FROM THE ARCHIVES: Issue One Cover

Let's Start At The Very Beginning...

Hello there!

Since Substack works a little differently than just having a regular mailing list, I thought I would intersperse my regular bi-weekly updates with alternating, bi-weekly re-posts of my early comic pages, along with some behind-the-scenes info about the making of the page. This way I will be sending out some content each week, and hopefully bring the fun of Steamroller Man to new readers finding the comic for the first time on the Substack platform!

Steamroller Man began as just a funny name, suggested by my youngest son during a dinner table game where we took turns coming up with superhero names. As soon as he said it, I got an image in my mind’s eye of this guy with a giant roller for a head. I really love grotesque characters with non-human appearances, particularly those with heads-that-aren’t-heads. Ben Edlund’s character, Chairface Chippendale, from his comic The Tick, was a direct and early influence on my proclivity for these types.

The story that starts in this issue was also brainstormed with my sons during a vacation roadtrip. The Gingerbread Golem was initially suggested by son as “a guy with a cookie for a head”. As we brainstormed who this character could be in Steamroller Man’s world, I decided to make him all cookie, not just his head - a giant gingerbread man, in fact - and the henchman of an evil, Wonka-type character. I always found Gene Wilder’s portrayal of the title character in the movie Willie Wonka and The Chocolate Factory (1971) to be tinged with a generous helping of menace, and so I wanted to play with the idea of a similar character who was just a straight-up villain. He was originally going to be called The Candyman, but then I remembered the horror movie of the same name. So Sugar Daddy was my second choice for a name.

I originally thought I could tell this story in the space of one standard 24-page comic book. Three issues later I’ve just passed the 100-page mark and still have at least one more issue to go before I finish it. This is all down to a complete lack of planning on my part. I just threw myself into comic-making without a net, coming up with at least the first twenty pages of this issue with no real idea where the story was going. I still work mostly in this fashion. I know the story beats I want to hit, and where I want each issue to end, but I have never worked off of a written, page-by-page script.

One last thing: originally, I had called the comic “The Ad-Hoc Adventures of Steamroller Man”. Then I realized that what I really meant was “Ad-Libbed”, since at the time, I was making the story up as I drew each page. So it became “The Ad-Libbed Adventures” for a period of time. When I did the Kickstarter for my first print issue, a friend suggested renaming it from “Ad-Libbed” so that people wouldn’t think I was just making it up as I went along, with no plan (little did he know). He also made the point that a title that more clearly implied that the book was a comedy would be a better sell to those who’d never heard of it. I saw the logic in that, and it’s been “The Absurd Adventures” ever since.

I hope you liked this insight into the cover for Issue One! There’s some extra behind-the-scenes content for paid subscribers, below!

Keep Rolling!

Matt

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