Hi Everyone,
I hope you all had a great Passover and Easter holiday. We celebrate Easter, and this year our son was the right age to appreciate it. It was also my wife Denise’ s birthday, and I’m working on an art deadline, so it was quite the jam-packed weekend. I did manage to catch “How to Train Your Dragon” with our son and we both give it high marks – be sure to catch it. The animation is wonderful.
I see my quote was posted in BusinessWeek today regarding how the iPad will affect the comic book industry. In my humble view, it will grow our audience for a new set of serialized storytelling fans who are not collectors, so a new audience is always a good thing for our industry. Here’s that BusinessWeek link for you: http://bit.ly/aK3O4k – my quote is on page 2 of 2. A special thanks to Charlie Athanas for finding it for me – our Google Alerts always show up way too late. Of course, special thanks goes to my publicist Denise Dorman at WriteBrain Media for putting it together for me.
For those of you who follow child development, you might have some insight to share with me. I think that my son may have inherited some creative talent from Denise and me. He has an attention to detail and an ability to draw from memory, rather than copying, that I find remarkable. I just hope that I’m not seeing his artwork through “daddy goggles,” but here it is, and keep in mind, he just turned 5:
Perry the Parrot
Dave Dorman's Son Draws the World of SpongeBob
You can see here where he started to draw Mr. Krabs on the far right, and then bailed at the last moment, losing his confidence. I was particularly impressed with how he drew Squidward and Gary, and even remembered the antenna on Patrick Star’s little rock house.
In other news, if any of you are watching Celebrity Apprentice, like me, you must be left puzzling over how anyone ever voted such a smarmy and witless wonder as Rod Blagojevich into the Governor’s office here in Illinois, where I’m now living. For the record, I didn’t vote for him. Basic skills, like typing, using a computer and text messaging, should be an assumption, not a struggle for someone in the Governor’s role. It is frustrating to us watching how far clueless narcissism can go toward convincing people of someone’s competence. Perhaps the next IL governor’s race should be voted on after watching all of the contenders in a similar reality TV program. At the very least, I want the next governor to know how to use a computer. It’s no wonder our state is bankrupt. I’m sure he couldn’t even open an Excel file, let alone analyze it. This brings me to my next topic, which is, at some point, I’m going to apply to go on Celebrity Apprentice. This season, there are folks on there who, frankly, are not household names to everyone, yet they’re famous within their own niches. That pretty much sums up my fame, so I think I should qualify. I am an Eisner Award winner, which is the Oscars of the comic book industry – similar to a gold medal in the Olympics. Like those Olympiads, I committed to my Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 + hours of hardcore training. I would certainly have nailed it as project leader on any of this season’s creative tasks…
My wife Denise and I did record Episode 1 of our podcast, “Wednesday is Comic Book Day” with special guest Scott Hampton, and once I know when it’s on iTunes and posted on Farpoint Media, I will let you all know here on my blog. I thank producer Denise Gideon and tech advisor Andrea Smith, two new media experts who do a superb job of leading the reluctant Luddites into the digital age.
There’s a major storm brewing here, so I will sign off now before the power goes out – it’s flickering and I don’t want to lose this post.
Thanks for reading,
Dave.
Dave Dorman 