Teenagers target their own regular comic book
TWO Limerick schoolboys are creating their own comic rivals to Garfield, Denis the Menace or Scooby Do, and share an ambition to produce a regular comic.
Mickey Casey and Nathan Peer, both from Dooradoyle, and aged 13, have been drawing their own characters since they first started school.
“I started creating cartoons and wrote little stories to bring the characters to life. My art teacher let me present the comics to the class and they liked them,” smiles first year secondary student, Mikey.
He has already created Crazy Steve.
“I like him a lot but sometimes Nathan and I have to discontinue a character because we run out of story ideas”.
Nathan, a second year pupil at Pallaskenry School, has, meanwhile, created – Otto and Feedback.
“Once, I gave the comic strip to a friend on a sleepover, and he didn’t stop laughing for ages – his parents wanted to see it too, and they joined in the laughter”.
Nathan, whose father is Austrian, thinks he has inherited his talent from an uncle who is “very good at drawing.
“I want to go to art college and improve my skills, and Mikey is keen to go to after-school art classes”.
Reminding me that Garfield “started out in newspapers “before he became a worldwide phenomenon that spilled over to products, postcards, etc, Mikey, said he would very much like to see a newspaper use their comic strips.
“Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, went worldwide – that’s an inspirational thought but at the moment, I have to confine my work mostly to weekends during term, or after homework.
“Both our families give us ideas – my mum, Alice, and my sisters, give us ideas for the characters and my dad makes suggestions on layout.
“Like Nathan, I think I inherited my skills from my uncle – his name was Mike, and my dad’s sister also comes up with ideas.
“My mum reads comics a lot and gives us great encouragement but what you have to remember is, everyone has a different sense of humour”.
On a practical level, what do they really want to do when they leave school.
“I’d love to become an animator,” is Nathan’s immediate reply.
“I want to make Zapp and Crazy Steve international,” says Mikey.
“There are many kinds of humour – slapstick, random, intellectual and you have to know when to use which type of character”.
