About Lakewood

Lakewood is a humor strip written and illustrated by cartoonist N. P. Rackley. Published as a daily webcomic, Lakewood follows the antics of a motley group of characters as real and imaginary worlds collide. Originally published starting on November 23, 2004 under the title of Designation Se7en (or D7), Lakewood was officially "rebooted" in October 2008 in the form it is currently known as today.

Publication History

Lakewood was originally published under the title of "Designation Se7en" (more commonly referred to as "D7") starting on November 23, 2004. It was published under the pseudonym of Johnathan Pratt. Beginning as a random selection of comics that were posted on Rackley's deviantArt gallery, the strip eventually found it's way onto Drunk Duck, an online comic hosting service.

D7 continued as a daily for five hundred consecutive strips. During this time period, Rackley described the style of his strip as having become "not quite so horrible." The strip began it's weekly status on April 6, 2006. D7 continued as a weekly until September of 2006, at which time the artist traveled to Mexico to perform missionary service. From this point onward the strip continued on in monthly form.

While D7 was running in it's monthly form, Rackley began working on a new art style during his time in Mexico. He illustrated a total of thirty-two strips with the D7 characters under the title of "Lakewood" and six mini comic books called "The Adventures of Sharky."

Lakewood was re-launched on October 31, 2008 at The Comic Dish. Rackley abandoned the pseudonym in favor of his real name. Following Rackley's return to the United States, the strip continued in it's essentially monthly form until March 1, 2009, when it's daily status was "officially" reinstated. D7 met it's official end in December of 2008 when the overlap of previously illustrated monthly strips and the newly drawn Lakewood strips ended. The comic has continued as a daily uninterrupted since that time.

The comic made it's print debut on October 21, 2009 in the independent newspaper the New Mexico Daily Lobo (http://www.dailylobo.com). It is still being printed.

Rackley purchased the web site LakewoodTheComic.com in April of 2009. This is now the comic's official home.

Basic Story

John is a student by day, and a cartoonist by night. As he attempts to improve his artistic ability of illustrating stick figures, odd things begin to happen to he and his roommates.

Joining the regular Lakewood cast are the Sticks, the characters from John's comic-within-a-comic, as well as a wide variety of other unimaginable characters. Lakewood follows the antics of John's stick figures, the adventures of Sharky, and Dro the Dragon and others as they attempt to coexist with the normal inhabitants of Lakewood County.

Lakewood - the place where anything can happen!