasional teaser image (see above). But, rest assured, things are moving forward, I’m working hard on something new, and am feeling really great about how it’s going.

Speaking of feeling good, I realized I never put together a big post-Angouleme festival report. I had big plans to put one up, but the extra week in Paris followed by week of lousy sickness kept me from assembling it, and now so much time has gone by, it feels a little less immediate. Not to mention, I already talked about the trip on The Ink Panthers Show!

I bet you can basically guess what the show was like, though: pretty amazing. Everyone knows what the deal is with Angouleme: a city of comics, where the mannequins in the department stores are propped up holding graphic novels and a giant sculpture of Herge’s head sits prominently in one of the town squares. Like a veritable real-life Hicksville. (Well, kinda. In Hicksville all the townsfolks love comics too – I dunno if that’s the case at Angouleme, since I can’t speak the language. Perhaps all the people working in the stores and restaurants are muttering “nerds…” under their breath at all the people who have descended upon their normally sleepy town, like Point-Pleasant locals dealing with the “Bennies” in the Summertime.)

So, I’m basically going to do an image dump. Here’s a bunch of photos I took, starting with the Art Spiegelman career retrospective:

The Garbage Pail Kids/Wacky Packages wall

Maus pages

A European festival goer absorbs this comic about Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush terrorizing Spiegelman equally (yeah… I gotta admit, I couldn’t quite decide how I felt about this one…)

This wasn’t in the Art Spiegelman exhibit. It’s a Pascal Girard page I saw up in the Maison des Auteurs show.

This department store mannequin is into comics.

Jimi Merman?

Map of Angouleme

A placemat at a restaurant.

Teenage vandals.

This guy sitting in front of the nudie pictures gives me a stare down.

From what I could tell, this guy was selling drawings of himself.

This guys looks like he’s yelling “Sacre Bleu!!”

AdHouse!

Is this series going to get translated into English?

The Panthers welcome The Desert Panther, Tony Consiglio, back into The Lair for an episode packed with controversy, disagreements, and fireworks. Should Weird “Al” Yankovich perform at halftime in next year’s Superbowl, as a blatant pander to all the football-hating Nerds who don’t deserve it? Are any of the Panthers OK with their wives slinging their arms around our necks, like we’re not the men in the marriages, but instead some kind of subdued house-cat? Doesn’t it make more sense to choose being partially paralyzed over having your face mutilated like Jigsaw from the Punisher, assuming you’re single? And what’s up with this new craze the kids are into called “Falling Over in Public”? And can you guess which one of the Panthers wrote this episode summary?

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by our very Tony Consiglio! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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Dylan Horrocks is my guest inside The Comics Journal TCJ Talkies Hutt this week. I was really excited to have him on for a chat. I looooooovvvve Dylan’s comics. I think his work has been quite influential on me. I was so happy last year when he agreed to write the blurb on the back of Troop 142.

Book blurbing is probably the least pleasant aspect of comics-writing I can think of, for all parties involved. There’s the part where I have to send out a sheepish request, there’s the part where the person feels pressured to consent to reading your book, then the part where I have to needle them to hurry things along. Ugh, it’s terrible. The only good part is when a blurb comes back and it’s so nice and complimentary and you feel great because one of your cartooning heroes has actually taken the time to sit down and read your story and then thought of a nice thing to say about it. That’s the good part, but all the rest, not so much.

I had an experience with Freddie & Me actually, where I approached another personal cartooning hero of mine, who (probably begrudgingly) agreed to read and blurb my book, and that one didn’t turn out quite as well. I couldn’t tell you for sure if the person ever actually read the story, based on the three word blurb they sent back. I couldn’t use it in the end. Ah well, like I said, it’s not a pleasant process for anyone, and I can’t fault someone for not really wanting to do some job for a stranger, but also not wanting to seem like a bad-guy by telling me no. I’m sure it happens all the time.

Anyway, this is all off-topic. Go listen to the Dylan Horrocks interview!

Mike returns from his recent trip to the Angouleme Comics Festival in France, and gives Alex a lengthy run-down of all the goings-ons. As is his custom, Mike takes a “vacation from vegetarianism” when traveling abroad, though unfortunately for the animals, it’s possible that this most recent journey could have been a game-changer. Also, Mike has to come to terms with the fact that he really enjoys visiting foreign countries, but learning a second language is quite simply beyond him at this advanced stage in life. Struggling with the language barrier has simply an unavoidable fact of life.

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Mike Schwartz! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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Bonus!! Some vacation photos from Angouleme!

Traveling companions, Josh Cotter and Brendan Leach

Drew Weing and Eleanor Davis

Brendan and Mike’s beds

Socializing at the bars

Josh and his wife, Momoko, standing near part of the French Chateau

An early morning start, to get to the festival, feat. Nick Bertozzi

Eddie Campbell

Jack & Max doodle, drawn at the festival

La Pagode movie theater, on a freezing cold day

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The Panthers are back in The Lair, with a lengthy discussion about drawing political satire cartoons. Plus, we run down the list of 2012′s upcoming Nerd Movie Releases, and talk about what looks exciting and what doesn’t. The Hunger Games? Seriously, it’s a movie about kids fighting each other to the death, and people can’t wait for it to arrive? And what about that Hobbit. Plus: Mike went to see Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, and got into an altercation with a livery cab driver. And lots more!!

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Andy Finkle! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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Another recent drawing I drew.

Also: I posted a new TCJ Talkies podcast over at The Comics Journal, featuring La Mano’s Zak Sally. I really enjoyed chatting with Zak – check it out.

I like drawing maps. Here’s one of central and northern New Jersey, which accompanies the comic I’ve been working on. Note: Pinewood Forest (setting for Troop 142) is technically over the border in New York state.

The Holidays are behind us, so Alex and Mike creep groggily back into The Lair to catch up and discuss the things that happened over Hannukah, Christmas and New Years. Warning: the first ten minutes or so are particularly rusty, as the Panthers shake off all the egg-nog and candy-canes and struggle to get their heads back into the game. Hear about Alex’s Ukelele, Mike’s Cello and Superior Singing Voice, and an account of a visit to the Metropolitan Opera. Also: a listener call is answered, and Alex poses an ethical conundrum for us to ponder. Happy 2012 everyone!

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Aaron F. Gonzalez! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

Subscribe in iTunes

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Troop 142 got a nice shout-out on an NPR Best of 2011 blog yesterday, which did actually translate into some book sales, I believe. I don’t know what amazon sales rankings really mean, but I know that I jumped into the top 100 for Graphic Novels for the first time ever. Again, I don’t know what these numbers really mean, but it was all very exciting nonetheless.

(I actually suspect a lot of sales came from friends who’d forgotten that I’d recently published a book until I posted about the NPR list on Facebook. A couple folks responded that “ah, yes, they really oughta finally buy that thing off of amazon…”)

In other news, I’m not sure that I’m going to be posting anything new on this blog for the remainder of 2011, as there’ll be no The Ink Panthers Show! episode next week, and then before you know it, it’ll be 2012 already.

Also, I am not sure yet when I’m going to resume posting actual comics up on this blog again. I have to admit, keeping the work offline for the past couple months has probably been creatively beneficial. I’m happy to report that I’m knee-deep in a new story and I’m feeling generally very positive about it. A couple days “staycation” this past week, where I just holed myself away and just drew and drew, really did wonders for my feelings of momentum and progress. I’m excited about the work, and am thinking maybe I’ll have something I feel good about showing sometime soon.

Here’s a video of me lettering a word-balloon, to tide everyone over.

Next year, I don’t have a ton planned. I’m going to be attending the big Angouleme Festival in France at the end of January, and will be doing some signings in Paris following that. My wife will come join me out there after all the comics business is done, and we’ll have a little mini-vacation to celebrate ten-years of being together.

In terms of other conventions, I am not sure what I’m attending or not. I imagine I’ll still make it down to SPX in the Fall, and am hoping that TCAF in Toronto is a possibility.

Nothing is changing with The Ink Panthers Show! I think this past year was really great for the show. We had some wonderful guests, and I think really had some strong episodes with just The Panthers (Tony “The Desert Panther” Consiglio is included in that. We should change his name to The Honorary Panther). TIPS is continually a work-in-progress, and Alex and I are always trying to figure out what is the best balance of solo-Panthers shows vs. Special Guest episodes. I think it’s probably best we keep aiming for that pleasant mix of both.

TCJ Talkies will return in January. It’s probable that those are going to be coming out at a slightly slower pace. The biweekly schedule really began to catch up to me at the end of this year, and listeners may have noticed a bit of a slowdown. My plan is to roll them out at a more relaxed rate, but we’ll see. I’ve found that I feel worn out before I record an episode, but once it’s done I get all excited and motivated again. I think I just really like talking about comics!

Happy New Year everyone!!