Austin Books’ Bag Means I Made It, Right?

Well, at least it’s one of the milestones I set for myself.

Back in the TSR days, the spring of 1981 or so, I used to have many conversations with Jeff Dee about the prospect of breaking into comics. Occasionally we’d discuss how we’d know when we made it. We discussed milestones: a major interview in The Comics Journal or some similar publication would be one indicator of success.

One thing we never considered was being asked to create the art for a comic store’s bag. But after moving to Austin, Texas, the honor of being asked to do their new bag joined the list of significant milestones marking the long, hard crawl up the funnybook ladder. Maybe you had to be there.

Sothenanyway, one day Boo-rad, the store owner asked me to create that year’s comics bag, and this is what I did. You can sort of guess the year based on those characters that made the cut.

Of course I couldn’t feature any character without first gaining official permission from the respective owners. Those still owned by their creators were the easiest to get. One phone call explaining what I had in mind and they readily agreed. So thanks to all of you for that.

I was mildly surprised that DC Comics was immediately willing to give their permission to use any of their characters. Marvel, on the other hand, wasn’t so forthcoming. They took a long time to get there, but their eventual answer was a definite no.

The only other one I couldn’t get permission to use was James Bond. “Not a chance,” they said, after I was finally able to make them understand what I had in mind. One problem though: Bond was Boo-rad’s favorite fictional character of all time and it would’ve broken his heart not to have him included. The solution: they can’t possibly own every dashing fellow in a tux who likes his cocktails shaken, not stirred. I drew this unnamed bloke without permission — the only one on the bag.

I offer a Fine Fellow Award to whoever can name every character (and the book they came from) in all six panels.