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It’s the secondary and tertiary characters that can make all the difference between a good story and a mediocre one. How many times haves you read a comic or watched a cartoon and all the supporting characters appear to be spit out of from the same mold? Sometimes it’s a matter time — there is no wand that can be waved to make new characters simply appear, they need to be developed. Perhaps I spend too much time on that at times, but I’d like to believe it pays off. This is Sergeant Slag, who’s pretty much a one-dimensional character: he doesn’t like Roscoe’s kind. He’s a first class FURC-hater. And as haters tend to be, he’s rather myopic — he allows his prejudices to keep him from finding the the true criminals.

I have several pages of sketches of some sort of sergeant to accompany Detective Penski. The Penski character was already gruff, the sergeant had to be more of an ignorant clod. During this period, I experimented with all sizes, races, and even gender. This led me to think about their captain, who would eventually appear on the page as a politically savvy woman. She would have to be smart in order to become a captain — someone who was considering all the angles and ramifications.

Roscoe’s bike is a constantly evolving vehicle — perhaps like the Batmobile, with many iterations. I’m always trying to justify its design, as if it would ever actually fly. So I work with it for a while and think, jeesh, that thing would never get off the ground, or how does it really do this or that? Stay tuned.

Desk – Music and Sound Design from Aaron Trinder Film:Motion:Music on Vimeo.

Strange but true and documented here in this promotional short film of Chicago Tribune comic artists churning out the daily strips on site and not at their home studios. Ahhhh…. simpler times.

Roscoe rising from the ruins of Crucial Comics

Ten years ago the publishing of the Rat Bastard comic book went dark. We left the comics world just as soon as we got a development deal for the animated Rat Bastard series. We were signed to a joint venture between Buena Vista (yes, Disney) and Ron Howard’s Imagine Television.

Rat Bastard was produced by Robocop creator Ed Neumeier and Tony Krantz (now producer of “24” starring Kiefer Sutherland). Tim and I were to be co-producers or co-executive producers, whichever title had less meaning, power, and pay — but what the fuck, we were in the door. We were to be writers on the show, and  got to work with some incredibly talented people.

It was a blast, and then it was over in a heart beat. One minute we had our own TV show, the next minute we were bums. So, like the Beverly Hill Billies, we loaded up the truck (in this case my Ford Explorer) and moved to Southern California in hope of finding another deal. After four years and several false starts, I decided I missed the NY/NJ metro area, and came home. I settled in Red Bank , NJ, a funny little town, 3 miles from the beach and a zillion light years from the world of Los Angeles. I could tell you how retarded  Los Angeles was, how bad the air was, how few people read books or newspapers, how many gun shots we heard or how many police helicopters went over our deceptively pleasant suburban home. But I’ll just say it was not for us, my wife Judie and I. Tim opted to stay behind. He liked it there.  So as we launch the new Rat Bastard comic, I’ll be writing and drawing in New Jersey, and Tim will be writing in L.A.

Here’s the mini pilot that was directed by Kevin Altieri and written by Ed Neumeier, based on our comic series “Fix For A King”. It’s a little bit corny, but take it from me; so is Hollywood.