Another Loren and Sylvia redux

Back when the black-and-white comics boom happened in the early Nineties, due to the cheaper pricing of computers and printing technology, somewhere in the Mid-West Matt Feazell started a mini comicbook called "The Amazing Cynicalman".  Although minimalist cartoons have a long tradition, including a topper in Chester Gould's Dick Tracy where nothing more than word balloons and little piles of sawdust appeared, Cynicalman embodies a light humor and engaging social outlook that is both immediate and easy to embrace.

I have dabbled with the idea of minimalism in comicbook humor before.  Somewhere I have a twelve panel comic called "Deep Thought Breakfast", which features a piece of manufactured cereal that has longings. But once Kathy Sprague introduced me to Matt Feazell's work, I had to dash off a tribute to his rare genius.  The cow references a descriptive Kathy attributes to the rural nature of our home state, Idaho, but is little more than a doodle...really.

Loren and Sylvia do Don Giovanni

Kathy Sprague and I are both fans of opera.  We both developed our tastes because of our mother's backgrounds.  Kathy's mother once worked as an opera singer and my mother had the opportunity during her childhood in San Diego to appear on stage of a production of Aida, which has formed a life long interest in music and singing.

Still, this title isn't quite accurate because I've never done a sketch of Sylvia dressed as Don Giovanni and I'm not sure I'd cast her in the role because it would be odd to have Loren as Dona Elvira.  These sketches happened because I was watching a production of Don Giovanni on television (I think it was the Metropolitan Opera in New York) and really liked the detail of the women's costumes.  If you are unfamiliar with the storyline, Don Giovanni is quite the ladies man, but has been around the block a few too many times.  Eventually he encounters a ghost which calls on him to repent or face the fires of Hell.

This other sketch of Dona Anna features Jared from Loren and Sylvia.  After doing these I realized it could be a sequence for the comicbook, perhaps as a dream.  I so love the drama of opera.

Some Early Portraits

I'm not ashamed to admit that I played a lot of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in high school.  In fact, I am glad my parents encouraged me to read about and explore fantasy worlds, despite being fairly starched Mormon Christians at the time.  In the late nineteen-seventies I responded to a newspaper ad for someone looking for others to role-play this game with.  I'd noted similar advertisements posted at the local library, so I assumed it must be the same person and responded to the ad.  This is how I met Clayton and his wife, Terry.  Clayton was originally from Pennsylvania and had played D&D in college.  He had developed a whole world campaign that we played in over the next few years.  The original group of players was a mix of teenagers and adults that grew and expanded.

I met a lot of great people I doubt I would have met otherwise.  One of the librarians at the local public library, Mary, and her brother joined the group and I became fairly good friends with them both.  At one point I made several trips to Cour d' Alene, to visit with them when they moved out of the Sandpoint area.  Mary and her brother were always quite resourceful and developed a dungeon campaign system on 4x6 cards so that any time someone didn't have a campaign prepared she could game master one easily by randomly selecting cards from her file.

Another friend was Darin who fostered some of my interest in comic books and horror fantasy.  He began a campaign based on a gaming system called Chill, where he managed to mix a Lovecraftian inter-dimensional story with the Sanctuary fantasy series with the added feature that each player gained a new skill when in the fantasy part of the scenario.  He also began a comic book store he ran from his apartment by taking subscriptions from friends, which is when I began my comic book collecting.

This is a portrait I drew in 1985 of my D&D character, Aurora, who was a priestess of the Egyptian Goddess Isis.  The drawing is based on the image of Isis in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Gods and Goddesses Manual. Unfortunately I don't remember the original artist otherwise I'd credit them here as inspiring me.  Aurora wasn't my first female D&D character and I did have a few other personae.  There was Naylor, who was my first character and was an elven multi-class character that I hoped to make a ranger.  Only he was killed off by an unfortunate encounter with hellhounds.

Another character I liked playing was my cleric, Balden, who is depicted in the next image with his elven friend, Trevor.  He started off being named Baldwin until I learned that was the real last name of another player, who was really cool about it.  But I wanted him to be unique and I have to admit I named him after the piano manufacturer, so I came up with something different.  I originally wanted him to worship Baldar, the Norse god of beauty, but Clayton had pretty strict rules about which gods and goddesses showed up in his campaigns, so I choose the Greek god Apollo instead.  Unfortunately his new character name brought quite a bit of ridicule from other male players, because they assumed I was referring to lacking hair on his head, which as you can see, isn't how I saw him.

Unfortunately I lost touch with many of these friends when I attended college and then came out as a gay man. I felt differently about myself, but I didn't stop playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.  My friend Kathy had played some campaigns in high school and we played a few times together.  I mainly played my character,  Balden, and she played her elven magician character, Trevor.  I guess it was freeing to allow my D&D character to come out of the closet as I had done the same, but for some reason my gaming interest was already waning.  I was reaching adulthood and because I felt even more an outsider, as I'd not maintained any of my previous friendships, I soon lost interest in pursuing fantasy role-playing, preferring the real role-playing we do as adults.

Why Loren and Sylvia didn't become a four-panel strip

These Loren and Sylvia images are just odds and ends I put together while attempting to consider it as a four-panel strip cartoon.

As you can see here, I never got to the fourth panel.  I don't consider myself a very good "gag" writer.

One of the primary concepts for the comic was that Sylvia was angry, but she is angry because everyone around her is unreasonable, while Loren is pretty much the opposite, entirely unaware that the world around him is unreasonable.

I figured Loren would be very introspective, always questioning his inner motives and those of the people around him, as I was when I came out as a gay man.  Sometimes Sylvia was seemingly irrational, saying and doing whatever occurred to her at the time, other times she'd just end up in odd situations because people would be afraid to tell her the whole truth.

In many cases we intended Loren to be a sounding board and foil for Sylvia's outbursts.

The simplicity of the artwork leant itself to becoming a four-panel strip cartoon, but Loren and Sylvia didn't really succeed that way in my mind because the stories we wanted to tell were more complex than would fit in that minimal medium.

Paula and the Purple Rayz

I promised a post about Paula and the Purple Rayz, another of the projects Kathy Sprague and I developed.  We originally devised this storyline as a comicbook, but after doing Loren & Sylvia I realized it would take me more time than I was willing to commit to develop the layouts.  So I suggested to Kathy that we turn the script she'd written into a radio play.  It was a small success at the student run radio station on campus at the Uof I, in Moscow, Idaho.  We invited all our friends to contribute voices for the various characters, deliberately playing against gender to hilarious effect.

I was assigned the voice of Pricilla Syben, the band's manager.  During our first recording I had a mild cold and began to loose my voice, which was perfect for her "Hollywood" character.  Subsequent recordings I did my best to give Prisilla the same husky quality to her voice, which wasn't easy. Over the seven episodes Kathy wrote and produced, we developed a loyal following of listeners, both on campus and within the larger community.

The storyline was pure word play and invention as all the characters had names beginning with the letter "P" (save Cinder Lou), frequenting cities from Prague to Puyallup.  At one of the celebratory parties after an early recording session we asked everyone to bring a food that began with the letter "P".  So there was a plethera of potluck potatoes, pineapples, peanuts, "pork porridge" and Pabst Blue Ribbon.  The basic idea was a mix of Wonder Woman's origin story and Jem and the Holograms, one of Hasbro's attempts to work with Marvel, which also produced the animated GI Joe and Transformers, only rather than the cheesy pop-music you encountered in Jem, we decided the band was a punk garage band.

Here is Paula's mother, Pollytah, Queen of Paradise Island saying two of her most popular lines.  Kathy and our friends would often repeat these catchphrases as if we were the Queen-mother, arm raised and voice modulated in a faux British accent.  These two drawings are not my original designs.  Instead our friend Ari Burns had attempted to copy my style and came up with the Grecian dress and pointy headdress.  She was intentionally aping the Statue of Liberty.  After seeing Ari's version I drew up these two images, based on her design.

It took me quite a bit of drawing to come up with suitable characters. I filled my sketchbook with page after page of just character head-shots.  Here is the villain character, Pineapple in a series of quick sketches, playing with how Kathy described him, a cross between the Cheshire Cat and The Joker from the Batman comic books.

Here are some quick sketches I did for the members of the band, who were all women.  Up in the left corner was a sketch that brought a strong reaction from Kathy, so I labeled it so that I wouldn't use it by mistake.  One of the running gags in the storyline is that anyone listening to the band is transformed, playing off the hysteria in the Sixties that Rock and Roll music was changing the youth of America into sexually liberated fiends.  Here is a quick sketch of Sylvia as if she were a member of the audience.

More Loren & Sylvia pages 16-17

So, here Erma's girlfriends, Roxy and Tabo, interact.  Blatant homophobia from people who thought they were tolerant of gay people is a theme both Kathy and I have experienced in our lives.  I can still encounter it from my family members sometimes, which is quite unfortunate.  All the same, I am happier that I feel I can live my life more openly now than when I first came out as a gay man.

One other point about the characters, in the final panel Uncle Chuckie comes in the front door.  He is Sylvia's landlord.  I don't remember if Tia Marge and Uncle Chuckie were related, but I think we had decided they came from opposite ends of the family.  I suspect that they don't really like each other, but I suppose that will have to be revealed later.

I'm sorry to leave this on a cliffhanger.  Unfortunately Kathy and I didn't write more script after this point and this is all the artwork I created.  There is more story to be told, but you will have to wait until I get to the point of creating more pages.  Part of why it has taken me this long to post these two final pages is the last page, seventeen, was unfinished.  I feel like I rushed it to get it to post, so the lettering is perhaps not my best work.

After all, it has been nearly seventeen years since I've visited this and my lettering hasn't improved in all this time. I may have to figure out a font that will go well with the artwork and re-letter the whole thing.  Some of what I want to add is a prologue, introducing more facets of the characters involved.  At one point, I jotted down some ideas for a dream sequence where Jared appears as the Sphinx of Egypt and my idea at this point is this dream will include some of the other characters that Kathy and I first experimented with.

I'm going to go back to posting pages directly from my early sketchbooks.  There is quite a bit of development of characters for a story line called, "Paula and the Purple Rayz", which was our riff between early Wonder Woman comics of the thirties and forties and the late eighties "Jem and the Holograms" animated television series.  Kathy and I talked about developing it into a comic, but before we got too far with that Kathy was inspired to write a radio play, which she produced through the student radio station at the University of Idaho.  We enlisted all our friends to play the different voices and it was a lot of fun to record.

More Loren and Sylvia pages 13-15

I just completed a web remodel for Jon Macy, which is why there's been no activity here...and not because I'm making any excuses for finding my time filled.  I do admit it allows me to plug his new edition of Teleny and Camille, although I am likely to do an actual post about it once I've posted everything I have for Loren and Sylvia. Anyway...

Here we meet Erma's new beau, Randy and get to see Eiri and her sister go at it.  Both Kathy and I have younger sisters, so you can imagine how we've fared in these situations.  Eiri, of course, thinks she's protecting her sister, when in fact she's exhibiting her sublimated homophobia (irrational fear of homosexuals for any of you unfamiliar with the term).

Also Genise and Sylvia make up for the moment.  I think this all speaks for itself.  Poignant but ironic relationships are the most difficult.  We also get a better look at Erma's friends, Tabo and Roxy.  We will see more of them next time.

More Loren and Sylvia pages 10-12

I took a week off posting more Loren and Sylvia for the Comic-Con in San Diego.  No, I didn't attend...I hear it was quite the event as it always is, but I was actually busy camping in the mountains and since there has been little commentary or interaction here (thanks for your comment, Carolyn!), I figured I was safe while many of the comicbook geeks are out of town. I doubt many of them are reading here...:P

There's not much to say other than the introducing of even more characters.  I think this was a problem with Loren and Sylvia, the list of characters began exploding exponentially as the party scenes kept getting wilder.  We get to see Adam, Tia Marge's beau hitting on Wayo, Sylvia's co-worker.  Remember from the "crab" chart, they've already done "the nasty".  There's another musical reference, and I really can't remember if we named all the kids that show up at this party.

Eiri's sister, Erma is here with a new boyfriend Randy and two girlfriends.  Randy brought along a couple of friends, including the mo-hawked punk.  It may be a problem to name them all correctly as I didn't keep copies of the scripts and I haven't spoken to Kathy in many years, assuming she kept them.  I think in the long run it doesn't matter as what was written is soon to run out.  I don't have immediate plans to add anything new, although I've begun to assemble notes I've made over the years and I do hope to have something more complete as a premium eventually.

More Loren and Sylvia pages 7-9

Other influences include the master of the panel comic, Charles Schultz and the editorial strip, Garry Trudeau.  Here we are introduced to a role call of "Loren and Sylvia" characters.  Besides Uncle Chuckie, who is mentioned but doesn't appear until later in the story, there is Adam, who is Tia Marge's beaux.  He is primarily a background character, but we wanted to show that even Tia Marge, who is clearly much older than most of the other people in Loren and Sylvia's lives, has a sexual life and the good sense to be knowledgeable of her partner's sexual behavior.

Perhaps the biggest enigma presented here is Sylvia's liaison with Genise.  You can assume they were highschool sweethearts of a sort, but there is still plenty of emotion between them.  But I don't want to spoil what happens next with too much information, so I'll stop here.

Just one more comment about background material, though.  I've peppered these scenes with references of music we were listening to at the time.  Can you guess what they were?  The first person to post all of them correctly in a comment will be eligible for a complimentary copy of the premium comicbook, when it is done.

More Loren and Sylvia pages 4-6

Sylvia is a complex character and not simply because she emphasizes her recycled bonmots by brandishing her beer bottle.  She sees the world through her own uniquely-colored lavender spectacles. She wears her pink flamingo sweatshirt not only because it is a practical piece of clothing, concealing more than revealing, but because it declares her affinity with things absurd and otherwise termed "gay" (it would be teal with puffy pink ink if this were in color).  Eiri, too is a lesson in contradictions.  She personifies that rare creature: the semi-butch, leather-coat-wearing straight woman.  In a more innocent age she would have been openly bi-sexual, without really experiencing anything more than trading kisses with girlfriends at slumber parties, you know, the ones Sylvia never got invited too.  We get to see her in action reprimanding her sister later.

Jared is on the other hand a deliberate stereotype, the misogynist self-aggrandizing queen.  If it isn't about her, she hates it.  I perhaps needn't italicize those pronouns, but how else would you identify an adult man who behaves like a fearful self-loathing child, verbally sparring with anyone who cares to cross her and speaking archly in case anyone is overhearing.  Loren exhibits some of these characteristics (smoking in bed, indeed!) but his focus is just on daily living and getting laid, a bit like most of us.  Being college age, he still hasn't given up the trappings of childhood: a poster of a dead hero, a favorite blanket with whimsical animals, airplanes on his curtains (were they there when he moved in?) and Mickey Mouse alarm clock; symbols of the adolescent emerging into adult life.

The juxtaposition of all these personalities I think come together well on the page, but there are consequences to all actions; what develops here will de-evolve in the next few pages.  I was always referring to other gay comic books when I was drawing this, Jerry Mill's "Poppers", Howard Cruse's "Wendel" and Jeff Krell's "Jayson", so naturally the stories that I personally experienced are repeated here in Loren and Sylvia.  You may see the similarities too.

More Loren & Sylvia pages 1-3

Here are some of the elusive pages that have never before been published.  I will post as much as I drew back in 1990, when I was last working on this. I'm not making any promises, but I have some notes which expands the story to include some "adventure" characters that Kathy and I developed.  Because they don't really fit with Loren and Sylvia, they will likely appear in a dream.  I also have sketches of versions of the Loren and Sylvia characters that were intended for potential dream sequences, so this is not so much out of the ordinary.

In these pages we are introduced to Jared, Sylvia's awol roommate; Erie, their straight friend who has a sister living with her; Genise, Sylvia's on-again-off-again girlfriend and notorious neighborhood bi-sexual; among many more characters.  The story has a lot going on behind the scenes, but I think it is an accurate portrayal of the lives of college age students learning about sexuality.  Of course, Sylvia is old-hat at it, but later she does find her desires acknowledged.  Oh, wait! I can't give away secrets too early!

I packed a lot of little bits of information into these drawings and some artistic bits.  You can find collage clippings scattered in the background as artwork and posters, reflecting the modern environment Loren and Sylvia inhabit.  These are pretty subtle reminders that these characters have lives beyond the panel.

Loren and Sylvia Pages 5-9

Lorraine is based on various women friends both I and Kathy roomed with at different times. We never did get along well with these women as there always seemed a big gap between our values and theirs. I suspect they didn't get that we were gay and what that meant, but that's perhaps my own prejudice.

Here we meet Sylvia's friends, Spencer and Tod, which were based on a gay couple we both knew. We also see to what extent pot smoking was common place in our lives. We intentionally never brought attention to the bong and what they were doing with it.

There is a lot of psychology in Sylvia's move to the door when Loren arrives. Also too much story telling. I really did come out after seeing "Kiss of the Spiderwoman".

I really wanted to show more of Loren's relationship with Vince, but for the sake of story telling we cut to the drama. I think some day I will have to write in the romance section.

The last panel is a story that Kathy told several times before we decided to include it in the comic. It is a good closing joke. Middle America is so naive and ironic.

Loren and Sylvia Pages 1-4

First four pages of Loren & Sylvia. Written by my friend Kathy Sprague and drawn by me, Nathan Kibler. The characters Sylvia and Loren are drawn directly on ourselves and the supporting characters are all based on composites of our friends, but the stories are mostly reactions to the culture of the time in a small college town in Idaho. This is autobiography with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Kathy and I were friends, but we thought the idea of "kissing cousins" was too perfect to pass up. I still wonder why we never did any back story for Loren and Sylvia's childhoods.

Wayo is a composite of several friends. He's mostly a supporting character, but he shows up at a party later in the unpublished section I will post at some later date.

I lived with Kathy for a time and rented the basement bedroom from her and her brother, who also lived with us. It was a good sized room and I enjoyed living with Kathy. It was also an official fallout shelter, thus the sign on the wall...

Loren and Sylvia together again

I met my friend Kathy Sprague back in the late eighties when I attended college.  She was an open lesbian living in the college town where she grew up.  We became fast friends after meeting at the local Science Fiction Association which held a small fan convention once a year and met monthly on campus.  We  immediately started bouncing ideas off of each other for science fiction characters, and then eventually wrote a comic book together we based on our own lives, called "Loren and Sylvia".

I created the first nine pages of the comic book in a whirlwind week of drawing between finals and the holidays.  These pages Kathy later published with two other comic stories by other people in a one shot called, "Feedback".  I added several more pages to the original nine, but never got around to publishing them together again.  I hope to offer them again here as a premium, but I'm not making promises.


Here's a short synopsis: Loren and Sylvia are cousins.  Loren is a virgin and has moved to town, but is looking for a new roommate.  Sylvia is looking for a roommate also, so suggests he move in with her.  Then Loren expresses his desire for his cousin, who scoffs and points out that she is gay.  Later Loren decides he's gay also and has a quick fling with one of Sylvia's friends who've dropped by to get high.  Hilarity and broken hearts ensue.