A comic strip about “warped kids”, a fake band called “Okra Pods” and a dream to be the next great cartoonist! Meet David Jones the creator of “Just Say Cheese”, the warped mind of a great Cartoonist.
David Hurley: You are the creator of the comic “Just Say Cheese”, can you tell me how the whole idea for your comic came from and how you got started as a cartoonist?
David Jones: I have been working on “Just Say Cheese” since I was in the Eighth Grade. I worked on a strip with two of my best friends Adrian Guedin and Eric Werner for a few years prior to Cheese when the school paper wanted them to do a comic strip. These two kids were the funniest people I ever met. They asked me to draw up their strips and spent a few years dreaming of fame and fortune with a strip that I still feel today could be a goldmine. Maybe one day…
A few years went by and they both dropped the idea of being cartoonists but I held on to the passion and decided to develop a strip of my own. I developed a really wild looking kid one day in class and Jan Kimble looked at my doodle and informed me that the kid was the “fugliest” thing she ever saw. She then explained to me what that term meant and Fug Lee Gore was born. The next character I created was his cool sidekick Billy Hamm… so I changed Fug’s name to Cheese. The strip was known as Hamm and Cheese for a few years. The storyline has changed over and over again over these many years until I finally came up with what we now see.
The story revolves around Fug and Billy who both have lost a parent. They bond and become the best of friends. I know it sounds a bit depressing, but I did not want a “cute” comic. I cannot write “cute” stories. My warped sense of humor needs some pretty warped kids. I figured that in order to get some messed up little boys, the characters would have to have something in life like a traumatic episode which they endured, causing them to be a little wild and rebellious. So I concocted the tale of a little boy who never knew his rock star dad being forced to live with his dad following the death of his mother. The boy, Billy, moves to the small town of Okrapolis and moves next door to Fug.
Click on image to enlarge
I chose the setting because I wanted a town that was warm and inviting. I modeled the town after my memories of Woden, Texas, where my grandparents lived. I loved way everyone knew each other and everything about each other in the town. There was a magical sense of compassion and simplicity that you just cannot find in the world anymore. Woden is my happy place. It makes the perfect site for my imagination to run amuck.
Floyd the Dragon, Willie the Mammoth, and Spazz the Unicorn were created for a second strip I was writing in High School called “Bazzle Presents…” which was a collection of tales by Sir Winston Louis Bazzle III. All the stories revolved around these three crazy creatures. I had decided that Fug’s dad was a famous explorer and archeologist who would be killed by a mythical beast in the Amazon. It hit me one day that if his dad was this famous explorer who traveled all over the world, he would have possibly discovered some really rare creatures along the way like the dragon, mammoth and unicorn I had created earlier. Once they were added, the strip was complete.
David Hurley: With that being said, what are your future plans for the “Just say Cheese”?
David Jones: I will be making my first public appearance this November at the Austin Comic Con. I will be drawing up free drawings for anyone who wants an autographed Cheese Doodle. I will also give away one Cheese Shirt each day of the three day event which runs November 11 -13, 2011.
As far as actual plans for my strip, I just want to get this epic into the newspapers. Ever since I was a little boy, I have known that I would be a syndicated cartoonist. I know that sounds odd, but I have never wanted to do anything else. My future plans are to get this strip into the newspapers. It may never happen. The odds are not in anyone’s favor, but I am not going to give up.
Click on image to enlarge
I would love to follow up syndication with a few spinoff projects. My strip has a lot of depth that could play off the success of a syndicated strip. I have a world of superheroes that I created for Fug to follow. I would love to cross over High Voltage and Sparky the Nuclear Boy into a comic book series. I’ve been working on and off that project almost as long as I have been working on Just Say Cheese.
I have a great idea for an animated holiday movie for my comic strip. I would love to create a motion picture that captivates an audience like Harold Lloyd’s “Speedy”, “Grandma’s Boy” or “The Kid Brother” mesmerized me… only with sound and color. No one wants to see silent movies these days.
Oh!, and I would also love to get my rock band Okra Pods a recording contract!
First things first, my one goal is to get my comic strip into the newspapers. I have my submissions sitting at all the syndicates right now. They are sitting there with thousands of other submissions! The chances are slim, but at least with Facebook and my blog, I have an outlet for my comic strip.
David Hurley: Tell me about your band “Okra Pod”?
David Jones: The band is a fake band I made up while working at DSI Toys. I would write these crazy parody songs that were usually pretty wild and email them to everyone. The atmosphere at that place was insanely creative and the people I worked with were just awesome. We found ourselves looking at layoffs so I created the band the Okra Pods and would write these Okra Newsletters that told the tale of okra. I would make up a news story about the pod and include a recipe and a parody song by the Okra Pods.
I went so far as to create a huge discography which now includes 69 studio and live albums. I have already released two albums this year, “Back on Crack” and “All Cracked Up”. The first is a studio album which includes the parody songs Back on Crack (aka ACDC’s “Back in Black”) and “Put on Some Panty Hose” (aka “Autograph’s Turn Up the Radio”). The second is a live album recorded on a rooftop where the concert is ended by police throwing tear gas at the band.
I periodically release a new, fake album. I just enjoy the heck out of ruining perfectly good songs. It is to the point where every time I hear a song on the radio, my brain screws up the lyrics and I find myself writing a new parody song.
The latest yarn I have spun is the news that the band is currently working on the game “Rockband Okra Pods”. I really think their catalog of songs would make for a fun video game. Singing the songs with those parody lyrics is not as easy as it sounds.
I would love to record a few songs, or even a few albums, one day. I have a few friends who have already expressed serious interest in using their talents to help me bring some of these gems to life. If I could pick one album, I would love to record “Southern Fried Okra”. This album includes some of the best parody songs I’ve written like “Mother In Law” (aka the Allman Brothers’ “Rambling Man”), “Combing Back My Mullet” (aka Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gimme Back My Bullet”), and “Swede Mauled by a Panda” (aka Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama”).
Anyway, the band is just an extension of my comic strip. I have spent a lot of years creating this town known as Okrapolis and the many characters that live there. Sometimes I just get a little carried away with my imagination. The next thing you know, I create a fake rock band and 69 albums.
Click on image to enlarge
David Hurley: What are your greatest influences when it comes to comics and cartoons?
David Jones: I was amazed at how the Peanuts told a story day after day for a week. I studied Charles M. Schultz’s work as a kid. I would go to resale shops and buy his paperbacks and read them over and over again. Then I discovered that these resale shops also had paperback books from Mad Magazine so I started buying them and studying Don Martin, Al Jaffee, Sergio Aragones, and the rest of those icons. These all served as my earliest influences.
Then one day I discovered Bloom County. I was in awe at the way Berke Breathed could spin a yarn over the course of a week, or two, or even a month. I decided that if I am ever going to have a strip I could be proud of, I would have to learn to write like him. I would clip out his strips every day and put them in photo albums. Then when his collected works were published, I would buy them and study them.
To be honest though, my biggest influences where the Marx Brothers, Harold Lloyd, the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, and Monty Python. How is that for a bit unorthodox? These comedians stirred my imagination unlike anything else I had ever encountered. I would watch old Harold Lloyd movies on Saturday nights with my dad I would find myself completely sucked into his films. Harold was a genius who made me want to do something creative that would make people laugh. His movies and shorts made me want to achieve my cartooning dream more than ever.
David Hurley: If you could be a cartoon character for one day, what character would that be?
David Jones: Man, you have to go through me a curve ball question. Let me think about this one. If I was Dagwood Bumstead, I would be married to Blondie. That would be cool. Dagwood is a lucky man!
Seriously, I think I would be Charlie Brown because Sparky’s family is doing an awesome job of keeping that strip going. I think Charlie Brown will live forever. Wouldn’t it be great to know you were immortal and would live forever?
Thanks so much David! Check out David Jones here:
Just Say Cheese
https://www.facebook.com/stripcheese
http://www.twitter.com/fugcheese
Okra Pods
