Poor Glickman. I’d planned the character to have a more significant part in Misspent Youths but I don’t know what I would have done with him after #2. I’m sure I would have used him again, just ’cause, but his story in that issue seems so complete to me now that I don’t know where I could have used him next.
“Madman” Handel and Jay Coldfoot were both vaguely inspired by a couple of high school friends of mine. That is, they only vaguely resembled the original people at the time I did the comic and, now that they’ve lived in my head for 20 years, they’re more or less independent entities.
Jay Coldfoot appeared in the first and third issues of Misspent Youths. He and “Madman” Handel were intended to have only minor roles in the first ten issues of Misspent Youths. They were going to have more significant roles in the second ten issues when Moe and Detritus went back to high school.
When I posted the Misspent Youths proposal a couple of weeks ago it was with a little trepidation. I didn’t start to do work I’m comfortable with until about 1992. I’ve got sketchbooks from the same time period as Misspent Youths that I can’t see myself scanning, much less posting examples of those scans. The proposal got posted because it was Misspent and those characters still live in my head.
While it’s no longer difficult for me to look at the artwork that I did twenty years ago I can’t say I think it’s great stuff. Now I can see what I managed to do well at the same time that I identify all the things I did poorly. So, the best solution to posting old bad work? Include examples of what my work looks like now!
I’ve got a number of projects that I need to get back to but I’ve been away from the drawing board for a couple of months. I’d love it if I could just pick up a pencil and get back to work on a stalled project in the same place I left it but a little practice is necessary first. I need to get used to the tools again. My brain needs to remember how to move my hand. So first I did some sketches that I’m not posting today. Random stuff. Then I decided to redraw the character portraits from the proposal as another exercise.
So for the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting now and then versions of the characters from the Misspent Youths proposal. Today I’m featuring Brother Entropy, the intended main villain of the (intended) first ten issues of the series.
By 1990 I’d written and drawn 18 minicomics on my own and contributed to quite a few minicomic anthologies published by other folks and I was feeling deluded enough to think I was ready to do a “real” comic. In my case a “real” comic was something printed rather than photocopied, that had a color cover and that would get distributed in comic book stores. I had two ways of going about it – I could self-publish (something quite a few artists were doing at the time) or I could find a publisher. I figured I’d see if I could find a publisher first and go the self publishing route if that didn’t work out.
I’d done eight issues of The Highly Unlikely Adventures of Moe and Detritus minicomic and had gotten fond of the characters. So I put together a proposal – a cover, two pages of a cast of characters, 4 pages of sample story and a back cover. I found that proposal recently while sorting boxes so I’m presenting it here.
Lord, that lettering is tiny. If you click on the above images you can see larger versions but the writing will still be almost illegible. And those images have been enlarged from the original proposal.
I don’t remember how many publishers I sent the proposal to. I know I sent one to Piranha Press, DC Comic’s alternative comics imprint. I’m sure I’ve got the rejection letter from Piranha somewhere in my files. It was a personal note suggesting that I try for something a bit less ambitious than a 30 issue limited series.
If I sent the proposal to anyone other than Brave New Words I no longer remember who they were. I definitely didn’t get any other replies. BNW picked up the series and we managed a run of five issues in a little over a year before we mutually agreed to cancel it. The four pages of sample story saw print as the first four pages in the first issue of Misspent Youths.
Here’s the second issue of The Highly Unlikely Adventures of Moe and Detritus. I also stole this one from my friend’s Facebook gallery. And many thanks to him for posting these pages so I could!
This issue introduces Buffy Crawfield, who would go to have a reoccurring role in Misspent Youths and Chickenhead, who would have a reappear in later issues of Moe and Detritus. The back cover ad is for an album by Ruptured Internal Organs, a band that Moe opens for in the first issue of Misspent Youths. Not that I knew any of this when I drew this story. I was making it up as I went along. 
Way back in 1988 I drew and published (via a copy machine at this new 24 hour copy chain called Kinkos) the first issue of The Highly Unlikely Adventures of Moe and Detritus. I really had no idea what I’d do with the characters and I certainly didn’t plan on making The Pile one of the regular case. But there you go.
And here you go. A friend of mine recently posted these scans online at his Facebook account. Now I’ve swiped them and sharing them with the rest of you.
If you have a hard time reading the lettering just click on the page for a larger image. 
This minicomic was 8 pages plus a cardstock cover. If you count you can see that there are only 11 pages here. I used the back cover to advertise Cheap Thrills, my first minicomic series. My friend didn’t include a scan of that so it’s not included here either. You’re not missing much.
And so we reach the back cover of the calendar and the last post in this series. This was also the last calendar I managed to do until 2003.
Detritus, Moe and K.Z. visit with faeries and an angel. As I understand it faeries were angels originally. They were the ones who thought Lucifer’s revolt was nothing to be concerned about and so neither joined it nor fought it. So while they fell with Satan’s forces their descent stopped at the Earth. Of course, that’s a christian explanation for faeries. I can’t remember what the original pagan explanations were. Or if they had them.
Everybody needs a place to get away from it all and relax. If that place smells like a sewer then you’re not likely to get a lot of unwanted visitors. If that place is a sewer you’ll likely have even fewer.
