It's best that Marc M. can't officially divulge the plot of his pilot for Comedy Central -- the synopsis alone is too graphic for print. As he outlines the story about a blood-thirsty space vampire of a different sort, he quickly catches himself saying a word he's not fond of letting slip past his lips.
"That's vulgar," he says, stopping the graphic flow of details. Strangely, Marc is the creator -- literally based out of an extra bedroom in his Lafayette apartment -- of Sick Animation Dot Com, a site featuring cartoons making South Park on its worst day look like a kindergarten primer for manners and civilized behavior. For his site, the 26-year-old University of Louisiana alumni creates very simple cartoon clips ripe with foul language and toilet and genitalia humor, almost always ending with a punch line of man-on-man erotic behavior.
Unfazed by the paradigm of how his creations can be so crude, yet he finds uttering a word used in his work vulgar, Marc says, "I don't like to blatantly be vulgar for no point, it's not me. I'm not some wacky, crazy, sick dude. It's just funny, I like it. It's cool to laugh at stuff like that, it's not cool to act like that."
To those who know Marc, it's not too surprising that he created Sick Animation. His huge fan base, though, would be surprised by his sheepish tongue. His devoted fans have grown to include those capable of offering him thousands of dollars just to come up with ideas for development on a household name network. National Lampoon, the Web site spawned from the humor magazine, is among his fans. Marc's Too Young to Die made its way across the Internet and landed in the computer of Lampoon's Scott Rubin.
Rubin thought the cartoon -- a random skit about a doctor who informs two children their parents have died after exploding into a graphic rap about his oral promiscuities -- was hysterical, breaking into laughter at the mention of it and blushing so hard it can be felt over the phone.
"There was something purely unique and original about Marc's work," says Rubin. "He seemed to be working off of a different beat. You just didn't see the surprise coming at all and that's really hard these days -- to create humor where you just have no idea that this things coming. He's brilliant at that."
Rubin contacted Marc and asked him to develop cartoons for their site. Marc looked over his drawings and found characters he drew while testing a newly acquired pen pad for his laptop. Letting the characters dictate the story, he made it up as he went along. To craft it into a space story, which he decided it should be, Marc threw out the sci-fi sounding names Merkin, Capt. Martinez, Galactor and Salmador.
"Then I just threw a name on it and that's what it is," says Marc. The two episodes he drew of The Secret League of Legionnaires follow Martinez as he battles his nemesis Galactor. At the urging of Rubin, it's not as scandalous as his other features, but it does contain material that could give a network censor a stroke.
After two episodes of Legionnaires appeared on the site, Rubin reports the series was a "huge hit" for Lampoon, drawing half a million to a million hits during a few months. Lampoon shopped it around Los Angeles, pitching it to places like Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, which said it was too adult for their late night programming. Only Comedy Central could swallow the content and bit on developing Legionnaires into a pilot the same day.
Sick Animation is Marc's only means of employment, what consumes his entire days. Lots of the time, though, he admits isn't spent in the most productive fashion, but it has been sufficient to land him on the receiving end of enough projects to pay his bills. Although he might only secure one project a year, he gets by. It doesn't hurt that he still lives like a college student, even a few years after graduation. On a bright morning, the apartment Marc shares with a roommate is dark as a tomb. Almost all the lights are turned off and the large living room window provides the scarce available light, as the sun's rays creep in from around a thick blanket covering the glass. It's been years since he's seen shows that serve as influences for young cartoonists -- South Park, Aqua Teen Hunger Force -- as the apartment hasn't had cable since one of their roommates left.
Marc's no stranger to the entertainment business and is keen enough to realize projects can be fleeting. Two years ago, a division of Fox brought him in to ink what is known as a first-look deal. Fox had the first shot at evaluating his project and could either accept it or reject it before he was allowed to pitch it to others. Before he even started on the project, the division fell through, but Marc was allowed to keep the money advanced to him. Another deal almost happened with a major network, to whom he previously sold a few already-made cartoons. After much negotiating, Marc and his representation rejected its offer to purchase 15 ideas. Marc, even in his dark, cable-less apartment, says the numbers just weren't good.
"Sure I'll give you 15 ideas for cartoons for $10,000, no problem. The thing is those 15 ideas are pretty valuable when you sell it for way more, somewhere else."
Currently, the dry erase board in his studio is filled with projects he's either thinking about pitching or trying to sew up into a viable deal. He thinks, despite his agent's opinion, there's a shot in the dark that a new network might want to run Sasper the Homosexual Ghost cartoons, which feature a fleshy, overly gay Casper-esque ghost. A humor magazine, making its way back to the drug store rack after a couple years of hiatus, is having him draw a comic. But like so much in his world, those deals -- a signature away from happening -- aren't suitable for print.
Marc is now in the outline phase of the Comedy Central project, awaiting feedback before starting work on a script. To learn the scripting format, his agent sent him scripts of Malcolm in the Middle and Drawn Together because Marc has never scripted his work. Before being animated, it will go through a first and second draft. Lampoon's name is on it, but it's Marc's baby all the way. As with all his cartoons, the story (minus pointers and concerns from the network), the art and all the voice work will be done solely by him in his apartment.
The network already has voiced its reservations about his work, vetoing several details of Legionnaires.
"They said, 'We like your stuff a lot but we have sponsors,' that was their exact words," Marc says.
When it came to Galactor, Comedy Central took issue with the villain's cut-off shorts and pink T-shirt, tied into a knot in one corner. While they had no problem with Martinez gaining super human strength by drinking Galactor's pee, the network was concerned he was too gay.
"And they don't want that. But man I'm gonna try to fight for that. Look at that guy, that sassy bitch, he's awesome. Right?"
Not only is the subject matter at Sick Animation juvenile at best, Marc's illustrations aren't that advanced either. Marc knows and revels in this. Because the art is simple, he jokes it takes him two seconds to draw a cartoon. If the kid who drew monsters and boobies in the back of your fifth grade classroom had access to a pen pad and Prismacolors, it's likely he would produce something along the lines of Sick Animation.
" I don't like extravagant art. The art starts taking away from what I feel is the main focal point, which should be the humor and the dialogue," says Marc, noting the humor is enhanced by the rudimentary graphics. When he was young, Marc was that kid drawing in class.
"I think as a kid, basically the humor was pretty much the same, but I didn't know as much (in terms of the birds and the bees and how to make naughty cartoons about their actions). I guess it's just the evolved state of what it used to be. And drawing, I haven't gotten any better over the last 15 years."
Even after enrolling in UL's animation program, Marc's work didn't improve much. He did experimental cartoons and learned how to sync his characters mouths to their lines. (In his studio, there's a hand-drawn chart of the different shapes a mouth makes when speaking certain sounds.) Between the grind of media workshops and 3-D animation projects for class, he had little time to focus on other work. Still, his homework began to veer off into cartoons for fun. In class, his assignments didn't yield much.
"I think they (professors) all disliked my work -- not because of subject matter. It was all the drawing and stuff. I'm a terrible drawer, a terrible artist, and I didn't make an effort what-so-ever to perfect my craft," Marc says about the program. "I really didn't care at all. I just wanted to do animation, and I felt like, man, you don't have to draw, when in actuality it's a huge part."
Marc stresses UL's program has its values and it employs professors who care about their craft, but he didn't put enough effort into it and didn't take it "as seriously as someone who's paying for college should."
"I think everyone pretty much sucked just as bad as everyone else. There was no bar, not at UL. But you get better as you go," he explains.
For Rubin, the distinctive style coupled with his jolting, seemingly uninfluenced humor makes Marc a rarity.
"Marc is an amazing illustrator," says Rubin. "It's really a unique style that he has, and his colors are incredible. The things that come out of him are just ... he's a comic genius. It's very rare for someone to emerge like him that can not only draw and animate things like this but script things that are completely original. You've got quite a talent there in Lafayette."
After college, Marc had more time to devote to populating Sick Animation. He gauges there are some 40 cartoons that are either on the site or have been on the site. Along with the cartoons, he records humorous songs, draws a series of comics called Hans Dick and creates a few side projects under the names D.J. Smurl (not to be confused with the real life DJ by the same name) and Romeo Jr. The main body of his creations carry the name Marc M., as he is cautious about putting his real last name on the Internet. "You should hear some of the crazy shit that I get."
At the advent of Sick Animation, Marc received complaints, hate e-mail and very suggestive ways offended viewers would like for him to die. After all, the cartoons on Sick Animation depict a range of material -- the excreting and ingesting of bodily fluids -- and acts illegal in even the most liberal states. As time went by the criticism subsided, overrun by a large and growing fan base. His cartoons have received plugs in the College Times, FilmMaker Magazine and Windows100 Super! out of Japan. Numerous fans have sent in art, which he posts on the site, derived from his cartoons. A special treat for his fans, Marc set up a phone number, given out on the site, where callers can hear a voicemail, updated every week, and leave a message of their own. His e-mails, which come in by the hundreds in a week, pale in comparison to the messages he gets.
"Whatever gross shit these kids can think up off the top of their heads ... picture the worst thing you can," laughs Marc about his fans, who often send him ideas they think would make for great cartoons. But Marc's stories evolve using only his own ideas, as he sits down and lets them come through him. It's not as if, he says, he sits around thinking up tales of perverse bestiality imposed on Little Red Riding Hood.
"Man I don't know, I get asked that (where his ideas originate) so much and I never have an answer. This is my answer," Marc says, unable to pin down the source of his ideas. "Most ideas come out when you have a deadline and you have to do something. That's when you're in a pinch for ideas, and you have to do it really quick."
One of his most constant themes is homosexuality. In Cement, a play on words becomes a chance erotic encounter in a general store. A prisoner sings an ode to the sexual anatomy of a dragon he shares dungeon space with in My Year with the Dragon.
"It's just a good go-to punch line. I'm trying to veer away from that as of late, 'cause it's done, you know, it's done. From fans, whenever I put one out that doesn't have that in there, I get a little bit of animosity because they are waiting for it."
Marc's newest cartoons signal a style and theme change, moving away from gay humor and into a sort of clay-animation-meets-cardboard process. His Adventure Tales and Pizza Heaven both utilize hand drawn characters cut out of paper and mounted on CC's Coffee House stirrers. Donald's Pizza Heaven features mythical characters raving about a pizza place. In Adventure Tales, Norse-like figures one-up each other through stand-up comedy. On his wall now are two drawings for Football Detectives, a cartoon the diehard Saints and Aaron Brooks fan is putting together about athletes who solve crime.
To him, nothing on the site is truly offensive. Marc says he's not out to personally offend anyone (i.e. setting out to be offensive), but nothing is off limits, not even a cartoon about God tricking the last two men on Earth into sodomy. He will admit The Last Two Men on Earth, which he calls a stupid joke, could be seen as blasphemy.
The only thing he avoids has nothing to do with its abrasive or offensive content. Instead, Marc says he would never draw cartons about celebrities, real people or anything plucked from real life. As he points out, topical subjects date and limit his work.
"Topical stuff ... I would rather do shit with dragons."
Yet, in spite of Marc's dismissal of the site's content, he shields his family from Sick Animation. Genetically he traces his bawdy sense of humor to his grandfather, but not that his paw paw would come up with the same jokes.
His parents know what he does for a living and how he's in talks with television networks. They might know the name of his site, but they haven't seen any episodes. When The Secret League hits television, Marc won't mind them watching it. But cartoons such as Dead Parents -- more homoerotic activity, bodily fluids and disrespect to corpses -- he doesn't want them downloading.
"They just haven't seen it. To see it is something different. I tell my grandma, 'Maw maw, you don't wanna watch it. You can't watch it,' and she's like, 'Marc ,don't make stuff I can't watch,' and kinda joking about it. But if she saw it, it wouldn't be a joke anymore."
Nick Pittman is entertainment editor of The Times. To comment on this article, e-mail nick.pittman@timesofacadiana.com.
Previously on The Secret League of the Legionnaires:
Capt Martinez
Marc Marc describes the series' protagonist as a loose cannon. He does before he thinks. In the first episode, he and Merkin are held captive by Galactor. Asked his last wish, he demands to drink the urine of his captor. The ensuing burst of strength frees Martinez. Says Marc: "The urine from a Galactic elder mixed with his Parusian (yeah, Marc isn't sure how to spell this made-up alien race either) blood making his XY chromosome -- whatever that means, I've heard that before, I think it's a biology term -- mutate and give him super human strength." This reaction is unknown to Martinez, who confesses he's just hot for celebrities. The burst of strength, however, did not warp his shirt into this misshapen form. "That's the style he bought it like that."
Merkin
Marc plucked the name of Capt. Martinez' sidekick from thin air but later heard it was a vaginal pubic wig. According to him, Merkin is the true brains of the operation, the voice of reason against Martinez' impetuous manner. Merkin is really smart and is an inventor. He is currently dating a girl he met online, who he says rebooted his heart drive. Many fans have asked about his heritage, as he is slightly dark and speaks with a bad stereotypical Jewish accent. "Is he Jewish? Maybe. He's Jewish, black, Spanish ... you know what I mean?" says Marc. In the first episodes, he has a green tentacle and a butter knife for arms. In later episodes, Marc plans to have the tentacle capable of changing into anything. " ... Screwdriver, blow torch, spoon, whatever. Yeah, a spoon. If he wants to feed a big animal, he'd need a big arm-sized spoon to do that. Why? Big animals need to eat too."
Green Dude
Marc hasn't given this character a name yet and isn't sure why he -- Martinez' brother -- is green and scaly. Perhaps he was cursed. Perhaps their species has random births. Perhaps Martinez was adopted and raised in his family. "I think it would be cool if Martinez was the adopted one into a family of those guys," says Marc. The first episode features Martinez freeing him from jail, where his captors mess with his mind and soul and serve pizza on Wednesdays. In jail, he wrote a romantic comedy about two brothers -- one who gets thrown in a "stupid jail cell" and the other who rises through the ranks of the military.
Galactor
The major antagonist of the series is not slotted to appear in every episode but will likely be the main thorn in Martinez' side. In the second episode, Galactor subdues Martinez with a ray the government used to put Shaquille O'Neal to sleep. When Comedy Central saw Galactor, they nixed his pink, rolled-up shirt and cut off shorts, claiming he was too stereotypically gay. "And they don't want that. But man I'm gonna try to fight for that. Look at that guy, that sassy bitch, he's awesome. Right?"
Salmador
Marc is proud of the look of this Galactor henchman. Despite his menacing appearance, he's not really into the evil doings of his boss. Ordered to blow up Planet 23, he refuses because its Michael Jordan's retired jersey number. Galactor tells him to blow up an embarrassing picture (meaning to destroy it), but Salmador enlarges it telling him in photography, blow up means to increase size. "He gives Galactor that kind of 'tude 'cause he's not really a bad guy, but he needs a pay check."
Chris
Marc isn't satisfied with this henchman for Galactor. He says he might lose his wings and he may be in for a redraw.
The Professor
"Last name: Professor, first name: The." The Professor is Galactor's go to guy for death rays and what not. In the second episode, Martinez catches him at his lab and drinks his last Diet Coke. Later, he reveals Galactor has The Professor working on a plan to blow up the Charles Barkley Center for Underprivileged Kids and develop microwaveable tin foil.