Welcome to Eltingville: Toy Aisle Color Background (w/Background)

In the Welcome to Eltingville pilot there's a "day in the life" montage of the Club members going about their club business, visiting various neighborhood shops and businesses in search of collectibles. One of their stops is a local toy store, which was based on the Toys R Us that used to be in the Hylan Shopping Plaza in New Dorp, Staten Island. In the 90s I used to haunt the place, mostly looking for action figures (and buying way too many of them). After our kid was born it was a place to haunt for Monster High dolls and Skylanders figures. I think the Eltingville version of the store was called "Thar Be Toys", with a pirate mascot instead of a giraffe. 

While in the store the Eltingville Club members play videogames and then tear apart the action figure aisle looking for bargains, and keeping some younger kids at bay. They throw the action figures they don't want all over the aisle, which you can assume they would not clean up after they were done. I wanted to show them hiding toys under some of the shelving (a ploy I learned about during my collecting days, but not something I ever did myself. Honest!). Sometimes Sarah and I would lift up the bottom shelves at Toys R Us, and if there were any hidden toys there we'd put them back on the racks (or buy them, if we found something we wanted). 

There was so much Eltingville-like behavior at the two Toys R Us stores on Staten Island. You'd see some creep throw practically all the new figures into a cart and leave the racks empty of an entire line of toys -- then the creep would parse through it all in some other aisle, not allowing anyone else to get a shot at the figures. Sometimes you'd be lucky enough to show up when the shelves were being stocker or restocked -- but somehow those rare figures from the line wouldn't be in the shipping boxes being unpacked. Then you'd see store employees standing in the doorway to the back room of the store, handing items over to customers they had a deal with.  We saw parents arguing with the Comic Book Guy/Joe types who had raided the aisle while their kids were trying to find something. And you had to watch your cart, because it wasn't being too paranoid to think someone might pluck something out of it while you were not looking. 

I would often take mental notes -- and sometimes written notes -- because there was often something good going on that would have made for an Eltingville bit. I had a batch of notes for a story that revolved around the toy store angle, I remember that it was going to involve Josh being shitty to some kids in the store, and then the kids go get their father. And the father is a very Staten Island kind of father. And Josh has to go into hiding, or something like that. I'm pretty sure he got his ass kicked at some point in the story. It was basically about the Club being bullies to smaller kids that they could push around, which results in their catching shit from a very scary character who represents "the real world" that they accidentally stepped into. 

In the end I never did the story, mainly because I knew I'd have to draw a lot of shelves and toys.  But a little bit of the idea got into the pilot's montage sequence. Before the montage begins, the Club members are thrown out of the movies by two high school jocks who work there. The jocks were semi-regulars in the pilot bible, basically a constant threat to the Club. When Bill and the others are thrown out of the theater (literally), they don't offer any resistance. In the montage, they take out some of their anger by bullying some little kids. They steal a toy from the little kid in the fast food restaurant (Burger Moat, the Eltingville White Castle analog), they don't let anyone near the sale bin in the toy aisle, and I think they push a kid aside so they can play the video game set up in the game aisle. The Club doesn't interact much with other kids, fans or school mates in the comics, if the show went to series, we would have seen more of their world, including their school, the jocks who bully them, other fan clubs, etc.

This particular background, the toy aisle, is barely seen in the pilot, so I thought folks might like a look at it to see the shelves and the background joke baked into the aisle sign. I knew the chicken fat I put into the backgrounds would never be seen -- either because the characters were blocking it, or the shot was too brief to parse -- but I couldn't stop throwing them in here and there. I think the only scene where the background jokes could be seen at all is when the Club is on line to get into the movie theater. But the background stuff in the comic shop and the toy store was just going to read as "mess", which is its own joke, and the main point of having so much crap existing in those backgrounds. I don't remember what the "atomic Moron" character alluded to in the background was, I don't think I put that anywhere else in the background art. 

If you look around the background drawing you'll see there are toys based on the fictional heroes of the Eltingville universe like Ultra-Mummy, Major Violence, and Battle Broad. There's also a nod to Kid Blastoff, a character we did some comics with, initially for Disney Adventures. There's also a personal in-joke no one outside of my 80's Staten island friends and my sister would get -- the little "Zop" and "Goog" action figures in the lower left-hand corner are based on characters I created when I was a little kid. I made comics with them when I was a teenager, which were basically the prototype for Pirate Corp$ (Star Wars-influenced comedic space adventures). I still have a few pages left from some of these attempts at making comics, maybe one day I'll have the guts to post them here. They're kind of what you expect from amateur comics, the art's awful and the writing is embarrassing. Everyone starts somewhere, but that doesn't mean you have to show off the equivalent of your nerdy high school clothes and haircut. 

Well. I think that's way more than I expected to write about a single background drawing that barely appears in a failed pilot from 20 years ago. Whew. I better sign off and give the hands a rest, especially since tomorrow I have my initial appointment with a physical therapy place for my arm and neck.  Fingers crossed (not literally, because that hurts).

As always, more soon, later.