Finally, here’s Detritus. Over the years I’ve imagined different names for him but none of them have stuck yet. Perhaps, if I ever do another series with him as a character, I’ll find one that does.
It felt good to draw the gang again. It’s always fun to hang out with old friends.
My first sketch of Moe (it’s somewhere in one of my late ’80s sketchbooks) established his appearance pretty clearly. The glasses, the dreads and the overcoat. Out of all the Misspent Youths characters he’s the one my hands know how to draw without a lot of warm up. I know my anatomy better now than when I first drew him but otherwise sketching him is like playing an old familiar song. Assuming I could sing or play an instrument 🙂
Lili Veracruz got the other Misspent Youths fan letter. I did get more than two but I only remember the one for K.Z. and the one I got about Lili. The writer wanted me to show that Lili was a fascist and (if I remember correctly) a not good person. He said that as I portrayed her in the first issue she was just a fanboy fantasy.
Hmmm.
Okay.
Given that the same issue featured a sewer monster, a couple of casual hookups in a crowded club and ended in a shoot-out I think the whole thing was a bit of a fantasy. So I don’t quite understand the complaint.
Trouble Coyote makes her first appearance in the fourth issue of Misspent Youths. The version of Trouble on the left was drawn while I was still working on the first issue. I’d only vaguely plotted that fourth issue so I really didn’t know what she’d be like yet. I don’t think the girl on the left would have survived as well as Trouble eventually did.
I have managed to go for over twenty years without really letting myself imagine what The Pile must smell like.
Abbie Guerrecash. Nah. She’s not who you think she is. If I were going to swipe a comic strip character and let her loose in my not at all family friendly comic I’m sure I’d be smart enough not to give her such an obvious pseudonym.
Buffy made her first appearance in The Highly Unlikely Adventures of Moe and Detritus #2 minicomic. She captured Detritus’s heart and moved into my brain and they’ve been fighting and getting back together up there ever since. And before you ask, that other Buffy didn’t appear in her movie until 1992.
I have a tendency to invent characters just intending to use them for a specific purpose in one, maybe two stories, and then they move into my head and never leave. I don’t remember having any special plans for Cherice. I’d already written the first issue of Misspent Youths when I started putting together the proposal. Cherice was featured in an important scene so I included her in the character list but I really didn’t know what I’d do with her after that. But, like the adventurous chick she is, she just kept showing up.
I didn’t get a lot of fan mail for Misspent Youths but the character of K.Z. O’Neil was the subject of one of my favorite letters. The letter’s writer basically said that he thought K.Z. was hot. I felt pretty flattered that my crude art had that much impact on a reader.
Sallie Browne appeared briefly in the first issue of Misspent Youths. If I had a specific plan for her character I’ve forgotten it now. But look at her! Can you imagine she would have just stayed on the sidelines?
