Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Big Suburban Fire Comics

During the summer of 1985 almost every aspiring cartoonist on the planet was dreaming of being the next Gary Larson, resulting in hordes of vastly inferior Far Side knock-offs spewing from the syndicate spigots. One can only wonder just how many never even made it past the editorial slush pile.
I wish I could claim that I was immune to this covetous rush, but I was not. I put together at least three separate takes on the single-panel gag cartoon, one being Big Suburban Fire Comics, a disparate, fleeting enterprise that culminated with a scant eight samples, none of which ever left my hands. Perhaps even I, locked in my thoroughly non-commercial mindset, saw how far removed this overly cerebral approach was from what the editors of American dailies were looking for. Nevertheless, I opted to adopt the Big Suburban Fire moniker and spent the next year creating many multiple-panel cartoons signed as such. I will be presenting many of these in posts to come. For now, I offer up the never-before-seen original octet, featuring two notably different drawing styles, not to mention some frightening misspellings.