Hey, all you necrofowliacs! Welcome to the latest “Dead Duck” episode, “ONE TOY SOLDIER RIDES AWAY”! Here’s your trivia fix for this installment:
- As I promised in the last installment, the word “retard” would be sufficiently drained of its negative connotations with Hokum’s explanation. I don’t set out to hurt anyone’s feelings with my comics, just to make people laugh. If I can do that while bursting some hot button terminology, all the better.
- The flightless bird with the John Fogerty hairstyle was loosely modeled off of underground cartoonist Dan O’Neill’s character, Fred the bird (who had no hair to speak of) from his comic strip, “Odd Bodkins”. O’Neill was the guy who founded The Air Pirates, a cartoonist collective of the early 70′s that published the similarly titled comic which depicted classic Disney characters in lewd, lusty and LSD-laced scenarios. The members included O’Neill, Bobby London, Gary Hallgren, Ted Richards and Shary Flenniken, all of whom, save Shary, were sued by Disney in a court case that took the entirety of the 70′s to settle. Along with Mark Bode, The Air Pirates make up my truest heroes from the underground comics movement. And I can say without an ounce of insincerity that without their influence, there wouldn’t be “Dead Duck” as we know the comic today.
- Like “Journey”, ”Creedence Clearwater Revival” is also one of my favorite bands, and I’m thrilled that I got to give them this little shout out, even in such a weird and unlikely forum as this.
- This second panel is a great example of Dead Duck and Zombie Chick’s relationship. No matter how loony or disconnected she can act, Dead Duck would NEVER insult her, and would either try and explain something so she could better understand it, or else just change the subject. Perhaps it doesn’t make for the best comedy, but these are characters that I care about, and whom care about each other. And I’d rather write them believably and compassionately than just convey a mean gag.
- Another area that He-Man never explored were the character’s names. Were they given these names at birth? Did they have regular names before somebody named them? I made sure “The Bad Asses of the Big Blue Yonder” had those answers, even if they weren’t quite the answers they hoped to get.
- “Gary” is a stock comedy name I use in my writing. It’s just such a nice, normal, safe sounding name, that whenever you give it to some kind of monster or warrior, it just seems funny. It’s kind of my recipe for instant comedy.
- I probably could have broken up the bottom panel into several smaller panels to convey this exchange. But I thought that doing a big shot with all the applicants would just convey the scene better. Plus, the jumble of word balloons reminds of cartoonist Mort Drucker’s layouts in Mad Magazine, so I could be in worse company.
- Again, these three characters are parodies of specific He-Man characters: Butthead=Ram Man, Blowjob=Sy-Clone, Drain Clog That Smells Like baby Poop=Moss Man. As an added note, this may be the first time I used the term blowjob in one of my comics, in any capacity.
See you on the next page!
–Jay
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