Cautious Fuzz What is "Cautious Fuzz"? Well, as the cover below will clearly tell you: "It's Science Fiction! It's Rock'nRoll! It's a Comic Book!"
Really, it's a project I embarked on the year after I graduated college. I wanted to make my way into the world of professional cartooning ... and my style really wasn't right for any existing title (or even company), so I decided the ONLY choice I had was to do a little self-publishing to catch someone's attention (or at least have something that looked good on my bibliography).
I was fishing around for an idea one beautiful Binghamton afternoon in the summer of 1988 when my friend, Steve Lorenz, and I spied a police patrol car moving very, VERY slowly down some residential streets. "Man!" Steve said, "That's some cautious fuzz!" We busted up laughing, and then I said, "Hey! That'd be a great name for a band—Cautious Fuzz!"
And the rest is history!
Oh ... what's "the rest"? Well, I decided to do a comic based on this fictitious rock band ... and I wanted it to suit my drawing skills. THAT meant lots of weird, goofy characters. And to me, that meant sci-fi. Then it struck me ... the very first joke in the book ... they'd be just like Josie & the Pussycats during their abysmal adventures in space, but they wouldn't EVER want to hear anyone say that! After all, they were a SERIOUS band.
For those of you who don't know, I've go a big soft spot for Josie & the Pussycats ... always have. (This summer I actually got to meet Dan DeCarlo, the guy who created them ... and I acted like SUCH a fanboy!)
Over the next few weeks I did a bunch of sketches, Steve and I did a lot of REALLY goofy brainstorming about the "music" (we decided that ALL of Cautious Fuzz's songs had to have a parenthetical title ... something that was VERY big in pop music), and life pretty much went on as usual. I was working as a computer monitor (someone who watches the computers, NOT an cathode emitting device) and that left me PLENTY of time to write and draw at work.
I could go on for quite a while with "inside stories" about the process, but I'll leave that for the notes on the individual pages. Suffice it to say all the computers got monitored, and by late winter I had a completed comic.
Of course, no one was interested. I sent copies to every company that was actively printing comics ... and to industry pros whose opinions I valued. I got a lot of rejections from the companies, and a lot of encouragement from the pros. But in the end, most of my micro-print-run wound up being given away to family and friends ... and occasionally being sold in local comic book shops. I think there are something like 125 copies of the Cautious Fuzz comic book in print ... I know I've got 2 of them left.
Reading it over as I scanned these in, I STILL think I did a pretty damned good job ... and I STILL don't understand why none of the small press publishers wanted to pick it up. Oh well. C'est la vie. It just means that you get to enjoy Cautious Fuzz for FREE (instead of having to buy it in some overpriced collector's edition).
I'll be putting the comic up a little bit at a time ... so please bear with me. And come back soon for each new installment!
Cover 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Sketches All material on this page ©2002 Stan!