Making of "Make Way" (Patreon)

Dads are often the butt of jokes. "Mom is cool and in control, but dad is a lazy bum!" -blah blah blah! For Father's Day, I wanted to do a straight "look how cool dads are!" comic, so I started brainstorming ideas.

I landed on that feeling I get when J does DIY for me. My love language is very much "Acts of Service" and flowers could never compare to some household job taken off my plate! It was a simple enough setup; reader confused by what's happening and then Joel comes in, looking all impressive, making Fran and the boys all starry eyed!

I went back and forth on Fran's happy expression. She looked cutest with a big cat mouth, but she needed to be saying her line. Opening up the wide mouth made it look like she was yelling, and I wanted it as more of a whisper. I eventually figured out I could just have a tiny anime style opening on the wide mouth -best of both worlds!

I pulled Joel's tummy in slightly from where it is normally to give him more of a proud triangular shape -going full rubber arms to accentuate it! Joel's speech bubble was right in the middle of the frame, which isn't great for Instagram, where wide panels are cut in half, so I stacked the words to make it skinnier. It had the amusing consequence of mirroring Joel's shape -almost like the speech bubble was sucking in its tummy too!

The t-shirt slogan was one J had come up with a while ago, aptly enough, while doing DIY! I'd been waiting for a DIY comic to debut it on, so I made sure to draw Joel's chest mostly unobscured.

A lot of commentors guessed that the bonus panel would be Joel screwing up, but I wanted to keep his head held high -dads deserved a win! 😁 After putting up some shelves for me once J had said "I know your love language is wall mounted storage!" which made me cackle, so I wrote it down. I figured I could use it perfectly here, switching it to Fran's line and getting a smooth Hans Solo "I know" in from Joel! 🥰