Commission WIP: MERV GRIFFIN! M&C Page Recreation (Patreon)

Plus, the title WIP, for the lettering wonks. 

(The original comic's title is pretty iffy, so I wanted something more substantial-looking as well as more attractive. Because it has to fit in a fairly narrow space and I want it to fit cleanly, I decided to take it off the page and rough it out on graph paper. I'll put it on the lite pad and trace it back onto the commission board and tweak it a little further as I re-draw it. This method also helps me place it cleanly. If I did it straight on the board I'd likely end up with a lot of erasing/penciling and risk some pencil groove lines getting etched in the damned paper. Which isn't too awful for print or a black and white commission (which this is, I ain't coloring no full page comic unless I'm getting a car or a Kirby page in trade). But with a color commission that could cause a headache if the markers manage to highlight the etched lines up.)

It amazes me to this day how well-received the original comic was, and how relatively popular it still is. Also, how poor the artwork was for the original! Revisiting it again (I did a recreation of the page some years back, with "Merv Griffin!" being changed to the name of the customer) was (and is) a cringeworthy experience. Some of the lines don't connect, which makes my OCD cause my skin to crawl just thinking about. It's a mess, a scratchy, ungoverned mess. But it worked for me at the time and worked for a lot of the readers. If I remember correctly, I knocked this page out in a single sitting to fill out the first issue. Most of Milk & Cheese #1 was made up of comics that were drawn for anthologies that folded before publication. That's where the comic came from, half of it was sitting around, a few pages were done for fanzines, and I had to do a few new pages. Merv Griffin was tossed off before sending the art to SLG to publish. I can't tell you where the idea came from, it's just a Milk & Cheese thing that happened. I knew it was super goddamned ridiculous when I drew it, which is why I labeled it "...their greatest strip ever!" in the title. Maybe so, maybe no, but it sums up the comic pretty well. 

Anyway, I'm glad people liked the original, but the recreations look a hell of a lot better. I forget who bought the art for the page, but it's been gone for some time. I still can't believe most of my career stems from this comic. Not complaining, just not comprehending. 

My babies. My horrible, mean wonderful little babies.