Knock Me Over

If you had told me just two weeks ago that my "hates to write, hates to draw" kid would be drawing comics for hours on end, I would have thought that you were crazy. But that is exactly what Jason (and Kyle) have been doing for the past 4 days.

It started when Kyle found a small white note-pad and started doodling different things (mostly stick people) just for fun. Jason started drawing stick figures as well and these stick figures morphed into Super Hero Man and his evil nemesis Crazy Man. Which then led Jason to creating stories for his characters. These stories are complete with laser weapons and plenty of things blowing up, but also have a lot of thought to the overall story development. He has been putting in a lot of time and energy to coming up with the plots.

At some point (probably about the same point when having tons of little white slips of paper all over the table, couch and floor started making me a little bit crazy), I asked Jason if he wanted me to find some blank comic strip panels online. He thought that sounded neat, so I went and googled. I quickly hit the jackpot with Donna Young's Comic Strip Printables page. She has all sorts of configurations of free blank comic strip panels available in pdf format.

I have really been enjoying watching him enjoy himself so much. Jason loves to show me his latest stories and his creativity and attention to detail is really interesting. While his hero and villains are stick people, the supporting henchman and other background things have a lot of detail. He is drawing evil lairs, golems, different weapons, different bad guys, you name it. He also seems to like to use the panel as part of the story...in one he has his hero climbing up ladders from one panel to the next, going into a door on one and coming out another, climbing stairs to get to a new panel.

Not to be outdone, Kyle has started drawing his own comics as well...his favorite so far has an arrow that is chasing the characters through the frames. And even their friend Sean, who was down for a visit (yes, another fun 3-day visit with friends from home!) got into the act.

Each has been building off ideas the other has and sometimes includes his brother in the storyline. They have been working on these in the morning while watching tv and in the evenings, as well as doing some of the drawing while I am reading to them before bed. I have been surprised at how dedicated they have been and how much they are enjoying themselves and the process (especially Jason, as he is more known for his perfectionism and wanting his drawing to be "perfect").

I think I will see if they want to come up with some sort of cover/binding to keep the stories together. We realized that we do not have a stapler (!) down here at the beach and have just been using paper clips. Which keep coming off. So we will need to look for a more permanent solution.

Just thought that I would share as this has been a totally unexpected but thoroughly enjoyable turn of events. You never know what will catch their fancy...I can guarentee that if I had suggested that they sit down and work on comics, they would have moaned and groaned about it and hated it. 

I guess we will see how long this interest lasts. I hope that it is for awhile, as I am really loving their stories!