How It Came to Be

After several cramped drawing hands, countless all night homework sessions, and one overwhelming class withdrawal, I am proud to say that my senior project, a satirical comic book about American history, with visuals inspired by classic cartoons entitled ‘Merica the Mythical, has been successfully executed. And so, it is with great privilege for me to share with you how I came to produce my project from concept to creation.

‘Merica the Mythical would have never seen the light of day had it not been for my humble beginnings. As far back as I can remember, my life has always been accompanied by illustration, animation, and film. My most cherished pieces of nostalgia were cartoons such as the wacky and revolutionary Looney Tunes shorts, the wittily groundbreaking sitcom The Simpsons, the innovative works of Walt Disney, and the action-packed animated adaptations of the Superman comics from Max and David Fleischer. These iconic components of American pop culture led me to start drawing at an early age and assured me early on in life that I would pursue animation and cartooning as my passion.

It was at age seven that I entered the second grade. At the time, I was obsessed with the book series Captain Underpants. It was never a problem for me to be amused by immature toilet humor, and still isn’t a problem to this very day. My favorite part of reading Captain Underpants was a special feature called “Flip-O-Rama.” This was an interactive section of the book in which the reader was left with two pages of imagery, one depicting the start of a physical action and the other with the end of that same action, the reader was instructed to flip back and forth. For example, the first page might show a charcter winding up a punch and then throwing that punch on the second page. The constant flipping created an illusion of motion. My classmates and I would draw our own “Flip-O-Ramas” and have a blast. This could be considered my first endeavor in animation.

Sadly, the “Flip-O-Rama” takes this story down a somber, more serious path. Approximately one week into the 2001-2002 school year, I was unexpectedly struck with a sense of pride and patriotism due to the terrible events that took place on an infamous September morning. I still remember my good friend telling me that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center had been deliberately hit by hijacked airplanes. I remember the girl I shared a desk with who lost her uncle in the North Tower. And I remember the significant turn the United States took in those early post-9/11 days. At the time, I did not quite understand the gravity of September 11th as I was still very young. And yet, even the youngest of people felt, as President Bush put it, “disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger.” With the country on the brink of war, the traumatized American people were encouraged to go back to work and continue their daily activities. And that is exactly what I did. I reported for duty at the living room desk, armed and dangerous, with a half folded piece of paper and my number two pencil. I was ready to pay a visit to Osama bin Laden. I deployed graphite onto the page which assembled into a custom-made “Flip-O-Rama” that depicted a juvenile line drawing of myself as a giant stomping on the tiny terrorist mastermind. A true emblem of patriotism if I ever saw one.

Fast-forward seven years later to 2008, when I was thirteen years old in the eighth grade. Having begun my journey through puberty and the hardships of growing up, I started drawing cartoons of myself and my peers in situations that revolved around my life in middle school as a way to carry me through it all. Overall, it was a collection of bad drawings and poor comedic writing that wound up being whiny preteen drama. I eventually grew bored of this material and struggled to think of new idea. Something I always looked forward to after a long week of school was a Saturday morning show on Turner Classic Movies called Cartoon Alley. It was a showcase of golden age animations hosted by film historian and television personality Ben Mankiewicz. One weekend, a special Cartoon Alley episode aired that specifically played propaganda shorts from the 1940s. One of the cartoons shown was a Looney Tunes feature called Daffy the Commando, where Daffy Duck takes on the Third Reich. I’ll never forget the ending in which Daffy sneaks up behind Adolf Hitler and bashes him over the head with a giant hammer. When witnessing this incredible landmark in both American and animation history, I looked back on the “Flip-O-Rama” I drew after September 11th. It was at that moment that the satiric part of my mind sparked. Comparing it to the Daffy cartoon, I realized that I too wanted my work to make fun of the world’s worst figures. Coincidentally, that Cartoon Alley episode aired around the same time my United States History class reached its World War II segment.

That is where my main man and the host of my comic ‘Merica the Mythical Kilroy enters the scene. That Spring, still having no fresh ideas to replace the atrocity that was my middle school art, I noticed in my History class a whimsical doodle of a bald man with a long nose peeking over a fence and gazing upon the class from the top left corner of the board. It was aptly signed with a message that read, "Kilroy was Here." My teacher, Mr. Michael Toth, explained to us that this litter of lines was a classical meme that was found in areas where military personnel were based during the Second World War. It is rumored that high-ranking German officers found American soldiers' equipment and weponry with the cartoon artfully applied, persuading Hitler to feel threatened by the possibility that an Allied spy had infiltrated the Nazi regime. I'm not quite sure what it was about the "Kilroy was Here" insignia that intrigued me so much, but I constantly shared its delightful appearance and backstory with my friends and family.

My obsession even followed me all the way to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with my Boy Scout Troop where we spent a weekend trip that season. It was trips like these where we toured the country that I grew to appreciate its history. After a long day of viewing beautiful green landscapes and solemn memorials dedicated to the bloodiest battle on American soil, me and the rest of my fellow troop members sat down for dinner at a buffet and small Civil War museum called "General Pickett's." Occuppying the basement was a gift shop that I browsed with no intention of buying anything. I was ready to leave until I saw a shelf full of giant, tacky foam Uncle Sam hats. Young and amused, I decided to buy it and immediately put it on. On our way out, I stopped in front of a mirror near the entrance. What looked back at me was a young lad in that same charmingly stupid hat, an unbuttoned uniform shirt with a red tee underneath, green pants, brown boots, and a pair of sunglasses. When asked by another Scout, "Who are you supposed to be?" I proudly replied, "Kilroy." When we returned home, I grabbed my drawing tools and touched the pecil to the pad just as the graffiti meme touched my heart. What came to be was the first illustration of 'Merica's mascot, Kilroy.

In referencing the meme, I tied the name "Kilroy" into a character biography that defines him as superior being with the power of eternal life who has lived through every single event in American history since the Revolutionary War. And so, whereever a major turning point or iconic moment happened in the States, "Kilroy was there." The first time I ever put my version of Kilroy in a written work was when my eighth grade history class began studying the 1960s Counter Culture and Civil Rights Movement. Mr. Toth assigned the class to make three pages of comic strips related to the topic. Aware of my fascination with the graffiti doodle, my teachers and classmates were impressed with my work. According to Mr. Toth, those panelled pages are still sitting on display in his classroom today and being used as an example for the new students.

Almost a decade later, I was once again granted the privilege to draw Kilroy in comic book form yet again in ‘Merica the Mythical as I entered my senior year of college. Unfortunately, my ambitious attitude and poor organization of time put me in a tough spot. By March 2016, only two months before the Farmingdale Senior Project Design Expo, I had an alarmingly unfinished comic book that would have taken much more time than I had. On top of that, I had barely begun any of the work that was to go along with the project. After having experienced college being known as softspoken, talented illustrator, I made the tough decision to withdraw from the art curriculum for the remainder of the 2016 spring semester. However, I spent the rest of that year hard at work on ‘Merica the Mythical, completing it that Fall. I returned to school in February of 2017 with plenty of breathing room for the extra work that coincided with it.

I view my struggle with Senior Project as a valuable lesson in staying organized and keeping in mind that while no one is perfect, one can always improve. What's even more interesting is that I should have seen it coming in my youth. When characters like Bugs Bunny would pull the cleverest gags and pranks on his adversaries, my adolescent self gazed upon the moving images in amusement, as I wished I could be just like him. Unfortunately, not all wishes can be granted, which is why I live life by a few words from Warner Brothers Animation legend and my personal hero Chuck Jones who said: “Bugs Bunny is an aspiration. Daffy Duck is realization.”