Making of "Need to Brush"

Getting my oldest to brush his teeth has always been a challenge.  His younger brother will happily comply (and according to his dentist, even do a pretty good job!) -but it's a nightly war of words to convince #1.  This comic wasn't actually something he said, but me anticipating his counter argument.  

For those of you who say I should come back with "Tooth Fairies don't want dirty teeth!" -Yup! Tried that!  All the consequences are just too far away for his ADHD brain.  My battle continues, but at least I got a comic out of it!

My first instinct was to have Fran mad and Vince delivering the last line in a bratty way -but we've been a bit concerned at people hating Vince.  It's hard when the character is based on your own kid and the funny things that make good comics are usually things where he's being awful!  The real guy has such a good heart, he just also has no filter, BIG emotions and a penchant for finding loopholes!  We want to round cat-him out a bit, so I made him deliver the punchline in a cute way.  He's not being a brat about it, he honestly believes!  

I then wanted to soften Fran, so I changed her from being angry in the 1st panel to cheerfully dispensing positive parenting wisdom like the books tell you to do.  It felt weird having both of them with closed eyes in panel 1, so I switched Vince to looking at the toothpaste.

For the second panel I wanted Fran to have a "Ah shit, I f-ed up!" expression.  She wasn't mad at him so much as mad at herself for leading him down this logic path and not being able to correct him without giving the game away.  I had her with her nose screwed up at first, but wanted more of a plastered on fake smile because he's still looking at her in the mirror.  Her frustration escaping through her clenched fist.

My oldest is very picky about toothpaste so I thought a kids brand with no flavor except "NOT MINT!" would be funny.  I did a cool little toothpaste guy on it because that's the kind of silly branding they have -or used to have!  Honestly these days it seems to be more movie and TV tie-ins.  I couldn't think of anything good for the Colgate toothpaste on the sink, but people have since suggested it says "Colgator" and that's funny, so we'll say it says that!  Clever me! 😆