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 m...

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 c...

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...

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 jealo...

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 emb...

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 ...

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 i...

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 s...

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 i...

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, be...

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 r...

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), c...

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.A...

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 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. Ho...

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'...

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 phras...

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 thi...

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 ...

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 tr...