LESSON 4: Colossal Team-Up

The mid nineties found me out of Cleveland and moving down to North Carolina. I was still working on Dr. Tobor and began to spread them around Asheville(which amounted to about 3 places). Which lead me to contribute to the free music paper Gank(see October 3, 11, and 23 for examples), for it's entire run. I also applied for the Xeric Foundation, which was a grant that helped fledgling comic book writer/artists self-publish their books. I got all I needed together and sent it out, waited and Dr. Tobor never did make it to the Diamond Distribution Catalog but I pressed on and started the book that I continue to work on today.

The origins of 80 Proof Comix Presents Tasty Treats is really clouded in mystery, as I cannot remember what made me start this one up, or use Jake Ace as the first story. Another puzzler was how Jake Ace went from cranberry juice and chewing gum(see Nov. 3) to whiskey in a flask and cigarettes(see Next Week). This version of Tasty Treats is one story per issue with the idea of rotating the characters each issue, but as it turned out you kind of stick with what's the funniest(at least to me) and the crossing guard crew had the best characters. Except for Issue 4(a failed experiment), I've enjoyed this run and have more or less been able to put out a book a year and will be posting them here as time goes on, and now that I've started this blog thing it maybe nice to start something new in the vein of the Dr. Tobor one sheets.


Tasty Treats #1 1997 #2 1998


Tasty Treats #3 1999-2000 #4 2001


Tasty Treats Back cover #4 #5 2002


Tasty Treats #6 2004


Tasty Treats #7 2005-2006

This ones a little short but I figure I'll write a little something as each issue is posted, I hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane, look for more doodles, some paintings, and finally some more comix(you gotta be tired at looking at all these covers). Enjoy Glenn

Lesson 3: Drinkin' and Drawin'

When last we met I was trying to figure out what was going on between 1993-95, well it looks like Dr. Tobor, and the birth of 80 Proof Comix. While Tasty Treats was a stab at some sort of professionalism, Dr. Tobor was born of doodles from the classroom and drunken nights of drawing in my sketchbook which usually had some sort of drunken rant(these type of drunken sketchbook drawings later went on to celebrating the New Year and usually included my album of the year). Now if I remember correctly(which I probably don't as I couldn't remember what I was doing between 93-95), a lot of the comics at the time were autobiographical type books. To me it seemed the Canadians knew how to do it best, they made them funny, thought provoking, and kept the artwork simple but always complimenting the story. But as with anything, for every good one there was at least two or three that came across as whiny-woo as me plus look at the crazy angle I can draw from headaches that they were. I don't need a panel that's looking up your nostril while you complain how crappy your life is because you got the wrong cup of coffee. Anyways the point being is that these books weren't fun, so in a way I knew that what ever I did next my goal was to make it fun which lead to 80 Proof Comix.


Sketchbook drawing 1993




80 Proof Comix 1








































Various Issues
Fliers
Dr. Tobor Collection

80 Proof Comix was a free Bi-monthly-one sheet-with pin-up-created in a sober/drunk mode-which lead to robots-killer robots-blood-some bad lettering-to be continued I was having fun and unlike Tasty Treats and my paintings it was immediate. If I didn't use the name 80 Proof Comix it probably would have been called "One Take Comics" cause that was how it was done, Pen to Paper-no pencil and drawn drunk. This lasted until Issue 7 where pencil started hitting paper, which was still fine as yet again whatever I put down first, stayed that way(unless it was god-awful). Plus I was still having fun with the covers and the pin-ups. The free issues were placed all over Cleveland as well sent out to Quimbys, and See Hear, this lead to receiving some fine comics from Tom Eaton(see link), and Jake Kelly and Stephe Kuchna's Summer Zine. I did a collection for the first six issues, finished the first story arc after I had moved to North Carolina and applied for a Xeric Grant(didn't happen), which leads right into Lesson 4: Skyland

While going through all this stuff I found the second Dr. Tobor story arc all penciled out...HHMMMM

Intermission-We now bring you..uh..uhm..ahh....A Painting..Lesson will be back next week

"Hey Rocky watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat" 70x84"