Mike Dawson's Blog, page 72

Book Deal 2006I had this notion of writing a longer Sad-Boy...

Book Deal 2006

I had this notion of writing a longer Sad-Boy comic, but I don’t think I’m going to do that anymore. This was the first page.

This many envelopes left to stuff

This many envelopes left to stuff

Compleat set

Compleat set

comicsgirl:mikedawwwson:Keeping on the theme of thinking...

comicsgirl:

mikedawwwson:

Keeping on the theme of thinking ahead to TCAF and other comics festivals, something I’m considering offering are personalized sad-sack drawings, where I will draw a lovely pen and ink portrait of you looking like a mopey navel gazing autobio cartoonist. Here’s a drawing I did of my friend Roy wearing his favorite MAD Magazine t-shirt.

… what if you won’t be at TCAF? I’ve always wanted to be drawn as a mopey navel gazing autobio cartoonist. I guess I gotta hold out until SPX.

I am not joking. I think this is 100% awesome.

SPX it is!

Phurry Phreak Brothers

Phurry Phreak Brothers

Keeping on the theme of thinking ahead to TCAF and other comics...

Keeping on the theme of thinking ahead to TCAF and other comics festivals, something I’m considering offering are personalized sad-sack drawings, where I will draw a lovely pen and ink portrait of you looking like a mopey navel gazing autobio cartoonist. Here’s a drawing I did of my friend Roy wearing his favorite MAD Magazine t-shirt.

I’ve paid for my SPX table in the Fall, I’ve bought...

I’ve paid for my SPX table in the Fall, I’ve bought my plane tickets to TCAF. Still wondering if there’s a show that falls in-between the two that I should try. Kind of got cold feet about it, tho - if I can’t figure out a way to make traveling to shows more cost-effective… For someone whose been to a million shows in his life, I’d think I ought to be better at selling books and making $$$ at them. I’m going to really try and think out how I want to approach sitting at a table moving forward. I want to avoid sitting like a mush-mouthed lump and really try and make something of the opportunity to be in a room filled with people who all probably have at least some marginal interest in what I’m doing. I’m lucky to have been accepted to both of these highly regarded and well attended shows. Time for me to make the effort to make it worthwhile.

That Charlie Hebdo essay

I don’t read French or follow Charlie Hebdo. My awareness of the magazine began with the murders of the cartoonists last year. I went to the Angouleme festival shortly after that and saw the memorial exhibition that had been put on, and spoke to a number of French people about the magazine and got a sense of what it had been. Of course I also followed most of the online conversations about Charlie Hebdo among the comics community since that time. Last week this essay was posted at the Charlie Hebdo website:

https://charliehebdo.fr/en/edito/how-did-we-end-up-here/

Here’s how I’m trying to think about racism these days: we live in racist, misogynist societies. It’s pretty looney to imagine you could come up in a place so heavily tilted one way and not have your worldview affected. I have grown up in a white supremacist society, these things are going to be in me. It takes work to pick apart our own wiring. I’d like to move towards a place of anti-racism within myself and my surroundings. I’m far from there. But I’m trying to recognize that calling me racist isn’t always the same as calling me evil, monstrous, or bad. But racism itself is always damaging.

RE: Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the wrong foot that a lot of the discussion got off on (and has maybe gotten stuck at) wasn’t whether the cartoonists who published in the magazine were “racist”, but rather raging about what “assholes” they were (this within hours of their murder, a thing that’s hard to set aside). How could they not exhibit aspects of French racism, being older mostly white Frenchmen, living in a country with it’s own history of bigotry and colonialism? They definitely did, and there were images I saw in the Charlie Hebdo memorial exhibit that revealed that. But, were they “assholes”? As far as I can tell, the intentions of the magazine as it was, were more often than not to combat the status quo as it existed in the context of their place and time. They were generally sympathetic to the plights of minority groups. And they had a history of thumbing their nose at religious institutions in general, I think to their credit. Ultimately, they were living with a threat of violence for drawing drawings, which they were not cowed by, they paid a huge price for it, and it’s not wrong to respect that commitment to principles without requiring that they be perfect people.

But what is Charlie Hebdo now? I guess honestly, I dunno - I barely know who they were before the murders, but it’s legitimate to observe that the actual cartoonists who comprise the collective today are different than before, because many of those other people are dead. And the magazine no longer occupies the space it once did. Whatever Charlie Hebdo is now, it plays an undeniable role in The Conversation, and it’s no longer appropriate for us to give them a pass as a “voice of the underground”. This isn’t just some low-class alt magazine anymore, printing a few thousands copies, existing beneath most people’s notice. The things Charlie Hebdo say now matter, many many eyes are upon them, and that editorial is plainly contemptible. Maybe I don’t understand everything surrounding it, but perhaps it isn’t always my job to do the work of justifying and contextualizing their every move. They are too high profile. That essay is racist.

#robliefeld #toddmcfarlane

#robliefeld #toddmcfarlane

I went to DiNK and MoCCA, and now I have too many comics to read

I went to DiNK and MoCCA, and now I have too many comics to read