"The Lion, the Witch and the Wart Hog"

I might not have known how to draw, but it sure looks like I knew my way around a drawer of Zip-a-Tone! (Circa 1980)

This, and the previous post, is at the request of Will Finn. "Earth Pig" is an old comic strip character of mine from my days in high school (1975ish)... and it followed me through my years at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Like many other young 'tooners, I had high hopes of my strip getting syndicated one day. But I and it just gleamed lots of rejection letters. The usual sob story. Then with the advent of adulthood and all its fixin's - bills, mortgages, children, et al. - I opted for the security of full-time graphic design and later of freelance cartoons and newspaper editorial cartoons... and put such iffy "consignment" stuff like this far away, deep in a trunk.

Much inspired by "Pogo" and the old "Shoe" comic strips... with a pinch of the Hundred Acre Wood thrown in. All set in a long forgotten ravine or a hollow (whose inspiration was Panther Hollow near the Pitt campus)... part idyllic woodland and part dump. Earth Pig was (is?) inspired in part by me... and is a clumsy wart hog of low esteem... a garbage man who lives in a pretty nice efficiency apartment under a stone bridge, built by the WPA in 1933. However, he, in his naiveness, thinks that keystone inscription must be his address: 1933 Wiley Post Avenue. Other characters included (and shown here) was his buddy Iwerks, a tree sloth who lived on the lightpost - perpetually decorated for Christmas. Iwerks (inspired by Will Finn - named after the great Ub Iwerks... the animator whose name sounds like a optician's office), liked living there fine except when he peed it would run down his neck. A common problem with tree sloths, so I am told, who move so seldom and so slowly that moss actually grows on them and colors them green. Iwerks was the doorman down at the E-Z Sleep Motel.

Chagrin was a door mouse who Earth Pig loved without return (much to his chagrin - get it?) ... based on a young hottie from Art School who wouldn't give me the time of day either (whom I later got even with - I married her! Ha! Twenty-eight years now in just a few weeks - so she is still paying!). Chagrin lived in one of those old one-time shiny silver house trailers and worked over at the White Lily Laundry. She told Earth Pig that she didn't date outside her species (I cannot tell you how many girls I heard that old chestnut from, boy!) Briffit was Earth Pig's loyal pooch (who starred once, literally, in a animated short for school, "Briffit in the Park". It was a project done by Will and hindered by me)... Boyd was a burned-out street bum of a kola bear (based on a talented druggie from art school). Flavia was a grumpy tapir inspired by a painting teacher at AiP... who was also, I always suspected, the inspiration first of Mama from the "Katzenzammer Kids".

Will, in his kindness, tells me that "Earth Pig" is still his favorite comic strip. Nice boy. Must not read the funny papers much...

By way of explanation of the previous post's heading... While at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, I had a t-shirt made with the words "EARTH PIG" on the front. Walking through Market Square one day, I walked by a trio of Aqualungs sitting on a park bench (in hopes of eying little girls with bad intent, no doubt). As I passed - apparently a slow day for little girls - I heard each in turn cheerily yell out, as if they knew me or my creation: "Earth Pig!" "Eart' Pig!" "Erf Pid!"

Then, to my back, wearily from under one of old sot's breath a sad, yet gruff, "Dam' fool!"