Mike Dawson
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GABAGOOL! 21st Anniversary Edition
🕑 Added 2024-03-24 15:38:47 +0000 UTC
I'm really excited about this one. Way, way back in 2003 I self-published the first issue of a comic book series called GABAGOOL!, created in collaboration with a co-worker and friend named Chris Radtke. This was an important book for me, not my very first 'zine/minicomic, but definitely the first one that I worked on that broke-through a little bit into the wider alternative comics scene at the time. Here's a glimpse at what the pages from that original issue looked like:
Chris and I created six issues of the series, plus some extras here and there (my first official published work was a GABAGOOL! short story that appeared in the old SPX anthologies that they used to put out to coincide with the show every year). Then things came to an end, the partnership broke up, and unfortunately, eventually so did the friendship, that's just how it goes.
It's been 21 years now since we printed those initial minis. The series is now legally old enough to drink. I took a look back at the first issue recently, and was delighted at how well it read. It was a style of comic that I certainly don't make anymore, and is maybe less in-fashion than it once used to be. Gen X/Slacker/Roommate style comedy. Coarse humor, centered around characters of questionable likability, but funny!
So, I decided, the next "deluxe" 'zine that I'm going to put together and send out to all members of my Almost Monthly 'Zine Club will be a special 21st Anniversary re-mastered and re-drawn edition of this seminal comic. It's wholly redone, all new artwork throughout, using some of the improved cartooning skills I've hopefully picked up over the past 2+ decades.
Here's a peek at some of the new pages:
GABAGOOL! The 21st Anniversary Edition will be 24 pages, black and white, digest sized. I'll share more work from it over the coming weeks, and will be aiming to ship copies to members at the end of April-ish.
Thanks as always for the support!
Mike
Comments
Reza
Glad your revisiting your old comic's. These are really hard to find.
Mike Dawson
The first few issues of Gabagool! are now old enough to drink!
aaronfg
I can't believe that's over 20 yrs ago. We gettin' OLD... Good MoCCA memories from that time though! I still laugh at (if I recall correctly) the elf name from one of the Gabagool issues, "Alanthanthas" or something impossible to say. Didn't know you and Chris weren't still friends. Bummer. I hope you and Alex still are!
Jim Dougan
Oh man! Gabagool! I bought those from you at the first MoCCA! I probably still have them somewhere...
