It was an aura of quiet intensity in the Comics With Shannon Wheeler (creator of the underground comic Too Much Coffee Man) workshop. Twenty kids, ages 8–11, furiously scribbled away at their comics, getting lost in worlds of their own creation. At the beginning of the workshop, Shannon talked about his experience making comics and said that making comics is an easy and rewarding process that can be very natural and spontaneous. Then the class walked through the construction of a scene with two characters, offering suggestions as to what the characters should look like and what they should be saying. After this, they collectively narrated a four panel comic strip to Shannon as he drew it. It was about a girl named Bob and her monkey friend named Hairy.

The second half of the workshop was when things really kicked into gear. Everyone got to create their own original characters and draw a comic strip about them. The stories ranged from two friends stumbling into a cave filled with jewels, to a snake fighting a shark, to a big-eared superhero named Super Ears and his friend Computertron encountering a ferocious sock puppet dog. When everyone was finished, they got their very own copy of the one of latest Too Much Coffee Man.

-Victor, 826 Intern

Here is one of the strips from the class by Yoshua Lo, age 11.