What’s your purpose in life? Are you even aware of one? Are you just running on automatic, going with the flow? Nothing wrong with that, but it all leads to the same big faceless wash-out.<\/p>\n What do you really want out of life?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I started to realize my purpose early, in grade school, 1984. There were these trading cards, see, and all of us kids adored them. We could not get enough of them. The administrators of Central School took notice, and banned these stickers.<\/p>\n Too late.<\/em><\/p>\n From my collection, which I began 33 years ago.<\/p><\/div>\n Suddenly I had a revelation. I could\u00a0draw<\/em> the stickers for the other kids, and the principal would be none the wiser. So I did. A\u00a0lot.\u00a0<\/em>I imitated the careful paintwork by rubbing my fingertip in the pencil marks, creating a primitive airbrush effect that I would have to be broken of years later, in art school. The other kids went\u00a0absolutely apeshit.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n “Clogged Duane” was my favorite to draw. Sometimes kids would ask for their namesake, or that of a friend\/enemy. I was in business. I was taking requests for “commissioned artwork”. At 12.<\/p>\n At 32, I was actually acquainted with Jay Lynch, the underground cartoonist who co-created the Garbage Pail Kids, with Art (Maus<\/em>) Spiegelman. I had tried to meet him at a MoCCA festival, but he was outside smoking. Later, desperate for work, I emailed him, and he congenially offered to let me ghost some comics\u00a0on the backs of new Garbage Pail Kids cards.<\/em><\/p>\n I’d known Jay’s work since high school. Amongst the classic underground cartoonists, Jay was the toughest nut to crack. Bob Crumb’s fetishes and predilections were well-known by 1970. Spain Rodriguez was the Minister of Propaganda for an honest-to-god motorcycle club (MC). Gilbert Shelton was the liaison of the thinking hippie, and a savant of a draftsman. But Jay?<\/p>\n Jay was the\u00a0master subversive.<\/em><\/p>\n Jay had a working knowledge of American 20th century pop culture. He knew\u00a0everything<\/em> about Chicago. R. Crumb had the 40s, Bobby London had the 30s; Jay Lynch had an undefinable, perfectly cross-hatched universe of his very own. Familiar, yet alien. Comforting, yet also disturbing. Nobody ever cross-hatched as good as Jay.\u00a0No one.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I know. I ghosted him.<\/p>\n He’d been bitten by the neighbor’s dog, and couldn’t draw temporarily. So the stars aligned, and I was permitted to fill in. When I got the originals, Jay suggested I use a Rapidograph I’d never even heard of before; the .18. The thinnest one I had was a .30, which slopped up Jay’s hard work like a charm. He didn’t use Liquid Paper or White-Out; he had a specially chosen white paint that he used, that he could continue inking upon. The dude was operating on a level I could only dream of at the time.<\/p>\n Here I was, being paid handsomely to do exactly what I’d done in grade school, out of passion. It took several tries before I got it right. It was the hardest and most rewarding art job I’ve ever done. Thanks to Jay Lynch.<\/p>\n Here’s the comic strip Jay saw that got me the gig:<\/p>\n From Mike The Pod Comix<\/i> #4, 1998.<\/p><\/div>\n Jay was an admirer of Chester Gould, as I am, and he was impressed with the lettering I did for\u00a0Stig Mata.\u00a0<\/em>Truthfully, the strip was as much inspired by Spiegelman’s\u00a0Dead Dick<\/em> as Gould’s strip. But the reason I tightened up my cross-hatching and text was to compete with the art of Jay Lynch.<\/p>\n My technique took a\u00a0quantum leap<\/em> after doing the GPK work. Jay taught me that you can always\u00a0go smaller<\/em>. I learned to write so tiny, the words can’t be read without a magnifying glass. That was Jay; you see an opportunity to leave a message, you take it. You plant the seeds that grow in fertile young minds, and build\u00a0strong intellects for the future.<\/p>\n Before Garbage Pail Kids, Lynch and Spiegelman created the immortal\u00a0Wacky Packages<\/em>, a legendary lampoon of consumer products, largely painted by the great Norm Saunders. Jay did the roughs for about a million of them. This was where I learned\u00a0subversion of advertising paradigms.\u00a0<\/em>One of the most important attitudes of a happy life: advertising is\u00a0all ridiculous lies.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bandsiusetalike.com\/biul\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/jaylynch.jpg\")
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