Posts Tagged ‘Evil Beard’

109 results.

Evil Beard

by Justin on June 8, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Posted In: Characters

beard Evil Beard was introduced in the first strip, and has stuck around to become one of the most commonly used characters. The basic idea behind him was to create a character much like Professor Hobo, but with a definite mean streak.

Evil Beard teaches creative writing and is the head of the Department of English. In his creative writing classes he stresses that nothing his students’ write is good enough for publication, due mostly to the fact that he has never had one of his books published. He often finds himself torn between the good nature of Professor Hobo, and the evil of Dr. Klownus and Mr. Mittens.

Premiere
Ad Initium

Cartoon appearances

  • The Story of O
  • Bada Bing!
  • The King and Us
  • Striking Out
  • Goat Me

└ Tags:
  Comment

The Fall of Racer One

by Justin on June 5, 2008 at 12:13 am
The Fall of Racer One

No other strip has sat in our notebook longer than the Racer One strip. It was one of the first strips I ever wrote, but it was far from football season when it was written. So we simply tucked it aside and waited for a better time to run it. It has probably gone down so far as our most successful strip among students. We’re not sure what that says about school pride or animal rights.

The little boy and mother featured in the fourth panel are also the same ones from this strip from the previous semester. This kid gets a lot of punch lines for a rarely recurring character.

└ Tags: , , , , ,
  Comment

Related Comics ¬

9/11

by Justin on June 4, 2008 at 12:13 am
9/11

After the previous strip, we were happy to get no complaints over this strip. We received many positive comments after its printing and happened to be the one we spent the most time revising. We knew we had a difficult task about how to do a comic that was both respectful, but made a point. We probably did a good ten revisions before we settled with this version.

Not sure how often it is missed, but the dorm buildings cast shadows of the World Trade Center buildings. We worried that would not be obvious enough.

└ Tags: , ,
1 Comment

Related Comics ¬

Cerberus

by Justin on June 2, 2008 at 12:14 am
Cerberus

I think we had some momentary debate whether or not to leave in the “bitches” line. After the previous week got censored, we assumed that word, even if used correctly in context, would also get us a call from the newspaper office. Happily we were wrong, and this strip really established a push for President Czar as a more major character.

This was the first time President Czar had been called by name in the comic strip. Also, the previous week we got in trouble for setting one building on campus on fire, so this week we set the entire campus beyond the gates on fire.

└ Tags: , , , ,
  Comment

Related Comics ¬

The Selecting Hat

by Justin on May 26, 2008 at 12:21 am
The Selecting Hat

Of all the original strips, this was by far the biggest headache of them all. I am not sure if any of the humor comes off anymore, because we rewrote the thing 20 or more times. We really shot too big with it, wanting far too many characters and far too much going on. Add in the fact that we were introducing three whole new characters and it was just a mess.

In the second panel at the bottom left you may notice a character wearing a mask. No, he is not someone random or a bad drawing of the blind professor, as some have guessed. He was actually a character named, creatively, The Masked Professor. He was slated to become a recurring character, but we simply ran out of time and couldn’t fit him any of the remaining strips that year.

└ Tags: , , , , , , ,
  Comment

Related Comics ¬

Spring Breaking

by Justin on May 25, 2008 at 12:22 am
Spring Breaking

We wanted to do a strip for Spring Break, and several ideas floated around about what to do. We decided we’d show what all of our characters we’re doing for the break, and so we brought back the Jolly 4 Jesus guy as well as Racer Patrol. Cancun seemed to be the big destination that year, so we chose it and off we went. It was also one of Mr. Mitten’s first big roles.

Missed by probably everyone who didn’t live in White College at some point in their life, the reason Racer Patrol chose White College’s air conditioner to bust was because it was always broken anyway. In three years of living there I never figured out why, and it seemed as good an explanation as any.

└ Tags: , , , , ,
  Comment

Related Comics ¬

Blind Man Walking

by Justin on May 24, 2008 at 12:22 am
Blind Man Walking

This remains one of my favorite strips of all the original ones. I love the play between the foreground and background conversations. Ok, so I am a little biased. Anyway, we wanted to feature Mr. Mittens heavily in a strip after his first appearance, so we decided what better way to show his true personality than to have him pick on the blind.

Though some might assume we wrote random dots down for what the blind man says, it is in fact really something written in Braille. I make this point, because it took quite a while to translate it to page. The blind man asks, starting with panel one, “Where’s my car keys?” And now that people know, all that hard work wasn’t for nothing.

└ Tags: , , ,
  Comment

Related Comics ¬

Gustav Holst Walks into an Elevator

by Justin on May 19, 2008 at 12:26 am
Gustav Holst Walks into an Elevator

This is the only strip we’ve ever heard negative feedback from, and boy did we hear it. A friend of ours is a music major and reported back that several people in the music department were annoyed upon reading this strip. Oddly, the only people who probably got the Holst joke were the people who were mad. That’s irony for you.

No one who commented on this one ever bothered to question what two English professors were doing in the Fine Arts Building. Our excuse? Umm, there’s not one.

└ Tags: , , ,
  Comment

Related Comics ¬

Ad Initium

by Justin on May 17, 2008 at 12:27 am
Ad Initium

Unbelievable as it may appear, yes, Professor Hobo’s look was pre-designed before this strip. We actually went through fifteen to twenty different versions. Still, the unsure style of the comic makes all the hard work almost unnoticeable.

What better way to start off a comic strip and new job than offending a part of campus, and more specifically, your own professors? Luckily I had finished my English minor at this point, so I was open and free to take a pot shot at them. Nothing personal, it’s just my English professors loved to talk about drinking–Hemingway Syndrome we called it.

└ Tags: , ,
  Comment

Related Comics ¬