Wednesday, January 7, 2009

#1 Redux



Here is the same strip, years later to practice a new format.

Biscuits & Gravy: #1




So here is the first Biscuits & Gravy...Always funny to see the humble beginnings.

This was written April 18th, 2004. Also my Brother's Birthday.

Lamby

"Lamby" was given to me by my Mother in 1980 as an Easter gift. I was very fond of this little white puffball of a lamb. I would tie a little shoelace around her and carry her with me on my early adventures. Snow sledding, Long walks, exploring the woods.

As I grew, She grew from cherished toy to become a mascot of sorts for Easter. My Mother loved to decorate the house. And more or less Lamby lived in the box with all the other Easter things. I put a Chicago Cubs shirt on her the last time I played with her, and she was packed away.

I went to High school, left home, fell in love, went to college, married, moved out west...I became a cartoonist.

My Wife and I were enjoying breakfast one morning. I thought of the comix I wanted to write. Including a daily strip of some kind...I didn't know.

Daily special at the coffee house? Biscuits and Gravy.

I thought back on the lamb. I knew how she would look, I could even hear her voice as the same high-pitched falsetto my Mom would use as she "played" Lamby.

I called home. Mom said she thought Lamby was still there.

Lamby arrived a week later in a small box. I remembered her having a round head, it was now twenty-four years older and squished a bit from the years of boxed life. My wife was even a little upset, as her Mother had passed away recently and here I was getting a bit of lost childhood back from mine. It wasn't fair, but Lamby was mine again.

I even gave her a sweet peck on the forehead and tucked her high on a special shelf, where she would not be forgotten, and maybe even preserved for future generations.

I wrote the first Biscuits and Gravy right after that fateful breakfast, and kept going for several months before my wife and I were blessed with pregnancy...Two beautiful children later, "Biscuits", as she is now known sits high in my Son's room, until he's too old, and then into our Daughter's room, and then?

She'll not be boxed away again, I'll tell you that much.

Not a bad legacy for a four dollar grocery store Lamb!