More Bio: HUGO WHERE? (For Paid Subscribers Only!)

More bio, on the origins of my own character:

HUGO WHERE? (For Paid Subscribers Only!)

At age eleven, I had a poem I wrote in the school pamphlet called “I Am A Knight”, with the slaying of a dragon and the rescue of a princess that “looked like Old Fay Wray. It was one of the few things I did that my dad was proud oof, mostly because of the “I Am A Knight/And I Love To Fight” couplet. I was being macho enough.

When I was about twelve, came KING LEAN BEEF. Blame it on my burgeoning interest in the Great Mediaeval Myth as originating in a Tony Curtis film and The Three Goofy Guards. King Lean Beef, about two feet tall, in a castle of stone walls and checkered vinyl tile floors. King Lean Beef, appearing in tablets of lined writing pals across the nation, limited to my home, of course.

I soon renamed the character KING OLLIE, of whom there were two versions. I had been given a BRINGING UP FATHER as a birthday gift, and thus inspired, I gave Ollie a Queen built like a Rodin statue, daughter (think George McManus' pretty women) and young, dashing son. I drew this incarnation through junior high. It was somewhat sexy. I did a pseudo comic book cover, on typing paper, showing the Princess and her consort on a divan. Said consort's hands were in suspicious places, and the Princess said how she hoped her father wouldn't see them; said Father was pointing a cannon behind them. The consort's hands were suspicious enough that my teacher wanted too show it to the principal, so I hid it. The erotic auras of ARCHIE had diseased my mind.

The other incarnation of OLLIE was my favorite, and, though I wasn't conscious of it, the STUFFY DURMA cartoons animated by James Tyer (appeared in The MILTON the MONSTER SHOW) had engraved itself on my noggin.

I never knew what route his animation would take. Even in the cheap TV stuff, he was using distorted drawings of fast motion...”smears”, but they'd be on the screen for, possibly, eight frames per drawing instead of two.

In this incarnation of OLLIE, the King was still tiny, but single, and he had a page with the appropriate haircut and a Miss Grundy nose named Rollo who patronized “my little king” and was always trying to take over. He would pat the King on the head and place him in a high chair, leaving him to fume. The King writhed in fury, and would have skull and crossbones thought balloons over his head, whether or not it was clear why. Occasionally, a story would end with the King attacking his page.

At age 14, I was borrowing library books on medieval history and Reynard the Fox. The notion of medieval animals weighed heavy on my mind, and I toyed with various types. It remained a fixation of mine. At one point, I had a jester named Shamus. By age 16 and showing my work at the Marvel offices, I had samples with “Chuzzlewit the Wizard”, a wolf with a henpecking wife.