Wednesday, September 27, 2006

The Brothers Gumm

Part Hardy Boys, part Little Rascals, part Willy Wonka, The Brothers Gumm is another failed attempt at a graphic novel. It follows the adventures of two brothers, Seymour and Humphrey Gumm, the great-grandchildren of a chewing gum tycoon (apparently, having the last name of "Gumm" is nothing more than a pure coincidence). One afternoon, the brothers are visiting their grandfather at his factory and end-up getting lost, only to discover an entire city, Chicleslovakia, buried beneath the foundation. Here, they run into various characters consisting of talking minerals, dancing frogs and, you guessed it, a gang of pixie sticks who terrorize the town. It's up to the Brothers Gumm to lead the citizens in an uprising against the Pixie Mafia and, at the same time solve the mysterious death of the mayor of Chicleslovakia, E.W. Mineralwater.

I conjured up the idea for this story over a four month period around the time I returned to school a few years ago. I managed to draw the above portrait of Seymour and Humphrey before abandoning the idea altogether. That was about the same time I stopped taking my meds. Dammit.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I try not to go back through my writer's notebooks TOO often, because I find several discarded ideas for books. Some of them are so bad they make me cringe; some of them are pretty good, but never got written and so make me kind of sad to see them again.

Frasier

28 September, 2006  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ah - well I naturally now have to talk about my music, since Mark is talking about his art and Matt about his writing. I found a tape from around my high school days that I used to record on anytime I had any new music ideas for songs. It was quite fascinating going through it and listening to the riffs and song elements - I actually remembered just about every one. About 4 out 5 of them were crap, but the ones that were any good found their way years later on other songs for my various bands. Until then, I hadn't realized that some of those ideas went all the way back almost 15 years. Blast from the past indeed.

'saw

28 September, 2006  
Blogger Mark Teel said...

Yeah, inspiration comes to us in small doses. Or, at least, when we're not expecting it. I find that when I flip through my old sketchbooks, there are many drawings that I can't even recall having put down on paper, but they're some of the intriguing ones that I find. Seems that when I set out to create a specific picture, I fail. But when I least expect it, I stumble upon something that I drew before that would work perfectly for what I'm needing it for.

For my current project, I'm actually using some of the recurring characters from my Tales From The Bachelor Pad days. mwt.

28 September, 2006  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Can't wait to read those!

29 September, 2006  

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