I have been a comics fan since the age of about six or so. My obsession with comics all started one day when I found some discarded comic books that my grandmother had thrown away in her trash can. I have no idea why she threw them away or why she didn’t think to ask if I wanted them first. Perhaps, she didn’t see the value of comics as a learning tool for reading as I do now. I still remember my parents pulling up and parking alongside the road and then getting excited as I got out of the car and peered into her trash cans finding what, to me, was the equivalent of discovering buried treasure.
Those old comics were a little bit of everything from funny animal books from Walt Disney and Looney Tunes to superheroes like Superman and Batman. That discovery led to an obsession with reading and collecting comics that I still have to this day. Those comics may not have taught me to read necessarily. I was taught the basics of sounding out words and the alphabet from school, but I firmly believe they played a huge part in the level of reading I achieved early on. After all the more you do something the better you get at it, and I read every day after that.
That was way back in the 1970s. Things are a bit different today. There are fewer funny animal books on the market. You can’t go to a local drugstore and pick out comics from the newsstand. There are a lot more distractions, like the internet and smartphones.
Back then, during summer vacation, when it was too hot to do much of anything, you could at least find a shady spot outside and read your comics. This was right before we got cable TV and the only time there was anything good on television was Saturday morning cartoons, the prime time hours at night, and late afternoon re-runs of Gilligan’s Island, the Three Stooges, or Adam West’s Batman. Comics were it for large portions of the day during those hot summer months.
Sadly, the vast majority of comics today aren’t really geared towards children anymore. You can’t find your monthly comics with a quick trip downtown unless you live near a comic shop
Recently though, there has been a new avenue for kids where comics are produced in book format with heavier paper and sturdier covers. Kids can get their parents to order thicker books with lots more pages of comics story than what was available in the old days. Today most kids have to get their parents to order their books online from stores like Amazon.
Still, I don’t feel there are enough options for kids, at least not in the comics format and that’s part of the reason I created Caveman Comics. It features all the fun and excitement that comics had for me back in the day, maybe even more so. Kids need fun stuff to read. They need escapism as much as adults and if they find themselves enjoying reading, all the better. These days more than ever kids and parents need to just laugh together and take a break from the outside world.
Historically, laughter has not only been considered good medicine for the body, but it’s also been a psychological coping mechanism for hard times. Laughter relieves tension and stress, and believe me, kids feel stress as much or more so than adults.
Besides my decades-long experience with comics as a reader and experience as an author in general, I also have a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in the area of elementary education. I’ve seen firsthand from my educational experience how important reading is to kids and to their overall educational foundations. Everything they read doesn’t have to be all about science or history, sometimes it can be just about the fun and still be hugely beneficial.
Caveman Comics has all the standard things you’d see in a classic cartoon that kids have loved over the ages. It’s got talking dogs and cats who run around causing trouble everywhere they go. Of course, there’s Ug Lug, the sometimes grumpy, but always funny caveman trying his best to survive today’s modern world. I mean, he’s just trying to get used to running water and finding a job he can hold without getting fired within the same day. You think your life is hard, try living with dinosaurs growing up in the pre-historic era, and then having to adapt to modern-day civilization with its mile-long list of complicated rules like don’t grunt out loud or pick your nose in public…err…scratch your nose in public. Life is hard for a caveman, but it can be a lot of laughs for the reader.
Which brings me to my last point. I believe the best entertainment and the best books are those that can be shared together as a family. To that end, I’ve done my best to make Caveman Comics the type of book series that kids, parents, and grandparents can enjoy reading together. Occasionally, there might be elements in the story that kids may not relate to, such as old-school typewriters, but that’s a great opportunity for parents or grandparents to share their memories of our own pre-historic eras and its extinct devices.
You can see my Amazon Author’s page here, which lists my previous works. If you haven’t read any of my Caveman Comics series yet, here’s the first book available at Amazon to get you started. It’s available in paperback and Kindle versions.
If science fiction is your thing, I’ve also written some science fiction novels you might enjoy revolving around time travel.