A Humorous Quadrilateral

I grew up with a love of newspaper comics. I think I had Garfield sheets on my bed for several years during childhood until they were replaced with a generic 90's jazzy colored bed set. To give you an idea of what the Garfield sheets were replace with, just look at this and you can visualize:

I got a kick out of reading the Sunday paper because they had the colored comics and it felt special. I fell in love with The Far Side. It was the greatest comic of all time. I thought Gary Larson must have had the best life imaginable. He could come up with funny ideas and draw them for a living. So I gave it my best effort to rip off The Far Side and come up with my own funny ideas.

I published my first comic in 1998 for a high school project in English class. The result was a bound book of a collection of student's "art" work. I remember having a discussion with the English teacher that they didn't want to print my comic because it was too vulgar. They believed the puddle on the ground to be dog urine. I clarified that it was water from the hydrant. You be the judge:

 

My reasoning was that the dog didn't have time to urinate because the hydrant was striking in anger. Regardless, this is a black and white picture, so it isn't clear either way. I won that argument and this comic was published. 

I would venture a guess that drawing this comic took me multiple hours. I was very particular about the layout and lines, and I also wasn't a good artist. I first drew in pencil, then outlined with a pen and erased the underlying pencil. That's how confident I was in my drawing skills. 

The name of my comic back then was "Humorous Quadrilateral" because I am a literal person and I literally could not think of a clever name. Doesn't it just roll off the tongue?

Here is another one from the same year:

I like this comic more than the one I published because I thought it was a more original joke. It also introduced my TZ initials on the lower right. I created this initial name sign in 6th grade during a particularly boring lecture.

When these comics were made it was just pen to paper and the thought of coloring them was out of the question. Markers would look like crap, and crayons were for kindergarten. I think I might colorize these soon just to see what they would look like. That is probably the main difference now that we have modern computer aided paint programs and scanners. I can color comics easily now!

So there you have it, my first comics. It all goes downhill from here.