Kyle and Evan, Critics At Large #1 (Blake Babies/Lemonheads)

My friend Brian David-Marshall told me that some folks on Facebook were talking about the concert review comics that Kyle Baker and I did for Reflex Magazine back in the day. The day being 1991, pretty much. You know, that year. Anyway, he thought it would be something I could post about here, since not a lot of people have seen the strips. And he's right! Very, very right. And correct, even.

Some of you old-timers will remember, but for those of you who are younger-timers: Kyle was asked to do a comic review of local concerts by someone at Reflex Magazine (probably Lou Manna, RIP). Kyle and I were friends back then (through Robbie Busch, which is how I also met Stephen DeStefano and Mark Badger, we all ended up doing the Instant Piano series later. Much later than we were supposed to. Another story for another day/year/obituary) and he asked me to work on the feature with him. I don't know or remember why he asked me, maybe so he had someone to hang out with at the shows. I wouldn't want to be standing on the side of the pit at CBGB's by myself all night, I'm pretty sure. What if you had a heart attack in the bathroom? No one would be looking for you, and it's a good bet that no one would help you. They'd treat you like a man-sized urinal cake (which, I believe, is the inspiration for the E. Nesbitt story, Man-Sized in Urinal, which is public domain, if anyone wants to look up that corker of a weird tale).  .

Anyway, the idea was that we'd go to a concert (on our own dime, we're talking big-time journalism here, folks), and the following day we'd each make some notes and write some dialog and then get on the phone (usually hungover, at least I was, usually, after a concert) and distill it into a script that Kyle would then draw and Reflex would then print and very few people would ever see.

Besides being done in comics form, the other shtick was that we weren't going to really talk about the concert much. As far as the music went. We were mostly going to review the experience, the venue, the crowd, the scene, the whatever the hell. We'd try to talk about everything but the bands. Unless we talked about the bands. I don't know if we went in with this mission plan or it dawned on us during the first concert that concert reviews are pretty dull and we weren't music reviewers by any means so why not just have fun and good on things.

I can talk more about some other things related to the comics, such as how it got a little weird to be thinking of jokes and observations while trying to actually enjoy the band playing on stage -- but I need to eat something, so I'll save that for when I find the other strips to scan. I have a box of magazine comps that have our work in it beneath my drawing table, unfortunately there weren't any issues of Reflex in it (Mostly Deadline, X-Magazine, and clippings from zines). But I did find a packet of tear sheets of some of our work, including the first Reflex strip. So I scanned that as best as I could (it's on lousy paper), and you can read it up on top there, if you haven't already done so. 

I reprinted most of the Critics At Large comics in Dork #2 (the reason I didn't use them all is another story I won't get into here). I asked Kyle's permission, and he said it was okay. But some time after, at the San Diego Comic Con, he said I never asked his permission to reprint the material and that I owed him money for doing so. Dork #2 might have made tens of dollars, maybe hundreds, but that was besides the point. I thought we had a friendly agreement and we could both use the material (we co-owned the comics we did for Reflex, I should have made that clear earlier. Sorry, I never said I was a journalist). Anyway, our friendship was already strained at that time, so, if you're wondering why these strips were never collected in the SLG paperbacks or the DHC hardcover, that's the reason. I never even tried to get permission from Kyle to run them, I just gave them up for dead. 

Ooh, maybe I shouldn't be running them here? I'll have to think about that. In the meantime, enjoy the first Kyle and Evan, Critics at Large strip, wherein we make fun of some kids, concert-going habits, CBGB's and pretty much everything other than the songs being played and how the bands sound. Except for the sucky opening band. I remember them being pretty bad. It happens.

Oh, also, I complain about being old at the tender age of 26. Unbelievable! You fool!

At 58, after a long doctor's visit this afternoon, I fucking wish I was 26 again. 

Sort of. I don't know. 46, maybe more like it. 

Hey, we outlived CBGBs! That's something, right?

No, it isn't. It really isn't. Clubs are supposed to have a fairly short run.

Well, I don't know where this is going, but I know where I'm going. Downstairs for some water to take me medicine pills, by cracky. 

Happy This Year, Everybody! Enjoy the old jokes!