Meet the Geeks

Stan Lee. What more can be said about the legend? He was Marvel Comics. He co-created Spider-Man, Dr Strange, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men and a host of others. He ran Marvel Comics. He was the pitchman for comic books as an industry and was integral to bringing it to the masses. Without his tireless plugging, and without his rich and deep comic work, he is the most prolific writer of the 20 th century, the most influential man in comics, and the best pitchman for the underdog. We talk about his influence, his wife Joan, his importance to society, and the moral compass that came with his work. #stanlee #stanleeforever #marvel #writing #comicbooks #comics #mcu Season 6, Episode 6 – Stan Lee (Extra Episode)

So why did we do it? As a youngling, I plied my art, certain I would be doing this as a career. I was writing and drawing my own original comic books and man I was good at it. As all artists do at some point, I started to question my abilities, and the drive required to make it. I was living in a small town, on Canada's East Coast. The logistics of getting to New York from there, getting my work in front of the right set of eyes, of scrounging by until that could happen--- If I got my work in front of the right eyes, was my work good enough? As I watched my own father struggle to feed his family, I started to wonder if I could make it, hit the big time and work for Marvel or DC. Practicality set in. I really got hung up. In the "regular" world, any one can get a job and if you worked reasonably hard you could get work. I wouldn't get rich but at least I could make some money. University came around. The drive to create was ever-present. But I took practical co...

Yesterday was productive. Yes friends and geeks yesterday good ol' CoreyGeek was kicking ass and taking names. Let me tell you a story. It began with a simple comment to the WifeGeek that I wanted to spend a couple of hours sequestered in my basement studio working on a strip. The plan, or so I hope, is to get new comics going up weekly starting on the seventh of August, returning to putting new strips up on Tuesdays. The WifeGeek agreed on one condition, that I have a new comic up by the end of the day. Well friends, sometimes that's easier said than done but I figured, I can do this. I spent the afternoon working on a revamp of a previously existing strip, updating the artwork and working at my craft. By five I had managed to finish the four panel strip and just needed to come up with another strip by the end of the day. Fortunately I had a plan. Going back to December, the wife bought me a cell phone. She had been playing Pokemon Go since it's release back...

Steve Ditko. Despite his most famous co-creator credit, the creation of Spider-Man, Ditko never really seemed to really get his due. At Marvel, there was Stan Lee, almost single-handedly writing most of their books, and there was Jack Kirby who was drawing most of the titles. Ditko had always been “the other guy”. When I started reading comics, Spider-Man had already gone through Romita Sr, and Andru on the art chores, and Stan Lee wasn’t even writing the book anymore. I was introduced to John Byrne and Chris Claremont’s run on the team-up Spider-Man book called Marvel Team-Up. Sure I had read Spider-Man’s first appearance a bunch of times in various re-prints, but I had largely been unaware of Ditko or his influence. I was aware of Stan Lee and his larger than life writing ability, as it was often talked about reverently by everyone in the industry. Because I had been groomed on John Byrne’s Spider-Man, I was very receptive to John Buscema and John Romita Sr’s version of the hero. An...

How things have changed. When I started collecting comics as a very young wee lad, part of the joy of it was re-reading my collection. There was this glee to searching through the long boxes and pulling out an entire series and diving back into it. After a while, as the collection grew larger and larger, finding a particular run became more difficult. I started cataloging my collection, keeping like-minded series in the same longbox until that series grew too large and I would need to rejig the storage of what series was kept where. I have a complex coding system to finding my comics, estimating their value and keeping track of my collection. Trades changed that. As sales of trades (collected editions of story arc in paperbook or hardcover format) grew, so did the number of them being put out. At a certain point, most of my favorite runs I had collected were being represented in tradebook format. And here is where collecting comics changed for me. In the old days, I wo...

Hey Geeks! There's some changes a-happening around the Geek camp. First off new strips are being worked on. Old strips are being reworked. SeanGeek has joined the Geek Facebook page as an admin and will be assisting around there with posts. We have a YouTube channel which I am still working on. Things are advancing folks. Keep checking back for new content! ~CoreyGeek

Someone needs to school Alanis Morissette on irony, but there was a certain irony going on with this comic as well. Aside from the Mystery Science Theater reference, behind the scenes I was falling behind on my duties as writer and artist of the comic and Clay found himself having to scramble to fill in, thus the Geekstery Science Theater was born. Four heads in silhouette taking the piss out of a movie. Honestly, I wish I had thought of it. Meanwhile I was still un-medicated and my depression was getting the better of me so nothing new was getting done on the comic from my end. I recall giving Sean and Clay some concern for my well being at the time. It was around this time that the original comic started to really fall apart. But, it's a new year and a new beginning! I want to thank everyone who's come back to check out the blog following the holiday break (because it was totally planned - yeah, right) and to assure you that the blog and the comic will continue i...

We've already covered the true and terrible saga of Clay meeting his idol David Prowse  so I won't be going too much into it here. Spoiler alert: David Prowse was a total dick. So this comic, as we imagined it, never came to fruition. Clayton and I had hoped that we would meet a jovial and accommodating David Prowse and he would say I'm a pretty, pretty princess which we would videotape and send to Jennie Breeden of the Devils Panties  who would give us mad props and we would hopefully get some traffic on our site out of it. Alas, it was not to be. The Devils Panties strip that started it all was one where Jennie shared her birthday gifts that year. It always makes me laugh. There was a slight screw-up with the comic. In the last panel David Prowse was supposed to be saying "ach" not "ack". I know, he's Scottish, not Bill the cat.  Blame Clay. It's all his fault.  Yeah. That's the ticket.  The guy in the seco...

Here we continue with the Manitoba Comic Con 2007 strips where we find that our little "prank" had greater consequences on poor matt than suspected. And that Bloodwine is indeed a harsh mistress. The 2007 con was almost perfect for the Geeks to attend because there were guests from each of our fandoms. There was David Finch, whom we'll meet later, David Prowse, whom we've already seen, the Duras sisters (who were absolute dolls) and there was supposed to be a Tolkien scholar who, unfortunately, was unable to make it. The strip was done a long time before we found out that bit of information though. The strip also shows that I was still uncomfortable with hands. Look at that first panel. Yeesh! ~Brother K'Bob

This strip comes from a dark time in fandom. The days when a forty something porn star wannabe trolled the halls looking for victims. Her story has been told many places, such as in the papers. I won't get into the full details here but sufficive to say she managed to drag one of our own into her dark web. This would-be porn starlet approached Clay about using his high end video camera to make a girls-gone-wild style video and porn where she would approach a group of young men at a local event and bring them home to video their coupling.  Clay showed us the results one alcohol fueled night at Sean's old apartment. It was not pretty. It was basically like watching a video of someone's creepy aunt seducing a bunch of his friends. Clay said it was one of the most surreal nights of his life.  There is much to the story but I will cut to the chase. One of this woman's gimmicks was 'squirting'. Now, we've already touched on the reality of that...

Oops. Little late getting the Blog up. Today we start getting into the original Comic Con run. At this time we were going to be attending the Manitoba Comic Con and Expo, later known as the Central Canada Comic Con or C4 so we did a series of strips based on imagined shenanigans that we might get up to. In my younger years at various Con's I would usually use my trusty one litre slurpee cup as my drinking vessel. The idea of filling it up with bloodwine, at least as imagined by the Starfleet Marine Corps, would be dangerous. Their recipe, from K'Tesh's recipe's page , and listed below, mixes Tequila and Everclear. Nothing good could come of that. 8 oz Firewater 6 oz Everclear (the full strength stuff) 6 oz triple sec 6 oz white tequila 3 drops green food coloring 6 drops red food coloring It's noted that you might have to adjust the food coloring to get it right. The title of the comic comes from a Klingon take on What do you do With a Drunke...

For those of you not in the know, there's a section of Winnipeg viewed with disdain known as Transcona. This is where I grew up and this is where I became the neurotic mess that led me to becoming a cartoonist. Transcona is often mocked by others for being stuck in the past. Whether it's dudes in mullets driving Camaro's to the maligned bar The Oak, Transcona is a suburb unto itself. Transcona was a separate city until 1972, two years before I was born. It was incorporated into the city of Winnipeg Hi Neighbor Sam The Hi Neighbor Sam statue used to sit at the border of Transcona welcoming people into the Town. It's been move a couple of times and repainted and rebranded (it was an advertisement for Canadian Tire for a time). It again sits on Regent welcoming people into the suburb. Now, as for the comic above, why would I be looking at a flamingo and saying "Just like being back in Transcona"? Well, for a time the majority of Transcona homes h...

The Very Secret Diaries were a series of Fan Fiction written around the time that the Lord of the Rings trilogies were coming out. The now deleted Wikipedia article stated: " The Very Secret Diaries  are a series of satirical slash fiction stories written by Cassandra Claire in the form of diary entries by various characters in New Line Cinema's  The Lord of the Rings  film trilogy following the release of  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring . Claire wrote a handful more stories with the release of  The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers , but then abandoned the series. " I'm sure there was more than one porn parody made featuring the LOTR characters but we, that is Clay and I, wondered what a Hobbit focused porn would be like and thus this comic was born. As revealed later this showing would break the character of Matt. Now, we haven't talked about Matt yet. At the time that we had met him as a young man Matt was very much a sheltered ...

As I've said before, Clay and I were the kings of self deprecating humor. If it was inappropriate and aimed at ourselves, we were all over it.  The Juniors restaurant close to Clay's old place would regularly have their "Fat Boy" burgers on for cheap, often a two-for-one deal. Of course everytime Clay and I would drive past we would comment that we should take our picture in front of the sign. Finally, one day, we were out with Sean and we decided to make this a reality.  Two fat boys for a mere six dollars! That's probably close to six hundred pounds of meat there dear readers. Cheap at twice that price! Sadly those days are gone. I think it's closer to ten dollars now if you want two fat boys. That's right. Tell me we're not in a recession.  The Creative Process above was made by Clay.  ~Brother K'Bob

Published on October 15, 2007, The Missing Ingredient is the strip that first introduced the world to our webcomic Meet the Geeks. The comic involved Clayton and Sean watching as Corey dressed as Crazy Britney (Spears) for Keycon's Masquerade. Like many ideas in the comic this one was based off a real life experience. I had dressed as Crazy Britney for the 2007 Masquerade (while Sean followed dressed as WWII Captain America). It was a late night drinking idea that had seemed like a good one at the time. It elicited a lot of laughs but didn't earn any awards. As had been previously mentioned though, this was never meant to be published as a finished strip. I had been practicing trying to figure out the layout for the strip and drew a series of figures before scanning them in for Clay to practice colouring on. As you can see in the raw art there wasn't a coherent gag, just a series of drawings of a rough idea with loosely laid out voice bubbles.  In the e...

Yes, pushed back to October.  October 2016. It may be time to let the cat out of the bag, so to say.  I'm planning a soft launch of the Meet the Geeks comic this month on Comic Fury's free webcomic hosting service. Starting later this month we'll (hopefully) be launching the site with the original comics, updating weekly on Tuesdays.  And after that run is done - well, we'll see.  Check out the new page here:  http://mtgcomic.thecomicseries.com/ During this time there will be continuing updates here on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well as occasional blog posts in-between. ~Brother K'Bob

Some time ago I had been going through my old clothes and came across my white dress shirt. I figured I would see how I would look if I smartened myself up a bit and put on the shirt with a pair of dress pants, belt and my ever faithful flat cap.  There was no escaping it. It was right there in front of me, staring back at me.  There he was, celebrity chef extraordinaire; Dom Deluise. Like looking in a mirror ain't it fat boy? Ah well. When it comes to celebrities there are worse people to look like. But I'll never forget that feeling looking into that mirror.  Beer bread anyone? ~Brother K'Bob

I always felt bad for my cat Thunder, all twenty pounds of him, during the times I was working on the comic. He would be circling around my chair meowing, purring, whining and doing whatever he could to get my attention. Of course he never fully understood other than knowing that I was doing something that did not involve him. Of course this applied to most things that I did without him. Showering, going to the washroom, cooking, etc, etc... Of course cats are a big draw. Lar Desouza, comic artist and caricaturist extraordinaire, has three cats. Launchpad, Dante and Pixel, who have become minor celebrities via Lar's "Kittycam". Another of my friends regularly films her morning workouts. Likewise her cats, Misty and Brindy have also become favorites on her page. After all, everyone likes cats. I guess as I work on the new strip I'll have to figure out a way to work our cat Mercy into the creative process. ~Brother K'Bob

Today's throwback Thursday is the companion piece to Tuesday's offering. Ahh that trip out had some great lines.  Clay and I had no illusions of our weight. It was a bonding point for us both. Go large or go home. So when ordering and the barista asked if he wanted the regular or the "skinny", well, there was only one way he could respond.  That quick wit is why he wound up doing stand-up comedy. I really miss those days. ~Brother K'Bob

This may surprise you fellow Geeks, but once upon a time Sean was not the responsible husband and father of two that we all know and love. No. There was a time, before his wife Silvy, that he was a smooth pimp. A casanova. A gigalo. A raging man whore! A dirty, dirty SLUT ....  well, maybe that's an exaggeration. But Sean had a way with the ladies. Whether he meant to or not. This is another from the started-but-never-finished files.  On this particular outing Sean, Clay and I went out to a local mall and stopped at a coffee franchise. None of us were really in the mood for coffee but Sean took the cake when ordering. Take away the knowing leer from the picture above and replace it with a naive sheepish look and you'll have what actually happened. The line itself did come from Sean's mouth, but it was delivered earnestly. He genuinely didn't know what he wanted to order. The young lady behind the till didn't take it that way though. As we ma...