Fruit, Pigs, and Giraffes

This morning I did a little time digging through a box of files my parents brought me the last time they visited. It's full of high school and college notebooks, my handwritten, self made Latin Bible study guide, and some pretty lame papers.

The best thing I found? ALL of the comics I wrote in middle school! Melissa and I were always writing comics. Melissa's benefitted from her superior artistic skills (she went to Rhode Island School of Design and works as a graphic designer), but what mine lacked in artistry they made up for with pure weirdness.

My stories vary wildly from an ongoing tale of how I tracked down the murderer of my alleged best friend in seventh grade—Mr. Giraffe, the paper mache giraffe in our school courtyard to comics about the bizarre and elaborate ways I dreamed up for getting rid of the popular girl who was always leaning against my locker with her team of admirers.
In case you were wondering about Mr. Giraffe, he really did exist and he really was murdered (one morning his paper mache head fell off ) but the details of our friendship were mostly fabricated. Mostly.

There are several comics about Oliver, the uptight pig who loved to eat bacon (he developed a taste for it before he realized what it was and just couldn't kick the habit). Please don't ask me where I came up with that idea, because I just don't know. My Oliver comics overlapped with Melissa's comics about Moo the Cow who could only say, "Moo," and, "Moooooon!" and any other words that start with "moo." He and Oliver were pretty funny together and had many misadventures.

And then there are the comics I wrote for my friends called the Super Fruit. It followed the lives of Melissa, our friend Dan (who ended up taking me to the prom several years later), and me as secret super heroes waging an endless battle against the Great Baluga Whale Shark and, of course, evil vegetables.

I was Avocado Avenger. Avocado really is a fruit, though at the time I thought it was a vegetable (there was no google or wikipedia then, okay?). However, I wanted to be an avenger and an Apricot Avenger just didn't sound right to me. Dan was Apple Man—in case you were wondering why I wasn't the Apple Avenger—and Melissa was Killer Kiwi. And then there was the conflicted Passionate Passion Fruit, always double crossing everyone and using her feminine wiles for no good (she had self esteem problems).

Maybe I'll post some photos some time of those old comics. They're pretty silly and fun. But for now,it's time to get to work!