|
|
|
   |
|
The story of J.R. Comics starts as a simple one. Two friends in 5th grade who, during the previous year, had done a couple of comic books, and were interested in doing it again. I had done a couple series of "Superbug", and John had done a neat one called "The BananaLand Times". In it, he got help from his dad pasting drawings from magazines and made it kind of a variety magazine as opposed to a comic book. We weren't working together yet, but I recall some other kids seeing what we were doing and telling us they were going to "put us out of business" by making better comics. They never produced a thing.
On October 29, 1985, we had a substitute teacher, and as I recall, he simply didn't do very much. We had a couple of assignments, but it was clear that we weren't going to be over-burdened with the workload. Right there in class, each of us decided to do a comic book. We debated on the name of our new comic book company for a little bit. I thought J.R. Comics sounded better than R.J. Comics, but he insisted on R.J., so we went with it. He started drawing "The Super Guys" starring a dog and a bean, and I started on "Super Bunny" (unfortunately, I don't have one single issue of that one around).
We finished the first issues fairly quickly, and immediately began work on the next ones, even before we had gotten copies made and tried to sell what we had done. We did get around to making copies, or at least our parents did from their respective offices. Over the course of the rest of 5th grade, we would sell a few comics, but really, we didn't sell very many at all compared to how much product we were churning out. Within a month, I had started and stopped a couple different comics such as "The Super Gang" (a rat and worm power duo), "The Super Chips" (two computer micro chips), and one weird one I barely remember called "The Super Heroes" (some kind of nut and a bean).
Toward the end of 1985, we actually started fighting because he thought I was copying him, saying my comics were doing the same things as his. Unfortunately, he was right. I liked his lettering a lot and thought his ideas were cool. But he didn't like being copied, and I got kind of pissy in general, so we *gasp* broke up! In December, I started drawing "Pac Man" comics, under a new company name called Star Comics. I'm pretty sure I did a few issues, though I only have one left.
On April 2, 1986, I was looking to start a new comic book that was much better than my previous garbage. I wanted more detail, better stories, and color. Sitting around at home, I wanted to use the word "slime" in it somewhere. My sister Kelli came up with the full name "SlimeBusters", and that was that. I would color each copy I made, and for a few weeks it was actually very popular. Between that and the "Kung-Fu Canines", we were doing pretty well for a couple of 11-year-olds. I only completed 3 issues, while John went on to do about 9 over the course of 3 years. 1988 was pretty slow in comic book land. We each did a few issues of our staple comics, but we were much more interested in doing other things, branching out. This happened to be the same year I got my Nintendo, and I would have been content to have been locked in my room with it forever, as long as someone threw me a sandwich now and then. It was about this time that we were trying to come up with new ideas. Keep in mind, nobody ever paid attention to what we were doing, but we took it seriously. We started, among other things, a fan club, made a weird little movie out of an old projection-type machine in John's basement, selling little ninja bears, a book (which is included in the site), and trading cards (also included). The end of 8th grade in 1989 meant the end of us going to the same school together, and we never did very much comic-book wise again. But the first six months of the year were very productive. We had started a new style for our pages, creating a smaller "book" type of comic. And our drawings were improving vastly. We were adding more details and shading than ever before, and trying to create more mature characters. We kept coming up with new things the rest of the year, but nothing really came of anything. I don't think either of us has anything from 1990. Separated and venturing into new territory in our respective high schools, we didn't work on much together. We still hung out a lot and were good friends, but we didn't see enough of each other to make anything happen. In 1991, I did a few pages of a third incarnation of my favorite heros, the SlimeBusters, but it went nowhere. In the summer of 1991, I took my Casio SK-1 keyboard over to his house so we could mess around with the sounds and make funny burping noises. We did this a couple times, and somehow got the idea that we could make actual music. John had been writing a lot of poetry and wanted to turn them into songs. I brought my guitar over, and that's what we did. The first few songs came about quickly, and they were pretty good, but neither of us were taking it too seriously. We taped ourselves during those early sessions, and would continue to do so for the next couple years, and most of it is comprised of vulgar hilarity and idiocy. Some of it, however, captures earnest attempts at getting songs right, and by the end of the year we had over a dozen that we thought were good. Without actually saying it, we had transitioned completely from comic books to music.
We would write songs the same way most of the time. He had stacks of papers filled with poetry and possible songs, and would give me the ones he wanted to work on. I would sit with my guitar and simply come up with something that fit. It worked very well for the most part. If I started playing something fast and jaunty for something he wrote, he might stop me and say that it was supposed to be slower, or more melodic. So we'd fine-tune everything until we both liked it.
The gig itself was in August that year, and somehow John got us an opening act. Just another dude with a guitar who John payed out of the money we got. The crowd was mostly his friends, our family, and the opening act's "people", but we each made about $40. My dad got a friend of his to videotape it for us. We played for over an hour, and our inexperience showed when I completely messed up during a song and we decided to take a "break". But it was a thrill to be up there, knowing people were paying to watch us. A couple weeks later, we went back to Stache's for what would be our last open stage there. It was right at the start of the school year, and I had just gotten sick. I tried cancelling, but John wouldn't have any of it, so we played, and his dad took video. I'm completely wiped out, but we performed pretty well. The next day, I had a fever of 103 and stayed home.
We would spend the rest of the year writing tons of songs and planning on when to play for people. We started going to a lot of parties and hanging out with his friends, playing for people at a variety of places. Not much has come from J.R. Comics in the last dozen or so years. John played in bands and did a lot of good things musically during the '90's, while I semi-retired and became a father. I was back in Columbus by 1994, and when he visited we would inevitably get together and play, even record some. But it was too difficult to try to be very ambitious with it. We were just getting our first e-mail addresses, but were transmitting over 9600 baud modems. There was no inkling whatsoever that we might be able to use the Internet as a medium for transmitting music. In 2001, I revived my musical abilities and started creating actual CDs with my solo work. With new, better ways to record, the material was sounding better than it ever had. John and I did create a few songs together during these years, and it was still as fun as ever. In 2005, we collaborated on some more songs and started recording some more. This may not ever lead to a complete album of material, but it should be enough to keep the hungry fans at bay. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures on the horizon! |