The Laredo Legend

i created a cartoon strip a while back that ran in the badger herald for about two months the year after I graduated -- until I moved to new york. here it is, from No. 1 at the top all the way to the last millionaire-influenced panel, including some that never saw publication before:

yeah i used to work in a liquor store. it was my eye on madison (get it?) and where many of the strips initiated and even where some were sketched and inked


a shoutout to a friend of a friend's comic that ran at columbia and created quite a stir from time to time, so i used it to parody the atmosphere in madison and my then-profession transmuted into blither


september 11 2003


censored in just its fourth installment, this episode of laredo never ran because two prongs of potential offense led to a three-fold conspiracy to silence it. explanation: my roommate at the time, a local city councilman, was concerned about the discussion of some private information concerning another public figure, so he entreated my former roommate, the herald's comics page editor, to bounce the strip. when that failed he brought the strip to the pizza entrepreneur whose shop appears fictionally in this comic's alternate universe. the albanian pizza man was concerned about his patrons both realizing he is not italian and associating albania and his shop with islam. he claimed the muslim tie did not exist, despite my having cited my source. threatened with withheld pizza, the comics editor relented and the strip got spiked


which launched my counterattack, and a fundamental change in style and direction of the cartoon


pat me on the back for predicting the badgers surprising first loss that season


racial tension and literary references become the norm


but lets not leave out sports and unnecessary intellectualism


four strips ran each week, because i didn't make one for thursday's color page, so this begins laredo's third week, with guest stars (also another wacky whitey reference)


outkast's double album dropped the previous tuesday, but i hadn't got my art in on time so this whole week ran late


as promised, so fulfilled


this is what living with verveer was like, and it's the last of guest-star week


i went to ny looking for an apartment, then came back for two weeks. this week was drawn from new york (or rather jersey city)


ralph wiley died this year, during the nba finals; next time you chadwick for odb, think of r-dub too


columbus day, in the bicentennial of lewis & clark reaching the pacific


the ongoing story of the strip is cryptic and many complained. this one probably didn't help, but if you look at it in the context of this week (this and the previous three) it ought to tie together


now this one makes no sense. it never ran because i didn't think anyone would get it. basically the paper of the strip is supposed to be tearing apart, mimicking the various conflicts and indecisions of the otherwise-unrelated drawings, and revealing the universe beyond.


the replacement i made, a bill watterson rip-off, did run. not only did i still get to draw a saturn-like planet (spot the error!), i think it ended up working well with the post-colonial themes of the story


i had a chance to meet duany's family at the final four. wonderful people


i had to look up the name of the font, only i forgot and turned the comic in. later i found it and had the comic editor fill it in before it ran, but i only have the originals and i can't remember it again


and that's it