ORDINARYMAN in the 1990's

   Since I exhumed the 1979 Ordinaryman story, I figured I'd add his most recent incarnation from 1998. After doing TALBOTO, TOXIC TOM, MOONHATTAN and REAPER MADNESS, I thought I'd take a whack at translating ORDINARYMAN into a comic strip. I had already set an origin story that explained how he burned out at a comic convention and came home to his mother's house to mull over his future. A chance encounter with his next door neighbor who needed to get to the airport but his car was dead, gave Ordinaryman the idea of being an all-purpose fixer. This included fixing machinery, fixing bad guys and generally using his super-human powers on a small scale. He opened a shop and people knew where to come for help, although some folks (like the police) were reluctant to utilize his services (he'd bill for them).

    I had gotten some minor local publicity during the TALBOTO project and was asked to come into the Lompoc Record to meet a lady who I assumed would be coordinating things. I showed some of the other characters I had and the ORDINARYMAN origin story, which she thought might be developed further. One red flag that was raised during this discussion was that if they decided to print the strips, there would be no money paid for them (I would get "exposure"). Working in printing, I read a number of articles about giving your work away, which usually ended in "Don't do it". If a mechanic, doctor or lawyer can demand to be paid for their time and labor, why can't a cartoonist?

    I figured it was way too early in the project to get into thorny financial issues so I went off and created 22 individual strips showing Ordinaryman's activities at home and work. When I arrived at the Lompoc Record with the completed strips, the lady involved was unavailable so I left them with a secretary. After some time passed and I didn't hear anything, I called but this lady wasn't available again. The secretary told me that I could by and pick up the samples so I knew this project wasn't going anywhere. At least she didn't get them for free.

   And that was pretty much Ordinaryman's finale. He lives on (in color, too) on this blog.

The Tale of ORDINARYMAN

    Like most aspiring cartoonists, one of my early projects was a superhero parody inspired by my cousin Peter. Now here's where it gets complicated. Around 1968, my cousins Peter and Steve would come down to visit us from Saratoga Springs, N.Y. My parents would haul us up there as well, usually in the summer or Christmas time. During one visit, Peter did some sketches of a character he called Ordinaryman. I got a laugh out of the idea and upon returning home, developed it further. There were villains and Ordinaryman's worthless sidekick (not getting a formal name but obviously based on myself). I filled several spiral-bound sketch pads with their adventures and did one story in black and white for school. My art teacher had a guest speaker who worked in some facet of publishing and he got excited over the story and wanted to see if anything could be done with professionally. That was the last I saw of the story and this gentleman. Before the guest disappeared, I informed Peter in a letter that Ordinaryman might see print. He panicked and told me that the character was based on an underground comic that his brother Steve had. When Peter tried to track it down to see how much my take on the character differed from the orginal, his mother had thrown the comic away due to certain vulgar features aside from Ordinaryman.

    Over the years, I continued to come back to the character, doing a story here and there and even a clay-animated short in 1975 (I'll post that when I get it transferred). The story included here was done in 1979 when I was working in LA and, to me, shows that I slacked through it since my interest had migrated to film at that time. I took another crack at Ordinaryman in the 1990's but that's another tale.

    Since I was living in Hollywood, there are references to people who are still around today such as Spielberg and AHrnold. So check out A SCAR IS BORN.