Super Puppy - Front Cover (Patreon)

I want to tell you a story about little Trick when he was but a wee lad.

This was fifth or perhaps sixth grade.  I was 9, 10 or perhaps 11 years old.  My best friend (Michael) at the time was heavy into Marvel comics, and despite his best efforts to get me interested in them, I was far, far more interested in Legos, Sonic, Earthworm Jim and the other video games available on my Sega Genesis.

Still, as I spent most days in class doodling over my assignments anyway, I started to bring reams of blank paper with me to school, (probably a suggestion from my mother who was tired of hearing angry complaints from my teachers).  Now equipped with blank sheets I could just draw on all day long without ruining my schoolwork, it was Michael, I think, who gave me the idea to start my own superhero comic.

I drew animal people because I grew up in a house with pets, and I loved them dearly.  Furthermore many of the cartoons I loved as a child prominently featured anthropomorphized animals.  Shows like Danger Mouse, Road Rovers and Swat Katz.  My art style was adapted and borrowed largely from a show on public access television for our region called It's Curtoon Time! ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8363782/ ) starring Curt Visca, someone whom my mom claims was the principal of my elementary school, (though I don't think that was true when I was there -- my principal was a lady who I met a few times in her office.)

The year and date on this cover page is actually an approximation.  I don't honestly remember if I started these in 1993-94 or 1994-95.  Our school years began in September and continued until June, and I don't think I changed classrooms between 5th grade and 6th grade, only teachers, so much of my time spent there in the classroom where I remember drawing this cover has blended together in memory.  I didn't have the foresight as a child to date these comics, so I went and added dates to them later when I was in high school.  January 15th is also just a guess.  Perhaps the publisher mark, hidden under the sticker there, might be another clue.  Melville Comics, named after a pet rolly-poly I had that was probably named for a similar creature featured in a popular show at the time.  Perhaps Doug?  Perhaps Rugrats?  I can't remember.  Melville didn't live very long.  I also think the publisher mark might have been added later.

What's utterly fascinating to me about Super Puppy is that I kept drawing these comics up through the end of my college days.  This had just become The Thing that I did while sitting in class or waiting for the bell.  They became something of a personal journal to me, if told somewhat cryptically through the silly and often hard-to-follow misadventures of a radioactive canine and his feline sidekick.  There's over 120 issues of Super Puppy, which I kept and protected for almost two decades as if they were the most valuable thing I owned.  At some point when I discovered the paper turning yellow on the oldest issues and the corners bending I had the prudence to obtain a bunch of individual plastic comic book protectors and store each one carefully in a comic sorting bin I bought just for them.

Fast forward to 2018.  I'm now 34, and I'm starting a brand new webcomic.  It feels like something of a homecoming to me.  It almost feels like all my years in retail and in the Video Games Industry were wasted dicking around (they weren't, it just feels that way) when really the thing I should have been doing all along was the thing I started doing in the first place.

When I moved out of my parents' house, I didn't take Super Puppy with me.  It was a big heavy box and I simply didn't have the room for it or a practical reason to have it again in a small apartment where space was limited.  Thankfully, my parents kept it in their garage all these years, and when I realized I was going to be drawing comics again, I asked them to send it to me.  It arrived just today.

I'm... not yet sure what I'm going to do with it.  Seeing it again, it is just about as terrible as I remember it being: "How Spot and Fuzzy Got to be Super heros" Not to mention the oh-so clever pun there, "Meteor Right!" in the... second title?  Subtitle?  I'm not really even sure.  But... Super Puppy has a lot of deep personal meaning for me, and it really kind of maps my whole life and growth as a person and development as a writer and artist.

As terrible as it may be... I think I might want to scan it and share it online.