Lowell kid comic club
By Justin Tiemeyer - Contributing Writer
Judah Smith is a fourth grader at Cherry Creek Elementary School, and he has expanded his personal interest in drawing into a full-fledged comic club.
Comic clubs are popular in elementary schools these days, as a result of the works of author and illustrator, Dav Pilkey. In his popular series “Captain Underpants,” protagonists Harold Hutchins and George Beard make comics about the titular hero, and another kooky character named Dog Man, who now has his own series and a movie that came out in theaters on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025. Cat Kid, a supporting character in “Dog Man,” has his own comic club, and he also has his own spin-off series titled, “Cat Kid Comic Club.” Kids around the world have found inspiration in the works of Pilkey, and Smith is no exception. “I started reading ‘Dog Man’ and ‘Cat Kid,’” Smith said. “Then I started drawing a lot more. I just thought I would make a comic.”
For Smith’s first comic, he kept things simple. “I just started looking at things around me, and I saw a pencil,” Smith said, “so I made Pencil Man.”
As friends joined the club, a theme emerged. Soon there were heroes modeled after erasers, trash cans, paper, and so on, and with heroes came villains, like the evil Pen Lady, Kid Drawler, and the Cuddle Crayons.
According to Smith, he started drawing when he was only a couple months old. According to his mom, Linsey, it was more like a couple dozen months.
These days, Smith takes his sequential art seriously. He had an opportunity to meet Katie Leigh, the actor who does the voice of Connie on the Christian radio drama “Adventures in Odyssey,” and Leigh challenged Smith to expose himself to, and learn from, other artists. Leigh also suggested Smith reach out to his local newspaper.
When Smith is not populating his own shared superhero universe with original characters, he can often be found drawing characters from the “Amazing Spider-Man” comic book series. “I’ve liked Spider-Man for a really, really long time,” Smith said, to which Linsey added, “’Like’ is an understatement.”
Spider-Man has a rogue’s gallery to rival Batman and The Flash. When asked who his favorite Spider-Man villain is, Smith expressed his love for Venom, a vicious, and viscous, for that matter, shapeshifting villain with the power of an alien symbiote suit. Also, these days there’s a whole Spider-Verse of spider-powered heroes to choose from, and Smith’s favorite Spider-Man is Miles Morales.
Smith has been doing this long enough that he has sage advice for kids who want to start making comics of their own. “You gotta persevere,” Smith said. “If you like doing stuff, then you should always carry through with what you like.”
When asked what is next for the Pencil Man universe, Smith said that the next frontier is a team book, some kind of junk drawer squad where all of these heroes can work together like the Avengers or the Justice League.
