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