Stoner Comix
During the 2013 APE Con in San Francisco; Smoov-E, my friend Jake ( who got me the job) and I went to a Last Gasp! Friday night mixer where all the artists and vendors meet the night before for drinks, music and such. It was there on the steps of that old publication building on Harrison Street that I met my future Publisher Vince Dugar of The Golden Frog Press. He loved the artwork of ‘Rappin’ Robot’ and immediately asked, ‘Who did this?’, my friends pointed at me as I mingled. We talked and he told me he did weed-comics, like in the days of the old Zap! and underground Head Comix. Of course, I was a big R. Crumb fan, having read and watched his documentary throughout my life. I said four words to him ‘Tales from the Bongsyde’, we both laughed and exchanged information, celebrating and then the next day realizing he had a booth next to us at the convention, we discussed the project further. He said I have two artists’ already, but was having trouble finishing the third issue of his series ‘Tales of the World Famous Drive Thru Bud’, starring ‘Budzilla’ illustrated by legendary Pat Ryan. I told him to let me take a crack at drawing the gigantic bud-toking monster! Vince, Richard and Pat all loved my design of their character and we later all came up with what would become ‘Stoner Comix’.
I hadn’t heard of him at the time, but later learned a lot about Pat Ryan as we worked together on stories and grew to be life long friends. Richard Becker, another legend who worked on Marvel and many other titles, who would do the majority of the inking in later issues (SC comix #2-3 as well as many other spinoffs) as I was exhausted after my first two Budzilla stories in the Drive Thru Bud series and the four other satires that would make up the next three issues of Stoner Comix. Vince and I realized soon that I couldn’t keep up with all the deadlines and maintain the quality so I just stuck to penciling and page layouts, this allowed things to move much quicker and we could finish more issues with all the ideas and storylines more effectively. I would meet up with Vince and we would discuss a storyline then I would do a thumbnail and that would become a visual script, later to be fleshed out in more detail and more humorous with full on stoner lingo! The rest was stoner history and we all had a glorious time promoting, selling and signing comics, merchandise and t-shirts at every annual High Times and Emerald Cup Convention at Santa Rosa Fairgrounds for the next five years. We sold out most shows and between Last Gasp! distributing in San Francisco and all the other comic conventions in the Bay Area, we had made our mark. You can still find lots of merch and comics for the man-cave @ drivethrubud.com
Comic Books
Buttons & Labels
Inking Process
