Humble Pie

on returning to a first love …

This particular piece came to me in a flash in the very early morning. It was pretty much fully written other than a minor edit on the punch line that my wife helped me with, and all I needed to do was draw it.

That doesn’t happen very often.

I had actually conceived these characters within the humorous gag strip style context, but this is the first Lestrygonians full page gag comic that I’ve done in probably 25 years.

In all honesty, I have to say that my opportunities to imbibe in humble pie are more numerous than I would like to admit. Aside from hopefully being a funny comic, it’s also a message to myself to grab a fork and dig in.

The characters, Jake the Armless Barber and Herk Tortoise, had started off in a comic strip that I did for the in the school magazine when I went to the School of Visual Arts.

It was during that time that I began checking out all kinds of different stuff – old style stuff. Little Nemo in Slumberland and Krazy Kat were big for me. While my classmates were mastering comic books, illustration and fine painting, I thought it would be a blast to do big gag pages like the ones in the first half of the 20th century or so.

Nevermind the second half of the 20th century as comics gradually shrank down to the size of postage stamps.

Postage stamps — are those still around?

I was in Walt Simonson’s class with luminaries like Farel Dalrylmple who would go on to publish an expansive oeuvre of whacked out graphic novel stories; whereas I, on the other hand did several of these full-page, large format, non-sequential gag comic pages eventually prompting Simonson to (pretty gracefully) kick me out of his class.

I eventually took a stab at the traditional newspaper strip (unsuccessfully) and eventually, in the interest of making a living, I laid down that entire enterprise.

I thought that I would never return to it.

But a few years back, after some soul searching and an open vision or two, the characters resurrected themselves, and I began a comic book series with them — again, thinking in terms of what the kids are into these days.

But then, literally, one day I woke up to this “pre-written” gag page, and in obedience to the inspiration, I executed it.

I think I’m going to release this and others in the same vein as 11” x 14” prints. I’ve got a few others in the hopper and will be releasing them as they come. It’s nice having something to share that’s less robust than an entire comic book.

Thanks so much for checking this out and for your support. More to come.