The first collection of Sunshine State strips will be coming your way soon. The book is formatted and ready to go. I’m working on the cover and shopping around for printers. I’ll keep you all posted as we move through the process.

Greetings Sunshine State fans,
 
Are you a big fan of newspaper comics, or do you know somebody who is? Then this might just be the book you’ve been looking for.
 
There’s a big, new comic book in town called
The New Classics – 21st Century Comic Strips and Sunshine State is a part of it. This book is 148 pages and includes four pages of comic strips from 36 incredible cartoonists (including Sunshine State). That’s over 400 comic strips! The best part is – all proceeds from the sale of this book will go to help promote these wonderful comic strips (including, you guessed it…SUNSHINE STATE) to newspapers across North America.
 
The book is available now and will ship in time for Christmas. No waiting in long lines at the mall either. To order direct from the printer, please click here: https://www.createspace.com/4079616   
 
Please pass this along to anyone you know who loves comics, and help Sunshine State spread it fun and whimsy all over the world. Well, the newspaper comics world anyway.
 
With warmest Holiday wishes,
 
Graham  

My graphic novel, MONSTER ISLAND is now available for pre-order. This is an all ages appropriate story that would make a great gift for kids, grandkids or yourself!
It’s only $9.99 and that includes shipping! Now I ask you, where else can you find such monstrous fun for so few shekels?

“…nothing remains quite the same”.

Jimmy Buffett wrote those great lyrics many years ago and they still hold true. Change is in the wind for SUNSHINE STATE as well as this will be the last “daily” post of the strip for a while as I make adjustments to the ever changing comic strip market.

Let’s face it, the daily newspapers are in the toilet. They are slashing the comics pages and cutting corners wherever they can. The good news is that weekly and free (advertiser supported papers) are thriving!

We picked up a bunch of papers right out of the gate, but of all the papers only one was a daily. Since October, I’ve been producing a daily strip for only one paper! Not economically feasible.

Now, before we all get depressed thinking this is the end of Mel and Dink and the gang…fear not! This is just the end of the beginning. Efforts are being focused now on the weekly Funnies Extra papers which I think just might be the future for print comics. If all goes well with the Funnies Extra launches then we will refocus our attentions on the traditional daily papers. We’re hoping to be able to begin that process by the end of summer.

In the meantime, I will be putting together the past years strips into book form and over the next 6 weeks, here on the website, I will run many never before seen SUNDAY comics which I think you will get a kick out of.

Like a batter in a slump you make adjustments at the plate to stay in the game. The game is still on and we are only in the bottom of the first so stick around gang. The best is yet to come!

My Dad was a character. A man of great complexity and contradictions but also a man of great affection. It was almost as if James Joyce and and Damon Runyon got together and created this larger than life person.

Leo Joseph Nolan was born on this date, St. Patrick’s Day, 1934, and you couldn’t find a more proud Irishman. The stereotypical Irish in America is either a cop or a tavern owner…he was both. In the early sixties he opened up NOLAN’S PUB on Park Ave. in his home town, Long Beach, NY. It became an institution and is still there today!

After a couple years he decided to enter the “family business”. His father was the former Chief of Police and so Dad decided to become a cop. He graduated from the police academy in 1964 as my Grandfather looked on proudly. He eventually earned his gold shield and became a homicide detective. He retired from the department in 1974 due to an injury (and that is a whole other story!) and moved us to Florida. Being retired and moving away from family was not a good thing for him as some of the demons that haunted him took control.

Dad was always a sentimentalist. He was tough as nails but every time he watched TITANIC (the Clifton Webb version from the 50′s) he’d be balling his eyes out when the young boy decides to not get in the lifeboat with his mother but rather go down with the ship with his dad. Loyalty was very important to him. It’s something I cherish highly from my friends and family as well.

When I was 11 and told him I wanted to be a cartoonist he couldn’t understand it. Although college educated, he was still a blue collar guy. He had two nephew’s with masters degrees from Pratt Institute and one was laying brick and the other delivering pizza at the time so he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of me wanting to become an artist.

As usual, I went off in my own direction and did what I wanted to do and as a result of determination and hard work became successful in my chosen career. All the years I was doing big projects in comic books he’d ask about what I was doing, but it’s not like he ever read anything I ever worked on until…

In 2000 I took over the art duties on REX MORGAN, M.D. I had been on the strip for about a year or two and we were doing a storyline about the dangers of black mold in the home. Rex’s wife June was in the basement and commented about a terrible smell down there. One morning my phone rings. I answered it with the obligatory hello and without missing a beat the guy on the other end says, “I know what the smell is in the basement”. It was Dad.

“Oh, yeah?”, I replied.

“It’s a STIFF!”, he says.

I laughed so hard. The former homicide detective immediately thought of a crime scene and a body. What this told me was for the first time, he was READING my work! Comic books weren’t his thing, but this, in a newspaper that came into his home and the homes of his friends…that meant something!

I always felt he was proud of his first born son that came home from the hospital, with a big shamrock pinned to his blanket that St. Patrick’s Day in 1962, but after that phone call, I was sure of it.

Dad sailed off to the other side of the horizon in 2004 and I miss him dearly. His laugh and sense of humor was contagious. So every year on this day, I raise a toast to himself. God bless you, Pop! Happy birthday.