Backpage Backtalk

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  • June 5, 2007
Okay, I’m taking it really far back with this one. As I’ve been going through my old stuff (hence that sicko Tiny Toons post,) I’ve also discovered my high school newspaper comics! Yes, I was a high school newspaper nerd. It began innocently enough– I just wanted an outlet for publishing my work. But by senior year, I was Editor of the thing and was seriously thinking about a career in Journalism! Weird huh? And now I’m a pornographer.
Anyhow, the name of the comic was “Backpage Backtalk” and it appeared on the backpage of the paper every 2 weeks. The theme was basically high school– but more spcifically, my high school. I went to a snooty private school (scholarship) so we didn’t really have freedom of speech. In fact, I had to approve all of my comics with the school administration before they went to print. I was censored quite a few times. Maybe that’s why my stuff is so over-the-top now…

So I’ve picked my 10 favorite strips for you guys to read. Since some of them are really specific to my high school, I’ll clarify some of the jokes for ya.

On this next one, the “caf-card” was what we used to get food at the cafeteria. I coined that term, btw.

This next one was a bit of a hit, so I kinda repeated the same joke a few months later.

And with this next one– the story was, one day, the ceiling caved in due to the weight of some raccoons that had nested there. It was a temporary building, and I think the raccoon fiasco was what got the administration really on-the-ball about building the permanent space. Sadly, I graduated before it was finished. But raccoon day will go down in history as the highlight of my high school career. Those fuckers are huge!

5 Comments

  • dreamerboy6 says:

    Omg, that was beyond awesome! XD What a cool opportunity to see your early work like that, plus your sense of humor! My best friend is a teacher, so he got a kick out of it too. 🙂 I love how even in your early work your characters were all so distinct and uniquely identifiable. You rule!

  • Kitt Mouri says:

    *giggles* Very humorous and surprisingly sophisticated for high school work! WOW! But, then, you’ve always been very mature ever since I’ve known you ^_^ Anyhoo, niceness! ^.^

  • Manny says:

    Hey JC!

    I could imagine you stalking the change rooms after gym class trying to get a scoop on who’s doing who in the locker rooms!

    It’s so cool that you kept all your early works. I wish I knew where the majority of my own are, I think my Mum still has them. I used to draw Grace Jones, KISS, Divine and Superman all the time, but that’s all they were just drawings, I never put a dialouge to them unless I was drawing a picture of my music teacher picking his nose or something.

    Believe it or not when I was younger I always wanted to be a cartoonist. This came after watching all the Hanna Barbera cartoons on t.v as a kid, but I never got the encourgement when I needed it and was too scared to talk about it at school because I would get laughed at for wanting to do somehting that my teachers would call “silly” and my parents didn’t really understand what I meant or how to go about encouraging me to be a cartoonist as I am first generation Australian in my family and they were raised in the old school kind of way.

    But I always love seeing other peoples work like this and how they have progressed over the years, in a way I really envy people like yourself and Patrick amongst others for having the guts to follow through. As for me I eneded up in the music industry tending to the likes of people who I won’t mention on here for confidentiality reasons. But still there is that part of me that wishes he could be 7 years old again knowing what I know now and being a cartoonist. Maybe it’s not too late for someone who is almost pushing 40 years of age to take up a childhood dream, I think they call it a mid life crisis these days!

    Big Hugz!

    Manny
    xxxx

  • Patrick says:

    Hey JC…

    These are fantastic… and so damn clever! It’s so much fun to see some of your earlier work! You were damn good back then too! :oD Thanks so much for sharing these, my friend. It’s always really cool to see what my fave artists have done prior to their current work!

    Hugz + Kisses,
    Patrick XOXOX

  • JC says:

    Hey Dreamerboy. Thanks for the compliment. Yeah, having distinct characters was always a must for me. I remember during that period, I was really struggling to find a style . I had my Peanuts style, my Tiny Toons style, my anime style, and my Marvel style was just developing. So what I did was just designed characters throwing in elements from each of those influences. Kids were always freaked that I’d give someone dot eyes when I was totally capable of drawing beautiful super-heroine eyes. I was all about mixin’ it up.

    LOL– Thanks, Kitt. Yeah, my stuff was a little too mature for the paper sometimes. Once there was this big to-do when I put the word “putz” in one of my comics. We had to print an apology. I didn’t know putz was “dick” in Yiddish.

    Hey Manny. Dude, you’ve gotta treat us to some drawings of Grace, sometime! That’s a shame how you were discouraged from cartooning as a kid. Well, it’s never too late to pick it back up. There are plenty of people in the biz that started “late” so to speak.

    I can honestly say that art (even cartooning) was always nurtured by my family and elders. In fact, maybe too much. Constantly people would see my sketchbooks and say things like, “OOH, YOU’RE GONNA TAKE OVER DISNEY!” or “WOW, YOU’RE GONNA BE RICH SOMEDAY!”

    Of course, I always welcomed complimentss, but once I came to the realization that artists aren’t necessarily rich, I sort-of resented all the positive feedback I got as a kid becasue it was almost misleading. I was under the impression that all I had to do was draw, and people would throw money at me– haha.

    Hey Patrick! You’re welcome! I used to be scared of showing my old work because it doesn’t compare to what I can do now. But hey, I thought it was good back then, didn’t I? lol! Plus, I’m such a pack-rat when it comes to my art. Hell, if I still had the charicatures of kids in my kindergarten class I used to draw, I’d totally be posting them– haha. Thanks for commenting.

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