Super Puppy - Page 1 (Patreon)

So, this comic opens with a scene where the nefarious Dog Catcher (It says DC on his hat, get it?  That's how you know he's the Dog Catcher.  Because it says DC.  There's literally no other way to know.) enacts his nefarious plan of... maybe... applying for a job?  And then murdering the person who reviewed his resume and was about to offer him a position?  I'm not sure I was ever quite clear on what the application was for, and this plot never actually goes anywhere.  I think I was just trying to show off how evil he was.  I'm not sure how that "gun" functions, or how it fit in his pocket.  Or why it shoots quite so many very tiny bullets.

Truth told, I'd forgotten about this character entirely until I opened this comic again.  It took me a really long time to remember what the DC stood for as well.  That might give you a hint as to how important he was to the series.  I think he appears once or twice more in the next 120 issues before I just killed him off in my later effort to tie up a lifetime of plot holes and loose story threads.

That's a shadow over his face caused by his hat, by the way.  He was supposed to be scary and mysterious, so mean eyes peering from shadowy blackness was about all I could come up with.  I was 9, so I had no idea how to draw that properly -- nor did I realize that such a depiction could be misinterpreted as racist.  These are also some of the only examples of humans I've drawn in my entire life.

Early on, my friend Michael was a huge influence on Super Puppy.   I didn't really know much about comics or what to do with them, so Michael was a constant source of ideas and inspiration.  He had ideas for silly villians that were comical and jokey, like "The Dog Catcher" and "The Hand That Feeds You," but beyond providing those initial concepts, the story took a darker tone in my hands.  My mother loves to tell the story about how my sixth grade teacher expressed concerns over the fact that I had a "dark side," in response to my turning in a short story I wrote in class that features a person dying horribly in a swamp full of monstrous leeches.  I was really proud of that story, actually.  My teacher graded it highly despite the fact that it apparently gave her nightmares about me.  In my defense, I was an avid reader in my youth, and I consumed a fair number of adult and horror novels, with Stephen King, Clive Cussler, Michael Crighton, and RL Stine being among my favorite authors at the time.  Suffice to say, associating fiction writing and death seemed rather normal to me.