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[BIOS] [STRIPS] [HISTORY] The History Of: version one version two version three version four version five version six version seven version eight version nine version one: In my 11th grade school year of 1985-1986, amongst much other silliness with my friends Tim and Aaron Palmer, my brother, and Tim's future wife Janine, came the birth of the most simplistic cartoon characters known. These included Captain Crayola, the Rubber Band, and a bizarre array of farm animals, not to mention some mold and insects. The drawings led to the initial inspiration (in Sunday School, on note paper that was supposed to contain musings on the Gospel) of an adventure series in seeking the treasure of Pagan Gods who all turn out to be false. Two drawings of concentric circles yielded Cat and Pig. With the addition of Bird made from ovals, I had to create a second oval drawing: thus Retart was born, originally misspelled, but later kept that way on purpose. He would become each pagan god, and represented the nonsense involved in following one. Ooh, deep! The first adventure was the same as presented in Version Six, 4 episodes into deepest Africa. The second went up the Amazon for 2 episodes. The third went into the South Pacific for 3 episodes. The fourth is the only one not yet rehashed in future incarnations. It initially went to Guatemala seeking Bo The Banana God, but digressed into being shipped in crates to a store in Cleveland and, finally, with Retart showing up with a nuclear bomb, thus ending our heroes forever. These stories kept my church friends in anticipation of each subsequent episode for a couple weeks as I turned them out at a rate of an episode every three days or so. The final story contained more inside jokes than anything: I changed the paper it was drawn on, the attack of a "Confused Contra", a truck heading for Cleveland, a Satanic store clerk, and the absolute, unchangeable death of our heroes for Jani, so that I could stop! This explains the inside joke reference at the end of episode fourteen in Version Six. This didn't satisfy Tim, however, so I made one more unnumbered episode set in Montana, where Retart just rode over them with farm machinery. I stored these pages away in a place so safe that I forgot them, and later thought (wrongly) that I'd destroyed them. At the insistence of more, I joked about starting again with episode fourteen, creating "The Extended Adventures Of Cat, Pig, And Bird," which would send our heroes to the Himalayas, but never did do it. One vague nagging memory seems to think I did, but.... version two: During my senior year I was involved in a project of putting out a video tape of my class, the 100th graduating class of my local Michigan small town school. To make this financially possible, we used the facilities of the local Public Access cable television station. By the Summer after graduating, I had secured my own silly show, The Rowland Ebright Twilight Zone Fake Talk Show, which I spent the Summer on seven broadcast episodes of, long before I'd ever heard of Wayne and Garth. It wasn't until much later that I found out I had a small cult following at the nearby campus of CMU and elsewhere. Within this show, I recreated the strip with the same stories I had done before because with all the other work on the show, I really didn't have the time or creative energy to come up with something new. Besides, I thought the originals were now long dead, and wanted them to be remembered. I drew each frame on a single sheet of paper, filmed it with my thumb deliberately showing holding it against the wall, and narrated each voice, in spite of actually drawing all the word balloons as usual. I taped the first nine episodes almost verbatim from my memory of the originals, thus recreating Africa, the Amazon, and the South Pacific. This is also where I encountered my first bout with censorship. My show was way out of bounds of what Public Access was supposed to be, and I only got to do it because the man in charge of the studio wanted to annoy his superiors in order to get either promoted or fired. It worked, which is why the completed eighth and partially filmed ninth episodes never aired, as his replacement proceeded to blank every tape that involved me (and my brother, whom I must credit with taking over the show at episode seven, as I had gone off to college, leaving some pretaped cameos and CPB). In spite of all this sanctioned irresponsible television, I was told that the name Retart might offend some viewers, and was asked to change it to The Other Guy. This explains the reference in the title of episode thirteen in Version Six. version three: I majored briefly in Computer Science at Michigan Technological University, before deciding I didn't like that idea and packed my life up for California to become a Recording Engineer. I am now, though I can't even come close to calling it a career. The point is, around Christmas 1988, as I was cleaning up the last things at home before one final semester of part-time classes and three jobs to save money to move, I found the originals in a little box tucked away. In that time of dorm life, it was a lot of fun reading or viewing all the crap people would put on the doors of their rooms. So in my final weeks, I would photocopy an episode and post it on my door (Wednesday at Midnight, just before going off to do my WMTU radio show) for the enjoyment of all hall wanderers. This garnered me yet another cult following of devotees hanging on each weeks stupidity. Each Wednesday gave me a dozen "When will it be up?!" - "Midnight, so be patient!" conversations. I still find this intriguing, because although I consider it sarcastic in it's simplicity and witty in it's subtlety, I'm still too self-depreciating to believe others do as well. They got to see the original drawings of episodes one through nine, which, in finding them not destroyed, I now considered somehow sacred. version four: In my first two years here, I won't even bother to describe the bizarre, Locust-ridden Hell-Hole I, and later with my brother, lived in. Suffice it to say that amongst many other things hung on the walls, we put up those sacred originals for the viewing pleasure of the few who visited and fewer who stayed long enough to notice them. In my folly, however, they were hung with duct tape. Their removal from the wall, therefore, during our removal from the neighborhood, resulted in their final, and this time real, demise. I mourned very little, since I had already left most of the rest of my childhood behind. version five: In the Summer of 1990, now a student in the Commercial Music Department at Long Beach City College, I just doodled up some memories one day for my rather fun to hang around instructor, Nancy Allen. This doodle is the Intro graphic. She loved it, and then insisted on my recreating the series. So that Summer resulted in the Version Five episodes one through three presented here, a condensed version of the original African story. That Fall, now upgrading to full legal-size paper giving me more space for clarity and longer episodes, I continued with four through six, now adding a middle to the story of The Great Zwokle. This was the first wholly original episode since the story in Montana. I progressed on to seven and eight, adding in Marvin because he never stopped talking to me the whole time I was drawing it. I never did nine because I got bored with it. The Bootleg Episode, it should be noted, was for the promotion of T-shirts Nancy financed. This was not actually until after the Version Six episodes, or somewhere within their time span, but I include this graphic with Version Five mainly for a division between the mediocre and the good. version six: The Fall of 1991 brings us to the pressure of Nancy and others on campus for more, More, MORE! Actually, I was pretty into the idea of starting over myself, but with a fresher approach than the "Go somewhere/get into trouble/the Pagan God is Retart" limitation. I gave each episode an intro caption and numbered it there rather than in the narration. I tried to add more obvious socio-political comments, more dated references, and more sarcastically self-depreciating art and foot-notes. In retrospect, the result wasn't as dramatic as I thought at the time, but I did begin to embellish the old material, rather than just rehash it. Episode One's introduction declares this creed. Nancy would post these, as with the earlier ones, on her office door for all to see. She was thoroughly convinced that I could one day become famous from all of this, so as I brought her each new episode, she saved the previous one like a sacred artifact that would one day be priceless. I didn't mind, since I had already gone through and gotten over the period of how I treasured my material. I barely took it seriously originally, and now I just laughed at compliments. Because of this, though, I could no longer get my hands on these. She didn't trust me to be as delicate with them. She is also a very busy woman, so to even secure the photocopies I now posses took nearly a year. That is about all that needs to be said about the Version Six material presented here, so enjoy. Notes: Episode Five is a result of my slowly complicating personal life as the Adult slowly dominated the Child in me, and CPB become more and more a necessary chore than a humorous diversion. Episode Eight was drawn. I know it was. I remember doing it. I think.... Episode Nine brings back more of the original doodles from the Captain Crayola days of 1985. Episode Thirteen was drawn in pencil on notebook paper one day, around the time of episode six or seven, I think, though possibly even sooner. Episode Fifteen seems like a brand new inspiration, but actually originated back in Version One. There actually was a Seventeen, which Nancy has seemingly lost, and I started an Eighteen, but never finished. version seven: Time went by, and after the initial boom, the T-shirts became a liability in the corner of her office. We got the idea one day to make calendars, which was fun, but it was December and a little late to begin the project. I did it, but we only sold a couple copies of the fifteen we made. This thing was a mock-swimsuit calendar, with each month presenting our guys in some exotic locale in some made-up style and price. I also included several mock-holidays to go with the real ones, like "Second-Cousins' Day" and "Elvis Impersonator Day:" The next November, in a pique of inspiration and in true CPB tradition, I grabbed a felt marker and proceeded to move over the days of the week one, cross-out and modify the holidays, and tried to sell it for another year. It didn't work. I also managed to churn out episodes twenty-one through twenty-three, skipping ahead in numbers, which somehow managed to combine Jack and the Beanstalk with the original radio version of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This was all totally new, and I daresay a lot of fun. Nancy has these somewhere, too. I may see them again one day.... At this point, I should note that a friend of mine, Jesse Garcia, around the Summer of 1994, began work on a strip that was a parody of Cat, Pig & Bird. I don't include this as a version within my history, because I didn't create it, but the history would be incomplete without mentioning it. His version had two parts, the first (actually created second) being episodes .01 .02 and .03 which were the origins and creation of each of our heroes, Catastrophe Cat, Patrolman Pig, and Banzai Birdie. The second part began with episodes .1 .2 .3 etc. These dealt with our heroes battle against an evil being from another dimension, his twist on Retart, who actually did things worth fighting against. And his heroes actually had the ability to do so. The fact that it took my source material as something so serious and important, and took that inspiration to such complex and bizarre extremes, is exactly what made it so hilarious. version eight: Then, after years of bleak and cold abandonment, in the Fall of 1996, I scanned all the photocopies of what I possessed and presented them to you, the Internet Surfer, for your viewing pleasure. This can now be referred to as version eight. I've now legitimately surpassed my exaggerated claims in version six. version nine: At this point, if I ever do create any more, they will be immediately presented here on the net, thus producing version nine. Will I ever get around to this? Maybe. The creative juices ebb and flow once in a while, but nothing has cemented in my head enough to fall out onto paper. [BIOS] [STRIPS] [HISTORY]