Greetings, all!

As you can see, Dorm Dorks has an all new site that’s much better and easier to access. Have a look around, and please let me know if you see any bugs or anything.

Hope you enjoy it!

-Mike

I’ve got a lot of new art over at my deviantart page. There’s a link to it on the sidebar there, if you ever forget the address.

There’s a lot of convention-type sketches over there. If you ever want a commissioned drawing, don’t hesitate to email me and ask. I’m cheap!

Uh, not in that way…

So a good buddy of mine just called, offering me FREE tickets to tonight’s Foo Fighter’s Concert in American Airlines Center.

And I turned him down.

What was I THINKING?! Free Foo! And I PASSED!

Sure, I had a legitimate reason for not being able to go, but seriously… I haven’t felt this stupid since… ah… well, how about a few days ago, where I needed to wear a suit at this event out of town–and upon opening my bag I realized I didn’t bring the suit jacket.

I guess I feel stupid a lot.

As a result of all of this, I now blare Foo Fighters from my stereo as loud as possible. My neighbors will just have to deal with it. This isn’t the first time they’ve come face to face with my Foo.

Welcome one and all, to the all new, all-awesome, dormdorkscomic.com!

The new site is built using the awesome Comicpress design, created by Tyler Martin. I’ve spent a lot of time modifying it to be my own, and I’m finally pretty happy with how it turned out. So have a look around, and please let me know if you find any bugs, or just want to give some general feedback. You’ll find my email address at the bottom of the sidebar on the right.

Allow to give a brief tour, if you will–it’s all pretty self explanatory, up top, you’ve got 3 main buttons. The cast page runs down all the characters in the strip, and is the place to go for new readers to get acquainted with everyone. The storylines button takes you to a list of the major story developments, with links to the beginning of each story arc. Pretty handy, eh? The archive button is a list of every strip so far, each with it’s own title. No more trying to remember the date of that strip you liked–just remember the title!

Something I really enjoy is the TAG buttons on the right. These are essentially bookmarks that allow to you to mark a certain strip in the archives, and then later, come back to that spot and continue reading. It’s based on “cookies,” so if you clear your cookies, you clear your bookmark.

Further down, you can buy the first book–”Primordial Soup,” and check out my deviantart page, which has lots of goodies that aren’t here on this site. Also, the “Mike & Friends Movie Reviews” site will take you to “The Critic Crew,” a movie blog that I and a few friends write for. You might have met some of these folk if you’ve seen me at a convention recently. Check out our elitist, opinionated movie reviews for yourself!

Finally, enjoy this blog. I’m sure to have a lot to say about Dorm Dorks, and life in general, as this thing goes on, and I never had a good space to do it over at the old site. So, enjoy this, and don’t be afraid to send me some feedback. You can leave comments now, and, there’s always email.

Thanks so much!

-Mike

Perhaps I should say something about today’s comic…

See, since I’m doing this Spider-Man 3 parody, I really wanted to be complete, and find whatever song it was that played during the scene where Toby Maguire is disco dancing through the streets, pointing at chicks, looking kinda emo, and generally ruining the Spidey franchise… Turns out that song is the great James Brown, singing, “People Get Up and Drive That Funky Soul.”

I have no idea what that means, but trust me, although I think the strip is funny by itself, reading this strip while listening to James Brown’s masterpiece is so utterly hilarious–I laughed outloud at my own work for the first time ever. Usually, I don’t laugh at my own stuff, because, well, that’s weird, but listening to that sweet bass groove with the wah-guitar and horn blasts… with that stupid look on Chuck’s face… it’s comic genius, I tell you!

Search around the web, I found a free mp3 of the song somewhere. And even better, the research for this strip inspired me to get the “James Brown Gold Collection,” which is pure genius. I love the old soul/funk R&B sound. Until sometime in the mid 80s, where R&B stopped being cool, and started referring to things like Mariah Carey instead of things like “Sam and Dave.”

My roommate says that I like this music because I’m a bass player, and soul, funk, and R&B  stuff is driven by the bass grooves. I think he might be right. I love Soul with a Capital ‘S,’ as “Tower of Power” teaches us… and it’s those awesome basslines that are the reason. It’s the same reason I love ska, reggae, and dub music so much.

Anyway, apparently symbiotes like the music, too. Hmm…

-Mike

Hey guys, there’s a cool interview with me that just went live on the a podcast called “Ink Inferno” which is done by the guys at SwapYourComics.com. They’re affiliated with the Star Wars site “Rebel Trading Post,” you may have heard of them.

It’s pretty cool. Brandon (the host) is a great guy and I had a lot of fun talking about Dorm Dorks and webcomics. The whole show is good, and the stuff with me starts about halfway though. Check it out!

Here’s a direct link. 

EDIT: Sorry about the lateness–I thought I had the comic uploaded today, but good thing I checked the site this morning and found a small typo in the filename. It’s fixed and so here’s today’s comic, a few hours later than I’d like. Sorry!

Well, I started a new job this week. It’s fairly exciting, but fairly depressing at the same time. Upon going to lunch today (Freebirds. Duh…), I realized I was one of THOSE guys… you know the type. The guy in the business clothes that goes to cool places and tries to be cool, but can’t, because he’s generic business guy and not actually cool at all…

Not to offend any of you business types. But now I feel your pain. Not all generic business guys are actually generic business guys. On the inside, we are more than cool, we are passionate, yearning for something more–yearning for true depth in our mundane office lives… yearning to untuck those shirts, and replace the shirt with a cooler, non-collared shirt that doesn’t require ironing… and to replace those stiff, totally lame khaki pants with jeans that have holes in them, and maybe a slight stain from where the sour cream dripped from your sweet, sweet Freebirds burrito…

Anyway, during the training for my new business job (relax, we were on break…), I was able to do some sketching:

(click for full size) I thought if I did a full-scale, finished version (colored, and with a funny caption that I’ll think of later) it’d make a funny wallpaper, or maybe even a T-shirt? Would you guys be into something like that? Let me know, and if enough people think it’s cool, I’ll make it.

Till then, peace out!

-Mike