Posted in: Comics, Comixology, DC Comics | Tagged: dc comics, dustin hansen, my video game ate my homework, my videogame ate my homework
DC Publish Dustin Hansen's My Video Game Ate My Homework This Week
Available in bookstores and digitally tomorrow, My Video Game Ate My Homework is an original graphic novel for DC Comics created by Dustin Hansen. Video game designer-durned author of the Microsaurs series of books, this is his first graphic novel. It will be available in comic stores servicde by UCS and Lunar at a later date and from Diamond on May 20th.
Meet Dewey Jenkins, a 13-year old schoolkid who's about to fail science class. Follow him on an amazing adventure that leads Dewey and his friends to a virtual world where they will have to overcome all sorts of digital creatures and solve a number of puzzles in order to get home. My Video Game Ate My Homework is a funny, fast-paced adventure that shows the importance of cooperation and teamwork, as well as the importance of using your own unique abilities to solve problems. It's illustrated in Dustin Hansen's colorful, cartoony style, and filled with lots of sight gags and nods to video-gaming tropes. Dustin Hansen spent years directing and creating video games before becoming a writer and illustrator, and makes his DC debut with My Video Game Ate My Homework!
Talking on Twitter, Hansen talks about where the idea came from. "Sometimes as a creative you are a bit fuzzy about when and idea comes to you. It can kind of be a blur, ya know? But this book came to me in a FLASH! A single moment that I'll remember for…well, forever, I guess. I was actually doing a presentation to a 3rd grade class in Manti, Utah, and we were talking about combining two old ideas to come up with one new one. It's a fun way to brainstorm. You know, like…Honey I Shrunk the Kids, meets Jurassic Park. Stuff like that. And I had this crazy idea of the oldest excuse in the book "My dog ate my homework." And then I thought it needed an update and BLAMO – My Video Game Ate My Homework pooped in my brainbox and it took off from there. After that I started drawing characters, and before long…I had the beginnings of the book. Wanna see my first lineup sketch? It's kind of fun to see how far it migrated from the original."
It does indeed. Here's some of the original planned artwork for the title.
Dustin adds "Here is the first image I made. It was kind of pieced and parted from a few older ideas. The book turned out very different, but there is still some of that same spirit in the book. but this is the first one that I feel like was the jump off point for my characters. At one point they had a pet bear, but that kind of got merged into Ferg's character. Crazy to see how much it changed, but how some made its way through to the book."
Here's what it actually looks like now.