Breaking Point, Turtleneck & College

College

1991-03-14T12:00:00.001-05:00

Thanks. It's been fun.

Ghosts

1991-03-12T12:00:00.000-05:00

The final appearance of the nightshirt, already a bit threadbare four years on. In this case, however, it does not say ohio university but rather, college.

It occurred to me to put a poster on the wall in the second panel. It could have been the album cover of Oranges and Lemons, that would have been accurate, we had that on the wall in the bedroom. But at the time I had it in mind to put a peace sign there. I remember struggling with that, why? Maybe because the air was so toxic with jingoistic fervor I was afraid of repercussions - I was almost done, I didn't want to go out with any more unintended controversy.

What a coward.

The dialogue, of course, is from the second strip of this series. Located as we were on the ground level in an alley, there were an awful lot of private conversations I had the chance to eavesdrop on. I did stand in the kitchen one night, in my pajamas, in the darkness and watch a couple have an argument, right outside my window.

How in the hell did we live for a year sleeping in the same twin bed?

Confirming the Inevitable

1991-03-07T12:00:00.000-05:00

There's Mark. Not a very good likeness, but there he is.

I never really made this joke, out loud. By the time I was in my fifth year, I was really treading water ... nothing happened this quarter. I did a show, attended classes ... my girlfriend spent an abortive semester at Wooster. I have absolutely no idea what I did for ten weeks except watch Twin Peaks and drink Southern Comfort.

Philosophy

1991-03-05T12:00:00.000-05:00

No, sorry, I have no idea who this guy is, nor why he is in my high school gym shorts. And yet ... there he is.

My girlfriend's birthday was the day before mine, so we had a big, two-day birthday, hot tub party - in our backyard!

Man. I walked by that place during the holidays. I could not fathom the concept. I mean, it's a paved deck off the basement of a house on South Congress. On an alley, shared with bars and restaurants. The cement was cracked then, virtually destroyed now. Broken glass, garbage ... disgusting, and dangerous. And yet we cleaned it up, and encouraged people to be barefoot on it.

And we grilled!

Really, I do not know who this guy is. But we had a late-night discussion on the meaning of life. In a rented hot tub.

You can see balloons hanging from the low ceiling inside in the second panel. And the garbage in the third.

I like the vapors in the second panle. I just like the atmosphere of the whole thing. I wonder if everyone else got that we're outside.

Duplexes

1991-02-28T12:00:00.002-05:00

Not for publication.

This was the other strip that I created that was not published so as to fit the entire series into one quarter.

Again, my reasoning was that a strip like this one did not show the subject growing much. This is a shame, if only because of the callback to the freshman winter quarter strip.

Our man is beginning to develop a paunch.

I think I simply spun around in my drawing chair to create this scarily accurate picture of that wall of our apartment. Uneven plastic shade, the Robert Smith poster, and the Bloody Poetry poster (an OUSoT play, another giveaway.)

And the couch, which also had a featured role in Turtleneck.

We lived in the basement. The guys upstairs did live like pigs.

Living Together

1991-02-26T12:00:00.000-05:00

Yet another verbatim conversation.

The shacking-up interview. "May I have your daughter's hand in co-habitation, sir?" What a nice boy, he even put on a sweater.

I don't think I would be as cool with it as her parents were.

We establish that at least one of her parents works for the college.

Our protagonist is suffering from what I called "The George H.W. Bush Decade" - that period, not quite 80s, not quite 90s, when fashion was truly awful. Sideburns, yes? And clunky glasses that never quite fit - people with bent noses should never get molded frames.

The College Relationship

1991-02-21T12:00:00.004-05:00

As opposed to the high school relationship.

Nice vanishing point work. We really did almost (yes, literally) run into each other, turning the corner of Ellis Hall near the library.

This conversation is pretty-near verbatim.

And here's your Loma Prieta wake-up call ...

UPDATE: Forgot to mention ... the ballcap was a salute to Turtleneck. Maybe you caught that.

On Turning Twenty-One

1991-02-19T12:00:00.001-05:00

Well. There you are. And this is a really cute picture.

This was, I believe, a cast party for OVST's production of Once Upon a Mattress (for which, it is a shame to say, there are no pictures on the OVST website.) I was not in that show, I was helping Katrina design props.

Diana was playing the princess who only knew one word in English; "Yes!"

This is more or less our first conversation. In the intervening twenty years, I have learned that the best way to hit it off with anyone is to say, "Tell me about you."

She turns to greet Nick, the keyboard player. In the (static) background, I can see Alex and Simon, I have no idea who Alex is talking to.

By the way, for my 21st birthday, my Mom bought me a blender. I hit the state store early, bought a jug of Bacardi and made frozen daquiris all day for anyone who dropped by.

Re-routing One's Major

1991-02-14T12:00:00.001-05:00

Repetition of everything but the right hand in the first and fourth panels. The desk is the same in the second and fourth panels. If you did not already know who my advisor was, the Mickey Mouse on the desk should have been a dead giveaway - it's Dr. Condee.

The after-punchline is a hallmark of the work of G.B. Trudeau. Sometimes his punchlines are in the third panel of his strips, when someone lays out a truthful observation, or spouts just the right, pithy quip. But then the subject of the remark has the opportunity to say one more thing. It's a denouement.

I did change my major from Acting to Theater Arts at this point in my education, because I realized I was missing out on a lot. My previous adviser had encouraged me to take a number of blow-off courses so I could concentrate on performance, and I finally realized I was in danger of graduating knowing absolutely nothing about anything.

The Stand-Up Comedy Class

1991-02-12T12:00:00.006-05:00

Not for publication.

I self-selected two strips that weren't to be published, because they wouldn't fit into the winter quarter POST publishing schedule. This was one of them. It doesn't provide any character progression, except maybe to indicate that since the fall I had developed a sense of humor.

Or not. In any case, I took Mel Helitzer's famous comedy writing "secrets" class and did my five minutes in front of the SRO crowd at the Front Room, which had this year switched from beer to coffee. Comedy in front of wired caffeine drinkers instead of drunk college students for the first time, ever. Boy, did we have our work cut out for us.

That's me in my junior year uniform, very Mike Doonesbury. Paisley tie, button-down (cuffed), vest, longish hair, wire-rimmed specs, khakis (cuffed) and Hush Puppies.

Really, name-brand Hush Puppies. And I wonder why I didn't get laid for a year.

I had an ongoing struggle with Melitzer about what is funny. It was a big comedy year, the OUSoT did Trevor Griffith's Comedians, Tom Hanks' stand-up movie came out. Half my act were traditional jokes, the second half a rambling tale about having sex with my Mom. Mel didn't like the second half.

UPDATE: I recently discovered Mel passed away on April 11. We didn't agree on funny, but he was a sweet man.

LATER UPDATE:

Free Therapy With Tuition

1991-02-07T12:00:00.000-05:00

This quarter was miserable. For real. I have been in difficult places, emotionally, before. But I had no one. And no privacy, our apartment made a moment alone impossible. I'd enter the place and find one of my roommates had six people over, or come home at night to the sight of the other roommate having sex with somebody.

The paces was a dump, I was tanking in all of my classes, and I had neither the spine nor the ... vocabulary to communicate my distress. It was then that I learned that counseling was absolutely free, or came with the price of admission. That was really helpful.

I know it's cliche for a therapist to ask how you feel about something, but what if you had honestly never actually said out loud how you felt about anything? If you had not allowed yourself to say what you actually felt? What if it just wasn't programmed into you? Well. You can explode.

Like I do in the final panel, in one of my favorite drawings of myself, ever. Unfortunately, by this point the people at THE POST had gotten cold feet about my liberal use of expletives and asked me to tone it down. Anticipating this, I had printed a bowdlerized version of the final balloon, replacing the obscene gerund in question with the word "freaking."

Unfortunately, clever me had printed the balloon at our apartment, on the dot-matrix printer, and pasted that over the offending balloon. The ink was, therefore, slightly blue. And if you know anything at all about newspaper printing, it's that it ignores the color blue. So in print, it was an empty balloon.

But look at the strip again. It was still kind of funny that way.

First Summer At College

1991-02-05T12:00:00.002-05:00

That was one hot summer.

Yes, it amused me to cut and paste the exact same panel four times over.

Hey, it's Simon's George Michael poster - a graphic I lifted wholesale from the Breaking Point video game. Or maybe it was the other way around.

And that other poster is a scanned logo from the Ohio University School of Theatre - the only "oops" in this strip, which designates what our main character's major truly is. Because who else would have one of those in their apartment?

That is a pretty accurate depiction of the t.v. room in our disgusting pad on Court Street, above the Revco. The couch, the table in front of the couch (the t.v. in front of that - we are in the t.v.) the crate of LPs with a board and a scarf over them. Beer cans, unwashed bowls of popcorn or salad. Mn. I can smell it.

Is that an "ethics" text?

Spring Is Sprung

1991-01-31T12:00:00.001-05:00

... and so am I!

Wading in "the lake" or climbing "the hill." Really straining to avoid proper nouns there.

First appearance of glasses.

That's Monique, who has made an appearance or two. This scene was inspired by an evening spent lying on the banks of "the river."

It was a heady spring, the one Julie is referring to when she says, "your Sophomore year made your Junior year."

Tragedy + Time = (Humiliating) Comedy.

On Robbing One's Innocence

1991-01-29T12:00:00.002-05:00

Losing my virginity was fun. Having sex with someone who was a virgin was a traumatic experience for me. That's part of the joke - whose innocence is being robbed here?

This gag was actually from one of Donna's stand-up acts, and I asked her if I could use the joke if I gave her credit in the byline, which I did.

Prior to this strip I had received one letter to the editor about college, just another generic "why do you run these dumb strips" letter. This particular strip, however, received a letter from an outraged young man - one of your New Age Sensitive Guys - who was hurt that I was making fun of fellahs who care and are attentive and sensitive and don't just "put it in."

Well. Say what you will. Remember the joke was actually written by a woman.

You will notice this strip includes no drawings (paging John Byrne.) I do take pride in a) the reverse signature and b) the gray-scale borders.

UPDATE: I realize there may be a misunderstanding, so let me be perfectly clear ... it's Donna's joke ... but that isn't Donna.

The Alternative Phase

1991-01-24T12:00:00.003-05:00

Now this is fun. It's "Kael" and "Wilson"! Only it isn't, that's me and my roommate Pete.

I dyed my hair black for maybe six months, tops. People still talk about it.

For the second panel I scanned a drawing by AEthelred for the background.

And hey, it's the Sting poster that used to hang in Cheryl's room.

The Summer Job

1991-01-22T12:00:00.004-05:00

My uncle owns a discount brokerage. I worked there as a go-fer that summer. I think my mom was hoping it would rub off.

Photo: My uncle and I during Spring, 1986, in a casual moment. Well ... he looks casual. I look like I am posing for a GQ cover.

The summer of 1987 was when the non-smoking ban went into effect in Cleveland public buildings. There were actual fights.

My duties included using the postal meter, making coffee and making copies. There was a great, independent CD store across the street - a store dedicated to CDs. That was crazy. Now it's just crazy to think of an independent music store.

I love the coffee mug in this strip. People have such cheeky coffee mugs in offices. One that just says "I Hate Work" seemed awfully subversive to me at the time.

And one other thing ... I avoided, as much as was possible, any mention of what this student is majoring in, or what he hopes to ever accomplish. He says he does not know what he will do when he gets out of school. This never changes.

Casual Sex

1991-01-17T12:00:00.002-05:00

As I stated when beginning this series, I am not sure of the dates. These strips were presented every Tuesday and Thursday, and this may have been the one to appear on January 17, 1991. I am not certain how I felt, at the time, of this strip appearing on the day the Gulf War began.

A conscious decision was made not only not to name anyone in this strip, and not to deal with any current events. The clothes, and the music, set these images in time, at least to me.

See: R.E.M. poster over this anonymous young woman's bed.

For the record, this memory is not of my first one-night stand. But it is a record of my first enjoyable one-night stand.

The movie was Sid & Nancy.

I have never had shoulders like that.

Adventures in Excess

1991-01-15T12:00:00.005-05:00

Here's Scott and I, maxing and relaxing in Biddle Hall.

For this comic, I drew Scott and the background once, and then cut and pasted that drawing four times. A little alteration to his mouth in panel three, et voilà. Four unique drawings!

I am wearing a Fishbone T-shirt - and we are drinking from bullseye cans, the only beer anyone at O.U. drinks.

I was trying to be ironic when I say, "I'm gonna be listening to this record forever." But we all know the truth. The Beastie Boys rule.

The High School Relationship

1991-01-10T12:00:00.004-05:00

My relationship with Cindy disintegrated over the course of fall quarter, we were finished by Thanksgiving. October has always been the cruelest month, at least to me.

I believe this actually worked the other way around - that she wanted me to propose to her and I was the one who wanted to explore new relationships. Regardless, we were both looking over each other's shoulders shortly after we arrived. Few don't.

You may ask - did you really wear a tie to class? Yes. Yes, I did. Those were the days - the mid-80s - and it took me a little time (very little, as it turned out) to acclimate to college life.

For example, I began on the 21+ meal plan. Three squares in the cafeteria, plus visits to the snack bars when they were open. Are you kidding? No one can eat that much! I felt obligated to hit the Nelson cafeteria for breakfast every morning (there was no one there) and dressed up for class, just like I did in high school.

You will see what happens to my appearance in the next strip. And I scaled back to the 14 meal a week plan by winter quarter.

No backgrounds yet, just ever changing "paint bucket" textures. I scanned my signature once, and used it for each strip.

How many hands are in the first panel?

College

1991-01-08T12:00:00.010-05:00

In 1990, my girlfriend and I bought his n' hers Macs. Cute? Wish I had a photo of them sitting together on the desk in our bedroom.

At left: College ID photo taken during Aug. 1986 freshman orientation.

I learned how to manipulate graphics - crudely - on this most powerfully elegant of desktop computers. My goal was to produce a computer-generated cartoon, but to make it, you know, not look like sh*t. I could scan a drawing at the computer lab (and that was in which building ..?) and use MacPaint in lieu of zipatone to add textures.

Then I would print the image on a laser printer - also at the comp lab, our printer was dot-matrix - which in this case smoothed out the image, which was quite limited in points-per-inch.

Shame, these cartoons were created on a computer, but the original files are on floppies and I cannot simply upload those to my server. So I have to scan photocopies.

COLLEGE (the strip) was my ~~parting shot~~ love-letter to my college experience. It exists separate from the world of my previous strips - which included a few cross-overs. This story is autobiographic, for better or for worse. No one gets a name in this strip, not even the university itself. It is referred to cimply as "college" another nod to that old Animal House visual gag.

THE POST agreed to run this strip my final quarter at Ohio University, twice a week. I didn't have enough material for a daily, did not have time to produce one, and they did not care. My only gripe was that I created it to be square (like Rubes, you know) and they insisted on splitting off the third and fourth panel and tacking them onto the end to make a long strip. I present them here as they were created.

I do not know exactly when the strip started, I will choose Jan 8 as an arbitrary date. I will share a few a week until we are all done.

This first strip represents my freshman orientation, August 1986. Each subsequent strip tells a story from each of my quarters at O.U., concluding with graduation in 1991.

Lyrics from Peter Gabriel's Big Time run through the main character's head. In the first panel he is in his mom's Volvo, in the second he is holding an orientation bag.

The third panel features my girlfriend Cindy, with whom I arrived at O.U. that fall.

Epilogue.

1989-11-15T00:00:00.004-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

I imagine I always intended to do a Ditko-inspired Spider-Man "Half-Mask" Hidden Identity drawing. And here it is.

And speaking of Ditko, the Mayor's pupils in her sunglasses in panel three was a tribute to Ditko's weird way of showing shock and surprise on Spidey's face in Amazing Fantasy #15, when he discovers the guy who shot his Uncle Ben was someone he could easily have caught before (see below.)

The Mayor and The President are walking down the same alley where Max first encountered an assault. Poetic? Sure.

In any case, there is our story. And what is the moral? You can't get away with being a vigilante? Take responsibility for your actions? Tag-team busting crooks can rekindle a relationship?

Regardless, I was satisfied with the conclusion, and no one brought up the idea of my continuing to produce a strip for the rest of the school year. Not even me.

I have to prepare for a solo production. COLLEGE will begin in 2009.

What to do

1989-11-14T00:00:00.001-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

Click on the letter at left to englarge. I came to me through the offices of THE POST in the flurry of editorial letters I received as a result of the incident.

Unfortunately, she sent it to me, and not the paper, so it could not be printed. I do not blame her, however, for not wanting to jump into this fray. However, this comment in the fourth panel is an acknowledgment of the fact that she did not, actually, smoke.

The quarter ends tomorrow.

Big girl

1989-11-13T00:00:00.003-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

I didn't used to know how to draw a bandaged head wound, but I have learned since.

Nice. Symmetry. Another Watchmen reference, repetition of pose. I don't know if I planned that from the beginning. Notice the "starburst" zipatone is less dense in today's strip. Less foreboding, more positive. At least, that was the idea.

What's with all the semi-colons recently?

UPDATE: I neglected to mention Alex's coat. In BP there are heavy coats in the winter strips, but by springtime everyone's just wearing T-shirts all the time. I don't know if that was the change of season or just laziness. In this case I have definitely made a choice to show, yes. It is November.

The Mayor & The President

1989-11-10T00:00:00.002-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

Crotch shot! Generic beer can! Charles Ping! It's a greatest hits of my cartoon icons!

If "the paper's been on the street for almost an hour", he's hitting the Miller Lite for breakfast.

Not the best likeness of our President, but I was happy with it. At least the ears. Gave him a little Paw print logo on his tie to make sure everyone got it. Because ... you know ... he'd wear that or something. In spite of several mentions of him through the years, this is his first appearance.

I really did make her short.

UPDATE: "Here goes nothing?" Jesus.

Turtleneck Confesses

1989-11-09T00:00:00.003-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

I attempted to make the photo in the paper look more like a photo by using zipatone for all shading - including Max's week-old growth of beard. Boy, he does look unsavory, doesn't he?

TURTLENECK CONFESSES
Identity Revealed in Flurry of Anguish

by Geoff Wrackling
Post Staff Writer

A lot of weird things have been going on this quarter, but that's not news to the average Athenian. Our campus has been stalked all quarter by a duo of self-proclaimed vigilantes, their mission to keep scum off our streets was upheld at every chance.

Last night when I men the man called "Number One" I asked who he was.

"Nobody," he said, "nice to meet you" ...

It is true. Ricky wore a fanny pack.

Panel three confirms that this is the same Alex from Breaking Point, but you already knew that. We also know that Simon knows who he is, and doesn't like him. Are there any men Simon does like?

"Eat my head."

1989-11-08T12:00:00.001-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

"Unbaised"? Wow - is that my first spelling error in print, or were there others?

Am I the only comic strip artist to employ semi-colons?

"Eat my head," was a typical rejoinder of mine from 1989. It ranks with other such turns of phrase as "jump up my butt" (1997) and "blow me" (1983 - Present).

Bazooka Joe & Mort

1989-11-07T00:00:00.001-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

Bazooka Joe is the hero of Bazooka Joe comics, found wrapped around a piece of Bazooka gum. He wears a baseball cap and an eye patch.

His friend Mort wears a red sweater that he pulls up to his nose.

Is Joe missing an eye? Does Mort have no teeth? I do not have the answers to these questions.

Mr. Peavey

1989-11-06T00:00:00.001-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

Kind of like my apartment on S. Congress, only the stove and counter would be on the other side. Other than that, it's all talk and no background.

Max gets a last name - a memory from my freshman roommate, who had a Peavey speaker for his guitar. And he's an advertising major!

Nobody.

1989-11-03T00:00:00.001-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

No backgrounds. None. And if you hadn't read yesterday's strip, you wouldn't know they are in a parking garage (at College & Washington.)

Now go vote.

"Hello; Post."

1989-11-02T00:00:00.002-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

This guy is based on my editor at THE POST. His real name was Jeff, here he is Geoff. That's pretty much what he looked like. He was the only person I dealt with face-to-face in the office, and he took most of the sh*t when people were dumping on the strip.

You will notice, from here on out, there's very little background and a whole lot of talk. The words are because I had to bring it all to a close, and fast. The last edition of Turtleneck comes out two weeks from yesterday.

The cheap drawings are because I had better things to do.

Voices

1989-11-01T00:00:00.003-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

This strip was inspired by Watchmen Chapter IX: The Darkness of Mere Being. Kind of.

At right is a photo of O'Bleness, the hospital.

Is this the first time I used the F-word in print?

Alex, you can't do this!

I'm well, my face is fine.

Knock yourself out.

Let's go crack some skulls.

Looks like you're beginning to feel the impact of your reckless behavior.

Didn't even say good-bye.

The police should be thanking us.

Do you feel safer knowing there are guys like that around?

The time for a hero is now.

Whatta guy.

Yeah, stopping violence with violence. Real cool.

Max, I got a bad feeling about this.

Some hero ...

Did I ...

I'm in big trouble.

Oh, stop making me feel guilty.

Should I ...

You're in big trouble.

I thought things were, y'know, getting better for us.

Comfy?

Well, shit.

We're spooks. Outlaws.

... You think I planned this?

I'm doing you a favor.

We'll get nailed.

I'm gonna puke again.

... I'm the only one I can trust anymore.

No thanks to you.

I'll be damned if I let everyone down.

I must be out of my tree.

... You could have gotten seriously hurt.

Please, don't tell me you're doing this to impress me.

Fashion conscious red-head.

You ruined my shot, everything evens out.

It's what you live for.

But we're right!

Wish they were all so easy.

You take care of yourself.

... Just what do you think you're doing, saving damsels in distress and such?

I need you like an ice-pick to the forehead!

I need you like ...

I need you ...

Where's this all gonna end?

Hullo?

1989-10-31T00:00:00.003-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

Panel one: A drawing of the door to my apartment ... and my O.U. ID. I was one of a very few students I knew who had not lost the ID I had received as a freshman. That photo (left) was taken August, 1986. I did not start wearing glasses until the following year.

Panel four: It's the big-ass O.U. nightshirt! I did, actually have a baseball bat lying near my bed for a long time in case someone broke in.

Panel five: You can just barely see the figure standing in the doorway.

Panel six: Happy Halloween.

"No, but we can pretend."

1989-10-30T00:00:00.005-05:00

Click on to enlarge.

Schwing! Aw yeah. Woo.

Max is, of course, singing the "Negro" spiritual Balm In Gilead. I prefer the version by Nina Simone. But what Max is also doing is promoting the upcoming OUSoT production of Balm in Gilead by Lanford Wilson, the 1989 undergrad production, opening this Friday.

At left, me, in that production, as the heroin addict named Dopey. Real hair, real scruff, and I smoked real cigarettes on stage. Yeah.

I am digging the sexiness of this strip. Alex's sly, backward glance in panel three. Max taking his shirt off in one move the way guys love to watch girls do. Not to mention the fact that Max looks like he's been working on the old-six pack since the earlier strips.

Also, the "marry me?" line is a call-back to an earlier strip.

On drawing black people ...

1989-10-27T00:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

So ... yes ... well ... how awkward.

There were people of color all along in this strip ... even if they did not get names, you could see them. Singing, mugging people ...

Okay, this is just awful, let's start again.

The fact is, I learned how to draw black people from Peanuts. In that strip, the only black character, Franklin, was lovingly rendered with slant-ways parallel lines to indicate the fact that he is darkly complected.

I also learned this trick from Wee Pals which featured a kids from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, though Morrie Turner just drew shading around the edges of the kids' faces, to suggest darker skin.

Later, Schulz would employ zipatone to for Franklin, which I tried first in this strip. I was concerned about the image being to dark ... and used a very minor pencentage of dots per inch. You can see the result (uhm, it's the guy with the oddly cut mohawk.)

It was Alison Bechdel who finally taught me that just as you do not need to "fetishize" you characters to make them look like women - exaggerated eyelashes, big boobs, bowy lips, high heel shoes ... what is Minnie Mouse, after all, but Mickey in drag - you also do not need to "shade" black people for them to look Black.

It's a cartoon. Draw what you see. The human mind can fill in the details.

Anyway, so, after the kerfuffle regarding race in this strip (sigh) I decided to cram as many black people as possible in this one strip. "Dood" (who has to bear a passing resemblance to Max for this so-called decoy ruse to work) gets on a brother's shoulders.

Okay, uh, that looks bad - what if they talk to another black person, to keep it light. Apparently, I was already prepared for letters about the Black Man's Burden.

And then, to really show my embracement of diversity, I make one of the O.U. Security a woman of color. Unfortunately, this time my zipatone is too dense and they all look like they have thumbprints for heads.

I did learn my lesson, by the way, which is on display in this detail from last year's holiday letter.

HOOUF! SSSWISHT! KLOP! kick.

1989-10-26T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

There's your kick in the crotch.

I don't know when I stopped finding a kick to the crotch funny. I don't mean receiving one, but watching someone get one in film, on TV, on stage, what have you. An obvious gag. I see them a lot in productions of Shakespeare, like, you know, at certain area theater companies. That specialize in Shakespeare.

So the crotch-kick came where it fit in the choreography, and instead of pop-eyed goofiness, Baldy looks in real pain.

Check out the second panel (see enlargement) where Max's wallet is already slipping out of his pocket. Now ... why in the hell did this dumbass take his wallet "on patrol"? Was he picking up a copy of The Big Easy at Magic Video on his way home?

PUNT!

1989-10-25T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Satch can't be much, he would have brought more goons. I love the fact Alex starts the fight. I had been playing with things that went outside the box - little notes or captions - but apparently Baldy's head went a little too far outside the box. Lost part of his beret in the printing.

The Catacombs

1989-10-24T00:00:00.002-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

I always heard you could get expelled for walking around in the sewers beneath the campus. There was an entrance at the top of Jeff Hill, I heard rumors - you know, college campus rumors - about people going down there. I know no one who actually did.

What is Alex wearing, Chinese slippers?

Shame, the cramped quarters of the sewer pipe ruined Max's mask. I like Alex and Max holding hands.

Halloween '89 Con't.

1989-10-23T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

No frames! None at all! Confusing? You tell me. I thought of dividing this into frames, with the background a seamless parade of Turtleneck-costumed humanity, and then I figured Hell, let's have some creative fun.

Max's costume consists of an overpriced Batman cowl knock-off, a Batman T-shirt, his black jeans - and a cape, which he dumps (or I forgot to draw) after this strip. Alex has a polo shirt with a little "R" cincle stitched onto it, a domino mask and some shorts.

The people in the background aren't anybody in particular ... except I think I see Jon, who played Wilson in the Breaking Point: The Play.

"Dood" doesn't have a real name, so I call him Dood.

See? They even speak the twenty-four hour clock. Weird.

Halloween '89

1989-10-20T00:00:00.002-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

What a pay-off.

The drawing does not, in fact, do Halloween on Court Street justice. The photo and the accompanying video will help in that regard. But this was very, very fun. I don't know where in the writing process this gag came to me, but it is a joke I had considered before, and never had the chance to use. What if you threw a costume party, and everyone dressed the same?

This contains the only Star Wars reference in any of my strips. I dare you to find another one.

I think it's goofy that Max is wearing his normal glasses.

You can see the Woolwerm's (I don't know why I felt I needed to change the name of the store) and the Marquee for the Taco Bell. The Dynamic Duo has emerged from the alley where Max's apartment is.

So here we go, spot the familiar faces ... Trixie has her arms around Wilson (it's really Pete, but we'll call him Wilson) and Rich. That's the only appearance of Rich in any of my comics, unless you count his inspiration for Kael.

Then there's Simon being harassed by the police officer, and Ricky and Roger, Cheryl (who is visiting from out-of-town) and the real Kael. Nice asymmetrical specs there, art-fag.

Behind Rich is yours truly, the way I looked then with a patchy beard and long hair. Then another attempt at a vampire storyline crossover with Mary (based on Monique) and Jack.

Behind them are two characters from the daily strip which preceded Breaking Point, the legendary Big Man on Campus. In front of them are my junior year roommates, Larry and Eve, with Eve's boyfriend Randy. I think that was his name.

To his left are the main characters - sans Sheckie the Fish - from Angst, the strip that followed BP. You can tell because she always wore crescent moon earrings.

Bottom left we see an O.U. Security guard pointing his finger at a partier we will meet next week, and AEthelred Eldridge.

An Uptown Comic Book Establishment

1989-10-19T00:00:00.002-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

As I said, Ski was selling these Batman cowl knock-offs. What you see in the photo here looks a lot better made than what he was peddling at the Uptown Mini Maul.

It helps if you have a face to fill it, like the guy in this photo does.

Alex is reading a copy of Yet Another X-Men Spin-Off.

Is it just me, or does Max's face keep getting longer?

Oops.

1989-10-18T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Whoa! If then were now, THIS is the strip that would have gotten all the letters to the editor accusing me of irresponsibility and insensitivity! My, what an innocent time.

Hey, we're in the Front Room. You can tell by the paneling, the glass coffee cups and ice cream chairs. What is that Max is doing, homework?

Tim Burton's Batman came out during the summer, but it was still very popular and I assumed that a lot of people would be dressed like the Caped Crusader on Court Street this year. And so, too, do Alex and Max.

Satch

1989-10-17T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

A villain! Not a super-villain, just your non-descript drug-dealing bad guy.

Baldy is based on no-one in particular. Satch (our Southeastern Ohio kingpin's name is Satch) looks like a guy Scott knew in Lincoln whose nickname is Mize. Can't remember his real name. He'd been living in Lincoln about eight years by this point.

Notice how our heroes dress in black, but these guys wear a lot of white? I think that was intentional.

"Starch-head." Goes down in history with all those other, ridiculous made-up obscenities like frell, frak and smeg.

Baldy

1989-10-16T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Nighttime establishing shot: the iconic Wray House with its clock and ~~pig~~ bobcat-topped weathervane.

Baldy smokes. In this strip, smoking is bad.

Got to do the two-heads suggest movement thing. Don't think I ever tried that before.

Anyway, this is all set-up.

Next: Big Mistake

1989-10-13T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

This was the blow-off strip for the week - can you tell? No background, no zipatone ... and for some reason the art is really bad. But some of the words are fun.

"It's not illegal to be weird." That's fun.

The "Voight Hall Shoe/Pizza Incident" ... that's not fun. Sounds like a private joke. I mean, it is a private joke, you're supposed to imagine something embarrassing thing that Trixie did with, uh, pizza ... and a shoe. But it sounds like Dave is making a private joke.

Pnael three: Hate mail from faculty members. Yes. The first negative reaction to the Sep. 26 strip was from a faculty member. But you knew that, didn't you?

There actually were two notes left on That Phallic Bulletin Board the next day, and this is what they said:

Turtleneck: Is there any way you could beat up Chubb Hall? - Concerned Citizen

Turtleneck - Help! The vicitimized public of Tiffin Hall are being oppressed! Jozsef the second floor R.A., has instituted a dictatorial regime and is denying us our fundamental right to privacy - and party! We need action! You alone can help us!
"Lev Ziakov"

I don't know who left these. But they made me smile.

Sorry about the poor reproduction; the footnote in the fifth panel reveals that O.P. means On Patrol and the tag on the final panel reads Next:Big Mistake.

Ah ha!

Hey Campers!

1989-10-12T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

I didn't want the graphic for the Turtleneck ad to look like the rest of the strip, so I asked Scott (aka Roger) to draw a pencil sketch, which I inked. He received credit at the top of the strip (it was cut off for this scan) for "guest pencils" and you can see his signature there.

He made tehm look so buff and menacing. That totally rocks.

I gave the Mayor Captain Queeg's silver balls from The Caine Mutiny, to suggest a humorous descent into madness.

There used to be a bulletin board outside the Front Room. It wasn't really "phallic" but it wasn't really bulletin board shaped, either. I don't know what it was, it look like three dingys joined at the stern.

Spooks

1989-10-11T00:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

It has been two weeks and a day since the offensive strip ran in the THE POST. In that time nine letters to editor, for and against (mostly against) have been published in regards to that one strip. Nine letters in eleven papers.

By this time, my writing and drawing had caught up - a week's worth of strips were dropped at THE POST offices the Sunday before the week began. So commentary on the incident is seeping into the strip itself.

What about everyone else? They don't know what I'm thinking. They can't know what my intentions are. I could have put it better than that.

Vendetta ... not an unintentional choice of word. I had just read V for Vendetta which I was also seriously impressed by. Like V, unfortunately, as we move into the final act, this strip becomes much, much more wordy. Like I am running out of time.

And I just want to crack some skulls.

Crossover

1989-10-10T00:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Apart from the first panel, this is just awful.

1. It was a throw-away part of the storyline, I needed to show one scene of No. 1 & No. 2 actually breaking up a fight, stopping a crime, or something. Or did I? Turtleneck isn't about fighting bad guys, it's about politics. Sort of. I don't know.

2. As I have mentioned, my BIG PLAN was to tell a different story each quarter through my fourth year at O.U. And so I thought it would be really, really cool to do cross-over.

As a result, we have panel four, which is an ugly, incoherent MESS.

Because I would be reintroducing Breaking Point in the spring (or so I thought) there is Kael and Carolyn. Carolyn is Kael's love-interest in the play. I thought I would be presenting a variation on that storyline, and so there they are.

Then there are George and Jack, who were going to be the lead characters in the winter story, about vampires in Athens. I had recently performed in the OUSoT production of Bloody Poetry and around the same time read Anne Rice's two (yes, until 1988 there were only two) vampire novels.

The strip was going to be an amalgam of John Polidori's mental abuse at the hands of Lord Byron, my own near-nervous breakdown in late 88-early 89 and the tales of Louis and Lestat.

It was going to suck. Lucky for me it never happened, though I did write a play using a lot of the same material. People thought that sucked, too.

Jack's appearance is based, again, on me (see photo.) George is supposed to look like Henson, who played Byron in our production.

Anyway, the whole thing left people going wha? Or even worse, that Hansen was degenerating into private jokes again, which no one could understand. And even if those other strips were created, it's a really lame "crossover."

Finally, I just think the domestic dispute our heroes are busting up is dumb. It should have been something dramatic and dangerous. I think I was afraid of offending anyone at this point, by presenting any potentially non-white person doing anything serious.

On Patrol

1989-10-09T00:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

I think this is my favorite strip of the series ... followed tomorrow by the worst strip in the series. But let's bask in our glory a moment.

The night sky in panels one and four are zipatone, the curved arc light coming off the Convo is created by an absence of zipatone, not any sort of drawn line.

I really liked drawing local architecture with this strip.

We establish the differences in Number One and Number Two's outfits, and why - though how Alex can handily deal with a pair of nunchuks is never explained.

And we have a punchline that lots of people told me they laughed at.

End, Chapter One

1989-10-06T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

It's funny because she has red hair.

Panel two: She has Disneyesque doe-eyes on purpose.

By this point in the story - the real-life story - the strip had generated an on-going back and forth on the letters page as to whether or not the Sep. 26 was racist, merely racially insensitive, or whether the whole uproar was what we would soon refer to as "political correctness run amok". Thank goodness those days are behind us. In any event, the meta-subtext to the final panel (which is to say - what was running through my head as I drew this) was I AM NOT ALSO A SEXIST!

I like Alex's jacket. And apparently this is the end of "Chapter One." I think we only have two chapters ... it's like in the Folios when the first scene is called Act One, Scene One ... and then no act or scene breaks are mentioned ever again.

BING.

1989-10-05T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Hey, it's the spilled coffee gag. We come full circle.

I like the economy of comic strips - when they are done well. Unlike, say, Funky Winkerbean, which, as I have said, is like watching an animated cartoon one frame at a time. There's info in every panel, told in several different ways, from different angles and perspectives.

Panel one: Max's clothes have been neatly stacked. Nothing odd about that, right?

Panel two: We establish that Max is alone in the apartment (soon to be wandering around in his underpants.)

Panel three: My. How Hitchcockian. Eyes fall on THE POST.

Panel four: Jeff Chapstick was a play on the name of one of their regular reporters. "A red-haired female" has dressed up as Turtleneck (perhaps in his own sweater?) and is beating up a suspect - just before kicking the POST photographer in the groin. At least, that's what I can make out from the caption. Post photographer listed in good condition at O'Bleness Hostpital is the accompanying story.

Panels five & six. Pay-off.

Comfy?

1989-10-04T00:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

More details from Donna & Julie's apartment - the poster, the lamp, the wicker couch, the small glass table. No, I never slept on the small wicker couch, that would be impossible.

I did have the exchange in panels four and five once in a similar circumstance ... not a hiding out from bad guys circumstance, more like a gee I'm much too tired to walk home can I just crash on your couch circumstance.

Note Max has left his sweater draped over the back of the couch.

"He's not my boyfriend."

1989-10-03T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

More details from Julie & Donna's apartment on S. Congress. I could not say whether or not they had a copy of Lolita on the bookshelf, or John Polidori's The Vampyre. I can't read the spine on that third book.

"Why don't you just go out and beat him up, studbag," has a nice, Donnaesque cadence to it.

I believe this is based on a true incident, where there was some guy outside the door to their place who thought he was at someone else's apartment and wouldn't leave. I was pressed into service, to provide a deep menacing voice.

"Hey," came the drunken reply from the stoop, "your boyfriend there isn't being very cool."

In my mind I heard Julie say, "he's not my boyfriend," and my replying, "what does HE care?" But these things were never said, I was making them up in my mind in the moment and they amused me.

Trixie

1989-10-02T00:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Trixie (as I have stated before) is based on Julie's roommate Donna.

Photo: The only timely photo of Donna I could find, from the 80s revival party I held on Sept. 22. That's right, an 80s revival party held during the 80s. Deal with that.

Left to right: Litz as Don Johnson, Ben as ... I don't know who Ben is. Pat as Paul Shaffer, Donna as Madonna, Katrina as Lady Di.

Julie and Donna had a unique relationship in the annals of college history. They were paired together at random their freshman year as roommates in Brown Hall. They did not know each other at all before this. They decided to remain roommates in Voight their sophomore year, in off-campus housing together (but with others) junior year, and then had a place together their senior year. Same roommates, four locations, four years.

Their Senior year location, on South Congress, was next to the Beta House - and right across the street from Max's - I mean, my apartment.

Remember the dollar gag? Love that one.

Meanwhile:

1989-09-29T00:00:00.004-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Panel one: A reprint of the sketch featured in THE POST on Sep. 18.

Panel two: utilizing the edge of the converging line zipatone.

Photo: Ski, from when the Uptown Mini Maul was closed in 2001.

Panel three: Back to Lucky's Down Under, with bartender Joe listening to Randy tell his Turtleneck tale - Doc and Randy used to play out most Saturdays in LDU. I was a fan of Doc's guitar playing, but Randy's covers of Brown-Eyed Girl and his original It's Good To Be Young weren't to my taste. Randy used to wear a muscle shirt when performing, and so when Scott and I began playing out on the Friday nights, I would wear a XXL muscle shirt. That was my little joke.

Panel four: See the bags under his eyes? Not a happy man.

Panel five: The Uptown Mini Maul, run by Jerry Ski. It was comic book/t-shirt emporium, and yes he sold busts of Elvis. I need to check the original, if I can find it, but I believe the bumper stickers read:

Bernard Goetz (sic) - Put Your Head Out - I'm Turtleneck

I'm Turtleneck In My Spare Time

Don't Try It -- I'm TURTLENECK

Panel six: Very, very proud of this image.

UPDATE: I should add, Ski was notorious for producing or obtaining knock-off novelties based on comics and other forms of media - hence the gag. He bought a gross of 70s era "Smiley" buttons, dabbed a little red nail polish and voilà! Watchmen pins. Of course he had Animal House inspired COLLEGE sweatshirts ... and some very special masks which we will see later ...

Next day

1989-09-28T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Where does this strip take place? Who knows. After establishing the scene as taking place "outside" (see: zipatone brick wall in the first panel) and then use absolutely no backgrounds whatsoever.

I believe my rationale at the time was this - I will draw three or four strips a week with explosive, interesting or realistic settings, and then blow off one strip a week with just talking and people.

Having said that, I really love the dialogue in today's strip (except the phrase, "there are people" - what is this 1889?) The last three panels tell a good story about these two. Lots of sweatshirts in this series. Sweatshirts and jackets. Max wears a T-shirt often, but at least Alex gets to change it up a little, a marked improvement over Cheryl.

I believe this is the first appearance of belt loops in one of my comic strips.

Red phone

1989-09-27T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Now the Mayor smokes a cigar. We're having some fun. If you look closely, you can see (in the first panel) that the book she is sitting on is, in fact, a dictionary.

The "Charlie" in question is, of course, President Ping. The fact that there are no buttons or a dial on the Mayor's phone is not an oversight - that's the "red phone" the Mayor of Athens surely must actually have giving them direct access to the President of the University. I mean, they have to, right?

"Right, AND he's breaking the law." I have always been, will always be, a cynic.

Incident

1989-09-26T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Oh dear.

Some found today's strip racially insensitive.

On the College Green side the O.U. Gateway reads:

So depart that daily thou mayest better serve thy fellow men, thy country and thy God.

In 1989, very few people of color wore their hair like that, and no one had big sideburns. Unless you were Lenny Kravitz. A little fashion-forward - the 70s revival was barely on the horizon. It was another "alternate reality" look I was attempting.

College Green

1989-09-25T00:00:00.002-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

It's strips like this that make me truly appreciate how far I came since early 1988. There is absolutely no crosshatching in the entire strip today, just black and white with shades of gray care of zipatone. I used to fret about realism - I would have gotten all worked about, you know tree bark - instead of emphasizing what was most important. I mean, it's a cartoon. Play around. Have fun.

Night is represented in the third panel by using a negative image. The clock on Cutler Hall peeks out in panel four and let's us know it is ten to two in the morning.

It's a good time.

Tomorrow I f*ck it all up.

Stay Tuned

1989-09-22T00:00:00.010-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Oh yeah - this is a school. Breaking Point had one classroom scene in it. So does Turtleneck.

The first woman in panel one is based on Monique, the second on Julia.

Panel two is at the Lollipop, a candy store on Union that had video games in the back. I do not know if you were able to smoke in there, but Roger is doing it. There was no Vigilante video game, that's supposed to be, you know, a joke.

Again with the smutty talk.

Above photo: The Lollipop, earlier this year. It has since closed ... and is now a Donato's Pizza. I mean, Jesus.

See yesterday's comments ... in this reality, the Mayor does write a letter to the editor about Turtleneck ... only it's to offer the reward mentioned in yesterday's strip. (Here is the letter she sent to me in our reality.)

I am going to guess the last panel is upstairs at Lucky's, listening to the piano stylings of Bob Montaldo.

UPDATE: Lollipop not closed! I thought I read that article carfully, but luckily for all concerned, I did not. The other Lollipop location, on East State Street on your way out to all the Big Box stores - that one has become a Donato's. Imagine my relief when, on a recent visit, I found the original on Union was just as I had left it. Stuffed with chocolate, candy and video games, and just as you see in the photo above.

The Mayor

1989-09-21T00:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

So in this "alternate reality" (like the alternate realty in Watchmen, only not as interesting) we use the 24 hour clock ... and men wear suitcoats as long as trenchcoats.

Sara Ague Hendricker was Mayor of Athens from 1988 to 1994, to this date the only female mayor of that city. The only real impression I had of her at this time was for her strict interpretation of building and signage codes, and her staunch disapproval of making the annual Halloween take-over of Court Street a legal affair - this last making her no different from previous mayors.

But she was a woman, which was fun - I got to play even more with non-traditional gender roles ... I was impressed with the way race was handled in Tim Burton's Batman. If you look at it, for the late 80s it had a greater than average number of non-white players, representing both "good guys" and "bad guys." Without meaning to, I had created a strong (well, I don't know, you tell me) protagonist in Alex, and had this cartoony government figure trying to thwart our heroes.

She was short (see the phone book on her chair in the third panel, ha ha ha) but I do not know where I got the idea to have her wearing aviator sunglasses all the time. I can tell you it had nothing to do with the fact that Turtleneck wears them or if so, that was a subconscious decision, if a somewhat interesting one that I only now thought of as I am writing this.

Her assistant is a nameless functionary, based on no one in particular.

The fourth panel features and exterior of the Athens City Building, which is not actually spelled "BVILDING." I made that up. That's Max sulking past the front door.

Photo: At left is a photo of the Athens City Building. I do not know who those people are, but they are about to be married by the Mayor of Athens, which is something you can do.

Fiji House

1989-09-20T00:00:00.005-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Hey, that's my couch. And my wicker wastebasket. And my stereo speaker perched on a milk crate. Sigh. Moving on.

And that's my crotch.

I'll stop.

No, I did not receive any prank phone calls over the Fiji House reference, though a number of people did stop me to say it was a funny line. Must be the exception, not the rule.

I have learned a thing or two about how you hold a newspaper. I think.

Turtlenecked Avenger

1989-09-19T00:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

"The following Monday" was, if you are paying attention, yesterday - September 18, 1989. That's the date on THE POST in the third panel. I attempted throughout the series to keep up with what day it was, more or less, as the strips were being published.

The "first sighting" of the Turtlenecked Avenger was Friday, Sept. 15, and this is three days later. Hey - that's biblical.

The first and second panel's feature loving renderings of the front door of my basement apartment on S. Congress. I used zipatone and no pen to create the shadow in the first panel.

I love the idea that Max has been vomitting for over two days.

The "artist's rendering" in the third panel was drawn with a charcoal stick. I wanted him to look like a square-jawed tough-guy (and a little beast-like, check out that mane) as though the guy who Max beat up wanted to make sure no one thought he was taken down by a wimp like Max.

I really did own boxers that looked like that.

This is the first and only time the Mayor is mentioned by her last name, after this she becomes simply "The Mayor." It is her first published appearance in one of my cartoons - because this Breaking Point strip had been rejected.

Hero At Large

1989-09-18T00:00:00.004-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Hey look. Another villainous redneck. I must hate white people. I do love to give bad guys snub noses.

The word "boycott" written on that wall was actual graffiti on the wall in question. I can't remember what we were supposed to boycott, though I imagine it was Taco Bell.

I had no idea how to draw the woman who was about to be raped, and did not base this drawing on anyone in particular. It's a pretty slight addition to the picture, without even any shading. Obviously I was insecure enough about the subject, I didn't want to draw any additional attention to her.

As for the violence, I'd never drawn a fight before, ever. I was never that kind of fan boy. And I've never been in a fight. But I did try to come up with some kind of realistic progression from one blow to another. My experience the year before learning basic hand-to-hand stage combat choreography helped a great deal in this endeavor.

1-2-3 and he's out. Not bad.

Now ... it should be apparent to anyone paying attention that the entire premise of this series is "inspired by" the John Ritter classic, Hero at Large. In that movie, and out-of-work actor has a gig wearing a generic "superhero" costume. On his way home from work, he breaks up a robbery in a convenience store, and becomes a vigilante célèbre.

I didn't realize I had lifted this story until much later - this in spite of the fact that Rich had told me more than once how much that movie inspired him, at least in the importance of doing chin-ups.

That John Ritter looked awful good without a shirt.

To be continued ...

1989-09-15T00:00:00.006-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

And so all events have conspired to bring us to this moment. If you heard what sounded like a potentially violent situation, would you run away from, or towards, the sound?

As you can see, the language barrier I was so concerned about during BP I just promptly ignored for this strip. I never asked permission, I just started using coarse language and swear words.

I have no idea if frat boys still wear sunglasses after dark, but they did in the late 80s.

Love the squinting in the fourth panel.

Above left are the Athens Court House steps, as they appear today. You can barely make them out in Monday's strip, and more clearly in the first panel today ... or for that matter in the comic I drew in honor of Halloween 1988.

At right is the alley between the former Woolworth's (closed 1994 ... still abandoned and an eyesore in the middle of Court Street for over ten years) and the former Taco Bell (now a Chipotle.) I lived at the far end of that alley in a basement apartment on South Congress when creating this strip. This also happens to be where Max lives, so it is odd he is walking past this alley instead of naturally heading down it. It would make sense if he were smoking a cigarette ... but Max never smokes.

Which is odd, because though Simon smoked like a chimney, I smoked more at the beginning of my senior year (I should say, during the year of 1989) than I ever did in my entire life. I bought cartons when I first moved into that apartment.

Check it out, Max wears Chuck's.

Big boy

1989-09-14T00:00:00.004-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Second panel, that's Joe, manager of Lucky's Down Under. The back-and-forth featured in today's strip is a milder version of the nature of mine and Julie's relationship during Junior year.

The final panel was achieved using the center of a page of converging-lined zipatone. It will be repeated with added emotional resonance at the end of the series.

So what have we learned? Max just happens to be wearing a black turtleneck. He has dark glasses on because he usual pair of specs were broken. He and Alex used to date, but they broke up some time ago ... hey, when did they start seeing each other? Must be since the conclusion of BP in Spring 1988.

Unless she started seeing Max while she was still dating Simon! Yeah! No ... wait ... that's not right. Only I did stuff like that.

Sunglasses

1989-09-13T00:00:00.003-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Performing tonight at Lucky's Down Under are Roger and an unnamed character modeled after Ricky - who I recently reconnected with on facebook! You can hear him sing on his myspace page.

That's not Ricky in the photo at left, that's me.

The second panel features an unnamed character based on an OUSoT woman I cannot remember, and Alex's roommate Trixie, based on Julie's real-life roommate Donna.

During my junior year I would sit at the bar at Lucky's Down Under and draw cartoons of people for free beer. These two caricatures came from that work. I am not sure if I knew Donna/Trixie was going to be a regular character this early in the game.

In the past year (88-89) Roy Orbison had had a resurgent career, and almost as suddenly died. The old tale is that he forgot his regular specs one night and his eyesight was so bad he decided he was less blind going on-stage wearing his sunglasses than no glasses at all. They became his trademark. I do not know if this is true or not.

Surprisingly, there will be no "I wear my sunglasses at night" jokes.

Origins

1989-09-12T00:00:00.005-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Every superhero needs an origin story. Ours begins at the pool table in Lucky's Down Under.

Photo: Former site of Lucky's Tavern.

Max was a name my brother liked to use in fiction when he was in high school. And here's an old friend - Alex. Yes, the same Alex with the red hair, long eyelashes and freckles only she's just done her wild hair short and straight. The downtrodden girlfriend with three appearances in Breaking Point gets bumped up to star billing. Adapting that former strip into a play made it painfully clear how weak my female characters were, and I was making a deliberate attempt to make up for that.

Check out this other strip that features characters shooting pool. Simon is saying "Yer a smart girl, you figger it out." In my original sketch I had written, "You figger it out, now get your tits out of the way so I can make this shot."

You will notice I have started using actual voice balloons. Also, instead of underlining words for emphasis, I use a fatter pen.

I am digging the eight-ball in the corner of the final panel.

When John Byrne was the wunderkind at MARVEL, he stretched himself very thin, drawing (at the very least) X-Men, The Fantastic Four and his own creation Alpha Flight. For that last he was not only writing, penciling and also inking. You could tell. Often he would forgo drawing an actual background and just use a dramatic color instead ... like pink. It was the 80s.

I tried that, too (only without the "color") in the third panel. Unlike Breaking Point which was divided into four uniform panels, I began making panels whatever shape I wanted.

Byrne once famously had his character Snowbird fight a Yeti in a snowstorm. There was no art, only voice balloons and sound effects.

"Yo, Turtleneck!"

1989-09-11T00:00:00.012-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

The past year had not gone to waste, I was drawing a lot. My style was vastly improved since January of the previous year and I was much more confident that I would be able to produce a stylish, interesting strip every day. So I stopped tracing backgrounds entirely, which made it necessary to create a unique background each time ... which meant new angles, and a bit more creativity in choosing where events take place.

And as I had chosen to create a "hero" comic strip, these were all good things. Turtleneck, for all its flaws, cannot be called just another Doonesbury knock-off. The plan was to create an exciting narrative, one with a beginning, middle an end. It was always my intent to make this a single-quarter series. Ten weeks, the end. This was part of the reason THE POST agreed to give me another chance. If it worked out, I'd do something different winter quarter - and in the back of my mind, the spring would feature the triumphant return of Breaking Point.

I attempted to use cross-hatching as a shading device as little as possible (jeans would be a regular exception, as you can see today) and instead rely heavily on zipatone. As a result, these scans of photocopies of the original printing of the strip (themselves, of course, reproductions) are a bit muddy in places. Sorry.

Panel One: The steps of the Court House on Court Street. We'll see these steps several times.

Panel Two: Tim Burton's Batman came out this summer, and was in its was an inspiration for this strip. The popularity of that film resulted in my favorite strip of this entire series.

A lot of my petty, girl-slapping criminals look white trashy. This fellow has a weedy mustache. Call it bigotry.

Panel Three & Four: Love these panels. I was beginning to be able to draw generic characters who look like actual people. That's an O.U. Security guard, not Athens Police - we will see plenty of both this quarter. You can tell Security by the paw print badge on his jacket. I like that the coffee cup reminds us that it is, in fact, 1989 ... in a nod to Watchmen I mess with "reality" a little bit by using twenty-four clock references instead of AM and PM - people even refer to times in terms of the 24 hour clock. Actually, that's a lot like 1984. Hmn ...

Panel Five: Hey, it's me again. Much more like me than Simon, a long nose, not a boxed nose, and a real, long shaggy haircut, not a mullet.

Panel Six: From Breaking Point to vanishing point. Nice. I would like to point out now that "Yo!" and "Keep the peace, brother," are not things that a white person would say in 1989. Not even ironically. Please keep that in mind before we continue.

Enjoy the ride.

The Play

1989-05-14T15:00:00.005-04:00

In Spring 1988 (before the strip concluded) Scott asked for material to use in his radio production class. I adapted the original Kael Goodman short story - something I wrote freshman year - into a brief radio play for him.

The story involved Kael and a mysterious woman named Carolyn with whom he was "psychically linked." Yes, very romantic. I wrote a paper on astral projection senior year in high school and used a lot of the business I picked up during interviews as the basis for my nonsense.

Scott produced the piece which featured myself as Simon, Scott as Roger, Ben as Wilson and Andrea (who hate me) as Carolyn. Kael was played by a friend of Scott's whose name I forget, but I remember his face (which you cannot see in this picture) because he was the drummer in the Humbert Humberts at Springfest.

Photo: Does the pose look familiar? See below.

As my junior year progressed, I became increasingly obsessed with my cancelled comic. I decided to propose a studio production of an adaptation of the Carolyn story, crossed with the Bob/Barbra story for Spring quarter, 1989. So, in addition to performing on mainstage in a small role in Romeo & Juliet and a core acting requirement of a Shaw one-act with an MFA director, I was offering to not only write, but direct my first play at O.U.

The faculty actually called me in for a meeting - just me and the OUSoT faculty, where they told me they didn't think I could manage this. I told them I could. Somehow I convinced them.

Having almost suffered a nervous breakdown in Fall 1988, this turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to my psyche. I had little sleep, but I spent all my time dedicated to these three productions (skipping Elvis Costello at Mem Aud!!!) learning how to take effective, ten-minute naps, and just having absolutely no social life whatsoever. It kept me out of the apartment, in which the atmosphere was entirely toxic at this point, and that was a good thing, too.

My friends were sick of it. When the play was accepted into the Spring playwrights' festival, and I told Rich he said, "Good, good. And then will you drop it?"

Did I deserve that? Of course I did.

Promo photo by Sal, which was duplicated on stage for pre-show (see below.)

The play takes place during the same period as the strip - Spring 1988. I even incorporated some text from the practice strips I did in 1987 as a flashback. Our cast consisted of fellow school of theatre people like Litz as Simon, Nancy F. as Cheryl, and Jill C. as Barbra and Carolyn. That's right, one woman played both love interests because all women are the same woman ... except Cheryl, who is just a doormat. This was something I became embarrassingly aware of during this process, my inability to write women.

We also met some non-theater majors who always wanted to try acting, like Jon M. as Wilson (a big, TALL, imposing Wilson) and the unbelieveably awesome Ron C. as Bob. Scot appeared as Roger, which was fabulous because he not only did the best impression of himself, but he also played guitar between scenes in "The Tavern" with drummer Keith H., who we all met through Sunday Progressions.

And finally, casting Kael. Originally I had always intended to cast Andrew F. as Kael, something he was looking forward to. But if he wanted it so much, he should have spent more time on his studies - I discovered very late in the game that he was banned from performance for the year.

Photo: Final dress, from left: Drummer Keith, Ron heading to front door, Brendan on couch, Jill and Jon at right. Note Keith's Church T-shirt.

Instead, Keith suggested bassman Brendan M., who I knew from School Kids Records. They played together in the band Bingo Smith. Also not an actor, Brendan was quiet and unassuming, and not at all the type I would have imagined as the lascivious art-fag from the strip. But he was sweet, he was game, and the news of Andrew's suspension from acting practicum arrived about a day before first rehearsal. A bit laconic, he still hit one out of the park when he picks up Carolyn right in front of Cheryl with the line, "Come home with me or I'll kill you."

The most important member of the team was my stage manager, Maiharriese. I'd never had a stage manager before. I didn't know what they could do for you. She took full responsibility for assembling a team of artists to do the tech work, which shocked me because I figured I would be doing all of that because, well, who else would?

I was a junior. In a theater department. And I still had no idea how these things worked.

The space was what was used to be called the "Little Theatre" in Kantner Hall, which was a tiny, proscenium stage with a working curtain and fifty seats fixed in position facing the stage. In the early 90s it was remodeled into a proper, fully-flexible black box, much more suited to a professional theater school.

The big question was whether or not anyone would see it. Sure, my fellow theater chums would, and that might be enough. There was no money to be made, these were free performances, open to anyone, it's a school, after all. But few outside our community generally attended these studio productions, if they even knew about them.

Opening night, Sunday, May 14, attracted about half a house. That was good. But the next day, there was a photo in the A-News of Brendan as Kael (see left) lying on the floor from an overdose of muscle relaxants. That afternoon, we had to turn people away.

For our "final" performance on Tuesday, there were enough people in the courtyard to fill another house. And so we were given permission to announce an additional performance the next afternoon.

None of this suggests the show is any good, just that there was real publicity for it. Even THE POST was caught off-guard, reading in the A-News that a comic strip from their paper had been turned into a play. They sent a photographer for the final performance (see right) and I got an interview out of it, after the show had closed, which was a delightful vindication.

In addition to directing, which I was terrible at (it was pretty slow) I did all the graphic designs myself - stand-ups of the characters, the Peter Gabriel and Cure posters, The Tavern logo, all life-size. I remember working on the floor of the Little Theater, by myself, listening to Oranges & Lemons, Three Feet High and Rising, Disintegration and the soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ. I have to mention Vanessa's costumes, which were just perfect in spite of her working against the fact that so many of my characters wore nothing but jeans and white T-shirts. Bob's chino-commando outfit was particularly brilliant, and Ron wore it so well.

By the time it was through, I guess I really was ready to "drop it." And I had made it through the most taxing quarter of my career at O.U. getting As in every course - except R&J for which I got a B+ because I missed one costume call.

The only people from the production I have managed to stay in touch with since then are Litz and Scott, though I recently "friended" Keith on Facebook. Brendan died of cancer in 1997.

Turtleneck @ 19 begins September 11th.

UPDATE: Check out the article on the play which ran in THE POST.

Halloween '88

1988-10-31T15:00:00.006-05:00

Not for publication.

Click on to enlarge.

I thought this was funny. While wandering in the artistic wilderness of my junior year, I used the drawing board lying fallow in my "studio" to create this single panel ha-ha.

Halloween has been a huge street party in Athens for decades now. While I was a student there, it was not officially sanctioned by the city, just an illegal "take-over" of Court Street which the authorities just barely tolerated. By the time I was a Senior, few people wore actual costumes (unless you count a beer case on your head as a costume) and the crowds were beginning to diminish ... until it was finally recognized by the city in the early 90s and became and "official" legal event.

Simon is Peter Gabriel from the Shock the Monkey video (I actually dressed like that for Halloween 1987.) Kael is Robert Smith, Wilson is George Harrison from the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band and Jo is the character her model played in the Spring 1988 OUSoT studio theater production of Incomparable Pablo.

The photo at left features the school-issued desk where I, cramped and hunched over, created all of my sophomore year comic strips.

The George Michaels are from videos for (left to right) Father Figure, Club Tropicana, Careless Whisper, I'm Your Man (up on the steps) Edge of Heaven, I Want Your Sex, Everything She Wants, Monkey, A Different Corner (down on the street) Faith, Freedom, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.

I really liked George Michael.

This scene takes place on the steps of the Athens Court House (hence the name Court Street) and this visual gag eventually becomes an important plot point in Turtleneck.

"Breaking Point"

1988-09-16T15:00:00.003-04:00

Rejected submission - not published.

Click on to enlarge.

Yes. Simon actually used the term breaking point. And everyone missed it.

As I reported earlier, Breaking Point was not selected as one of the three strips chosen to be published for THE POST's "contest" for a new comic strip.

I do not remember what the two losing submissions were. The winner was called Angst and featured two roommates, a young man and woman (who will make a cameo in Turtleneck) and a pet fish named Sheckie the Fish.

Yes. A talking fish. That's what I was missing.

I wrote a somewhat churlish letter to the editor letting everyone know how I had been cheated, hoping, I imagine, for a groundswell of support, which is ridiculous.

I was correct, however, in guessing that someone - especially a college student - who was moved to create a new comic strip by entering a contest would probably not have the creative desire, or ability, to keep it up for very long. I think Angst ran the entire quarter, and instead of the art getting better, it got much, much worse.

What I found most amusing was how the strip degenerated from the antics of Sheckie the Fish to humorless, existential musings about life and whether it had any meaning. And these characters didn't even quote song lyrics.

I had all kinds of storylines planned for the 88-89 school year, more than I could have possibly gotten to. I think I even had the mad notion of making the entire fall quarter take place over the course of a single Saturday night, with Simon trying desperately to get home and being sidetracked by numerous people and situations. More high school girls putting the make on him (I knew something about this) Kael teaching him how to dance "alternative."

The big punchline would come in the last strip of the quarter, just before Thanksgiving, when Simon's head finally hits the pillow. He'd make some observation about feeling like he hadn't been asleep in months, and then some reminder that the school year was about to officially start on Monday. Get it?

Kael was about to develop a major coke habit.

Jo would be part of an improv comedy troupe.

Wilson's father would run for Senate. Just kidding. Not really.

That brings up an interesting point ... would I have even mentioned the Presidential race? Lloyd Bentsen did stage a rally on Court Street. Hard to do if the entire quarter is spent on the last weekend of August.

We'll never know. For Simon and Kael, the story ends here.

But not for Alex.

Wrench

1988-09-15T15:00:00.004-04:00

Rejected submission - not published.

Click on to enlarge.

Actual conversation, verbatim. Pretty much.

A girl with earrings, how novel. Why no background? I guess yesterday's strip plum tuckered me out, without the caption in the first panel, you wouldn't even know it's nighttime.

Simon's showing a tum. Cool. All those flat-stomached college boys were coming off as hysterically unrealistic.

Pawpurr's

1988-09-14T15:00:00.003-04:00

Rejected submission - not published.

Click on to enlarge.

Pawpurr's was a popular Greek hangout. I have been into the place exactly twice - on the night in question, and then later to get the back of the bar right.

No one had ever complained about the language I used in the strip (only that it wasn't funny.) So I just stopped editing myself, and waited for someone to say something about it. Here are two a-bombs for you.

Man. Nice detail. I know two panels just show Simon's back, but look at the difference in the body language between the second and fourth panels.

I Don't Want To Be A Hero

1988-09-13T15:00:00.006-04:00

Rejected submission - not published.

Click on to enlarge.

Hey, Simon changed the decorations in his room. Gone is the GM, replaced by a Watchmen graphic ... and a poster for the really terrible Broadway production of Chess. And his crotch.

I was really into Watchmen right then. I still am. March 6th can't come fast enough.

In the second panel is sign reading Just Say 'No' To Signs featuring the face of Mayor Sara Hendricker. The Mayor will become a major character in Turtleneck. The sign is a commentary (if you can call it that) on her recent stand upholding Athens' strict signage laws.

Yes, Simon is wearing cuffed shorts.

The young woman here (who does not get a name) is based on a girl from the company of Bye Bye Birdie named Katie. What is about to non-happen is based on a real evening I spent with her on Court Street.

I Don't Want To Be A Hero was a hit for Johnny Hates Jazz. I had to google that lyric, I couldn't for the life of me remember what the hell Simon was singing.

Audition

1988-09-12T15:00:00.009-04:00

Rejected submission - not published.

Click on to enlarge.

I returned to THE POST offices in early September to discover that my strip was not welcome back. I wish I could report that they told me directly, "We are no longer publishing your strip." That was not what happened.

Click on to enlarge.

Instead, I was informed that they were going to have a contest. The paper was going to invite submissions from the student body, run a week's worth of strips from three candidates (candidates to be chosen by the editors) and then ask the readers to choose their favorite.

Pretty weak. But there was nothing I could do. I took the first week of strips I had already drawn, and submitted them as my entry for this "contest."

I do feel these strips represent where the story was going as well as anything else I may have created, had I known they would be judged. Today's strip was meant to re-introduce the characters to the readers ... though I have no idea whether the tiny print would be legible once published.

"No idea" because Breaking Point was not even selected by the editors to be an entry in the contest, these strips were not published. There would not even be an opportunity to find out if anyone would have even voted for my strip, if I had any support at all.

Believe me when I say the three submissions they chose showed a serious lack of talent and no potential for interest or growth, which may be irrelevant - it is entirely possible, if you want to be paranoid about it, that they received only one entry and a staff writer was asked to create the other two just to give the illusion of a full slate.

The message was clear. "F*ck off, David Hansen."

The bulletin board posted clippings presented in today's strip resemble the kind of "Man On The Street" blurbs they ran in the A-News. The reader is left to guess what the questions were. The real example above-left lets you know what the question in panel four is.

To create photo-like shadows for these bogus clippings, I used zipatone on top of zipatone. I was going for a look like Dave Gibbons' from Watchmen.

Check out Jo, she looks like a real woman. Damn. Regret sucks.

Panel One:
Kael Goodman, 19
OU sophmore
Beachwood, OH

"No, I feel that anything taken to an extreme is a bad idea. It's a pointless gesture only generating more animosity between the administration and the student body. This student body, anyhow."

Q: I have no idea what the question to this answer is. By the way - didn't we establish Kael was from Shaker?

You can find the original of that photo of Wilson here.

Panel Two:
Wilson Allen, 21
OU senior
Cleveland

"As long as homosexuality is an issue, it's a problem. And one of the organizations keeping the term 'sexual descrimination' on our tongues us you leftist media freaks."

Q: I believe there was a sexual-orientation anti-discrimination proposal on the ballot that fall - which for 1988 was pretty progressive. It became a big issue as to whether it was right for students to register to vote in Athens County to approve it.

Hey look, a photo of the model for Barbra.

Panel Three:
Jo Parker, 20
OU senior
Shaker Heights, OH

"Oh, come on, So what if Dukakis got psychiatric help in the seventies. Who didn't?"

Q: Pretty self-explanatory.

The cartoon there is a panel from the legendarily-hated POST strip "Big Man On Campus," which ended just prior to my arrival at O.U. in 1986 (but would have been freshman year for most of these characters.) I really like my re-creations of photos of "Kael & Roger" and "Roger, Cheryl & Simon."

Panel Four:
Simon Wharton, 21
OU senior
Near Cleveland

"Wait, what drought? Did I miss something?"

One Summer In Hell ...

1988-08-09T15:00:00.002-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

UPDATE: What the Athena looks like since the university assumed mangement.

The second Summer POST strip, published the first week of August.

Panel one: Hey, that's what our sink looked like in my new apartment on Court Street ... and now things get pscizophrenic. This strip is all about me and not Simon. The last panel looks more like the "breakfast nook" at our new place than it does like the kitchen at 121 N. High Street. Suddenly we have a center-posted table ...

Panel two: The Athena movie theater "caught fire" in the spring. Here it is boarded up, there is a guy with a mask over his mouth cleaning debris. I have no idea what the movie poster is for.

Panel three: Buffalo shot.

Panel four: I played Albert in the worst production of Bye Bye Birdie ever produced. The OVST site now features archive photos, and I am glad to say I am only barely visible in one of them.

It was very hot. I do not normally sweat on-stage - it wasn't even a problem when I was overweight and had to do some actually running around in Little Shop of Horrors two years later. I think it was the polyester suit, the inpenetrable heat ... and the fact that I was painfully aware of how much my performance entirely sucked.

God, I'm sweating in this photo, and we're only tech'ing.

Oh, and when Albert Brooks character in Broadcast News finally gets to anchor, he sweats a lot.

Panel five: Like you really needed to see this.

Panel six: It's Jo! Welcome, Jo, I wish we had time to get to know you better, you were going to be so much more interesting than Cheryl. Jo is based on my new roommate Eve, another theater major whom I got to know during Camino Real. Rich, Pete and I were going to find a place together (but we weren't trying very hard) and I surprised them by saying I'd jumped ship and took an offer from Eve. They were a little pissed about it.

The Carriage Hill place they did find did not have the infestation problem Eve and I discovered almost immediately.

Panel seven: It's the Life In Hell calendar.

Summer Jobs

1988-08-09T14:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

"August 2" is an arbitrary date, I believe the Summer POST came out the first week of August, but it was only one issue which included this and the next strip.

It was drawn at my first off-campus apartment, that hellhole on Court Street - I am talking about the space, mind you, I am not about to rekindle any animosity with my surviving apartment mates. The Summer of 1988 was one of the hottest on record and how we made it through that in one piece is beyond me.

Let us take a moment and reflect on the stunning difference between my work at the beginning of the strip, and what comes now. I know how to draw a realistic doo-rag on Roger's head. His hair is like real hair. So many interestingly placed rips in his clothes - we dressed like that.

The last panel is a call-back to the very first strip. That's the same woman he menaced way back in January. You will notice Simon shaved and cut his hair. There is a reason for this which will be explained in the next summer strip.

Roger is working for his dad ... I did that job later that year - it was actually pasting labels onto one-gallon cans, one-gallon cans filled with volatile liquid. Lennon is John Lennon, Page is Jimmy Page, and Tiffany is Tiffany Dwarish who was really, really popular then.

I don't know where Wilson is working, I don't know what Cheryl is watching. I really wish I knew what Cheryl was watching. Dinky-Di Dog Food is from The Road Warrior. East 9th and Euclid used to be the commercial nexus of downtown Cleveland, when we had one.

Kael is working at his dad's jewelers. My father did not own a jewelry store, but that's him.

Simon is working at Wendy's, which is only fitting. Simon is the only one who is spending summer in Athens.

UPDATE: This issue of the SUMMER POST did in fact come out on Tuesday, August 9. Found a copy in the attic.

The End

1988-06-03T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

This ever happen to you? There's someone you deeply care about, but you treated them poorly, and when they have a moment of great accomplishment, you want to join in but you can't because you've been such a d*ck?

Or is it just me?

Anyway, don't feel sorry for Kael. He's not even a sophomore yet.

All strips were reduced to one-third for publication. So I made photocopies of how they appeared in the paper (that's what you've been looking at all along, scans of the photocopies of the versions as they appeared in the paper - the originals are damaged by age and they were not created on good paper for this kind of work to begin with) and then cut out my favorite panels from the series to paste up for the backgrounds of this final strip. They fit neatly, three by three. I didn't need to adjust the size at all.

I traced the figures from the key scenes in the first three panels from Jan 21, Mar 4, and Apr 12; improved upon them (made the grays black, fixed that thing with Cheryl's boobs) and then cut them out and pasted them onto the panel.

This is not, in fact, the end. It was the end of the school year, and I was moving off-campus for the summer, into an apartment on Court Street. Instead of having to hunch over my university-provided desk, our new digs had a small, airless room (a large broom closet) which everyone agreed could be my drawing room.

I brought my drafting table down from my parents house in Bay Village, and made plans for the second year of Breaking Point, which would begin with strips for the summer edition of THE POST. One issue of THE POST always comes out in August, in time for freshman orientation.

I will not wait until August to continue this story - and I will not be waiting until 2009 to begin the Turtleneck series. However, it is the end of the school year now - and I mean right now, in 2008 - which means I am very busy playing clean-up for the year just past and making plans for the one to come. There's also a summer camp I have to organize and facilitate. To wit - I do not have much time.

Until fall the posts will come maybe once or twice a week. A lot happened between Breaking Point and Turtleneck. I hope you stick with me. This has been fun.

Graduation

1988-06-02T15:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

The Convo is a big place.

William Hurt: I think the guy in the hat did something terrible. - The Big Chill (It's still a good joke.)

Check out Wilson's deely-boppers. I think that's supposed to be Monique in the upper right corner, but if so, it's terrible. She makes unnamed appearances in Turtleneck and college.

Hey - there's people of color here! And Peter Gabriel must have escaped from the housemates TV room wall ... so he could make it to commencement.

UPDATE: Check here for an earlier, more better cartoon of Erin/Gail, and here for an alternate mix tape.

... excuse me ...

1988-06-01T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

This is a story my brother told me. Waking up on the couch following a night-before-graduation party, there were these teal-framed Ray-Ban-type sunglasses on the table near him. They were the first thing he saw when he woke up. He did not know whose they were. But they were suddenly very important to him, and he took them and wore them to graduation. This was in 1985.

I assume they are actually Simon's sunglasses, though they do look bigger and darker.

How odd, to see Cheryl's feet - anyone's feet - on the floor. I bumped the background up from its usual position to make it possible to see things sitting on the floor. It's like when we see Kermit riding a bike in The Muppet Movie. For those of us of a certain age, that was the first time had ever seen a muppet's feet. Ever. Weird.

Today I didn't shade with charcoal - everything in the background is drawn in charcoal. I also intentionally did not erase pencil lines.

And as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention.

1988-05-31T15:00:00.002-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

No, wait - this is my favorite strip (not this) for several reasons.

People loved the last panel - which you will notice has a thicker frame, in the hope people could tell we were no longer in the living room. That would be awkward.

To give the impression of a hangover, I used charcoal to shade the background, and then matte-sprayed the paper so it wouldn't get smudged at the office.

The Peter Gabriel poster has been knocked off the wall, so has the triangle from The Police graphic, and there are little bits of sticky tape left behind.

Hey! Simon has eschewed that other brand of sneakers for Chuck's. He fell asleep with his hand in a bowl of chips, and there are crumbs on his shirt.

Someone broke a window pane! Kael's eyeliner is smudged! Alex has fallen asleep on Roger! (Yes, Julie snores.) Sarah and Wilson are kissing each other good ~~night~~ morning! (I said we would see Sarah one more time. The model for Wilson and the model from Sarah were, of course, actually dating at that time.)

Why am I decribing everything you can plainly see here? The detail! All the lovely detail! Why didn't every strip look like this?

The song (on vinyl!) is Airhead by Thomas Dolby. It was on the CMJ disc for winter 1988, and I liked it. Rich found it irritating, and sexist.

commenting

Nothing But Flowers

It's true. Nothing But Flowers is a superior song.

Mix Tape!

1988-05-30T15:00:00.002-04:00

Fire up the grill, drag the couch onto the porch and hang beer advertisements from the gutters! It's time for the ...

121 N. High Street Memorial Day Mix

01. A Japanese Dream (extended mix) – The Cure
02. Vanishing Girl – The Dukes of Stratosphear
03. Reptile – The Church
04. People Are Strange – Echo & The Bunnymen
05. Got My Mind Set On You – George Harrison
06. Pump Up The Volume – M/A/R/R/S
07. Doctorin’ The Tardis – The Timelords (The KLF)
08. Peace Train – 10,000 Maniacs
09. True Faith – New Order
10. Alex Chilton – The Replacements
11. Flesh Number One (Beatle Dennis) LIVE – Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3
12. Nothing But Flowers LIVE – David Byrne
13. Fragile – Sting

UPDATE: Since I published this mix, I realized PWEI's second album came out in 1989, not 1988 as I had previously imagined. I swore Mark B. introduced me to that band in the summer of 1988, but I guess I made that up, like so much else. So I have added a lovely live version of Nothing But Flowers.

LATER UPDATE: Hey! Contact from Mark B.:

Yes, the worst production of Bye Bye Birdie in history - that will get play in the next week or so.

FFFT!

1988-05-27T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Almost makes me wish I actually knew anything about Cheryl. Anything at all.

Banana clip

1988-05-26T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Yes, this conversation actually happened. Verbatim.

If the strip had continued in the fall, I wonder how many sequences would be based on actual conversation.

While it is not a technique Harvey Pekar necessarily pioneered, his work would inevitably have a profound effect on my work.

This is a banana clip. Most girls I knew in 1988 had a banana clip.

Where is this? A background would have been nice, even a brick wall - which would have been appropriate because I think the actual conversation occurred by the bagel buggy.

Colin Hay

1988-05-25T15:00:00.002-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Immediately following The Church concert on Tuesday night, I walked into THE POST offices to punch-up Cheryl's superlative. I can't remember what she said originally, something like "great" or "super." I don't know why it was necessary to have her say "fantastic" - I don't mean it wasn't a fantastic show, but was my upgrade really significant?

Boy, it sure was hard for me to fit all four housemates into one panel.

Why the hell weren't Simon and Kael in attendance at the biggest music event of the quarter?

What is up with Wilson's enormous head and tiny claw in the second panel?

I had never noticed an Australian accent in the singing of my favorite Australian singers, I always thought they had the flat, Midwestern quality that most foreign singers since The Beatles aspired to. But there is definitely something about the way they stretch their mouths to accommodate most vowels, especially AAYEEE and AHOWW.

Listen to Beds Are Burning or Like Wow Wipeout or Never Tear Us Apart.

It's true, Colin Hay was born in Scotland. But even so, I would not group him with Aztec Camera, The Fratellis, Calvin Harris, Jimmy Somerville, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Clubbed to Death, Lloyd Cole ... or any of my other favorite Scottish acts.

This is the way we used to talk. That's the joke.

UPDATE: Look at what I found - a photo of The Church performing at Mem Aud on May 24, 1988!

Charles & The Church

1988-05-24T15:00:00.004-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Two things ... first, The Church.

As has been mentioned previously, the mid-to-late 80s was a musical wasteland, as least as far as international acts were concerned. True, The Mats had made a visit to Mem Aud the previous fall (my fist mosh pit!!!) but otherwise we were hurting.

Early that year it was announced that Arista Records was holding a contest - whoever got the most signatures received a FREE concert from the Australian band The Church, whose hit Under The Milky Way was familiar enough to anyone watching 120 Minutes or listening to Sunday Progressions.

In our desperation, and through the hard work of the people at ACRN, O.U. out-signed every other campus in America something like two billion-to-one. (More on ACRN in a moment.) We were all Church fans overnight.

Word got back to THE POST that the roadies were so angry about today's strip, and so protective of the band, that they made sure none of them saw a single issue of the paper.

The fellow in the first panel is Charles, who Pete met freshman year, and was a mod-mate of ours that year. By this time he was something like Program Director at ACRN - All Campus Radio Network.

I called it "All Cable Radio Network" because the only way I knew how to get it was through cable. I don't know anyone who had cable radio. I don't know anyone who listened to ACRN. All I know is that it wasn't broadcast.

ACRN spearheaded The Church campaign, however, and took credit for the catch. For the record, Charles was flattered - and amused - by the depiction ... even if I have given him a freakishly huge left arm.

Charles was a real sweetheart. In the picture you see here, he is headed off to a choral event. He was a beautiful singer. That's Pete, posing as his date. And that's Rich ... I don't believe I've put up any pictures of Rich, yet. So here he is.

Okay, okay, I'm laughing my ass off.

Charles pursued a career in radio journalism out of college, he spent some time with WTAM in the early 90s. He actually got them to do a brief piece on Guerrilla Theater Company, I don't know how he swung that. I don't believe he was very happy there.

It was only after all of that that I got to spend a large amount of time with him. I was surprised when he showed up for auditions for the first show I did at Dobama's Night Kitchen, an hour-long ensemble writing piece about being young in 1980 called Bummer. His writing was wonderful, he was a great performer, he brought a genuine, melancholy air to the project. That was in 1995, and I only saw him occasionally after.

Pete called in 1999 to tell me Charles had received a cancer diagnosis and died shortly thereafter.

¡WHUMP!

1988-05-23T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

From the movie Yellow Submarine:

JOHN
Ringo, I've just had the strangest dream.

RINGO
I warned you not to eat on an empty stomach.

Wilson is a faithful reader of the newspaper. I still don't know anyone who holds a paper like that.

Digging the sound effects in panel two. I neglected to expound upon the way I broke the box in the Camino Court series. I used a thinner tool-line for the zig-zagging boxes within the larger, thicker frame.

I believe this is the first time I have used a thicker pen to emphasize certain words, rather than underlining them. It's better.

Two weeks, huh? Time flies.

Block Four

1988-05-20T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

I feel I have lost you. This does not surprise me.

Simon's subconscious is accusing himself of being the kind of a-hole who deserves public accusation and retribution. You will notice the only part of the charges against him he objects to is the one relating to smoking, and not his ill-behavior toward Alex or his general a-holiness.

Vonnegut did say this.

During performances of Camino Real the wall was opened between the Patio Theatre and the "Little Theatre" next to it, because the cast was so large and there were so many props and other bits of business they needed to room. Sitting in the darkened not-theater, Chris R. told me I had blown the British-ism I had used in today's strip. It's not "that says maybe" it's "that's as may be" which anyone who has read the lyrics to I Can See For Miles would know.

I'd actually heard the phrase used in the Monthy Python crunchy frog sketch, but I was still wrong.

Anyway, so Simon blames his ex-girlfriend for all of his antisocial behavior. Boo-hoo. See here.

"Stewed, screwed and tattooed," is from Camino Real.

"Mach's mit suff, stoff, nikotin - verlier die spannung nie," are lyrics from the Peter Gabriel song Kon Takt! which is the German version of I Have the Touch. The English translation is "I've tried food, drink, cigarette - tension will not ease." I still think it was appropriate to have a foreign language pop up in Simon's dream, that happens in dreams ... right?

At the conclusion of The Lamb after sacrificing everything (especially his penis) Rael finds that his rescued brother John is actually himself. And so Simon discovers the only judge is the one in his head. (See Arthur Miller's The Crucible: "The magistrate that sits in your heart judges you.")

His revelatory statement, "Wait! Somethings changed ..." is from the song It. And so Goodman's final line (I love the fact that he is smoking a cigar) is the final line from Camino Real.

It would appear that Simon has the same severe acne scarring on his chest that I do.

Block Three

1988-05-19T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

In Camino Real Gutman calls Kilroy Candy Man.

The judge's sash features symbols from the cover of the George Michael album FAITH.

Sample diaglogue from A Hard Day's Night:

66. INTERIOR THE INNER OFFICE

A large room, part production office with models and sets ... Behind a large desk sits SIMON MARSHAL, a bland but slightly irritable young man of about thirty-five. He is wearing the ultimate in the current smart set fashion. Behind him on the wall is a poster of a girl. Across the poster is printed, "Way Out, your own T.V. Special with Susan Campey. Director, Simon Marshal."

-- edit --
SIMON
(to secretary)
Here's this kid trying to give me his utterly
valueless opinion when I know for a fact within
four weeks he'll be suffering from a violent
inferiority complex and loss of status if he
isn't wearing one of these nasty things. Of
course they're grotty, you wretched nit, that's
why they were designed, but that's what you'll
want.

GEORGE
I won't.

SIMON
You can be replaced, chicky baby.

GEORGE
I don't care.
There is no "Judge" in either The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway nor Camino Real. However, judgement figures a great deal in both of them.

In the case of The Lamb, I had returned to this record once every two years, and this was my third go round. In 1984 I just liked the music and had no idea what it was about. I had a knock-off cassette I'd gotten in Spain which had no liner notes at all. In 1986 I got the vinyl and was appalled and fascinated by the story, especially the castration fantasy that figures into the second half.

And speaking of castration ...

Block Two

1988-05-18T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Roger makes an appearance as Don Quixote. The photo at left is from a production of Camino Real but not the OUSoT one. But I like the design.

Note the Dos Equis ballcap.

"If I keep self control ..." is from In The Cage.

The heckling from the audience ("This isn't funny.") is taken from the first letter to the editor BP received. The author was named Dianna. The audience member lecturing her on what is or is not pretentious is quoting the song It.

Roger Quixote is first quoting the play ... and then Simon.

The tiny script at the bottom left of the final panel is a desperate attempt to find a stunningly clever anagram, and failing.

Block One

1988-05-17T15:00:00.001-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

I was shocked to learn, in 1983, that the guy who sang Shock the Monkey was once the lead singer of Genesis. I was a big fan of Genesis, and I couldn't see how that guy could sing could handle the pseudo-R&B stuff Phil Collins and the band were currently producing.

Well, he didn't, of course, stretching back into the late-late 60s Genesis had been a minor prog-rock band and Gabriel was its demented ringleader, complete with bizarre tales of severed heads, child-rapists, and the economic woes of merry old England.

His final album with them was 1975s The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, a concept album produced long after concept albums had been deemed really self-indulgent and stupid. Its protagonist, a New Yawk PR street kid (as if the private school raised Gabriel would knew a Puerto Rican if one punched him in the nose) named RAEL.

Rael comes out of the subway onto Broadway, and is frozen in space and time, then transported to a distinctly unusual world, pursuing his brother John, who has been taken from him by invisible forces.

You want the full story? Go here.

Camino Real, currently in production by the OUSoT was another over-long, masturbatory work by one of my favorite artists, Tennessee Williams. Don Quixote reaches the end of the road, where the Ka-MEE-no Ray-AL becomes the KA-min-o REEL and Sancho Panza leaves him in disgust. Quixote takes a nap, in hopes of dreaming up a companion to continue with him on his journeys.

The Camino Real is a dead-end of all sorts, with a slum on one side of the street, and a luxury hotel on the other. Managing the hotel - and apparently this entire part of the world, is a man in an ice cream suit named Mr. Gutman. And into this world comes KILROY, born with a heart of gold the size of a baby's head. He's an American hero who is almost destroyed by this world of depravity.

And so we conflate RAEL and KILROY and get KAEL. This was a happy accident.

The backgrounds here are modeled after the set of the OUSoT production.

Simon's pose in the first dream panel is from a detail on the cover of The Lamb.

At the start of Camino Real the legend Kilroy Is Coming is spray-painted on the bricked up wall the the end of the road. When Kilroy arrives he corrects it.

The "lost souls" under the wall sing a line from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (song.)

I wandered lonely as a cloud was originally from The Daffodils by Wordsworth, but also appropriated (before I) from Colony of the Slippermen.

Don't look at me ... is also from the title track.

Hush, Aurora, is a line Gutman (now Goodman) speaks to his white cockatoo. Here, Aurora is a sheep. A baby sheep.

Behind the hotel are the street cleaners - agents of death. The lower one supposed to be Rich. The guard is Wilson (Pete.)

Above the strip, aligned right (below where my name would have been printed) is the legend With acknowledgments to Tennessee Williams & Peter Gabriel. It always bothered me how a cartoonist will parody something and then write "With apologies to ..." as if they are truly sorry to have created what they have. Like, I didn't mean to do this - or - I don't mean to offend.

Because Simon is an acting major, and this is in it's way an actor's nightmare, there is an audience - you can see the tops of their heads.

You will notice that Kael, recently given to wearing as much black as possible, is dressed all in white, while Simon appears darker than usual.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

1988-05-16T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

It troubles me that I have very few photos of Julie from the period when we were going out. Most are from the improv troupe. And then there is this lovely snap I took of her while she was working a shift at Wendy's.

I was, in fact, playing around on her, which should surprise no one. My guilt - no, not guilt exactly, but my anxiety about actions manifest itself on the pages of THE POST where I was able to present my id (Kael) and super-ego (Simon) in glaring black & white for everyone to see.

Simon is wearing his new Springfest '88 T-shirt, modeled on the ones they actually sold, as opposed to this one with a larger logo. He must have really liked Springfest.

The culmination of this semester's rumination on sleep and dreams is about to reach its climax. Simon will soon dream the dream of the damned, I will take my first significant artistic risk, and each successive strip will be another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing.

"Your name is ..?"

1988-05-13T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Aw, SNAP!

I owe the ... and your name is ..? slam to Pete. He used to love blowing people off that way.

By the way, I just got back in touch with the legendary Eric Britton! (Follow the link to find out what I mean.)

"I am breaking ..."

1988-05-12T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

I forgot this one - a photo update of Lucky's.

So anyway, imagine this is your favorite song, ever. Just try really, really hard. It helps.

In spite of the ritualistic abuse Simon has been heaping on Roger since the beginning of the strip, that is not indicative of my relationship with Scott, with whom I have been friends since 8th grade.

Beginning in Spring, 1989 we started doing "open mics" at Lucky's under the nom de guerre of Karl Dee & Hog which became a regular Saturday night stand through most of that fall.

He's a very good guitar player. When I sing I am a clown.

That is our high school friend Lynn in the Alpha Chi shirt, visiting from OSU.

Not only have I entirely given up on giving Cheryl anything interesting to wear, it looks like her plain white T-shirt is disappearing. Soon her torso will be an amorphous blob. Ditto, Simon. At least Kael's wardrobe keeps being interesting - today he is wearing his signature vest without a shirt.

Outrageous

1988-05-11T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

There was actually no BP in the May 11, 1988 edition of THE POST. I opened the paper that morning, and found Calvin & Hobbes and the detestable Rubes but my strip was nowhere to be found.

Outraged, I stormed into the offices of THE POST (okay, I didn't, I stalked in neurotically and worried) and asked what had happened. They said someone had spilled a cup of coffee all over the original so they couldn't run it.

"Why didn't you call?" I asked.

"We don't have any contact information for you at all," they said.

Hmn. Oh. Well.

Anyway, I took the original back to my dorm, traced it and gave them another copy, which they ran on Thursday along with Thursday's comic. And that is why it says Take Two next to the date in the first panel.

Kids' Day At The Boat is a real song from the Bay Village-based band "Today's Special." I picked up their homemade cassette Fishing For Beer during the summer of 1986 (don't ask where, I have no idea) and actually caught someone performing it in The Front Room that fall.

The song details the various joys of getting dangerously intoxicated at Put-In-Bay.

Little America

1988-05-10T15:00:00.003-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Once upon a time, Ohio University was a regular stop on the tour circuit of any up-and-coming, or established mainstream band.

This all collapsed due to the Great Big Bam Boom Bust Of 1985. BBB may have been Hall & Oates most commercially successful album ... among those aged fourteen and under. It was not so memorable to the college crowd. When O.U. event organizers booked it - for the CONVO - they attracted a meager crowd consisting of the least popular people in Southeast Ohio.

As a result, my tenure at O.U. (which began, remember, in 1986) was devoid of any great concerts - with the exception of The Replacements (1987), The Church (1988), Elvis Costello (1989) and the lecture tour of the soon-to-be-dead Graham Chapman (1941-1989).

(I thought that was pretty clever.)

Getting up-and-coming talent for Springfest, the annual campus-wide campus music festival, was becoming increasingly difficult as no agents wanted to send anyone here. As has been mentioned previously, they had recently booked Paul Every Time You Go Away Young.

In 1987, the year before the Humbert Humberts' gig as a warm-up act for Springfest, the headlining act was Little America, whose website claims they cranked out two of the best AOR albums of the eighties.

You make the call.

To truly appreciate the joke in the last panel, let us return to the Front Room on January 28. I love a good call-back.

Take note of the musicians in the former incarnation of Humbert Squared. Apparently Roger let everyone go (this will be more obvious tomorrow and Thursday.)

Roger is wearing a Fishbone T-shirt.

UPDATE: Shut the f*ck up!! Look what I found!

May 17, 1987: HELLO, ATHENS! IT'S LITTLE AMERICA!

Springfest '88

1988-05-09T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

What is wrong with this picture?

Was I high when I inked this? The words looked muddled, tiny and poorly spaced. And the art gets worse from frame to frame; by the last panel they each have mitts for hands. Roger's arms look weirdly short and I have lost the nerve to connect lines. A shame, because it's classic BP dialogue.

"Shut up, Simon."

"I'm sorry - I wasn't listening."

Stosh and Bud (see the flyer from last Wednesday) are based on guys Scott met freshman year in Biddle Hall. I think one of them was named Chris.

Rosebud

1988-05-06T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Carol Lee's

1988-05-05T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Why I Hate Funky Winkerbean

I'm from Cleveland, and I used to really enjoy reading Funky Winkerbean because - like so many comic strips - it originated in Cleveland. And because it was usually funny, it was about high school, I liked the characters, it was a definite ritual every morning to read Funky and Doonesbury and tolerate most of the other ones.

Click on to enlarge.

Author Tom Batiuk took a "risk" and created a storyline about one of the teen characters getting pregnant, which turned out to be not much of a risk at all. Some thought it was inappropriate for the funny pages, but they'd been saying that about Doonebury for years. Most were impressed with how well he handled it, and so was I.

Well. The man got drunk with all of this praise and ever since, Funky has been the malady of the week. Sure, he's been sent up for a Pulitzer for his story lines about breast cancer ... but it seems necessary for him to give every character in his universe a life-altering monkey wrench.

Worst of all, these changes are abrupt and humorless. No, the comics do not always have to be funny, but (again) Trudeau can be poignant and hysterical, often at the same time. Batiuk is normally maudlin, and ponderously so. I remember when young Winky Winkerbean, or whatever his younger brother's name is, started smoking. It was like watching an animated cartoon one cell at a time.

He reaches into his pocket.

He pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

He takes out a cigarette.

He puts it in his mouth.

That's four panels - see you tomorrow. Tomorrow we see how a lighter works. It took a week for one drag.

So I know of what I speak when I sympathize with the irritation some had with this week's series. But it wasn't the norm, I was trying something new ... and I was only nineteen years-old. I didn't make a career out of it.

Today we are in Carol Lee's, the former 24-hour doughnut place that also sold some wicked foot-long chili & hot pepper dogs. It's been a bagel place for many years now. My wife reminds me this is where she had her first job.

Battle of the Bands

1988-05-04T15:00:00.000-04:00

Click on to enlarge.

Simon is outside the Cline Building on Court Street. I do not know if it is still owned by the university (or if it ever was) but the OUSoT once used the third floor as a classroom space. It was a large open space with a great hardwood floor and huge windows that let a lot of light in.

Why is Simon so hostile towards Roger and his band? I do not know. What I do know is that one POST reader was so disturbed by this image they had to write a letter protesting my fictional character tearing an innocent Battle of the Bands flyer from a post, thinking I - not Simon - had a problem with the Battle of the Bands - not the Humbert Humberts.