FLU BUGS, PUFFER POOCHES AND DANGER MICE!!!

April is here!  And I for one am stoked!  Aside from it being Spring time now, it's also my birthday month!  And if that weren't enough, I got art celebrating some childhood classics all month long AND a special new comic I'm premiering today!  Ain't that grand?  So let's dive right in!  Well, lightly step.  The pool's shallow after all.  Enjoy...

 That Flu Bug is certainly full of himself!  The inspiration for this came from my dear friend Sheena Monahan, whose son, Hunter, had the flu.  She said a nasty bug had hit him and she wanted revenge!  Hunter loves dogs (Who doesn't?!), so I decided to call on a heroic newcomer to battle this dastardly insect: Puffer Pooch!  You see, Puffer Pooch owes his very creation to Sheena.  Last year, she organized a most wonderful effort to raise money for a boy named Alex who was battling cancer.  Alex's two greatest loves are dogs and super heroes, so Sheena combined them into a big coloring book project where artists from around the globe created hero dogs to be colored in.  My entry was a short comic about a young beagle who can bloat up named Puffer Pooch.  I've been itching to put this pup in another comic, and Sheena's request made it necessary!  Alex, thankfully, has recovered from his battle and Hunter eventually beat the real flu bug too.  Hopefully someday, we'll see even more of Puffer Pooch down the road!

And now for something completely different…

"He's the greatest!  He's fantastic!  Wherever there's danger he'll be there!"  Those lyrics can mean only one thing: DANGER MOUSE IS HERE!!!  One of my favorite toons when I was very little, my first exposure to Danger Mouse was during the early years of Nickelodeon, back when Pinwheel was shown for several hours every morning and green slime still played a role in the network's theming.  You see, Nick really didn't do much original programming during their first decade or so, so most of their shows early on were either picked up from the first-run syndication market or were foreign imports, mostly from Canada, England and Japan.  Some shows were better than others as different cultures have different humor styles, but Danger Mouse always seemed to work for everyone!  Needless to say, when the Daily Doodle did an 80's toons week, there was no way I was missing out!

Well, that's all for this week.  Got plenty more retro fun in store for April, so bust out your Aquanet and Member's Only jackets and get ready for some totally awesome action dude!  Trust me, next week's toon will light up all your "Gadgets!"  Until then, take care and I'll catch y'all later!