The UHF Spectrum

Today's episode is dedicated to Mr. Dave Merrill, America's Ambassador to Canadia.

In today's media-soaked world, it's easy to forget how limited and ephemeral one's entertainment options really were (I mean, if you weren't willing to settle for playing outdoors and interacting with other living humans and stuff, of course). Upstate South Carolina had many good points, but the availability of a wide selection of interesting syndicated reruns and cartoons on the local channels was not among them. Until 1980, if I wanted to see cable television, I had to ride on a different bus after school with my friend Richard Dubose to his grandparents' house in town, at which point we could then watch about 90 minutes of WTCG (Later WTBS, TBS, and now WPCH) out of Atlanta before we hitched a ride home with one of my parents at 6:00. Spectreman and Space Giants were rare, hard-won treats indeed. If I was staying downtown in the evening, I could go over to the bar adjacent to the bookstore my father managed and they'd let me watch KTVU out of Oakland, which was at that time a "superstation" on nationwide cable, like WOR, WGN, and the aforementioned WTBS. Not only did it have a thrilling (if crappy) array of shows I'd only read about previously, like The Marvel Superheroes, and Clutch Cargo, but due to the time difference, they just got going as the local channels went to the news hour. Plus, they featured TV Pow!, the world's most retarded game show!
Around this period, my friends and I generally rushed up the hill from the bus stop to the nearest friendly house to watch Star Blazers (and, most days, the second half of New Zoo Revue, which preceded it, even though we were a bit old for it) on the local Christian channel, WGGS. They mixed a bit of secular programming amongst the sacred, but outside of the aforementioned pair, there wasn't much to see. On the other hand, it was always exciting to tune in to channel 40, if they were on the air.
WAIM was a tiny, low-power station that showed both ABC and CBS programming in the evenings, but the afternoons were filled with a crazy party mix of kid-oriented programming. A typical afternoon would feature Felix the Cat, Mighty Mouse, Speed Racer, The Little Rascals, and other assorted cartoons...but in no fixed sequence.! In fact, on at least one occasion that I recall, they played a Speed Racer, followed it with 15 minutes of Mighty Mouse, and then repeated the same Speed episode. Also, at least once every couple of weeks, the transmitter would break down and they'd have to send over to Greenville for a repairman, so they'd be off the air for the night. Watching channel 40 was an adventure. It was probably on such an afternoon that I drew this page of mostly Speed-related doodles. I don't recall if the flying saucer car is from the show, or whether it was my own design. Again, like yesterday, we see the notes on homework interpolated with the drawings.

War of the Satellites

I find it interesting that the ship in the foreground that I actually put most of my effort into is in fact a mere observer of the action, with the actual assault on the space pirates' ship coming from off-panel.

Exoskeleton for a Disembodied Brain

Almost certainly torn from the same notebook as this piece, we see before us my concept for a suit to help disembodied living brains live a more normal , active life... kinda like a Rascal, but more so.

The tiny, awkward X-wing seems very much an afterthought, added to lend some sort of drama to the static frontal view of Lord Vader's souped-up TIE fighter. I don't think it succeeds.

Flying Trinacromerum

This may be an extrapolation of something in the Lee J. Ames book (as discussed in this post), but the fact of its being drawn on tracing paper may be an indication that it was traced from some other dinosaur book. I was having trouble finding any reference to "Romerum" in any English-language documents, but I eventually determined that the missing piece would have completed the word "Trinacromerum".It starts out as a pretty accurate rendering, and then goes its own way...I suppose the horn and wings are reasonable enough, butI'm not sure what I was shooting for with that strangely humanoid hind leg. And then there's the butterfly-winged snake and the bat-winged ladybug...as well as the fact that the smaller flying fish has little clawed pterodactyl wings.As usual, I was so far ahead of the other paleontologists that they still haven't caught up to me.

Yellow Submarine

Referenced, but not traced (I just went downstairs and checked) from the cover of the soundtrack album. Said album was the first pop album that I purchased entirely independently of any adult, at a short-lived record shop upstairs from my parents' place of employment. I had plenty of records that had purchased for me, and I'd previously special-ordered the Close Encounters of the Third Kind soundtrack at the same shop, but this is where it all began for me as a record buyer. I don't think I've actually listened to it in this century yet, but it's the only post-Yesterday and Today Beatles album I'd be likely to pull out. Nonetheless, they all sit there patiently awaiting being called up to duty.
I'm thinking that this was probably done between Christmas and New Year's Eve, because I'm pretty sure that it was drawn with a particularly nice set of felt-tips that my Godmother gave me for Christmas that year. I got a lot of use out of those, and I believe that I still have one or two of the less-useful colors that could still more or less function, tucked away among my art supplies.

Beware of the Blob and his Snazzy Spacesuit

Clothes make the man, they say...so what might they do for a hideous one-eyed blob? Here are a couple of designs for exo-skeletons for Mr. Blob. The boots on the left one and the chestplate on the right-hand one seem to be inspired by stormtrooper armor. As a bonus, you get a couple of arms and an unfinished quiz or homework assignment.

Scary Robots

These fellows are clearly bad news...the one on the right even has an angry face on his hand, for Pete's sake! But then, I guess that if my hand had a mouth with lasers shooting out of it, then my hand might be angry, too. I was initially puzzled at the robot's apparent scuba tanks, but it's now my belief that they're actually tanks of rocket fuel to allow it to levitate.

Battle of the Dinosaurs!

Here we have a rather oddly composed fight scene between a tyrannosaurus and a pterodactyl. If you were a child at any point in the last 30 years and had any interest in dinosaurs (and who doesn't?), the odds are pretty good that you drew these exact dinosaurs (Use "Search Inside" and you can find the actual pages referenced). Yep, it's all thanks to good old Lee J. Ames --the noble king to whose throne the vile Christopher Hart pretends (I'm really interested to see how Jay Stephens' new instructional books turn out). I actually only had the dinosaur book and the comic character one, but I made a lot of use of them both. As you can see, though, I had some trouble figuring out how to take two different pieces and make them work together.

Possibly Rabid Robot with Eye-Tentacle

That interpretation only holds up if you interpret the underside of the top part as a frothing robot mouth and the round bit as a slitted eye, rather than some sort of glowing grating and a joint held by a screw, of course. But it sounds more exciting than "Two Camera-Headed Robots", wouldn't you agree?

The Purple Monster Strikes!

No relation to the villain of this serial. Perhaps I should just say that a purple monster strikes. This was done as classwork in Mrs. Jamie Corrigan's art class (I'm pleased to see that she's still teaching, but a bit distressed to discover that they closed my old school six years ago). At some point around this time, I made a pretty decent Godzilla paper-bag hand puppet that I'm still trying to locate. Watch this space for details! For the (likely nonexistent) curious, the "5-G" next to the signature refers to my being a member of Mrs. Garrison's 5th grade homeroom.

Where's My Pulitzer?

For whatever reason, I drew an editorial cartoon about the November 1978 invasion of Cambodia. What possessed me to do so, I really can't say. School assignment? Copying out of a newspaper? I don't recall having a strong interest in Southeast Asian affairs that year. Apparently, though, I felt strongly enough to draw this somewhat offensive political statement, which is (I believe) my only work in that field. I've drawn plenty of Nixons, but that's just because he's a funny-looking cartoon character.

Space Baby

Popeye's gonna need a lot of spinach to rescue Swee'pea this time. Note the relatively sophisticated way I handled the radio-transmitted crying (and the unusually sloppy hands). But for real precocity in the field of sequential fiction, click here.

The McDonalds of the Future

The Jetsons influence is evident...as is the shaky perspective on the offramp. There's also the question of why there is a need for this elevated roadway if air travel is so common that the sky is filled with rockets. Also the question of why the sky-cycle cop is hassling the hovercraft when there are clearly space pirates in the vicinity...possibly led by the Hamburglar of the Future!

Robot Overkill

This fellow is pretty well-prepared for nearly any eventuality, up to and including towing illegally-parked cars or administering injections. And yet, all that he chooses to do is to destroy a tree. I think that stuff at the tip of his nose is a set of doors opening to reveal another missile of some sort.


This fellow is less aggressive in his general look, but he's in danger of legal action from several of his metallic colleagues. Let's break it down: he's got Raydeen's legs, an upper torso reminscent of Iron Man's, ear thingys patterned after Robby, and I think his head may be based on Lucifer (though I believe that the top of the head was not intended to be a dome, but a set of sliding doors modeled on the U.S.S. Enterprise's shuttle bay). I think this may have been intentional, but that's probably after-the-fact rationalization. What is unique about him, though are his three rows of pouches around the midriff. Now that's a utility belt!

Anachronism

Like many kids in 1978, I filled my notebooks with Star Wars drawings, many of which will appear here eventually. Unlike most such kids, I also threw in some real curve balls, like this rendering of a battle between a Martian war ship and one of the Air Lords of Han's airships from Buck Rogers, ca. 1930. It would have been referenced from The Collected Adventures of Buck Rogers, which was frequently found on remainder tables in those days. I also tracked down the original novella that introduced Buck, Armageddon 2419 A.D. As a result, I would soon be perhaps the only pre-teen in America to be offended by the TV show's lack of fidelity to its source material. And don't get me started on the Flash Gordon movie!

Startled Robot

Apparently, when a robot does a Tex Avery take, the proper exclamation is "APP".
While they're hard to read, his eyes say "TILT". There were also a couple of false starts for more contemporary (i.e. STAR WARS/Micronautish) robots on the same page, but they were comparatively boring.

unfinished letter

Letter from camp? Some sort of manifesto? Who can know?