Hectic Planet: 5 Years And Counting (Scanned From Original Art)

The first 8-page story from the Bummer Trilogy, originally published in Dark Horse Presents #118 (1997). 

I recently scanned the story before shipping two of the original pages to a customer The Bummer Trilogy was collected as a one-shot single issue from SLG, but wasn't reprinted as part of a trade paperback, so I wanted to make sure I had hi-resolution copies for any potential PC$!/HP collection I might wrangle before I take the dirt nap. I'd also like to add some new pages, but that's neither here nor there. Especially not here.

Anyway, if you haven't read the three Bummer stories I'll post the other two before too long. They're all romantic stories that are, well, bummers.  This first one is based on an experience I had when I was nineteen years old. I had gone on a skiing weekend with friends. We didn't ski all that much, most of us never having tried it before. Instead, we wrecked the hotel room, I crashed a snowmobile (injuring my friend Pete) and while on a date my friend Rob went through a car windshield after an auto accident (he wasn't driving). It was a time. I tried skiing one afternoon and hated it, I was constantly falling and sliding downhill, when not planting myself in the snow after a mild rise flung me in the air. Kids literally jumped over me while I lay there unable to get up. I got pissed off and tried to take a few laughing bastards down with a ski pole but failed. Finally I crawled off to the side and lay there a while like Randy in A Christmas Story. So, yeah, fuck skiing. Despite being a pretty typical nerd in many ways, I actually played a lot of sports growing up, and I liked getting into the pit at shows. I wasn't completely useless physically, but skiing wasn't happening. 

The next time my friends went skiing I opted out and just walked around to see the sights. And I somehow struck up a conversation with a very attractive girl who was also on her own, while her group was off doing something else. And we just sat together and talked for a few hours and got to know one another. And while we weren't flirting, we were very definitely enjoying ourselves, and if we were both unattached I might have actually said something ridiculous. But I had a girlfriend at the time (my first really serious one, and the person Elsie LeGrande from HP is based on) and she had a boyfriend. When her friends showed up there was an awkward moment, we both got a little shy saying goodbye and while I can't speak for her, I felt a definite knot in my stomach. I was mooning all the rest of the day, extra-jealous of Rob for getting a date with one of the girls working at the front desk of the hotel we were staying at (while wrecking one of their rooms -- Rob got her to toss guest complaints about the noise we were making). Anyway, the mood changed that night during dinner, when Rob showed up in a slight daze in the dining room with glass in his hair from the car accident. That was a real-life 80's movie weekend. Except there were no happy romantic endings for any of us. Just mishaps and incidents mostly. 

So, yeah, I always remembered that day, and at some point I thought it might make for a story springboard or incident for Halby Durzell, in order to add insult to injury in regards to his love life. I paired my story up with the "let's promise to meet up in X years" bit of business, and then pulled the rug out from under him as hard as I could to add as much insult as possible. The map was an anachronistic meet cute (maps in the future, boy did I not anticipate cel phones and the internet) and the husband was modeled on a guy named Elio, one of the bouncers at the Red Spot (a punk/new wave/metal nightclub I worked at in the late 80's). The bar seen in the first panel of the story is based on 7B, aka The Horseshoe Bar, aka Vazac's (Ave B and corner of E. 7th St, NYC), a place I used to spend a lot of time at and still went to with friends here and there pre-pandemic. I'm not sure if this was the first appearance of Eek ("Ecoli" Weinstein), the girl in the baseball cap, who was meant to be Harmony's snotty sidekick. One of many characters that never got fleshed out since the Bummer Trilogy was the last gasp of the series. 

While looking over the story, there's a script choice on page 5 that I wouldn't make now. Halby is fantasizing about what might happen while he waits beneath the clock. I decided to visualize his thoughts as a series of thought balloon images to keep things dialog/word balloon-free. The first image shows Trudi showing up looking as she did when he first met her. The second shows Halby reacting in shock to Trudi having become overweight, using her weight as comic shorthand for being unattractive. Straight-up cringe-inducing fat-shaming. I wish I was better attuned back then. If I was to write something similar now, I'd indicate a change in Trudi's personality or interests that would be a game-changer for Halby. Maybe we can see an extreme right-wing slogan or flag on the back of her jacket. Something along those lines. 

Anyway, that's the story of the story. I'm not sure of the name of the next one, "Shot on Goal", if I remember correctly. That's where Chako Marquez from The Trombone Girls meets a mysterious young man at a concert. I'll scan that one for you folks asap. The third story is about Elsie LeGrande's finding an item in a thrift shop that sets her looking all over town for an old flame. 

No happy endings, naturally. 

Oh, if anyone's interested, the remaining original art from the story is available for sale on the good old, sad-ass text-based list. Backers at the $5-$10 level get free shipping if interested. First come, first serve. If nobody comes, nothing happens. That's very much in the spirit of the Bummer Trilogy. Drop me a line at evandorkin@gmail.com if interested.

Art list can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WlJgIu3mGvE6Rny14ow_i-h4lRY9jp0rvXSqgz1dC8o