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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 24, 2001)
I nary 24, m Pay ludyfui, *)ad. Pi J 18 roii =>rs, incl 1 =:hway bounty i =ting roi -cess isii Drtunily We do )hearw in then - a pub -orge Bi ■d Conff =W a.m committe "veratyofij H):30a.nu iciydiscu' d. Wednesday, Januai'y 24, 2001 AG GI E/i/e THE BATTALION X Page 3 uw oezz, z iui«s see. ici ; usow ?«*'*. or\t u : rr^t By Brooke Hodges The Battalion Have you ever wondered who is responsible for the comic strips in The Battalionl You know, the ones that sometimes make you laugh out loud dur ing a really boring lecture. From the funniest to the crudest and everything in between, here is an inside look at the guys responsible for the strips. Fatih Ruben DeLuna, The Battalion graphics editor and a senior marketing major, is the creative mind behind the strip that The Battalion has featured for almost three years. Fish started in Fall 1998, when DeLuna created a strip about a group of fresh men with a plan to follow them over a typical four-year college career. The fact that the characters have stayed freshmen for three years is never discussed, and .ideredi: said i\t mean tin] te said."! s better. rom Pi ' said Si icral sn dize areavij ng Wifi f tWol d , J are ataol iresentaki ireseffivi lew yeaii eworta.: >pirits. I bratiot- erenion'- MN H(N HON 111 DeLuna said it is because he did not want to change the strip’s game. The characters in the strip are named after people he knows but are not necessarily based on their personalities. The only exception to this is Middle- Aged Larry, who was based on a guy in DeLuna’s freshman math class. “I don’t even know if the guy’s name was Larry,” he said. DeLuna said the characters Scoot and Ryan reflect his personality the most. “Those are the two characters 1 use for outlets,” he said. DeLuna said he especially enjoys drawing the strip when he gets more room in the double strips that usually parody a recently released movie or a television show. “1 have more room and can do multiple jokes instead of one punch line,” he said. “And, I’m a fan of movies and anything ‘pop-culturish,’ so it lets me be more random.” DeLuna said the comic strip started as a way to get his drawings no ticed. Now, because he has to make other graphics, the strip is the excit ing part of his job. Brandon Henderson, a junior electrical engineering major, is the mastermind of the wit that fu els the humor in Non Mia Culpa. The idea for Longhorn and Robo, who first appeared in Sep tember 1999, came to Henderson when he was at a basketball game with a friend. “At the time, I saw an un tapped market of readers who were sarcastic, witty and, by all means, good looking,” he said with a laugh. “We came up with Longhorn right then and there.” Many readers may wonder | why Henderson decided to use the mascot of A&M’s rival as the star of his strip. Henderson said he used the Bevo look- alike because of his lack of artistic ability. “1 was such a horrible artist when 1 first started, I just tried to come up with sketches that could readily be identified as unique characters,” he said. “If it has things sticking out of its head, it’s a Longhorn.” Henderson said the character Robo was the second member to join the cast. “Robo came about when I realized I needed a good foil for ‘Horns,” he said. “What is the opposite of a longhorn-man? A trashcan, of course.” During last spring’s student body presidential campaign, the usual fliers were accompanied by leaflets featuring Robo. Henderson said the idea of the Robo2000 Campaign started as a joke and spread like wildfire. “It was fueled by that sick feeling everyone gets in their stomach when they get offered some cheap candy by a stranger disguised as a cam paigner,” he said. “The Robo2000 campaign was for those who wanted to rise in a unified voice, shouting across Aggieland in a rumble that would shatter democracy and windows alike, ‘We don’t care!’ ” Henderson, who is not on campus this semester because of a co-op job in Dallas, is looking for someone to head up this year’s Robo campaign. Non Mia Culpa is being submitted by email and will run only three days a week. 4A|jp)t, Kyle Whitacre, a cartoonist and a senior journalism major, has given read ers an almost daily glimpse into his apartment since this past summer. All the characters in his strip are based on Whitacre’s former roommates. He said the old roomies don’t mind being in a comic and think it’s cool. “They’ll use the fact they’re in a comic strip tq hit on people,” he said. “My new roommates are always complaining (because) they are not in there.” Whitacre describes his material as anything out of the ordinary that happens in daily life. Last semester, he exper imented by adding photos to his strips. He said the challenge of mixing pho tography with his draw ings led him to try some thing new. Whitacre said his fa vorite strip was the one fea turing Jay and Silent Bob from Clerks and Mall Rats. Whitacre said his artistic ability has benefited from drawing the cartoon. “It has really improved,” he said. “It just keeps get ting better and better.” For people who have not followed the strip since the beginning, the nin ja who randomly appears in the strip was originally a pet that the residents of apartment 160 kept in a cage. The ninja escaped from its cage last se mester and will continue to wreak havoc in the apartment this semester. Carson Higgs, a cartoonist and a senior biomedical science major, is re sponsible for 254, which is Higgs’ apartment number. Higgs decided to do without reccuring characters after a failed attempt at a storyline comic during Summer 2000 with Fantastico Chronicles. Higgs said that not having to follow the characters makes doing a comic strip easier. “I like being able to put random stuff down, and it doesn’t have to be a lit erary masterpiece,” he said. “And with college students, you can be more crude. Plus, it makes my parents proud.” Higgs said originally he wanted to place classifieds in The Battalion each week containing information about his and his roommate’s lives like “Car- son took a test today,” but the ads were refused because they didn’t offer any thing for sale. So, he said, the next logical step was a comic strip. He said he suffers from creative blocks when he thinks about his subject material too much. Higgs said he believes he lacks artistic ability. “If you see my comics, you can tell I haven’t been drawing forever,” he said. Higgs said the hardest part of doing a strip is that one person will love a strip and another person will hate it. Tte Cmkm Adrian Calcaneo, a cartoonist and a senior international studies major, is the artist behind The Wuss Cookie. i .,e strip, which began in Summer 2000, is back this semester after a brief hiatus. The strip started because Calcaneo wanted to poke fun at the University and the average college student. He thought about hav ing one guy in the strip but decided to use two because he said he thinks pairs are funnier. The two characters are based on Calcaneo’s ex-roommate and Dave Foley of “Kids in the Hall.” Calcaneo said most of his material comes from his daily events. “I sit down and think, ‘Was anything funny?’ ” he said. He began drawing as a kid and said he would enjoy drawing a strip af ter college. “I would love to do this as a career, more to learn.” he said. “But right now, I have a lot Tte prmm imm& The cartoonists were asked whether revealing their identities made them nervous after they have been behind their drawings. Here are their answers: DeLuna: I’ll be very disappointed if people don’t hunt me down ask ing for autographs! Henderson: A year ago, I don’t think I would be comfortable telling everyone who I was. That is why the comic is penned under b-hippie. At some point, I decided that people, for the most part, don’t care enough to even raise an eyebrow. This being said, all stalkers must sign up at Koldus before 3:30 p.m. on Thursday to receive stalking passes. Stalking is per mitted only in designated creeping areas. If you stalk on game days, PTTS will tow your car. Whitacre: The people who I care if they read it, already know I do it. Calcaneo: I don’t think people will recognize me from the picture! but if they do, I hope they had good things to say and aren’t mad that I’ve been picking on the football team. Higgs: I’m not worried about revealing my identity because “Carson Higgs” is an alias. I’m like that guy from the critically acclaimed TNT show “Pretender.”
