Thu - January 27, 2005

From the Archives: Hudson Van Curen Gets Dumped, Part 2




Here's the final "Hudson Van Curen" strip, published in June 1992.

Fun fact: This comic was, in an insane feat of procrastination, drawn during a single all-nighter -- in the same room with staffers who were laying out the student magazine in which it would appear.

BTW, if the lettering's too small, you can download a high-rez PDF right here: HudsonDumped2.pdf
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Posted at 04:25 PM    

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Mon - January 24, 2005

From the archives: Hudson Van Curen Gets Dumped, Part 1




The final two installments of my 1990-92 college comic strip, "Hudson Van Curen," were devoted to Hudson's pathetic, grand-mal breakup with his girlfriend and ensuing departure from Eugene, Oregon.

Not. Autobiographical. At all.

Here's Part 1, digitally remastered. Part 2 (which is, I think, funnier and stranger) appears later this week.

Fun fact: Anthony the man-bird was based just a wee bit on the editor of The DVD Journal.

Lettering too small? Download a high-rez PDF of this comic right here: HudsonDumped1a.pdf
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Posted at 04:16 PM    

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Thu - January 20, 2005

From the archives: Hudson Van Curen's Commedia Dell'Arte




Like many aspiring cartoonists of my generation, I drew a comic strip for a college newspaper. Mine was called "Hudson Van Curen."

I drew "Hudson" for two years -- as a four-panel daily one year and a two-page monthly the next. I looked at some of them yesterday and marveled at how naive they are, how they hit all the stereotypical marks of a college comic strip in the early '90s.

Did it owe more than a little to "Bloom County?" It did.

Did it star a bland white everystudent who stood in for the cartoonist? It did.

Was there a wisecracking animal sidekick who acted as the strip's Id? There was.

Was there earnest confusion about being a young male in the early '90s -- complete with pinings for an unattainable, barely two-dimensional female archetype? There was.

My God, I realized: I was "Liberty Meadows," only without the draftsmanship or solid punchlines!

Anyway. It's my birthday, so I decided to digitally remaster one of the second-year strips and throw it online. Apparently, when I wrote it, I'd finally gotten sick of U of O's fine-art students telling me my comic sucked.

Oh, and if the lettering's too small, you can download a high-rez PDF of the strip right here: HudsonCommedia.pdf








Posted at 11:06 AM    

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