I actually made it to the San Diego Comic-Con this year. It had been a while, because various things would come together and keep me from going. This year, amazingly, I had both the money and time to head out there (well, at least the latter). It was a great time. One of the tremendous benefits of heading out there (besides the free books at the Del Ray booth), is that I actually had a chance to pick out a few bad indie comics myself, rather than having my editor mail them to me later on. Thus, with a feeling reminiscent of someone walking over my grave, I hit the indie section of the Con. I had some money to blow, and there were a lot of things that were asking to be panned. I came across Dorkboy. The art annoyed me right from the start, the comics were badly put together (the center pages extend quite a bit past the cover), and the name sounded rather ridiculous. Unfortunately, I had made eye contact, and was lured into buying a copy. My only joy at the time was in dragging Sidra down with me ("If I buy this, you can buy that one."). If I hadn’t looked up at that moment, I would have passed it by. This would have been a huge mistake. Dorkboy contained everything I enjoy in comics. Damian Willcox has a twisted sense of humor that would somehow make me laugh and groan at the same time. If you enjoy the Meat Puppets and the Tick (and you wouldn’t be afraid of their love-child), I think you’ll enjoy the series as much as I did. The particular comic that I picked up, 6.1, involves Dorkboy’s trip to China, to help his Uncle Li. According to the author’s note, it was based on a real trip that probably was almost as interesting as the comic. I mean this in a good sort of way. Normally, it’s hard jumping into a series, but I felt right at home here. There was enough of the characters to get involved, and Damian kept things moving at a great pace. Just about every other line had me at least smiling. The incident with the traditional Chinese medicine had me laughing out loud. This particular comic had three extras in it. One was a Too Much Coffee Man short, the other two were Scooter Boy and Workin’ Jones, both by Damian Willcox as well. Scooter Boy . . . well . . . not much to say on that one. The plot was fun, but the artwork was incredible. There is a website for Dorkboy. Oddly enough, it’s http://www.dorkboycomics.com. On it are a few previews, a lot of information about Damian and his other projects, and a Dorkboy store. Be the first on your block to buy a t-shirt that proudly states "Dorkboy!" The site is excellently put together (no pages sticking out here), and I like how the comic previews come up in a separate window. The only downside is that one of the full comics he links to on his site (2.1, I believe) no longer works. If you want to see it, you can copy and paste the url into archive.org’s web page time warp, and it’ll come up there. All in all, an excellent comic, excellent website. My second favorite thing to come out of Canada (you just can’t beat that bacon).

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