"Running Moose": My First Weight-Gain Comic (Patreon)

In the past, I’ve mused on the great lengths I went through to indulge my prurient interests as a kid.  With no internet and a Bible Belt residence, there was little to satisfy the burgeoning urges of this adolescent FA and weight-gain enthusiast.   As a result, I had to get creative with made-up stories, crude sketches, and cut-and-paste collages from diet ads.  (I shared a few of my creations here www.patreon.com/posts/my-stash-30858442 and Riptoryx shared one of his early comic efforts here www.patreon.com/posts/awkward-early-of-42001435.

These were lonely endeavors.  They say nobody creates in a vacuum, but my BBW and weight-gain imaginings from the 1980s were pretty darn close.  (I consider it a triumph of nature over nurture that my size-centric proclivities developed during such fat-phobic times.)  Although I was able to satisfy myself, so to speak, it would have been nice to share that part of the coming-of-age experience as readily as the jocular jocks snapping towels in the locker room and lusting over cheerleaders.

I didn't share my deviant desires with anyone.  Not even my best friend.   If I thought I was a weirdo, what would he think?  It didn’t help that--despite sharing the same taste in toys, cartoons, music, and movies—the only way our pubescent passions could have been more divergent was had one of us been gay.  My buddy’s penchant for the fairer sex ran so athletic and boyish (he dated a ballet dancer throughout High School and ultimately married a competitive distance runner) in my adolescent eyes he may as well have been.

To make matters worse, my friend--who on the surface was the most congenial and polite guy you could ever meet—was a fat-shamer.  I’d like to say I called him out for his intolerance, but as an 80s kid in a rural red state where the N-word was still bandied about, fat-shaming seemed as natural as cow-tipping.  Combine that with the compulsions of my kink, and I routinely set him up with low-hanging fleshy fruit to pick-on:

ME: “It looks like Amanda’s packed on a few.”

HIM: “Yeah, she’s becoming a real porker.”

ME: “What do you think of that new girl in History class?”

HIM: “She’s so fat she blocks my view of the projector.”

I’m paraphrasing, of course, but you get my point.  There’s a thin line between love and hate, and our fat-shaming conversations simultaneously fanned my flames of fat-admiration while providing cover for my perverse proclivities.

This unique set of circumstances culminated with a collaboration that predates my weight-gain work with Magmaman and Riptoryx by 35 years.  When we weren’t playing war (with either GI Joe figures or plastic guns), blowing things up with firecrackers, or doing other 80s era activities that would make most people cringe today, my buddy and I would occasionally draw.  (Usually, pictures of war and things blowing up, but I digress.)   Although we drew in the same room, often at the same table, we never collaborated on a comic before.  Ironically, this newfound spirit of brotherly cooperation was fostered by a callous comment my friend made as a fat girl rumbled past us in a supermarket:

“Running moose is on the loose!”

I know, we sucked.  I’m still embarrassed as I type it, three and a half decades later.  I don’t think he said it loud enough for the girl to hear, but that doesn’t really matter.  (Hopefully, I’ve done enough good as an adult to offset the stupid, insensitive, ignorant, offensive, and hurtful things I did as a kid.  Hopefully, we all have.)

Anyway, it became a running joke the rest of the day.  I remember our conversation going something like this:

ME: “Running moose is on the loose.  Ha!  Ha!  That sounds like a tag-line for a superhero.”

HIM: “It does!  Ha! Ha!  But what if she was really a villain out for revenge on people who made fun of her?”

ME: (Hiding the bulge in my Bugle Boy jeans) “Her superpower could be making people fat!”

The results of this fit of horndog inspiration are below.  The comic documents the vengeful Janet Muse (AKA, "Running Moose") as she exacts revenge on the folks who wronged her in school.  We even incorporated a PI character from another comic I created (we did crossovers before Marvel!) to serve as the "good" guy, despite his also being a school hood jerk.  As I recall, the seven or so pages were completed over a two-day period during the summer of 1986 before a game of Nintendo, or football, or dinner, or any number of things diverted our puny thirteen-year-old attention spans.  My friend was the better and faster artist, so he did the bulk of the work (no pun intended).  It's ironic that the fat-phobe drew Janet and her plumped-up victims, but I suspect the decision was practical.  Had I been tasked with drawing the fattened hotties the going would have been even slower than usual!

In retrospect, there are all sorts of real-life parables I can draw between the comic and our lives, such as they were, back then.  And there are several clues to my latent sexual feelings.  The hero's line about the titular villain ("She had a pretty face") being an obvious one.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane.  I may occasionally post more of my crude childhood content from time-to-time.  It's embarrassing, but it's useful to occasionally reflect on our journeys to better understand where we ended up!

Best--

Maverick