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Sometimes you have an idea that you play with for a while and when nothing much comes of it you just let it die. Years later, when you're cleaning out the attic, you come across it again and you think "Damn, what a clever fellow I was. I'll bet this could have made a really great book/video/movie/performance art." The you go about your life and forget about it all over again.
This is if you are normal, which I am certainly not.
So there I was in high school, editor of what we laughably called a "School Newspaper". Nowadays school newspapers are amazing professional looking things made on computers with thousand dollar software. Ours, conversely, was mimeographed on cheapjack Xerox paper. Layout was accomplished with scotch tape and scissors. I seem to remember making the ink ourselves by mixing our own saliva with dustsweeping taken from shopclass.
I would like to point out that what we lacked in resources we more than made up in talent and that American "can do" spirit. I'd like to but the reality is that the few copies I've stumbled across while cleaning up the attic are of unbelievably poor quality and convincing evidence that we weren't putting the caps on the white out bottles very tightly.
At any rate, since we were the only ones reading the thing, we were also the only ones who decided to parody ourselves with an "underground" version that we would distribute, causing much confusion and mirth.
This plan went nowhere but it did eat up some time that would have otherwise been spent listening to our teacher try to teach us Spanish.
One of my friends, Bob Sebaste, contributed a two panel comic strip that was a takeoff on the then new Amazing Spiderman Comic Strip. It was cleverly titled "The Grazing Cowman" and had a picture of a cow eating grass. A word balloon said "moo" thus alleviating any doubts as to the nature of the creature depicted.
Why did this throwaway gag come to consume an amazing portion of my life? Who can say? What if Bob had written something else, something on the order of "Buy lots of stock in computer companies like Microsoft because even a pinworm could figure out that computers would be the dominant technology of the next few decades"? I'd be very very wealthy now. It's something I don't try to think about.
Anyway, I wrote an entire 20something page comic book on Cowman. It was a 100% pure takeoff of the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko origin of Spiderman, full of in-jokes that are so obscurely tied into what was happening at Saugerties Central High in 1979 that even I no longer know what it was that was supposed to make them funny.
The comic book got rave reviews from the 4 or 5 people who read it and so, emboldened by this tsunami of support I decided to immediately make a movie. Keep this in mind when we get to the current version of Cowman.
By movie I mean real, shot on film movie. Yes, the film was Super-8 but that's beside the point. Super 8 was a lot of fun and those of you who have only tried to make epics on video cameras don't know what you're missing--lonely nights spent cutting and pasting strips of film together, watching your hard work ruined the first time it went though the projector (which would immediately strip off the soft fragile film, leaving ugly black strips), etc. Now you can shoot hours of footage at virtually no expense. Go ahead! Act like Kubrick! We had to rehearse every shot until it was perfect and could only get a maximum of 3 1/2 minutes per reel.
The script was essentially the comic book. Obviously we could in no way shape or form pull this off and in fact we never came close to finishing it. A few minutes of footage remain. Oddly, I allowed my friend Joe Damrath to play Cowman while I played the villain. Careful analysis of the finished product reveals a serious flaw with this plan which is that I really sucked as an actor, even by the almost nonexistent standards of super 8.
And that was that. We all graduated and moved on. Bob unwittingly did contribute one future piece of Cowman lore at one of our graduation parties by getting drunk and putting on a Mickey Mouse hat and a "cape" and shouting "I'm Mouseman! I'm Mouseman!"
Bob is currently a highly respected member of society and at one time was actually involved with nuclear plants and navy subs. It's a frightening thought but then again, they let me teach children.
Onto college. After two years of hard work I joined a peer counseling group known as Uncle Joes. We were a group of 2 dozen or so kids who trained to council our peers and tell them things like "I feel your pain" and "Maybe jumping off that bridge is not such a terrific idea."
Mostly though it was sitting in a room waiting for the phone to ring, which it seldom did. Occasionally you'd get the usual phone pranks from people looking for Al Koholoc and Hugh Jass or even a legitimate person in need of support. But usually it was just 4 or 5 hours of nothing. So I started doodling a Cowman comic strip in the logbook.
Next day I got a phone call from someone who said they thought it was screamingly funny. Either college had given me a much better seance of humor, or, more likely, she was very very tired that night. At any rate, it doesn't take much to get me going, so I kept adding new installments, integrating other members of Uncle Joes into the mix.
Keep something in mind: I can't draw. Oh sure, I can, if you give me lots of time and a big erasure, but I have very little natural ability. But everybody likes to see themselves in a comic book so I was able to entertain the members of the group. The comic at this time was a homage to both X-Men and Frank Miller's Daredevil, reflecting what I was reading at the time. This was also the high water mark of my comic book reading.
Off to Grad school. This was an unbelievable pressure cooker but I was so happy with how well cowman had been received in college that I started doing a "real" story--heavy stock paper, art pens, zipatone, etc. I still couldn't draw however and this story, parts of which will be reprinted here, was also never finished.
The most significant part of this was the introduction of Mouseman, Cowman's comic foil. As the character of Cowman himself had evolved into a "serious" superhero I needed a stooge to play the fool for laughs and the brainless but oddly endearing Mouseman fit the bill.
I was also heavily involved in APA's at this time, specifically X-APA, a group of talented artists and writers who produced several years worth of terrific work before the APA went down in flames. I reprinted a lot of Cowman stuff there and did occasional covers. Others did covers as well. My character was catching on!
I got married, dropped out of grad school, moved, had children, moved, divorced, changed careers, got remarried, moved. Cowman sort of got put on the backburner.
Somewhere in all that I met two of the most important people in the cowman saga--Eddy Von Mueller and Brain Hague, two talented artist/writers from Denver. During the 3 years we were together in Denver we collaborated on tons of stuff, including the inevitable cowman scripts. These were in the nature of Cowman as Bugs Bunny, taking on terminators and other foils. Keep in mind that this was during the black & white explosion, followed shortly by the black and white implosion. It is one regret of mine that we didn't strike then while the iron was hot and basically ANYONE could get a comic book published.
It was when Eddy was visiting me years later in Wichita that the final piece to the Cowman puzzle fell into place. We were talking about ways of trying to make a story that could be done as a comic book. Comic book parodies were by now a dime a dozen (and do keep in mind that when Cowman was first being done this was not the case. After the teenage Mutant Turtles you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a superhero parody). I suddenly had a notion: what if two guys (Bill & Ed) made a comic book and one of them publicized it by dressing up like Cowman? In other words, the story would be not about the character but the creation of the character and the comedy would be in these two fanboys trying to publicize their work in an uncaring world.
Ed, who could have saved himself a lot of trouble by just shooting it down, instead got excited and started drawing sketches. Free from trying to come up with parodies of other people's work I started having lots of fun ideas in this new universe. The story would be set in High School because, hey, why not? I remember high school and there's no better environment for tales of comedy, horror, apocalyptic fantasy, whatever. The characterization quickly fell into place: Bill, the maniacal single minded writer, eager to see his dreams realized even if it causes severe distress for his best friend Ed, the talented but somewhat sheep-like artist. See Bill come up with wacky schemes. See Ed try to run away. Run, Ed, run!
Our high water mark (thus far) came when two very dear friends of mine, Tom & Mary Bierbaum, who are actual comic book professionals, asked me to come up with some short material for their independent comic DEADKID. If you want to see the only published cowman material go find DEADKID #1 & #2. I wrote a script for a 3 part story that Brian illustrated in DEADKID #2 and both issues have a Cowman comic strip panel written and illustrated by Eddy.
Although Eddy was careful in his early illustrations to make sure that neither character (who I had mischievously named Bill & Ed) looked at all like either one of us, Brian even more mischievously drew us looking very much the way we really are.
Sadly, DEADKID did not find its audience and the second part of the story never was published. You lucky readers will get to see the full script and as mush art as I can find.
So there you have it. I still write Cowman material and now have a place to publish it with this webpage. I suppose I hope that some enterprising publisher will read it and after wiping the tears from his or her eyes, will call me up and offer me massive amounts of cash to get this off the web and into the comic book stores. But quite honestly, I'll be happy if some of you out there just get a kick out of it. Writers like to be read. So please enjoy and if it isn't too much trouble, drop me a note laying on the praise heavy and thick.
Cowman: We Will Be Rich Beyond The DREAMS of Avarice! This story serves as the origin of the current incarnation of Cowman and as such has a few of the limitations that most origin stories have. The cast of characters is quite limited and I hadn't yet gotten into the fantasy "Archie Universe on Acid" mode of thinking that would follow. Still, it has a few chuckles and sets the tone I'm trying to go for here: cruelty without meanness.
Cowman: Unsightly Film-The (mostly) Illustrated version- This is the script for the story that was, partly, serialized in DEADKID. First appearance of Darci the Knife. My attempt to make a Scoobie Doo story and, if I can toot my own horn here, not too shabby a result. You lucky readers get to see 2 full chapters lovingly illustrated by Brain Hague, and colored by Yours Truly. Free annotations by moi to tell you why each and every panel is so garsh durned funny.
COMING SOON
Sketches by Ed- See the prelim sketches that spawned an obsession!
The Poissant Papers- A regular feature in DEADKID was a 1 or 2 page text piece, supposedly written by Allan Poissant, the cranky editor of the local paper. It vaguely ties into the Cowman mythos in that Bill & Ed write a Cowman strip for the paper. Included are the 2 Cowman panel strips done by Ed (the real Ed).
COMING SOON BUT DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH
Cowman: Come Sale Away- Bill, Ed and Darci go looking for garage sales. Hilarity ensues as Bill is given near cosmic powers. A horror story.
Cowman--the original comic book- pencil drawn on genuine school notebook paper--It's like looking at cave paintings by Neanderthals without the talent.
Cowman-The Uncle Joe Episodes- or as many as I could find
Cowman- The Super-8 movie script.
COMING EVENTUALLY
Cowman: Idiots Abroad- Bill and Ed go to Japan. More obscure Asian movie references than you can shake a stick at.
