Passion Projects

I started a project this year with no plan at all: a hand-drawn comic strip.

I work on it Saturday mornings when I go out for coffee. (I call these solo breakfast sessions my "Doodle & Noodle Time".)

The strip is about a guy who's hired to work as a janitor on Mars. Yes, I know, HBO has since released a program based on nearly this exact premise, "Fired on Mars", but it's snarky, ugly, and seems to hate its characters *and* science fiction, so I'm just pretending it's not there.

Working like this, with traditional media, is a constant tightwire act and a dog to scan and publish in any way, so what am I thinking?

Well, I wasn't thinking. I'm doing something I feel compelled to do, just for me. Maybe I'll never share it. That would be okay.

It also feels like going back to the source, to those endless childhood hours I spent drawing with my best friend, Karl in his basement. He had muscular dystrophy, so we drew cartoons instead of playing sports (psst, I didn't want to play sports anyway!). He was way better than I was, but, as fate would have it, I'm the one who's still around.

Doing this project feels like being true to him, and to Little-Me, too.

By the end of this year, I'm going to fill up this sketchbook with comics. (I'm over halfway already.)

#workinprogresswednesday #passionprojects #comics #cartoons