Early Conan Commentary

So, I haven't really been doing many comics lately. That's because I moved to Chico, and we're still moving in and stuff. I started working immediately and haven't had any time to get shit done around the house. On my off time I wrote some commentary for my Early Conan comics. Here is commentary for the first forty Early Conans. Hopefully I'll get to make more soon...

THURSDAY, APRIL 17th 2008

The first strip was based on an AIM conversation! Basically, I was scrolling through old transcrapts to look for funny stuff to post on the blog. I was, at the time, starting to post backlogs of old material on this blog and was turning that into a big project. So I came across me saying "Remember that episode of Conan where he showed what would happen if two gay dudes mated and it was just a picture of nothing?" I was going to post it as an aim conversation, but then realized it would be a perfect three-panel comic. So I drew it! I called it EARLY CONAN just to explain why he's a jerk. Something compelled me to draw a second one. Basically as I drew more I realized I'd make this a regular thing.

FRIDAY, APRIL 18th 2008

I think it's funny when people tell other people to shut up out of nowhere! SO SUE ME!

SATURDAY, APRIL 19th 2008

This is based on how extremely complimentary David Mirkin is re: Conan O'Brien on Simpsons commentaries. I was just trying to think of Conan-centric things and for some reason that came to mind immediately. Gene Shalit blasted this one because I portrayed David Mirkin as a sexual predator, but he's a fat faggot so fuck him. Also, the Amoeba talk was from when a crazy lady at Borders gave me unsolicited advice about drinking water.

SUNDAY, APRIL 20th 2008

I just imagined Andy Richter moaning in bed with some kind of Oregon Trail disease and it cracked me up. Who else would he call but his #1 pal Conan O?? And people skeletizing within a very short period of time is extremely funny. I think I subconsciously stole "your late" from snagglepuss though

MONDAY, APRIL 21st 2008

Just continuing Andy's sweating nervous persona in a comic that is based on 1. how people used to smoke on Talk Shows and 2. Muppet Babies. Here Nanny is played by Tom Scharping (not really)

TUESDAY, APRIL 22nd 2008

I think this was the first idea Mark gave me, and it cracked me up. I actually have a backlog of ideas he gave me that I want to draw. My contribution to the idea is everyone applauds after Conan screams - they don't get that what is going on is real and think Conan is really good at acting. Also, how Conan repeats the concept in the first panel. I came up with that. Because he always does that.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23rd 2008

I always wanted to refer to Chevy Chase as a "Handsome comedian and Conaine Enthusiast" in a thing. Or do a character that was a parody of Chevy Chase and write a sketch where an entertainment news show refers to him that way. I realized Conan was the perfect vessel to make my words sparkle. Also a shirt that says "LEGALIZE IT!" and having it refer to COCAINE is such a good idea and the intent is unmistakable if Checkers Chase is wearing the thing. Chevy is NOT dying from cocaine use, by the way.

THURSDAY, APRIL 24th 2008

This was going to be a three part comic, but I nixed the first part, where the Executive tells a rude joke about calling NBC "THE COCK" (a shortening of THE PEACOCK). He says "If you stroke the 'cock, the 'cock will stroke you back!" and it cuts to Conan looking away and crying and the executive apologizes. Then I realized at that point I hadn't had anything truly vulgar in the comic yet and decided now wasn't the time to start. This would be the second part. The third part I'll talk about later. Anyway, this is just making fun of pouty angsty kids who behave the way Conan is behaving, and the executive over-reacting.

FRIDAY, APRIL 25th 2008

Mark made a video about Mike Myer's dying, and there was a photo in it that I thought to myself looked like Conan O'Brien. So I instantly came up with the idea of Mike Myers impersonating Conan. I had Wayne on the Brain I guess, so I changed it to Wayne Campbell, thinking it would be funny to have Wayne exist in the world of Early Conan as a rival talk-show. Andrew deserves a writing credit for this, but I didn't give it to him because at the time I thought I'd only credit concepts for strips and not just little jokes. He came up with Garth Shushing and having it turn into SCHWING! Oh yeah, the Aerosmith reference is from the opening of Waynes World 2.

SATURDAY, APRIL 26th 2008

I was chatting with Mark, and I accidentally called Wayne "Wayne Algar" and corrected myself. The idea of Wayne taking Garth's last name instantly lead to Mark coming up with the concept of a wedding invitation, and that Conan would open it up and it would say "NOT!" inside. Also, I love how close the two Wayne incidents are to each other, Wayne was really gunning for Conan in those early days.

SUNDAY, APRIL 27th 2008

The idea of getting yourself worked up over a terrible future so much so that you get diarrhea always appealed to me! This is an all time classic because it features Andy taking a shit and every comic that involves that is a classic!

MONDAY, APRIL 28th 2008

This was going to be the third part in the three-part comic, but I realized that it would be clunky and weird and it'd be best to just space them out. There was no real reason to make them come right after each other. Also the big thing about this comic was that I just lifted the joke from Mark Riddles' hysterical Doogan-releated prank and kind of just did it without asking him (even though I credited him). Sorry!

TUESDAY, APRIL 29th 2008

Just in case I need to state the obvious, this is based on Conan's penchant for spoofing Walker, Texas Ranger and also on the cartoon DUCK AMUCK. I call it CHUCK AMUCK. I made a headshot Featuring Chuck Norris posing with Conan and Andy, as a parody of cartoonist's headshots where all their characters are surrounding them. I was going to do all the characters that had been seen up to that point, but it was too much work for a joke that normal people wouldn't even get.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30th 2008

word-for-word a Mark Riddles script. Triumph is a real dog and Conan had a heart attack from shock. I think I originally was going to have Triumph floating, suggesting some kind of supernatural goings-ons, but decided against it. I hope people don't think Triumph is still a puppet and I just didn't bother to draw the arm. That would be terrible!

THURSDAY, MAY 1st 2008

man I love this! The funny face had to be just right. The idea of a lame funny face is hysterical to me. One time Martin Short interviewed Damon Waynes for a Jiminy Glick sketch and he asked him about Jim Carey, "OLE RUBBER FACE!" and then Glick started doing really lame funny faces to get the point across and it was one of the funniest things I ever saw. I can't beleive nobody discusses this moment as one of the funniest things Martin Short ever did (And I am one of the few people my age who actually does think Martin Short is hysterical).

FRUDAY, MAY 2nd 2008

Mark wrote this one and originally Max was supposed to have a backwards baseball cap on and there was going to be a VH1 Logo in the corner. I just forgot about those details when I drew it. Also, look closely! Max has a flannel sweatshirt tied around his waist! Oh yeah, and also IS IT 1996 YET? was an anti-Clinton slogan of the time that my dad had a bumper sticker of on his truck. I wish my dad was hip enough to keep it on post-1996 (or at least save the bumper sticker for me to put on MY car 7 years later). Max feels like Clinton is ruining his 90s experience.

SATURDAY, MAY 3rd 2008

Mark originally pitched this as a joke involving Jeff Goldblum getting snippy with Conan over weather or not the fake skyline in the background was fake or not. Conan says to Jeff "It's the middle of the afternoon!" to which Jeff rejects, citing that his self-tinting shades would be tinting if that were true. Then Mark told me the story of a fat kid he knew in high school who very arrogantly showed off his self-tinting shades and Mark's angry reaction to watching this smirking butterball's eyes disappear. I used that instead!

SUNDAY, MAY 4th 2008

All I really have to say is that the Michael Winslow call is funny because he gives him self an opportunity to do a Machine Gun sound effect but doesn't follow up with the actual sound effect. That was not a mistake.

MONDAY, MAY 5th 2008

This is basically based on my decision to turn YOUR L*** into a running joke. It has yet to run since.

TUESDAY, MAY 6th 2008

Mark had all these lofty ideas of doing spin-offs, including Future Letterman and Current Fergeson. His pitch for Current Fergeson was that Craig would be listening to an i-pod during a commercial break and would creep out Howie by trying to get him to listen, using his used ear buds. I loved the joke a lot and realized earbuds existed before ipods, and also it'd be much funner to draw Howie Mandel 15 years ago. I combined it with this old comic I drew. Andrew and I had an art class together and we wrote this when we were bored. And when I say "we" I mean ANDREW wrote it.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 7th 2008

So a million years ago I saw some Animal Planet show about a cat giving birth. It was basically a reality show about a couple with a pregnant cat and it was teaching you how to deal with it step by step. The final shot was of the couple's dog, locked outside in the backyard, going nuts at the sliding glass door. It was a throwaway shot that just stuck with me as being a great, hilarious detail. At the time there was a big joke thread going on on one of our message boards, and I wrote it as a joke: Q. Why did the dog get sent outside? A. Because the cat was inside giving birth! When Mark came up with the idea for Triumph being real, I immediately thought of that, and I put off drawing both comics because I couldn't decide if I should make THIS comic be the introduction to Triumph being real, or if I should do Mark's concept first. I'm still not sure I made the right decision, but I guess I wanted this comic's joke to be more about a dog being locked outside because a cat is giving birth than for it to be about a famed puppet actually being alive.

THURSDAY, MAY 8th 2008

I consider this to be the first in a trilogy of uncomfortable comic strips, just because of Andy dressed all racistly. Basically this just comes from the idea of bleeping a fart. I think the TV edit for Problem Child 2 was on my mind, where Junior farts in Gilbert Gotfried's office; On TV they would change it to a belch (substituting footage of course; they were NOT trying to make it look like Junior farted out a burp).

FRIDAY, MAY 9th 2008

This is based on a seldom-known thing where sometimes closed captioning fails to censor language on TV. This one's funny because the closed captioning probably said "(Farts)" which is obvious without ANY audio. Just explaining the joke in case you're deaf. The hat on the kid is inspired by a pencil I had growing up that said "I'M A LUCKY KID!" with a bunch of four-leaf clovers on it. Also, I hoped people didn't think I was making fun of how deaf people talk. I just wanted to hammer home how uncomfortable this is for Conan and how much of a jerk one would feel like if they were confronted with a kid with deaf dude talk coming out of his mouth.

SATURDAY, MAY 10th 2008

It always sucks when people who are about to die touch you. I hate it. At the time of this comic, me and Andrew were listening to Tiny Tim's first album a lot. It's actually genuinely great. I forget if there was more to this comic originally. All I remember was Andrew wanted Conan to meet Tiny Tim and that he’d have a creepy handshake.

SUNDAY, MAY 11th 2008

I got that giant Calvin and Hobbes anthology or whatever you'd call it last Christmas, and never cracked it open until very recently. The idea here is that Andy is just a stuffed animal to everyone but Conan. And if you read all the comics, this honestly could be true for every strip. Not that I tried to do that, it’s just a happy coincidence.

MONDAY, MAY 12th 2008

Chris Elliott was in a series of Tostitos commercials, where he played a gullible boob and typically the only redeemable thing about his appearance at any given place (weather it be a party or an airport or what have you) is the fact that he brought Tostitos chips and dip, then people would celebrate his arrival, and then tell him something (typically some kind of promise of new-found respect for Elliott because of his saving the day with snack food), and he'd ask "Wow, really?" to which the person would cruelly taunt, "NO, NOT REALLY!" It’s also funny because Chris Elliott is a totally nice dude and would never grab any host by the scruff like he’s doing now and scream in his face.

TUESDAY, MAY 13th 2008

There was a comic I really wanted to draw (this one), but it would basically mean my spinning-off Wayne’s Wedding into it's own comic series. I couldn't really figure out how to introduce the spin-off. So I asked Andrew what he thought, and the idea of a cue card with a picture of a Wedding ring on it was the first thing that came out of his mouth. I wrote the rude Top Ten, which if you look closely the #1 slot is the beginning of "LIVE FROM NEW YORK, ITS SATURDAY NIGHT!" On Saturday Night Live they did Wayne’s World a lot as a cold open, and they'd do the Top Ten sketch, and #1 would be "LIVE FROM NEW YORK!" So as a result, on the Mike Myers Best-of they showed these sketches and they'd just cut away before they got to #1. And people didn't get that that was why and bitched about it. "THIS IS BULLSHIT THEY EDITED WAYNES WORLD!!!" they would moan. And by "they" I meant the one person I saw do it on amazon.com one time. There was probably more.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 14th, 2008

This is a really old Mark Riddles idea I just didn't get around to until late! He originally pitched it as Joel Hodgeson showing a clip, and the clip was going to be of the Mystery Science Theater theme song. But it was too hard to draw. Also I felt like people would call bullshit if Joel Hodgeson was on a talk show that wasn't hosted by a cartoon character.

THURSDAY, MAY 15th, 2008

Willie wrote the idea of seeing a masturbating bear in the zoo and Conan getting the idea for a million dollar sketch idea. I added the twist of seeing a Pimp Bot in the zoo as well. I just want to say that there’s not very many big, detailed picture of Pimp Bot to be found online. I kinda had to fill in the blanks. "But Look at there" was a sleeper hit of words and I am very proud of it.

FRIDAY, MAY 16th, 2008

Originally I wanted to get a comic off the ground called "Heat of the Moment" where each day I'd draw the best moment of my day. I drew a bunch of them, but since the whole shtick was supposed to be that they were things that happened very recently, I'd be lazy getting them scanned and I'd never put any of them up. I drew one that was complete fiction, and kind of ruined the whole concept of the comic: I approach Andrew at work and lament that the new girl won't talk to me, she keeps going off to do busy work (True, except with Andrew and my roles reversed). Andrew for some reason is mad, and he says "I bet she thinks you are ugly." (untrue) the next panel was me sitting in the Borders restroom, crying. (untrue). I was going to call it HEAT OF THE MOMENT: FACT OR FICTION and have a photo of Jonathan Frakes saying "FICTION" at the end to make it all okay. Since the paper I drew it on got trampled and wasn't in scanable condition, I reused the joke here. Other comics include: Me trying to get tape off my finger and scolding myself "THIS IS TERRIBLE BEHAVIOR. THIS IS FOOLISH!" Me saying something funny and then writing it down after getting a laugh from a girl at work and then folding up the paper and putting it in my pocket (Somebody recommended I read a book because it was "really good, but really sad" and I shot back with "you know what book is really good but sad? MY DIARY") and an autistic kid asking a teacher to turn a painting on it's side and then exclaiming, in a pompous tone "AH! Now I see the flow!"

SATURDAY, MAY 17th, 2008

This was the first comic I did without having a big backlog of comics ready to run. My moving out of the horrible city of Eureka was looming closer and closer and I kind of started losing sight of the comic. It's also the first truly topical comic. I had to do a thing about Gay marriage since Wayne and Garth were gonna do the deed. The big joke in here is that I confuse Wayne and Garth with the Ninja Turtles by throwing in a "kick shell" reference.

SUNDAY, MAY 18th, 2008

I love the idea of a big brute bully chasing around a little guy and calling him a pipsqueak! I love it so much, it is one of my favorite comedy ideas.

MONDAY, MAY 19th, 2008

This is a more poignant comic than it is a joke-a-thon. I was afraid people would think I was running out of ideas and that splitting this up was a ploy to milk an idea. I just couldn't figure out how to draw it as one comic, and at the time was a stickler for the format.

TUESDAY, MAY 20th, 2008

This is so conceptual and inside-jokey. Originally the idea was I was going to a whole week of comics like this, but I got super busy and just couldn't dedicate the time to try and think of high-school-esque comics. This is based on a true story, by the way. My math teacher was pregnant and hormonal, and I did a math project wrong, like there were two different assignments and one was just an example and one was the actual project, and I did the example which actually was more work, and I sheepishly went up to her to explain I did it wrong and she started crying and called me a "stupid mother fucker" and left the room. I got a B without having to redo anything (shouldn't I have gotten an A?). It's also a throw-back to when I would make comics about my teachers, but they were all way more mean-spirited and smarter than this.

FRIDAY, MAY 23rd, 2008

This is based on an episode of All in the Family that I hate. It's about Archie's Army buddy coming into town, and Archie and his other army buddies all laud him because he's super rich now. The guy is having issues with his son, and intermittently calls him from Archie’s house while Archie woops it up with army dudes laughing, completely fucking oblivious to their friend's sadness. The only guy who notices is Rob Reiner, who looks on with a sad face while Archie is clueless. And that's it! Archie stays ignorant and Rob looks at the guy all sad and the whole episode is like SEE THIS GUY IS RICH BUT HE HAS FAMILY PROBLEMS AND THE CONSERVATIVE GUY IS TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND IT BUT THE LIBERAL DOES and UUUGH its so bad. I think it's a Season One episode if you want to track it down and watch it like an asshole.

SUNDAY, MAY 25, 2008

Mark gave me this idea really early on, and I held back on doing it because I started drawing it once and realized it wouldn't be a three panel comic. For some reason it didn't seem right to do two-panel comics. I thought of the Richard Kind one shortly after Mark gave me the idea. The second time I attempted to draw this comic was after I did the Chris Elliott one, which was a little too similar and I decided to get some distance from that. Oh yeah, Mark pitched it as Kevin Meaney throwing Conan's desk, but it was too hard to draw so I substituted desk-throwing for a Beetle Juice face.

TUESDAY, MAY 27, 2008

There was a reality show on TV Land (A channel whose whole purpose is to show reruns of old shows), where parents would pull pranks on their children, and each week they'd bring in a celebrity to help out. Because that's really what we want to see, right? Super rich and privileged people picking on CHILDREN with hidden cameras? Well, TV Land had a Night Court marathon and Mark and I watched most of it, and all through it they aired a promo for an episode featuring "CELEBRITY PRANKSTER RICHARD KIND." Since then not a single conversation went by that involved Richard Kind where we DIDN'T give him the title CELEBRITY PRANKSTER before mentioning him. How many conversations have we had involving Richard Kind? A lot more than you'd think. Also, a joke in this that nobody ever commented on: Their tie status is left-over from the previous comic, so this time they revert back to their original states when they get spooked. Either it was too subtle or not funny enough to mention.

SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 2008

So this was the whole reason I wanted to make a WAYNES WEDDING SPIN-OFF. Because Mark pitched the concept of Wayne doing a TOP TEN REASONS WHY I LOVE GARTH and it simply being a big picture of his face slowly being revealed and I thought it was amazingly hysterical and great. He came up with the idea the same night as the concept of Wayne and Garth getting married. I couldn't figure out how to do it in one line of comic, so I decided to draw the entire thing. It was the first comic I drew since moving from Eureka. It took so long because 1) My printer/scanner was packed, and I was unwilling to unpack it thinking I was going to be moving again soon, and 2) I lost my pen I use. I found said pen, but lost it for a SECOND time in the middle of this comic. So half-way through, the lines are a little different because I was using a different pen. The pictures of Garth reacting are so grotesque. It was sort of me giving up on making them look good, and sort of thinking they were funny-looking enough to upstage the main photo of him and that was a big accomplishment and something to be proud of.

SUNDAY, JUNE 22, 2008

Mark and I had a friend on aspecialthing.com who was going to Vegas. Mark's response was to write and impromptu Early Conan on the spot: Andy asks Conan where he went on Vacation, to which Conan replies "VEGAS, BABY!" I came up with the idea of Conan putting on sunglasses to say it, and also the phrase "where did you have vacation?" I think the reason I liked this idea so much is because me and my friend Andrew had a running joke about one of our former bosses named Mike. He was a by-the-book douche who was kind of weird and snotty. Squidward from Spongebob Squarepants could easily be a parody of this guy, except not as emotional. He has an insane jaw and a bald head. He's basically a caveman that acts like he's from the future and is above everybody. He wasn't very nice, and he seemed to care way too much about his job yet at the same time he seemed like was barely involved in it. Despite all these negative observations, me and Andrew still really liked him because he was such a weirdo. He was gone for like two weeks one time, and we found out he was in VEGAS. Me and Andrew would imitate his voice going "VEGAS BABY" and joked that he'd come back and suddenly be really super nice. In our made-up scenario, after a week police officers would come to our work, looking for Mike. Mike would walk out, see the police officers, and give himself up. As he was being taken away he'd turn to us like Royal Tenenbaum and tell us that the past week has been the best week of his life.

FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 2008

Me and Andrew were brainstorming Wayne's Wedding ideas while watching Wayne's World (Which inspired two additional comics). I think we discussed who should be Wayne's best man out of their group of friends, and Andrew suggested that it should be Garth. As part of his speech, Garth would say he had WAYNE ON THE BRAIN, and it would cut to Wayne swooning. And that's the story of Wayne wanting Garth to be his best man!