MORE OF SAME AND SUCH

Sal, Alexandria Virginia, and myself demonstrate how NOT to plan and carry out a humorous comic strip. 

From an old sketchbook: My underground comics canine meets the ultimate tribute to cartoon dogs.

I was creating characters before I knew how to use a ruler, ink with a brush, or stand up for myself. 

Where were you in 1992?

How can I explain? I wanted to see a particular movie. I found at the movie theater that the movie was no longer showing. I opted for a lesser movie. Upon leaving the theater, I realized there was a third movie showing that may have been far more enjoyable.

You simply can’t have an experience this colossal through Netflix.

I created ‘Clown College’ in 2010 for entry in a comics contest sponsored by the Washington Post. While I never heard back, I did secure the rights to the feature, and am currently developing a screenplay based on the same property. 

I have known cartoonist Frank Cho since high school, and contributed gags and story ideas for his college strip, ‘University Square’. When Frank made the jump to national syndication and ‘Liberty Meadows’ 1997,  I followed, and  congratulated him with this celebratory, if sobering, two pager. 

To this day, Wussout and Saferoute  remain my favorite fictitious go~to executives. 

While refining my editorializing chops in the high school paper, across town I was moonlighting in ‘Spot: The Dog With Speech Problems’ as the son of the owner of the title character. The comic strip appeared monthly in W.D.C. Period, alongside such underground comics staples as ‘Baboon Dooley, Rock Critic!’ and among reviews of the latest  g.g. allin show. My oft incontinent, hair~lipped dog had found acceptance among the hep alternative crowd, and couldn’t be happier.

 High school brings with it a great many challenges, but making a fool of myself wasn’t one of them. I drew a ton of cartoons and illustrations for my high school newspaper, The Falcon News, depicting myself as the impish dwarf we all know and can barely tolerate. As a result, I won an award for Best Editorial Cartoons from The Columbia University School of Journalism, including for this one, on the affliction of Public Hallway Affection.

I was BLOWN AWAY by the mini series Elektra: Assassin, by Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz. The whole thing was artful, surreal and very funny… way ahead of its time. Taking a cue from trends in popular culture to infantilize established cartoon characters, I drew the troubled anti~heroine as a precocious kid. Fan art, drawn on a breakfast tray in my mother’s living room one Saturday afternoon. It became my first published drawing! She stood directly opposite a ghastly rendering of Swamp Thing, and under a terrific cover by the great George Perez. I had to peek inside a few other issues on the rack to make sure my drawing appeared in every copy.