DMC 10 – Hope Grows in Detroit

The tenth, and final Detroit Mock City created for the Cartoonist Studio contest. Feel free to click the image to view it in full size.

We wanted to end our submission for the contest (and possibly the last comic in this series) on a positive note, and say something inspiring about Detroit.

That’s what we wanted to do, but we didn’t know how.  We were trying to think of one of Detroit’s unique beauties we could show, like a nice sunset over a distinctly Detroit landmark or something.  Then I thought about all the hauntingly beautiful photos I had seen of some amazing abandoned buildings, particularly one with plant growth in them.

I brought it up to Alex and we both agreed a plant growing out of the rubble would be a perfect metaphor.  So I selected the photo that I thought best captured the idea of hope growing.

The next hurdle was to figure out what the comic would say.  We tried finding positive, fitting quotes about Detroit from some of it’s prominent residents, then just from anyone famous, and we had a hard time.  There were a lot of negatives quotes, and any positive ones just weren’t a fit.

As we were about to give up on it and take a break to write some TDM I asked Alex “Does Detroit have an official city motto?”  Well, he looked it up and we realized we had just had a serendipitous moment.  The motto couldn’t have been anymore fitting if we wrote it ourselves.  After that the rest of the comic was a snap.

So if this is the last we see of old Homeless Happy I can at least be proud that we gave him a proper send off.  Hopefully my drawing in the final panel captured the true beauty of these majestic trees growing out from the floor of this epic old abandoned building, which I assume was a library, with the middle tree even growing all the way up through the hole in the ceiling.

And hopefully this series brought you some joy and gave you a better of appreciation for Detroit.