Three Fights
Someone said something to me a few months ago that I had to think about for a while because I didn’t know why I disagreed. Essentially, he said that you don’t know who you are until you’ve been in a fight, and you don’t learn as much from a win as you do from a loss.

The first one I argued with because most people, men and women, haven’t been in a fight ever. They seem to know who and what they are as people. Yes, it can tell you some things about yourself but you can learn those things without chucking knuckles. You want to know if you’ll stand your ground or run away? Get pushed around at work and have to put your livelihood on the line. You’ll soon know who you are. The fact that he believed most people didn’t know who they were because they hadn’t been in a fist fight? Nonsense. But it was thought provoking nonsense, as if there’s a truth at the center of it.

The second assertion; that you learn more from losing than from winning gave me pause because it seems more correct. But it didn’t hold up to my personal experiences. Yes, anecdotal does not equate to statistical, I understand that, even still I learned much more from my wins than I did from my losses.

The major part of that was that all my losses added up to the same lesson (don’t get into a fight with a kid who’s a year and a half older than you, who has all the physical advantages you do of being from a long line of people paid to pick up and move heavy things, and who has the same last name). True, fighting an older brother like that probably made me a lot tougher, a better fighter, which means I learned some things but it didn’t teach me anything beyond that.

I fought a lot in school, a year didn’t go by where I didn’t get into two or three major fights. Being one of the smallest, one of the smartest, and the youngest in my grade had something to do with it, but it was mainly because I was on a short leash. Kids knew if they pushed me long enough I’d snap and we’d fight and I’d win, but I’d end up with the majority of the punishment (the guy who slammed my head into a locker in grade four who I then beat up? He got a talking to along the lines of don’t play with the bad kid, whereas I got a reaming, a call to my parents, detention for a week, and threat of suspension).

Eventually that meant I couldn’t fight at all in school. In grade nine I got a look at my file for discipline and there were one and a half binders of write ups. What did I learn from all that? Don’t trust teachers. They knew I was being bullied, picked on, ostracized, rocks thrown at my head, and their solution? Don’t fight back. Take it. Somebody must be the target and its better you than me.

Not good lessons. Not something I thought worth absorbing.

I’m Irish, and I have the gift of blarney, a way of exaggerating stories for humorous and/or dramatic purposes but I’m going to talk about these three fights and what I learned from them as clearly and honestly as I can.

The first one was in grade Nine. The worst year of my life. My friends had moved to another school so I was all alone. I was going through puberty, with the added wrinkle of being the only kid in my classes going through it since they’d got it out of the way the year before. Got picked on a ton, and with the nearly two binders of discipline slips hanging over me I knew I couldn’t get in a fight. As did everyone else so they ramped up the abuse to monumental levels. Before that year everyone was a bit circumspect because I had been in so many fights, and even though they lied to their friends about it, they knew they’d gotten their butts kicked. That year was nuts.

There was a kid who was scared of me. To the extent he would run away when I looked at him sideways. We’d fought years before and he’d lost badly so he’d left me alone since then. But that year he got his courage up because he was sure I couldn’t respond. A torrent of abuse came from him and his best friend (who was also afraid and who I’d also fought) near daily until finally I had enough. It was coming up on spring, the ground was a little muddy, a grey sky, I left school and wandered through the gravel lot beside the gym. He and his friend decided that since we were still on school grounds they could have a little more fun and something inside me just said no. Not anger. Just done with it. Taken too much and couldn’t take any more.

I walked over to him and looked him in the eyes and told him that’s enough. He sneered and tried to say some more insults but I shook my head and pushed him. He was not a small kid, I’d gotten my size but he was close to the same size. Should have been even enough. That push sent him five feet away from me. By this time a sizable crowd had gathered. To his credit he came back at me, throwing all his weight and strength and momentum into his own push. He couldn’t move me and I absorbed his push and then pushed him back again five feet. Once more he threw himself at me, once more I pushed him off as if he was a first grader. That time he fell to the ground and I stood over him and waited for him to get up. That wasn’t chivalry, sure I could’ve jumped on him and beat him up and letting him get up meant he could fight back but even if he tried he really couldn’t fight back. It would make me look good and I’d get the chance to rough him up as much as I wanted to. Punching him while he was down? Not as impressive. What looked like chivalry was actually disguised jerkiness on my part.

So, I waited. He lay on the ground, not hurt, no punches had been thrown, he just lay on the ground. As if he was inviting me to punch him. And I looked in his eyes and I saw the defeat in them. He would rather have gotten beat up than fight any more. He knew he was done, he knew I knew. I could have left it there but I didn’t. I had to take something from him, so I balled up my fists and looked down at him as he flinched and said loud enough for all in the gathered crowd to hear: “You’re not worth it.” Then I turned and walked away.

Big deal, right? Three pushes. How is that a fight? How could I possibly learn anything from that?

I learned about cruelty. How I’d overstepped. Went too far. He was a big kid, but soft. I was a suddenly big kid but hard. Too hard. Those words to him. Too much. How do I know? Because those were the last words either of us uttered to the other in the three years we went to school together after that. He would avoid me in the hall. He’d transfer out of classes if he could if I happened to be in it. Never met my eyes, always kept them on the floor around me. When he had to do an oral presentation his voice would fade away when he’d swing his head to my side of the classroom. It was bad. Every time he’d stumble around me I wanted to go over and put my arm around him and apologize but I couldn’t. It would have been rubbing salt into what was obviously an open wound.

Did his silence make my life slightly better? I guess, but I was used to the abuse. But him? He learned about himself in that stupid little fight and had hated what he’d seen. A mountain of insults wasn’t the equal of that.

Twenty-eight years later and I still regret that fight and what I did.

The other two fights I may have learned less. Or more. Depends on how you look at it.

But those will be told later.

The Last Rogues did not begin as a band name, it began as a bad novel written by a Nineteen-year-old furniture shipper. How do I know it’s bad even though I haven’t read it in over twenty years? Well, I wrote it, and I sucked at writing at the time so that’s a clue. But mainly because I can’t actually remember much of it. I remember the opening, and the main characters, and the central idea and I’m sure there’s a princess of some sort but that’s about it. I’m not ashamed of it, everybody sucks at first and it’s at least semi-coherent. But the question is how did it become a Band Name in the strip?

Panic. I didn’t grow up wanting to be in a band, I hadn’t written down hundreds of possible band names, it had never occurred to me to focus on it. But Rick was in a band, and I knew it had to have a good name to be as popular as the story needed them to be and the one thing that The Last Rogue (novel) had going for it was a good title so I yoinked it.

The problem was the word Rogue implied someone acting independently and that didn’t make sense with a band that’s (theoretically) supposed to be pulling in one direction. Then again lots of band names make no sense at all (the Rolling Stones are neither stones nor do they roll. Walkers, sure, I grant you, but no rollers yet) so it kind of fit.

Then there’s the mascot/logo/imprint of the Last Rogues, the arrogant, crooked-eyebrowed, smiling, cigar smoking ¾ smiley face. That too was designed for the Last Rogue Novel (it was the symbol painted on the nose cone of The Last Rogue’s spaceship meant to evoke the paintings on world war 2 airplanes) and easy enough to bring across. Heck, if I remember right I didn’t even redraw it the first time, I just cut it out and slapped it on Rick’s shirt.

Basically, The Last Rogues as Rick’s band’s name came about because I panicked and re-used a book title as a band name, then stole the logo from the book and gave it to Rick as well.

Two additional notes: I’m working on a cover for a book I plan on releasing in a few months called Dragon Assassins and one of the characters dresses all in black but, while it doesn’t come up specifically in the book, I realized he’s a hard rock/metal fan so I knew he’d be wearing a band shirt of some sort. Originally, I was going to swipe an Iron Maiden shirt, then I decided I didn’t want to get sued, then I was going to draw an entirely new shirt for an entirely new band, then I looked at the picture and realized that’s a lot of work for a piece of a cover that’d be less than pinky-sized, so I ended up just taking the Last Rogue symbol and Name and splashing it on the shirt. This worked but also made me realize something: Dodge the Bullet and Dragon Assassins occupy the same universe. No crossovers are likely but the idea they could meet tickles me.

The second note: After I named Rick’s Band officially I was looking at one of my old sketchbooks and was staring at the random words I’d written on the cover years ago. I honestly didn’t know what they meant or why I wrote them, or what they were about and it had always bugged me. One sentence was ‘it worked six times and then stopped,’ and that one I had figured out a few years before (the idea was a classic colt peacemaker had found its way into a fantasy setting and the ‘magic’ weapon had launched a revolution but the user couldn’t let people know it no longer worked so it existed as a bluff and a symbol of his new-found power). The other thing written on that sketchbook was the phrase; Har’ Alc’hol. There was nothing there to figure out. No clues, no context, no idea why I’d written it down. But having named Rick’s band it came to me; Har’ Alc’hol was a band name (a drunk saying Hard Alcohol). I had a band name ready to go and completely forgot about it.

Thank god for that. The Last Rogues is a better band name.

Even if it exists because of panic and laziness.

Thanks for reading,

Steve

Never once in five years of taking art in school did I have a teacher who could actually draw. Not one time. The reasons for this are many, first is that art is an elective at University and the requirements to get a degree that says you can teach art is strange. You’d think being able to draw would be the main requirement but alas no, that would require you learn different skills. Instead what often happened (things might have changed now, this was over twenty years ago) is that you got a minor in art history or some other offshoot of art and got a certificate saying you could teach art. Then you get into a school as an English teacher and they happen to need an art teacher too and you get drafted. Can’t draw, can’t paint, don’t really know much at all about art, but you get to teach it (the advantage to the teacher in getting that art minor was that they had something on their resume that other English teachers didn’t and were more likely to get hired). No one seemed to mind this.

Except for one little boy who really wanted to learn how to draw. I’d get books out of the library on how to draw, I’d draw as much as I could, and practice all the time. Art class for me was the one time of day that I wouldn’t get yelled at for drawing, but it was also the one class I had the hardest time passing. Why? Because they couldn’t teach art and were focused on occupying students time with crafts and collages. Not really into crafts, refused to do collages (you can learn something about composition by doing collages but you’d learn more about that by learning to draw), and would just draw and hand in my drawings. The teachers couldn’t exactly fail the one kid in the class who could draw and was productive, but they couldn’t exactly give me high marks for ignoring the assignments and doing my own thing. Scraped by while irritating my art teachers and being irritated by them in turn. If ever they got on my case I’d ask them about an art term they didn’t know about (of which there were many) and they’d leave me alone while trying to avoid my gaze.

Then I entered High School and my High School had a beautiful art room, with giant sky lights and its own kiln, and all the supplies you could ever want. They couldn’t possibly have built something like that and populated it with an art teacher who couldn’t draw, right? That’d be silly.

The first day of art class we were issued a syllabus, guiding us through the modules (painting, clay, watercolors, and so on) and it had a section on sketches. Ninety different simple things to draw and then ten of our choice. I thought the ninety were suggestions of things we could draw, not requirements we had to draw. There was a reason for that but I’ll get to it in a second.

The art teacher was unpleasant but I didn’t care, I was happy and hopeful to learn so in that first week I was working on a drawing of King Arthur and couldn’t get his surcoat to flow correctly as he swung his sword. Naturally I asked the art teacher to show me how.

She couldn’t. She tried but she made a hash of it. Terrible work and I saw it and she saw that I saw it. Unpleasant person. Watched me from then on. She played favorites and her favorites were the ones with less talent and less drive than she herself had. Anyone in that class who was better than her knew to avoid asking for help as it would be delivered in such a way as to hurt your work and bring you down. A lesson others learned by watching me.

It was strange, I could draw okay (the quality of art at the start of the strip is kind of low but that’s because of nearly fifteen years of atrophy and is not indicative of where I was in grade ten), I could paint a bit, I knew forms and colors, but every assignment I handed in got less than fifty percent.

Except for the sketches. Those I was bumping along at nearly a hundred percent. Naturally I concluded that drawing was my talent and I had no talent for anything else. Though it was strange; my stuff didn’t seem worse than the other student’s stuff, and they were always confused when they saw my low grades. But I was used to that in a way: Lots of teachers would give artificially low marks to smart kids who weren’t trying very hard to motivate them. I assumed that’s what she was doing. Besides, the sketches were worth fifty percent of the final mark so anything I got on everything else meant I’d finish in the seventy percent range. I was fine with that for two reasons; one it was an okayish mark, and two: I wasn’t ever taking her class again. Never again. A very unpleasant, condescending, mean, churlish, petty little dictator who ruled her roost like students were peasants. That meant I was done with art period since she taught all the art classes there.

But I didn’t think she hated me, after all she was giving me an average of Ninety-five percent on my sketches. My plan was to pass. That’s all I wanted.

Then a week or so before Christmas break I handed in my ninetieth sketch, only ten left to do, a week and a half of classes before the assignment was due to be completed, plus the week-long break. Tight, but very doable. Until I handed in that sketch and she said she didn’t know why I kept handing the sketches in, and I said for the sketches assignment, fifty percent of our grade. She then informed me that only ten of my sketches would count, the other eighty didn’t matter. Only ten were optional and I’d just drawn whatever I wanted instead of the assignment. It didn’t matter that I pointed out my sketches were far in advance of the ones she’d asked for, that clearly I could draw, that the best artist in the class, and the one who’d produced the most work, shouldn’t fail the assignment and thus the class. She informed me that I had almost three weeks to get ninety sketches done and if I worked hard enough I could do that.

Which I could have, but badly. Badly enough that she could then justify giving me the same mark on my sketches (just below fifty percent) as she’d done for the rest of my assignments. I knew I was done and thought I had no recourse.

But it was the look in her eyes that did it for me. The glee. The laughter. The mockery. She’d destroyed my dream of going to art school, and she loved it. That’s not an opinion. Cold hard fact. She’d done me up good and proper and she enjoyed doing it.

I was faced with a binary choice, work like a dog and fail (I barely have the speed now to produce ninety good sketches in two and a half weeks), or just ride it out and fail. Which I did.

She taught me nothing about art. Not one damn thing.

But she taught me a lot about people and who to avoid.

A few years later, after she’d done similar things to many students before and after me, finally the litany of official complaints got to be too much for the school and they had to do something. She lost her job, whether transferred, or simply fired, I don’t know. Understand this though; the teachers have a very strong Union, and she showed up for class and ostensibly did her work. Getting rid of her would have been a massive pain in the ass, but they did it anyway. That’s how egregious she was. I wish now I’d put in a complaint against her, because even though I’d have lost (my key piece of evidence that she’d done it deliberately was tone of voice and gleeful, mocking eyes. Not really admissible), at least I’d have felt like I’d done my part when she finally did go down.

In my last year of school I took Art again, not out of hopes of going on to University or anything like that, but because I liked art and thought it might be fun. The new teacher was an emergency replacement due to the removal of the unpleasantness.

She couldn’t draw either. But she encouraged me, and liked my stuff, and because of her if I’d gone on to University (had the marks but not the money), I would have taken a minor in art.

That first Art teacher was the inspiration for Mr. Witt, but she was actually worse. Witt was a jerk because he was bullied and enjoyed the reversal of being able to bully someone he considered similar to those who had bullied him. She was unpleasant because she liked it. That was her personality. Who she was.

This isn’t whining, or anything of the sort, just an example of how you can take bad things and use them to fuel you. Whether to keep going against hard odds, or as inspiration for the art you produce.

She beat me then, but by continuing to do art, and continuing to get better, I can beat her now.

She can’t stop me, she never could. Only I could do that, and I did.

That’s why I’m grateful to Dodge the Bullet, and to all the readers of it, for rekindling my love of drawing and watching me get better over the last seven years.

I always end these posts with ‘thanks for reading’, and I hope you all know now just how much I mean that.

Thank you for reading,

Steve