HOCKEY COMICS

Welcome to The Downward Spirals a webcomic created by John Simcoe and now available in print form as “The Downward Spirals: 36 Minute Major.”
This comic collection features the Downward Spirals, the all-opossum squad in the Meadow Hockey League.

THE WEB COMIC

You can check out samples of their adventures in the links below, but, hey, why not just take a chance and get your very own offline version!

• Cheap Shots in Hockey
• Penalty Box Blues
• The Shirt Off His Back
• How to Start a Hockey Fight
• Illegal Equipment on the Ice
• Hockey on a Holiday
• The Fine Arts and Hockey
• Faceplant
• Helping Them Help Themselves
• Be a Better Hockey Player
• Hockey & the Bard
• Working for Peanuts

WHAT ARE THE TEAMS?

The comic strip stars The Downward Spirals, the tree-dwelling all-possum team. The entire league is:

• The Downward Spirals (Possums)
• The Dam Quixotes (Beavers)
• The Bluff Nuts (Squirrels)
• The Apple Corps (Raccoons)
• The Bone Yards (Dogs)
• The Garden Jests (Rabbits)
• The Marsh Invaders (Skunks)
• The Bridge Billies (Goats)
• The Loch Foxes (Foxes)
• The Coniferous Coldbloods (Turtles, who always seem to cancel their games)

WHAT’S WITH THE SCORES?

The way I see it, each strip represents a game played within the
Meadow Hockey League. I’m just giving you the final score of each game.
Eventually, I’ll post up a stats block for these guys.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

I’m John Simcoe. Right now I live in York, Pennsylvania, but I grew up in the farmland just outside of Corning, N.Y. You can probably guess I don’t have any formal art training — and you’d be correct. Other than high school art classes and a stack of How-To books, my art education is limited. But that doesn’t matter, creating stuff is just amazing and since art is just my hobby and comics are my passion a comic strip was a natural.

Looking over the vast landscape of webcomics (and comics in general) I noticed there weren’t many sports related comics, so I decided to give a hockey comic a try.

Rather than focus on people playing hockey, I found I had more fun drawing critters in hockey gear, so that’s how the Downward Spirals were born.

HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR
DOWNWARD SPIRAL COMICS?

I draw them with a ball-point pen on the back of the most useless
paper product known to man: Comic-book backing boards. Then I scan them
in, shade them, add my zinger of a punch-line and post them up.

(Click here for Downward Spirals notes and designs)

THAT’S ALL THE HOCKEY YOU GOT?