My (own) back pages…
I was born in California to an American father and an Australian mother, with an older brother and older sister, both of whom were born in Australia (in Perth). My family moved back and forth between Australia and the U.S., so when I was almost three years of age, we moved back to Perth, where I was raised for the next nine years, completing primary school (that’s elementary school for you Yanks) there - and first falling in love with drawing pictures. As I was born to older parents, my father was already looking towards retirement, so when I was almost 12, we moved back to the States, to Boise, Idaho. There, I went to junior high school and then high school, beginning junior high school as the kid with the “funny” accent, then graduating from high school as just American enough to pass and Aussie enough to keep calling my mother “mum” and not “mom.” (Pretty schizoid background, awot?)
I served in the U.S. Navy for five years after high school, then came back to Idaho for college and a fine arts degree. I could not pursue it to the graduate level, however, as my father died the year I was graduating and I had to be close to my mum. I went to work with special needs adults and over time, lost the mojo for art, even after she died a few years later. I went into education as a teacher of English as a foreign language (TEFL) and onto Japan, where I have now lived for the last 28 years and am now a TEFL lecturer at three universities in the Tokyo area.
So, how come Zoot & Algy?
In December 2019, after meeting a former university student of mine for dinner one night in Tokyo, I wandered onto YouTube on my smartphone while on the train going home and as it was getting near the 25th, I got the urge to watch a Charlie Brown Christmas, which I hadn’t seen in a dog’s age, thinking I could find some clips for it on YT. When I found and watched some, I was reminded all over again just how great Charles Schulz was. So I went to some comic websites, scrolled around, and fell in love with comic strips all over again - call it a minor epiphany.
Shortly after that, my wife asked me if I had any New Year’s resolutions. It tumbled out - “I’ll start a comic strip.” Just like that. I bought a sketch pad, a few pencils and a calligraphic pen, and started doodling. One thing led to another and I came up with two characters - a kangaroo and a cat. Why a kangaroo and a cat? Well, what’s the most Australian thing you can think of? As much as it could be Vegemite, Tim Tams, or Aussie Rules football (all of which I still love), the most natural is a kangaroo. And cats? I’ve had several cats in my family over time, and my wife and I are cat lovers, so - a cat. With my two lovely little guys, whom I soon named Zoot for the kangaroo and Algy for the cat, I knew I was at the launch pad.
As for the concept of the strip, I was reminded of the final Calvin and Hobbes strip that Bill Watterson ever did - a Sunday New Year’s gem, where Calvin says “let’s go exploring!” and they go sledding down a hill. My first strip with my two characters was about picking up where Calvin and his tiger left off - what happened at the bottom of the hill? So I had Zoot and Algy land in a strange place - plucked out of the conventional world by an unseen but friendly entity I spontaneously called The Big Idea, which soon charged them with forming a “zoocracy” - the world’s first country run by animals - with other creatures (and eventually, objects that talked). Z&A had to then go exploring around to find other creatures that the Big Idea had also chosen to bring into this odd new world. I was throwing ideas up against the wall to see what would stick - and one (of the many) that did was the line in the Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” about the “4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire” (which also inspired The Big Idea to communicate through a statue of Queen Victoria - there’s a famous one in Blackburn) - so at first I put holes, which then morphed into circles, throughout their country, the Undiscombobulated Republic of Foreka. Why “undiscombobulated”? It’s just a weird and wonderful word. Why “Foreka”? I was born in Fortuna, California, near the redwood country, and Eureka is adjacent to it, where we were living after I was born. Hence, “For-” (from Fortuna) and “-reka” (from Eureka).
So that’s what I blame this whole thing on. Over time I’ve gradually added new characters, developed kooky scenarios and situations, gone onto creating with an iPad and the Procreate app, and I haven’t let up since.
If you’d like a rundown of the characters, you can check out the “Meet the gang!” section on the Amazing Zoot & Algy website.
My influences (or who to blame it all on).
As for my influences, they’re the great panoply of 20th-century American cartoonists - George Herriman (Krazy Kat), Schulz, Watterson, and Berke Breathed (Bloom County). In addition, there’s the underground comix of the 1960s, especially Robert Crumb (not in content, but in style), as well as the psychedelic poster artists of the same era. For humor, Frank Zappa (not in the scatological, but in references that are peppered here and there in the strip) and Monty Python, for their sheer irreverence. For anything touching the philosophical, I have always been struck by the moments in Peanuts when Linus and Charlie Brown would discuss things.
So that’s that. My apologies in advance to those looking for the clean, agreeable profile of say, Webtoons. That’s not what I do. (No knock on Webtoons, mind you, but they’re not just my cup of meat - though anyone working within the predominant styles of that mode still gets my full support. Anyone human and trying to create meaningfully is doing something vital.) But the way I work is where I’ve realized my best self, and this is what I want to offer to all who view my work.
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