First, a warm-up drawing I started my day with. This is Wurzel, our Boden druid from my upcoming new Table Titans story. I’m very excited for everyone to meet Wurzel as he’s acting as the Titan’s “Yoda”, introducing them to the concepts of magic and how it works and affects the world for good and bad.
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Next, let’s talk about Robbie and Jase. Robbie and Jase have been through a lot of change since I first drew them back in the late 90s. They are based on two co-workers of mine from my college summer job at the local YMCA. And they were originally created for a comic strip I was submitting to newspaper syndicates in the mid-90s about an elementary school.
That strip, is the strip that eventually became PvP. I converted the cast from an elementary school faculty to the staff of a video game magazine. Robbie and Jase went from being Phys-ed teachers to being slackers who played and reviewed sports games.
For most of the first decade of PvP, Robbie and Jase were typical frat-boys. and by that I mean they were were sexist, homophobic, jerks.
I would love to tell you that Robbie and Jase were ONLY there to mock sexist homophobic jerks. Certainly I remember using them to mock the jocks I grew up despising. But I started PvP when I was 24 years old. And when I was 24 I had no concept of privilege or the male-gaze and I was definitely homophobic. I know that because a good friend of mine made the effort to wake me up to that reality and thank God he did. So I have to own up to my own ignorance and admit that my art was a reflection of that. So yeah, Robbie and Jase were there to mock jerks. But I was also one of the jerks.
I’m not proud of a lot of the humor found in the PvP archives. They reflect and earlier imperfect version of myself that I have progressed past. But I refuse to remove those strips from the archive because doing so would prevent me from looking back and seeing how far I’ve come. I can look back and see where I woke up to certain things and hopefully became a better version of myself.
So the question is: do I change Robbie and Jase to reflect who I am as a person NOW? Do I allow the characters to grow with me? Or do I leave them the way they were and show them try to exist in a world that’s passed them by progressively? Both have merit, and both have opportunity for insight and humor. One thing is for sure, it’ll be addressed. And the strip WILL continue to change. That’s the only way I can ensure it will survive another year, (let alone another 18 years).
I’m taking a second run at these two now that I’m hopefully a better person and writer. Hopefully I can do something interesting with them.
Counting on you kids to let me know 🙂