The origin of Welforce is a spin-off from “The Misadventures of Misfit Misquit Mike Butski” — a series of comic strips (most of which were in “The Far Side” style of a large single panel with a caption beneath ) that I drew in Middle School to entertain my friends.
The main character got into a lot of misconduct, including being found sleeping in his bed with dogs, and the Music Teacher asking him to go into his personal office (with an opened condom wrapper found on the outside of the closed door). The comic that everyone found the most entertaining from the series was the basis for this first page — Mike stealing from the Salvation Army Donation bin. This entire comic spinoff is based off from that single panel.
I was actually a good kid, very shy and never swore, stole from, or fought with anyone. My humor was meant to get laughs, not to cause harm (but later on, I would find that not everyone laughed with me and some wanted to kick my ass for them). But I’ll be honest — public school made me try to fit in and be cool with the rest of the perverted kids. I didn’t even have cable TV back then, my family was very Christian (although not churchgoing, we believed, and still do), so any weird perversity and vulgar words I learned were 100% from classmates, much to the chagrin of my family. The problem was, I got in trouble for it and they didn’t. I was too naive to hide the jokes.
My mom was called down to the Middle School office to discuss the subjects of my artistic endeavors, which were confiscated from me by teachers (and not the 1st time this would happen in my public school cartoonist career). They showed her, scolded her, and sent her home to discuss it with me. The only thing I remember from the discussion was she said they were very upset and stern and that she defended me as a good kid just trying too hard to fit into that awkward tweener age. And when she left, she heard them unable to contain their laughter.
Got ’em!
