The boss did suggest/request minor changes to the script here and there but, for the most part, he was happy with the results. The main reason that the comic never got published was lack of time and changing attentions. I didn’t have a lot of time to draw at work with my other duties so work on the final art was slow to start and slower to progress. My boss isn’t good at working long form projects. Anything that can’t be pulled together in a few meetings or work sessions will get set aside for something more interesting. The more time that passed without concrete results the more his attention turned to marketing projects that could be produced and distributed quickly.

I’m okay with that. I prefer to use my art skills outside my day job.

I ended up writing the comic. The boss originally hired a writer (one of our clients) to script the story but her first draft was more absurdist and comedic than he expected. He was apparently looking for something more “realistic”. With superheroes.

I think there’s an inherent goofiness to superheroes. If they’re tackling “real” problems they lose a lot of their magic. Superheroes require super problems to justify their existence. The boss and I talked about it and, with guidelines, he told me to come up with a story. I think I probably tooks some ideas from the writer’s script (I don’t remember now) but I added plenty of my own and made things even more absurd. The image posted this morning is the first page of the script. I sketched the whole thing out so the boss could get an idea of what the final product might look like.

I have even less idea what this character’s story is than I did the monkey. If we’d needed a villain for a later story he probably would have been some representative of waste and sloppiness. Mostly I was just filling up another page. Dr. Bland and D.U.L.L. were going to be our heroes first adversaries.

However terrific your hero’s arch foe may be, he’s going to need other adversaries to avoid becoming dull. Not that I had much of an idea of other foes besides Dr. Bland. I wasn’t sure we’d actually get the first issue finished, let alone a second. And at this point we hadn’t actually figured out the storyline for our little comic. But crazed monkeys are fun to draw.

Since we were doing a superhero comic we needed some sort of supervillain. Our customers were (and still are) designers and other creative types and they primarily use Macs. Part of my experience in my oh-so-brief career as a designer was being frustrated trying to convince a client to go with a design that I thought was new and brilliant over the ordinary style they preferred. Obviously there was a conspiracy out there dedicated to crush new and brilliant designwork. Perhaps that conspiracy was also working with the computer industry to force users to stick to poorly designed and heavily restricted computer systems? Who could be behind such a conspiracy?

Obviously – DOCTOR BLAND and the AGENTS of D.U.L.L.!!!!!

I never did get around to figuring out what D.U.L.L. might be an acronym for. Any suggestions?

After I’d finished the main staff (if I remember correctly, Mrs. Boss didn’t want to be cartooned) I threw in a sketch of the boss’s three year old daughter. She’s a sweet little girl, really.

My job was (and is) to be responsive to clients. Our current website says:

David is our first line of contact for clients new and old. He’s the voice of reassurance when clients need help, and he’s the glue that keeps our team together. There are fast paced moments when he’s answering three calls at once, and fielding emails. And there are recuperative Zen moments, where David can slow down and catch up on paperwork, or observe traffic on Aurora through the office windows. Which David says is kind of like watching fast, noisy goldfish.

That’s mostly accurate. The bottle in my hand isn’t beer. There used to be a series of locally brewed energy drinks that I was addicted to. Used to be. The company discontinued them last year and now concentrates on caffeinated chocolates.

And here is a cartoon of what I looked like in 2002. I hadn’t planned to cartoon myself but the boss thought I should be part of the comic.

When creating superhero alter egos for KP and the Boss I mostly just designed a costume that I thought would be fun to draw. Their actual personalities or possible superpowers didn’t affect the design. By the time I drew EW’s alter ego I’d taken the time to think about what a techie superhero might look like. The design is no more real world oriented than the other two but he does look like someone you might ask to repair your server instead of punching it into next week.

EW had been with the company a few months longer than I had. He was a challenge to cartoon in part because he wasn’t funny looking. That would imply that the other guys were funny looking.

Hmmm. Maybe after I wake up some more I’ll try and articulate my point.