My 30 Comics With Silly Humor And Magical Twists You Might Enjoy

I grew up in the '80s reading GI Joe comic books, Mad Magazine, and Calvin and Hobbes — and it was my love of comics that got me to start drawing. I remember struggling to draw arms and legs and stuff so I invented a cartoon character that was just a floating head. I called him Clumsy Joe and began drawing little comics where he would float around and knock things over. Then I came up with a rat character I called Rugby, and suddenly I had my first comic strip — Rugby & Joe. I was 11 or 12 at the time.

I created my first "real" comic strip in 2009 while I was in grad school (I have an MFA in illustration). It was a webcomic that poked fun at horror movies called Haiku Comics. My brother Robert wrote the haikus and I drew all the pictures. We put out three comics every week for about a year and a half, went to a couple of conventions, and even self-published a book collecting the first 100 comic strips. It was a lot of fun.

I've worked as a graphic designer for most of my career, so comics have been something I've had to do on the side. In 2019, I started sharing Sundae Comics on social media and working to build a following. I now write and draw Sundae Comics full-time and hope to spend the rest of my life making comics.

I named Sundae Comics after the Sunday newspaper comics I grew up reading. While a lot of the comics are joke-driven, my original concept for the strip was that I wanted it to feel like reading the comics pages in the Sunday paper — sometimes it might be funny, sometimes heartwarming, and every once in a while there might even be a serialized adventure story or melodrama. The format of the comic has given me a lot of freedom to experiment and continue to push myself as a cartoonist.

Witchflowers is the first ongoing story to find success in Sundae Comics. I wrote and drew the first episode as part of the 2021 Inktober art challenge — the word prompt for the day was "crystals." In the comic, a little girl asks about the powers that crystals of different colors contain — and she's surprised in the last panel by the rainbow created by the clear crystal. The comic was an instant hit and my followers demanded more. So, I made more!

Witchflowers looks a little different from my other comics. Because I started the series during Inktober, an event meant to celebrate artwork made with ink, I chose to post them in black-and-white. The comics are all drawn on bristol board using brushes and dip pens — I add some grey tones to the finished art after I scan them into Photoshop. I really like the look of the black-and-white artwork and it seems the fans of Witchflowers do too. It gives the series a distinctive look that sets it apart from a lot of other comics.

While I will continue writing and drawing new Witchflower comics (probably forever!), Sundae Comics will still explore other themes and stories. In October 2022, I introduced a new series about a character called Tiny Dracula. (He's just like regular Dracula, but tiny and adorable.) I've also been publishing a slew of humor comics that poke fun at science fiction and fantasy tropes. Hopefully, I will have more new comics to share with the Bored Panda community soon!