Fast forward to the present day.  I’m a big fan of web comics and love seeing the drawing talent that people possess.  One of the people I’ve most recently found, is JC of TheAnimatedWoman.com.  Head on over and see some of the wonderful posts and drawings that she’s done.  On second thought, read the rest of this post first and then go there.  I guarantee that, once you’ve browsed to her site, you’ll spend hours laughing at her wonderful posts and drawings.

A few months back, she posted a “how to draw” that involved lines.  Then, on Sunday, she followed this up with another one-liner post.  Inspiration struck.  So here is my attempt to follow her instructions.  Sure, my lack of skill might have gotten in the way a bit, but I couldn’t at least give it a try.

First, I started out with some lines.

Then, I added some eyes.

The arms and legs began to add some personality.

Next, came the dialog.

Finally, I added some color elements to give it some zip.

  Not bad, if I do say so myself. I don’t think I’ll quit my day job, though.

As you may remember, I was undecided on whether or not I should go to Free Comic Day.  After B left, I made my decision: We were going.  I armed the kids with their Green Lantern rings from our Green Lantern party, got them into the car and headed over to Zombie Planet.

I had heard that the 501st, a group of Star Wars fans who dress up like Stormtroopers, would be there.  NHL was excited to see “costumes.”  Ever since Disney, he’s gone costume-crazy.  He must meet (and get his photo with) any costumed character who is anywhere near him.  He was not disappointed.

We got out of the car and there, in front of the store, was a single Stormtrooper.  He was joined by a Tusken Raider.

The Tusken Raider would occasionally make a growling sound (like the one that the movie Tusken Raider made as he stood over Luke Skywalker).  This scared NHL off from getting his photo taken with the Tusken Raider.  So we went indoors and proceeded upstairs to the free comics section.

Unlike last year, when it was “take as many as you like”, there was a 5 comic per person limit.  I had gone online the previous days to Free Comic Book Day’s website to see which comics would be available.  This meant that I knew just which comics were the best for my boys and which should be skipped.  The only complaints from the boys came when NHL looked out the window and spied Spider-Man.  He insisted that we *HAD* to go outside right now to meet the web slinger.

I explained to NHL that we needed to check out (even we had nothing that we were being charged for).  Besides, I had brought some Phineas and Ferb action figures that needed peg stands.  I hoped that the comic shop would be able to help.  (Sadly, they didn’t have what I needed.)

Finally, we left the comic shop and NHL immediately approached Spider-Man for a photo.

Then, I made a Geeky Daddy decision.  NHL was wearing a Green Lantern ring.  Green Lanterns Hal Jordon was supposedly “born without fear.”  So I couldn’t very well let him leave afraid of the Tusken Raider, could I?  I’d have been deducted 30 Geek Points!

I spoke with him about it and he finally agreed to get his photo taken.

After that, we headed home for lunch and some comic book reading.

Once the boys were fed, I decided that it was too nice of a day to be couped up indoors.  So we grabbed some of our colossal cannons and headed out to play.

Eventually, NHL had a bright idea.  His great-grandmother had given them some butterfly nets, but NHL thought they’d make great colossal cannon disc catching nets.  And they did!

Our next door neighbor’s daughter, N, also came over and played with the boys for quite awhile.  Eventually, they tired of chasing after green discs and wanted to play with bubbles.  Cue the Winnie the Pooh bubble blower!

They also wanted to play with chalk and I eventually relented.

I noticed the skies were getting dark and warned the boys that we might have to go inside soon.  Besides, B’s return time was getting closer and closer.

As B pulled up, I hurredly gathered the chalk and got the boys (and N) off our driveway.  The boys said goodbye to N and hello to B.  Then, as we walked in, the heavens opened up.  Perfect timing!

The boys and I had a fun day together and B had a nice Mommy Road Trip.  I’d call that a win all around!

This year, will be a bit more complicated.  B’s going to meet someone for lunch tomorrow.  This means she’ll be out for most of the time that Free Comic Book Day runs.  The complication is that I don’t usually drive on Saturdays for religious reasons.  My geekiness (“must take boys for free comic books”) is battling my religious side (“must observe Shabbat”).  Who will win?  To be honest, I still don’t know.

Meanwhile, I’ve been introducing my boys to various superheroes.  They love the Avengers (Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Ant Man, Wasp, Thor, Black Panther and Hawkeye), Young Justice (Robin, Superboy, Miss Martian, Kid Flash and Aqualad) and Batman on the TV.  They have also been introduced to the Green Lantern.  My boys just love superheroes and would love to pour through new comic books.  Somehow I’ll have to make this work for them.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Who is your favorite superhero and why?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #86

Then, I noticed something interesting.  Not only were the comics I knew and loved online, but a lot of other comics were online as well.  Comics with no large syndicates backing them were sprouting up left and right.  Some might have spoken to a niche, some might not have fit into your average newspaper and some were just too out there for the comics page.  Not all of them were good, of course, but many of them were.

I began following a lot of comics.  One of the newest ones that I’ve followed is called Noodle Knobs.  It features a mom, dad and a kid nicknamed “Noodle Knobs.”  Here’s the twist: The characters in the comic strip aren’t fictional.  In fact, the family is quite real.  The artist is the father (known on the site as The Daddy).  In addition to comics, NoodleKnobs also features a blog where The Mommy and The Daddy discuss (separately or together) various topics ranging from illness to kids toys to nicknames.

But today’s NoodleKnobs has a special place in my heart.  Why?  Because my boys and I are in it!  Yes, NoodleKnobs put out the call for parents to guest blog about their own NoodleKnobs.  I answered and that guest post runs today, along with a comic that The Daddy drew.  The teaser above is a shot of JSL meant to whet your appetite.  Is it whetted yet?  Then head on over to NoodleKnobs.com to read my guest post and see the full comic!

NHL already likes Star Wars. Both he and JSL love Looney Tunes. JSL will even, when prompted with “Rabbit Season” say “Duck Season! Fire! PSSSH!” (The sound of him imitating Elmer Fudd’s gun.) They also both love computers. NHL will beg to be allowed to learn more about computers and JSL has come to expect being able to see his grandparents via Skype whenever he wants.

On the superhero front, NHL watches Batman The Brave and the Bold with me and wants to know everything about all the heroes and villians. He gets especially excited when the heroes begin beating up the villians. (Perhaps too excited, but that’s a topic for another blog post.) He’s also watched Super Hero Squad, Spectacular Spiderman and X-Men: Evolution with me to get him into Marvel’s heroes and villians.

So when I heard that Saturday was going to be Free Comic Day, there was no way I could pass it up. We went to Zombie Planet in Albany, NY. Beyond the great name, they’re also a great comic book store. We wandered around it looking at everything. We saw lots of items that my comic book store growing up didn’t have (mainly dealing with role playing games). I was even impressed that they had a Nuclear War card set. (That’s a card game where you toss nukes at each other trying to be the only one with a population left; often there will be no winner. But I digress.)

The one thing we couldn’t find, however, was the free comics. That was easily solved, however, by asking the friendly store staffers who directed us to the secret passageway… I mean, the stairs that we hadn’t noticed. Upstairs, the boys loved seeing a table of comic book after comic book sitting in front of them.

All of the comic books on the table were free as were a few other items sitting on the table, so I grabbed one of everything. However, B, thinking ahead to the inevitable conflicts concerning who is going to read what comic book, grabbed a second one of the Toy Story, Penguins/Shrek and Fraggle Rock ones. We probably should have gotten second Iron Man ones as well given that both boys love Iron Man, but I figured that there were 2 Iron Man comics (one teaming with Nova and another teaming with Thor) so they could alternate. Plus, I didn’t want to be greedy. As it was, we were leaving with over 40 comics for $0.

Well, the total didn’t exactly come out to $0. As we were asking where the comic books were, we had noticed that they make Super Hero Squad cards. We promised NHL a set so, when we came back downstairs with our haul, we picked up a pack. I might let NHL start a collection with these. I began a baseball card collection when I was about his age and thoroughly enjoyed it. Obviously, there would be spending limits in place and perhaps he would need to do things to earn his collection money, but this might be a nice non-toy, non-video-game, completely geeky collection for him to have.

The boys had a great time seeing everything in the store, seeing all of the comic books, and reading their comics both in the car and on the way home. (Though how much was reading and how much was looking at the pictures, I don’t know.) I even read NHL the Iron Man/Nova comic and he enjoyed it. I’m happy to report that the geek-i-fying of my boys is right on track.