This is something that I’m circling in the story lately and I figured I should address it directly, namely;

Just how famous is Rick Dodge in his world?

When I started work on the strip he was always intended to be moderately famous, a rock star recluse with one hit album and a well-known website wherein he criticizes other musicians but as the story grew I came to realize something fundamental to how the world works and how Rick Dodge would fit into it:

Rick Dodge would be one of the most famous men alive in his world.

That’s a helluva statement, I realize that, and since I’m the creator of the world and the writer of the strip (forget the artist, he doesn’t matter) I could just SAY he’s the most famous man on his world and that would be true for my creation. But I don’t want to do that, just say it and make it so, I wanted to justify that position.

Take Kurt Cobain after the success of Nevermind, hugely famous, the voice of a generation (which irritates me for two reasons: One-I’m a member of that generation and don’t like his music and don’t feel it speaks for me. Two-All the cute girls in my high school who adopted the grunge look for grade eleven and twelve. Yeah. Baggy. Shapeless. Awesome.) and imagine he did what Rick did and pulled the plug without satiating the demand for Nirvana.

The audience would be thirsty.

Imagine that Kurt then took to writing incendiary criticisms of other musicians in a nationally syndicated newspaper column. And imagine that Kurt did it with style, wit, and humor. While simultaneously getting into public spats with fans of other musicians, and other musicians, every single day.

Kurt would have dominated the news cycle. A slow news day, see who Kurt is slagging, write an article about it and watch the attention roll in.

Pretty famous.

Then imagine Kurt went too far and got a famous musician (like maybe Michael Bolton) so riled up that said famous musician hunted him down and shot him ten times.

Imagine if instead of dying he hung on in a coma for six months as news crews kept vigil. The trial of Michael Bolton. The acquittal of Michael Bolton. Michael Bolton going free.

Kurt then comes out of the coma and resumes his job as critic with a few stunts (making a talk show circuit, critiquing 100 albums in 100 hours straight) to get his profile back up.

He’d be beyond pretty famous by that point.

A few months down the road Kurt is hired to replace Simon Cowell on the second season of American Idol and sets up a huge stunt to give the middle finger to a sponsor and ends up dying by electrocution. On live television.

Back in a coma.

A concert is set up to celebrate Kurt’s death. A concert at which Kurt appears and scares off all the acts that were there to join in the celebration. A riot ensues.

A month or so later news gets out that Kurt is dating Britney Spears, whose career he ruined via his harsh criticism. But she’s only a year or so removed from being the biggest popstar on the planet. They go out on a very public date. At the end of which he dies.

Again.

For the third time in public.

A while later they break up. He goes out on some other dates. Then they get back together and word leaks out that he’s helping Britney with a new album.

Imagine that the first single isn’t just a smash hit but also an incredibly good song.

That sounds like Kurt Cobain would be the most famous man on earth, right?

Rick Dodge would be even more famous. The added element of the wonder kids. The added element of the business oriented pushy mother. The added element of being tall and good looking. The smile and twitch of his eyebrows. The added element of the ubiquitous media of the modern era. The added element of having a hugely successful music website. The added element of speaking four languages and insulting the music of those speakers (Spanish, English, Korean, Hebrew).

He’d be Michael Jordon, Michael Jackson, and Muhammad Ali. All in one.

In a fragmented entertainment world everyone, worldwide, would have knowledge of, and an opinion on Rick Dodge.

Now, I wish I could show him as that famous in the strip, but basically it’s set up as a family sitcom with a tight focus on how Rick interacts with that family and sometimes I think I don’t do a good enough job of pulling back and showing you just how famous Rick Dodge would actually be.

In fairness to me, the writer, part of that is the fault of the artist (that lazy bastard) who is not a big fan of doing crowd scenes.

Luckily, there are many, many, many crowd scenes coming up in the next few months which I am very much looking forward to writing (sample of script; two panels, many, many angry faces yelling at Rick). My artist is not looking forward to them but I just tell him to shut up and get back in his cage (artists only understand mistreatment. They’re used to it. Prefer it in fact).

Hope that illuminates what’s been happening in the strip lately. I’ve been a little worried that people might have been a little confused and have taken for granted that they have been spending time reading the adventures of a major league celebrity instead of just a cranky critic with some hot chicks and some crazy toddlers.

Thanks for reading,

Steve

Drive along a road you’ve never been on before and you’ll see something you’ve seen all the time but maybe just that once you’ll see it for what it really is and not what you thought it was.

That old business that seems to need a new sign. The one that sells something you can’t believe anyone would buy. A plumbing store. Lighting store. Asian market in the middle of an industrial park.

Even if you drive down a residential street you may not see new things, but you may see things new if you look hard enough. Houses. Sure. Old, beat-up, rough-hewn, needing paint, needing their lawn mowed, hell, needing a lawn.

Does it look sad? Does it look rough?

Look at it with a new thought. Most of those houses aren’t houses. They are homes. And those homes were someone’s dream.

Most of those odd businesses were someone’s dream.

They dreamed of owning their own business.

Dreamed of owning their own house.

Maybe it didn’t go the way they wanted, maybe it wasn’t the panacea they sought, but they had a dream and they made it a reality.

The world isn’t built on concrete and asphalt, nor gold and silver, not on lies or truth, but on dreams.

Everyone has a dream, some simpler than others, some just want a nice meal and a place to put their feet up. Others try for more. Some don’t dream as much as others do but they still dream.

Drive down those back streets, see those odd businesses that you can’t believe are in business, start out with a sneer, then look at them again and see them as the owners saw them. Not now. But then. When they opened. When they saw their dream realized.

This world is a dream. A beautiful dream.

Rick’s dreams are complicated. Yes, he dreamed of a house because living in a business took his childhood, yes, he dreamed of a wife and kids, of family, of security, and yes, he even dreamed of music. Too many dreams? Hardly, there can never be enough as long as you work to make it a reality.

As for me? I love my home, I love my Angel, I love my son, and I love my daughter, but my dream was different. Was it to write and draw a comic strip? No, that was an accident, one I’ve enjoyed, mind you, but it was never my dream.

I do have a dream and I have worked to make it real.

But this has gone on a bit too long and seems a bit too philosophical so I’ll talk about that dream later and leave you with a joke, the first joke I remember hearing.

Knock knock,
Who’s there?
Bear.
Bear who?
Bear in his underwear!

(I swear I found that funny when I was a kid. I have no idea why. Worst part? My wife calls me Bear so when I told her the joke she couldn’t stop giggling).

Thanks for reading,

 

Steve

This one was sort of my fault. The year before in shop we had a cute girl in class and most of the guys tried to hit on her but she swatted them down with ease. I never hit on her (too shy plus I didn’t think I’d have a shot so what would’ve been the point?) so she kind of liked being around me. Never talked down to her, never took work out of her hands to show her how it should be done, only helped if she asked for help and only did the things she asked me to do. One of the guys in class wouldn’t stop bugging her and would constantly try to get her attention. She was too polite to tell him off, and I had no right to tell him off, but what I could and did do was mock him in my quiet unassuming way. I’d use words he didn’t know, sentence constructions he didn’t understand, basically just made him look like an idiot.

She’d laugh, and he’d look confused, and she’d laugh some more. Harmless fun for me but obviously he wasn’t a big fan of mine.

The next year she didn’t take Shop with us so he got his revenge by making dumb jokes at my expense and I’d conspicuously ignore them. He hated that I clearly thought he didn’t matter so one day he decided to escalate by throwing things at my head.

I was sitting at the front of the class waiting for the teacher to come in and drawing in my sketch book and suddenly rubber stoppers started flying past my head. This went on for a few minutes and irritated me. They didn’t hit me but I stopped drawing and laid my pencil down and waited. Then another came whistling by, then another, and I told myself if one more came flying I’d have to go take care of it. This wasn’t to fight one guy, all ten other guys in the class were laughing and sitting in a cluster at the back of the room. This was me against ten. Not a fight I could have won but a fight I had to fight.

Another stopper went by, I stood up and calmly walked to the back. A guy I’d been friendly with since grade one was laughing at me so I put my hand around his neck and was told he had nothing to do with it by one of the others. I nodded, said I knew, then pushed him out of the way. A couple of guys were sitting on the drafting tables to either side of the row and were pretty astonished when I pushed them out of the way as if they were nothing, heavy desks, two or three guys per desk, but I was… kind of angry.

The guy who I knew had been throwing the stoppers saw the look on my face and spun into the aisle and tried to run away. Unfortunately for him he was into a weird style choice wherein you kept your shoelaces loose and tucked into the shoes. He tripped over his own feet and fell on his back.

I wanted to punch him, too angry not to punch him, I was reaching for his face but his feet were against my chest pushing me away. Legs are longer than arms and I couldn’t get at him so I concentrated on wrestling his legs out of the way. That didn’t work, but what happened was one of his shoes came off in my hands.

The next moment I was pushing his legs forward with one hand while the other hand used his shoe to spank his butt and I said: “You’ve been a very bad boy.”

The teacher came in right about then and we both got sent down to the office.

I thought for sure I’d get in trouble (starting a brawl with ten guys in class seems like it would lead to punishment, right?) but we both told the truth and I got nothing and he got a few days of detention.

What did I learn? Did I learn not to fight multiple people at once? No, I did that a couple more times in the next couple years. Did I learn discretion is the better part of valor? No, I’d probably still lose my temper and go take on ten guys if the same situation cropped up today.

Honestly, I would have said I learned nothing until my younger brother asked me if I’d really spanked the guy with his own shoe.

Twelve years later.

I could have mashed that kid, could have hit him, could have made him bleed, but no matter what I did to him it would not have been talked about twelve years later. But spanking him with his own shoe? Not likely to be forgotten.

That’s a story that your Best Man tells at your wedding. And someone else tells when they’re shooting the crap around a fire pit at fifty. Something he can’t live down. Heck, could even be told at the bar after his funeral. So, something he can’t even die down.

The biggest geek in school (both in terms of geekiness and terms of biggieness relative to the other geeks) tossing you to the ground and spanking you with your own shoe? Too good a story to not tell.

The lesson I learned? Humiliation can be even more satisfying than a right cross to the jaw.

Even though delivering the right cross would have felt pretty good in the moment.

Thanks for reading,

Steve