Clattertron

[dc]A[/dc]s I did a bit of Spring Cleaning the other weekend, I found a couple of issues of my alma tomater‘s underground newspaper. Inside the issues were two strips of my college era comic strip, Big Robot On Campus.

A Long Time Ago

I drew these around 2002-2003, and can’t remember the last time I even looked at them. The strip, such as it was, starred a cast of goofy robots in college. Yes, a college newspaper comic strip about characters in college.

It’s a cliché, sure, but it helps to know one’s audience—and being at a loss for other ideas at the time, I decided Why Not. I’m sure both readers enjoyed my lampooning college life over the course of two, maybe three, comic strips.

Name Game

In the first comic strip, our hero Broc (get it? Big Robot on Campus? Broc?) moves to his (well, its I guess) dorm: Arnold J. Rimmer Hall.

Yes. A Red Dwarf reference. Ground breaking material in the early 2000s, I’m sure. I remember fighting (well, talking several times) with the editor of the underground paper about the name ‘Arnold J. Rimmer Hall.’ There were concerns ‘Rimmer’ was a sex joke, but I said it was merely a reference to a cult British sci-fi comedy show and blah blah blah fine get out of my office.¹

Assemble Your Crew

The second strip, without dishing out boring details only two people will care about, drew inspiration from my friends, roommates, and general college shenanigans. We meet Broc’s supporting cast: Steve (with a look inspired by the Skutters on Red Dwarf), Cid (Ho ho! A Final Fantasy reference?!), and Popa a pop vending machine bot who ‘rigged himself to dispense beer.’²

You Can’t Do That in an Underground College Newspaper

I drew a third comic strip, but I’m at a loss if it ever saw print. I remember the editor took issue with my using a Mountain Dew logo for a joke (and referencing Pepsi Blue). Using the logo in such a way was not allowed the editor told me (we were a Pepsi campus).³

Here’s a scan of the original comic.

I recycled this joke† about three years later for my other short lived comic strip, Capitol Offense, which ran for about three minutes on LiveJournal.

Beginnings

I don’t even remember how I started doing the comic strip, other than I maybe went to meeting for the newspaper and asked if I could draw a comic. I wrote a few (Onion-like) humor articles too, here and there.

It is fun to look back at these comic strips and see how I’ve progressed. Maybe. These comics aren’t too different than my first Clattertron comic, but it is nice to see how much my drawing improved over these last few years. It makes me wish I kept drawing since 2003, and how much better I would be today (I only started drawing again in 2012).

My panelization is better today. I didn’t even have ‘gutters’ in these early comics. For the lettering, such as it was, I think I printed out the text and glued it on the original drawing. Then, I photocopied the whole thing (I think).

To use Broc’s quote from the first comic strip: “Ah, college.”

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¹ Which I think was just a shared cubicle space.

² Meaning, I guess, he just replaced the soda pop cans with beer cans? OK.

³ In hind sight, the paper wasn’t so ‘underground’ was it?

† The ‘someone donates a lot of money to get something named after them and brands/corporations abuse it’ joke.