A comic book about a hair salon called Tease and a cosmetologist named Mickey may not be the first floppy you look for when you shop at your local comic book dealer. Then again, I’m not your typical comic book reader. Last week I picked up an Asheville indie comic from Deaver Park Press at Comic Envy. Tiziana Severse and Brent Baldwin team up to self-publish Mickey’s First Day (I was able to secure #69 of 75 limited edition copies). As far as slice-of-life drama comic books, it’s off to a good start.
A few years ago I read an excellent black and white graphic novel titled House of Java (now collected in two trades). The artwork wasn’t particularly top notch, but the stories were engaging and the characters were always interesting. Maybe that’s the appeal of indie comics: great writing and engaging stories. I don’t expect Barry Windsor Smith artwork from indie comics. I expect a raw art form found in Mickey’s First Day and House of Java. Another indie comic book I eagerly collected as floppies was The Waiting Place (now beautifully collected in one volume). Again, the artwork is good, but the storytelling is great. I hope to see more good material from the team of Deaver Park Press.
Coffeehouse Junkie 
Thanks for the kind words! We’re glad you found our comic, and even happier that you enjoyed it. We’re starting a weekly webcomic based around these characters in July, at http://www.hairandtherapy.com. We’ll also be posting Mickey’s First Day in its’ entirety on that site, as well.
Looking forward to the launch of the webcomic! What prompted you to produce an indie comic?
Because we love them! It’s always been Brent’s dream to draw comics, so one day I was like, “well why don’t you draw a story about blah blah blah?” And he was like, “Good idea! Write it!” That’s how we got started 🙂
Awesome! I’m really excited for you and am looking forward to reading more at http://hairandtherapy.com/
I started an indie comic awhile back called Strange Familiar Place (a narrative non-fiction comic), but I couldn’t maintain the drawing and inking work load. So I hired an artist for a couple pages (featured here and here) and that whole recession thing happened.
Bummer. Well, here’s hoping that you can get it up and running again, if that’s what you’re hoping to do. I’m pretty sure I saw that artist’s work at HeroesCon. High quality stuff.
Yeah, you may have run into him at Heroes. I’m slowly getting back into the comic scene again by editing a web comic called Dark Candle (http://www.darkcandle.net/). So we’ll see where it goes from there.