TAGS Feb. 15 & 16, 1993

Corina (poodle) introduces Sara (panther).
Not only that, but I introduce the idea that Monster is a cartoonist. I’ll probably mention that a couple of times more and show Monster actually drawing perhaps twice.

As I recall things, I had not yet decided if I was going to reveal who the so-called ”new girl” in the strip.


Rodney (lion) follows the creed, “faint hearts never won fair maiden.” - from Walt Disney’s Robin Hood.

As I had previously made note, there are large gaps in the dates of the strips, some times weeks. At the time, I would make a pair of TAGS strips over a week end, dating them for the next Monday and Tuesday - or at least the next non-Sunday days. I wasn’t actually trying to produce at a real world pace of six daily strips and one Sunday edition per week.

The large spans of time in TAGS production, resulted in jumps in the story telling, which is more obvious to me now than when I was writing TAGS. It’s as if there are missing strips.

In a way there are lost strips. When I would start back up with TAGS production, it would be as if it was days or weeks later for the TAGS characters as well. As an attempt at continuity, the characters continued to dwell on the “current” topic, “the new girl”. I wonder if the pacing was jolting to readers. Yeah , it probably was.

Book Signing 2006

Wed., April 12, 2006
Oxford Comics, Atlanta GA.

The book signing event heralded the first published appearance of Tuff-Girl, the adventure heroine co-created by Merrill Hagan and myself, Bryan Mon. The six page feature appears in issue #5 of Silver Comics. Add to that two pin-up pieces of art and the cover, it isn’t a bad way to start things.

Oxford Comics is probably the store that best caters to Atlanta’s serious comic and graphic novel reading crowd, just the sort of crowd that might gamble $2 or so on an independent tome. With that in mind, having the gathered masses consist mostly of friends and people from work was a given. That traffic would be high in the first hour and a half to trail off, was also a given. That we would be packing and carting home a majority of our inventory, was a given.

We did, however, sell a few copies that night to anonymous readers willing to give it a chance, including a few back copies of Silver Comics. Additionally, copies left on Oxford’s shelves sold without the hard sell in the next few months.

Oxford’s signing table, is generous if you were to set in front of you when you’re eating your dinner while watching the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica, so things were snug for Merrill, myself, a few stacks of issues #1 through #5, the “Freebies” bowl and T-shirts on display and in sock behindus. Still, I might describe it as fun - or at least I might describe the memory of it as fun. Merrill thought it was weird, as I recall. For me, anyways, there were those five years I spent as a character artist on Disneyland’s Main Street,USA, doing my thing in full view of passing guests. The weirdness of being on display gets to be less weird in the second year.

The freebies were metal pin-back buttons imprinted with characters and insignia from Silver Comics. Juan, publisher and major creator behind Silver, had them made up and sent a bag out to me in Atlanta for the event. Kids love the freebies.

That follow-up to the event was at the San Diego Comic Convention, later that year in July. But that’s another story.