
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)

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