A Retrospective of Bugman
The youth of the nation was enraptured in the throws of Ninja-Turtle-mania and Simpsons-mania. At the same time, the Hollywood hype machine was in full swing for what was soon to be a blockbuster movie, Dick Tracy. It was 1990 and, in this swirl of pop culture, I decided to sit down and make my first comic.
By this point, I had been creating and drawing characters on scrap paper nightly before
bed. Inspired by Looney Tunes (one of my favorites was Bob Clampett’s “The Great Piggy Bank Robbery”) and a few Dick Tracy books that I had convinced my parents to buy at Half Price Books, and, of course, the Teenge Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. My first comic was crafted on the back of some old school flyers. Borrowing the name Bugman from a character in a Ninja Turtles episode, I dreamed up a character with a tooth-shaped head who had all the powers of insects, including wings to fly, termite teeth to chew through things, the ability to shoot webs, and a scorpion tail that shot electricity… admittedly because, at the age of 8, I had no idea what scorpion tails actually did.
For the villain for Bugman’s first battle, I picked one of my favorite creations from my Dick
Tracy inspired rogues gallery, a gangster with a giant round head that I named Pancake Face. The comic cover declares “Bugman V.S. Pancake Face the batole of the sinchey’’ and while I can’t claim it to be a great battle, it is a story fueled by imagination. The story starts off with the origin of the villain, who gains his deformity when a pancake is thrown in his face after winning a card game. After which, Pancake Face goes on a crime spree, first robbing a bank and then leaving a taunting note for the cops that proclaims, “Dear Cops, I’ll rob the armerd car. From, Pancake Face.” The story ends like most Bugman stories with Bugman meeting the bad guy and simply wrapping him in spider web.
I’d go on to create over a hundred issues of The Adventures of Bugman over the course of
the next few years, each with its own equally bizarre villain. Eventually, I created an origin for
Bugman and, as every kid knows, the origin issue is always issue #1. The Pancake Face issue was originally unnumbered until about a year later when I decided to number all the comics I had made. For reasons beyond me today, this issue would be labeled issue #8.
Creating comics became an all-consuming mission for me. I’d even convince my friends to
make them with me when they came over to play. I’ve drawn many comics over the years but I’ll always have a special place in my heart for Bugman.