Mike Dawson

Cover Reveal - TAKE TWO

I redesigned the cover for the Summer 2023 issue of FUN TIME. As I worked on the story more, I felt like the image I'd initially created wasn't quite working. I think this pops a heckuva lot more. What do you think?

A Year of Making Comics - Update #13

I'm pleased to share the first few panels of a new cartoon I'm in the midst of creating. It is my hope that this will be part of a new graphic review that I can publish in The New York Times.I had a really great response from the last piece. The author Sigrid Nunez, whose work I love, sent me a really nice note to say how much she appreciated the piece, how it made her cry, and how she's having the page framed to hang on her wall. I also heard from her editor, who said it was the mos...

Every time…

You’re Welcome, all other passengers

COVER REVEAL!! FUN TIME 4

I'm excited to share with you the (almost) final cover for the next FUN TIME 'zine.This issue of my anthology series is going to be different from the previous three, instead of gathering together a number of short pieces, it will feature an all-new original sixteen page cartoon essay. You can perhaps guess from the cover what the general topic will be and how it might relate to some of my previous work.Here are a few sample panels and pages -I am still working on putting the issue toget...

A little FUN-TIME 'zine update

Page from a comic in progress that'll feature prominently in the newest issue of my FUN-TIME 'zine series. I'm having a lot of fun with this one. It's my one-man 'zine, I can climb inside my own navel as much as I'd like, and what I'd like is to write a new comic about my relationship to the band QUEEN.I have a busy week or two ahead of me, a lot of school visits and comics-workshops, as well as my kid's Spring Break, but things are looking good for me getting the...

Premium Patrons Only Comic

A funny and (I hope) funny comic. I learned how to make a screen-tone in Photoshop for this one (it’s insanely easy), I really like how it turned out.

A Year of Making Comics - Update #12

There is an ad for Amazon Prime (I know, I know...), apparently directed by Olivia Wilde, where a girl who feels ugly goes onto Amazon and buys a Freddie Mercury jacket and goes to school feeling confident and acts fabulous, and watching it filled me with all sorts of feelings. One of them was jealousy.I was out walking my dog this morning, and it came to me, the reason I felt that way. There's a scene in my 2008 "graphic memoir" Freddie & Me where I depict myself in High School, cir...

Big Head Problems

Got to push the bad ideas out to get to the good ones

Herman Miller Aeron Chairs

My favorite perk of the first dot-com era

Pandemic Anniversary

NEW COMIC!!!... mostly.Sometime around now is what I'd consider the third anniversary of my own personal pandemic. It was either March 14th or 15th 2020 when we got the word that schools would be closing for two weeks, and then there were a million people I never ever saw again.It is sort of embarrassing how many comic essays I've made about World War II propaganda posters. It's something I've come back to again and again, and usually from the lens of, why can't we all sacrif...

A Year of Making Comics - Update #11a

This kind of embarrasses me, but is a part of writing. I posted my MCU comic yesterday, thinking it was fairly clever, but not feeling totally 100% about it. I realized after I'd put it up here, the problem wasn't so much in the concept, but in the execution. I was hemming and hawing in the text, being too wordy and mush-mouthed, and I think worst of all, not using the pictures to say something greater than what the captions were already articulating. So, I rewrote the piece (I also redr...

A Year of Making Comics - Update #11

New MCU comic in progressA rough draft of a new comic about ways the MCU could make itself more interesting to ten year olds. This one cracked me up, I am not totally sure it'll be as funny to anyone who doesn't have a fourth-grader at home. I really can't seem to get my son interested in watching Marvel movies, but he can watch someone on YouTube screaming while they play Roblox for hours...

A Year of Making Comics - Update #10

This one's for all PatronsNot a lot of updates over the past two weeks. My wife got herself a case of Covid on a recent business trip. The rest of us seemed to avoid it, but just having it in the house causes upheaval. Then I did come down with some kind of sinus infection anyway, and today my son's home with a stomach bug. It's just non-stop over here.But, I did want to share that the comic I was workshopping on here earlier in the month has found a home. I submitted it to The New Y...

I’m something of an activist myself

You’re welcome everybody…

A Year of Making Comics - Update #9

What Are You Going ThroughIn my last update I'd mentioned that I'd read an advance copy of a Vince McMahon biography that I was hoping to create a cartoon review of that I could submit to The New York Times. Well, I hit a complete wall with that. I just haven't been able to generate an idea that I like. I'm thinking it's a situation where I want the $1000 fee from the NYT more than I want to say something specific about the book. So, I took a break and finished a draft of thi...

Tubi

A Year of Making Comics - Update #8

I was sent an advance readers copy of RINGMASTER, the upcoming biography of Vince McMahon by Abraham Riesman, whose previous book about Stan Lee I enjoyed very much. I finished reading RINGMASTER, which I liked, but I have to admit, didn't connect to in the same way that I did the other book, because I am of course *extreeeeemmmmmely* familiar with Stan Lee and the history of Marvel Comics in a way that I'm just not with Vince McMahon and the WWF/WWE.I basically know who McMahon is, and ...

FUN TIME SPRING 2023 - going into the mail

Just a quick update to say, copies of my newest mini comic arrived back from the printer's, so have started to go out into the mail for all zine club/premium supporters. If you don't receive yours in the next 7-10 days, please let me know.Thanks for all your patience and support!

Hourly Comics Day Part 1

I’m not sure if there’ll be a part two, but these are all the Hourly Comics I made in the first half of this day

A Year of Making Comics - Update #7

Haha, no, this isn’t a current self-portrait (at least not this week), but it’s the start of a comic I’m hoping to make about reading novels.Reading is important to me, but I’ve found that like all things that aren’t always easy, it takes some practice and effort to maintain a consistent reading practice (like going to the gym!). I’ve been killing it lately reading novel after novel. I recently discovered Sigrid Nunez with her book, The Friend, which I loved, and then right after tha...

A Year of Making Comics - Update #6

A short post just to say, when I updated this series on Monday, I definitely felt morose. I think it was a bit NYT postpartum (this happens a lot, you think something's coming that's going to "change" things for you, and it does a little, but never as radically as you'd hoped), combined with, as I said that day, a feeling that I was floundering around trying to figure out what the new story I wanted to make was going to be about, and feeling like the whole day had been fritte...

A Year of Making Comics - Update #5

My comic essay, "Orwell Was Right" was published today over at The Nib. This is of course the piece that I serialized here as I wrote it. That was a satisfying way to make a comic, sharing it here as I went, then going back and making some revisions and changes before finding a home for it.As I've covered here also, last week was also the week that my cartoon review of the Dan Kois novel "Vintage Contemporaries" was published at The New York Times.In terms of writing cartoon ...

FUN TIME SPRING 2023 COVER

I am excited to finally share the cover to the next issue of my one-man anthology (manthology?) comic book series, FUN TIME, SPRING 2023!Twenty-pages, full color throughout, collecting cartoon essays, gag strips, and diary comics. This issue features three central pieces, all loosely based around the act of reading and writing. These are the world's most literariest cartoons!All patrons supporting me at the premium level will automatically receive a copy of this 'zine sent straight to th...

New York Times cartoon

I should have shared this yesterday when I could have been sure it was possible to buy a copy of this Sunday’s New York Times, but I had a full page comic in this week’s Book Review insert, a cartoon response to the new novel by Dan Kois, Vintage Contemporaries, which I thought was excellent. Hopefully this will get published online also.This comic will be reproduced in the next issue of my FUN-TIME ‘zine series, which I will be sending out to the printers as soon as I finish the cover art...

A Year of Making Comics - Update #4

The initial draft of the new cartoon essay I've been tinkering with, in full. It will get a second going-over, but in general this is how it will all flow. Let me know what you think!I've submitted this to The Nib, it feels to me like a piece that might fit in well there. Hopefully they'll like it.

A Year of Making Comics - Update 3 "1984 cont..."

I'm happy to share some new panels from the 1984 comic. I took a lot of the ideas and concepts I blurted out in the last update, and I think started to shape them into a comic that's starting to be interesting. I am particularly pleased about the "Authoritarianism Porn" turn of phrase. I believe in what I write about when I make comics talking about the rise of American fascism, but I'm also aware of the fact that while these anti-Democratic forces of illiberalism are indeed ...

A Year of Making Comics - Update 2

I have an idea for some kind of comic, but I'm not sure what exactly it should be just yet. I think I mentioned in the first one of these updates that I've been experiencing a touch of cartoonist's block. I drew these four panels above as a way to maybe find my way into whatever this thing will be.1984A joke I'm going to make in this strip, which also happens to be true, is that I re-read about half of "1984" fairly recently, so I am an expert on it. I like George Orwell&...

Grody Mouth

It’s shocking how much we love dogs considering how gross they are. I couldn’t love my doggy more, but I see all the nasty things she puts in her mouth

A Year of Making Comics - Update 1

Happy New Year! I hope everybody's 2023 is getting off to a fine start. Thank-you for your continued support on here, I really do appreciate it very much.I wanted to try something new, which is to provide a little more ongoing "Behind the Scenes" updates for Premium supporters. I have a variety of things going on, and I'm hoping this year is a successful one for me, so my thought was to post weekly "Year of Making Comics" updates. My aim will be to post these on Mondays. ...

January 'Zine Club Images

Just a super-short update to share some of the images from a new comic essay that I have been working on that will be included the 'zine I am going to send to all club members in mid-January. I'm going to be experimenting with the next publication in terms of format, I think I am going to try something like a newspaper broadside. Much more to come on this soon!