The Complete Mike Dawson Comics Self-Published Media Checklist Vol. One: 1990-2025

lol, I know that in comics you can use drawings to tell the story, but I really don't like letting words go to waste...

I shared a reel on my Instagram, Bluesky, and here on Patreon "Quips" this week announcing that I was going to publish a bonus minicomic to accompany every 'Zine Storage Box that I ship, and this is a post to give some details about what that exclusive self-published pamphlet will be: THE COMPLETE MIKE DAWSON COMICS SELF-PUBLISHED MEDIA CHECKLIST Vol. ONE: 1990-2025

Part checklist for completists (though I don't even own copies of everything I've ever self-published), part autobiography, this full-color digest sized minicomic/'zine will exhaustively detail all of the D.I.Y. work I've put out into the world, starting with my very first self-published efforts, a series of gag cartoons I drew in 9th grade, on up through present day, where I'm regularly publishing a brand new mini each month. I'll cover a series of collaborative comics and 'zines that I produced while at Art School (featuring a cameo by Evan Dorkin, who quite literally changed my life when he came to speak at a meeting of the Rutgers Cartoonist Club in 1994, opening my eyes for the first time to a world beyond that of Marvel and DC Comics), the collections I created of the daily newspaper comic I wrote and drew for five years, my first autobio attempts, the Gabagool! period, and my later multi-pronged approach to serializing graphic novels, efforts that scored me a number of Ignatz nominations and a win for Best Online Comic.

This will most likely be in the range of 16-20 pages long, and for the time being will only be available to obtain through my 'Zine Storage Box Kickstarter. Either box design will get you this comic, along with an exclusive print and a copy of my recent mini, A Part, Apart. There are only four days left in the campaign, so if you'd like to get all this (for about $24 total), don't wait.

I started this week off without an idea in mind for an exclusive Box-Only comic, just the thought that I wanted to make one, and now I'm ending it with something I'm extremely excited to put together. It will be a fun and funny mini, which I will make very accessible to all readers, including those who aren't up to speed on every up and down of my ongoing cartooning career.

I'm also excited thinking about publishing Volume Two of this, 35 years from now!

Last thing, the comic you see me holding on the cover of The Complete MDC is a two-man 'zine, Temporal Darkness Presents, which I published with one of my best friends from High School, Gaz Gretsky. You can follow him on YouTube here, where he posts weekly updates and process videos about his journey to write and draw his own self-published Kaiju comic, The Horror A4. It's his birthday today, and it would be swell if you went over there and hit that like and subscribe. We were both heavily into 90's Marvel and Image comics back when we made that 'zine, and one of Gaz's covers I think remains one of the best artifacts of what a certain kind of comics culture was at that time.

Look at the size of that gun, and those thighs! Look at all that blood! Those were very heady extreme days, for sure.

Thank-you for the ongoing support!
Mike