#42 - the search for "boobie" (11-97) 



a very unusual comic altogether, because it completely leaves the world of christopher, mortimer, nips, and chirp, and enters ours, through a massive use of narrative voice personified as nips.

yeah, it's a visual and storyline catastrophe--self-admittedly so--and i would never do anything like this now; but it was written because of a truly unusual incident that occurred, that would continue to lurk around the edges of my life until 2002, five years after it happened.

there are at least seven people with my name in the united states of america. one of them is in mississippi, apparently owns a small record company, and is in other wise as far as i can tell an upright citizen. five others i know nothing about, but there is one to whom i became quite closely tied when he moved to kansas city in 1997.

the first time i heard about him, his mother-in-law had called for his wife, and left the message in the top of the comic below. i was confused. why would someone think this woman lived with me? it was a huge puzzlement. but as i was finishing this comic--almost ready to take it to press, in fact, i received a call from a welcome wagon service in smithville, trying to locate my address there.

naturally i was bemused, since i didn't live within twenty five miles of smithville. but the welcome wagon people were insistent. i lived in smithville. a few more questions, and it was revealed the Other Me had a different middle initial, and was not me at all!

incredible! someone else with my name, out of the handful in the country, and there they were half an hour away.

a couple of days later, i got a call from him. we chatted briefly, amused, and then that was that.

a few months went by.

then the calls began. people began asking me if i were planning to make my truck payments, my boat payments, the payment on my television. i suggested they had the wrong person. they went away, dubious. happily, the same agencies never seemed to bother me twice, but like the head of a hydra, two more would return for each one i suggested should go away.

the calls continued; i continued to drive them off. they asked me if i knew who this person was. they asked me if i knew where he was. they asked for the last four digits of my social. they asked me if i had accounts with such and so. i told them the story. i said no. i told them XXXX. i said i had never heard of their bank, their credit agency. i had none of their cards, and was making no plans to pay them back. sometimes i didn't even bother to inform them of the fact i was not Not-Me, and simply told them to leave me alone.

two years passed. three. the calls waxed and waned. sometimes i would go nine or ten months without hearing from them. then some bright researcher at mastercard or visa or such and so collection agency or thusly bank would discover me again, and the calls would come flying. the Not-Me was evidently Not Easy To Find.

the calls never actually stopped. i just got rid of my landline and got a cell-phone. like magic: nothing!

so far, the Not-Me has not damaged my credit rating. right now, i believe he lives in iowa.

please pay your bills, Not-Me.

an interesting technical note, at this time we got a new color copier at work. the color copier was the device i was using to reduce the 11x17 pages i drew the comic on to 8.5x11; the new one, which was a Xerox instead of the rickety canon, left behind an interesting gray background and preserved far more pencil details than the rickety canon i had been using. i liked the effect, and it set the trend in the future for how i addressed backgrounds, washes, and my pencil-lines.

also at this time, i had begun, i think, to suspect that the comic as i knew it would be soon over, but i didn't know yet what new form, if any, that it would take. after all, the first year has only six more comics left.

 


 

 


 
 

Posted: Tue - May 18, 2004 at 10:26 AM             |

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