#4 He Was Surrounded By His Own Pajamas

This was drawn one afternoon in the 70s. 

I ate a slice of apple pie that was left over in the refrigerator. It had only been there a day or two but you could taste the aluminum of the pie tin. I was doing a number of these drawings that day, working on one, then the other. 


This was an incredibly creative period for me. I wrote up, like, 30 of these cartoons, and began drawing them. I don't think I could do that many at one time today. I also was in love that weekend, but more on that later. 


I went outside, thinking about the aluminum taste in my mouth and remembering how, as a child, my sister and I chomped down on tin foil once, and the taste. That metallic taste.


It was a sunny spring day - mid-day - and most everyone else in the apartment complex was probably at work. That time of day was always kind of spooky for me. But I worked at home. Alone. I was a cartoonist. 

It was like being in a ghost town for a few hours every day. 

One time I imagined the apartment complex, covered in 80 feet of ice, like an ice age had come. People and their possessions - sneakers, alarm clocks, toasters, a briefcase with papers coming out -  were floating in the ice, out the windows, entombed forever. 


I used that image/concept in one of the unpublished Mysterymen stories I did for Dark Horse. The MM were testing a flying wing and dropping bombs on the ice. When they examined the craters, they saw a whole alien, or ancient civilization down below, frozen in the ice, and floating. 

Kind of like THE THING, the original one, from the 50s with James Arness. 


I had to get the taste of the aluminum out of my mouth. I could go across the street to FRIDAYS and have a drink while waiting for "happy hour" or go back inside and draw. Or maybe take my pad and go over there and draw some monsters. sometimes there were a few stray housewives or divorcees at the bar there in the afternoon, left over from a 5 martini lunch with the girls.Yes. that would be a good idea. 


Monsters. Yes.