It features a story where our hapless college fratboy Servo wanders into a land where Mike Kazaleh's Captain Jack is his guide and Cerebus is throwing a big PARTY!!!
Yes the characters are used with permission and how the characters were landed in the comic was part of my 'Comic Book Maker' column that I did on creating Wise Intelligence over at Newsarama! So I figured in prepping for the full story next week (June 20th) I would flash the teaser shot and repost the column on how I scored Captain Jack and Cerebus for the comic!!!
When I started planning to write this anthology I knew I wanted to write a quick story on one of the characters looking at himself and realizing that women aren't sex toys. I hate to admit this personally but there were many times in my collegiate career where I was more worried about how I was going to get my "next piece" or how I was going to juggle this girl and that one then I was about my classes and grades.
Servo, the character in question, is a bit of a dog throughout the anthology and I knew he was the one who would receive this revelation, perhaps as the last story in the book. It didn't take me long to figure out how to write this story because of Edward Norton. Not the guy on The Honeymooners but the actor who was in Fight Club. I had popped in my Fight Club DVD for, perhaps, the thousandth time when the idea became stuck in my head. Early on in the movie Norton's character enters his mind and finds his spirit animal, which happens to be a big talking penguin. The spirit animal doesn't really guide him in any way, but I found the idea very cool and something that could work a bit better in comics.
Fantagraphics' The Adventures of Captain Jack was a favorite of mine when it was published back in the eighties. There was something about this series featuring a cartoon cat that smoked from a cigarette holder, had a robot dog, and usually had anthropomorphic nudity that always rubbed me the right way. For all these years later I still pull out the five comics I actually own of Captain Jack and read them. When I came up with this idea I thought of no one better to be the spirit animal then Captain Jack.
How does one get permission to use a character that doesn't belong to them? Looking at the inside cover of the comic I found that the character is copyrighted by a fellow named Mike Kazaleh. I pulled up my web browser, typed in the name, and watched as hundreds of webpages featuring the name popped up. It was then when my heart fell.
It seemed that Mike just didn't do Captain Jack in the eighties then fall of the face of the Earth. The man is huge in the world of comics and animation, having worked on cartoons like Tiny Toon Advenutres and cartoon comic books like Ren and Stimpy, Roger Rabbit, and Mighty Mouse. The more I clicked on the various links the more I grew in awe of the man. I read nothing but utter praise. I also noticed something else, that there was no contact information for the man. No phone numbers, addresses, or e-mails for Mike Kazaleh. It's pretty hard to ask permission to use a character when you can't contact someone.
What did I do? I started e-mailing everyone that I could. Every person who interviewed Mike, every website that ran a story, every webmaster of every site, every conference he ever attended got an e-mail. I did this for a couple weeks, sometimes e-mailing the same people over and over again. Determination was key for me. I didn't care if Mike said "There's no way in hell you'll ever use my character." What I did care about was not even getting the chance to ask.
I began to map out my four page "Spirit Animal" story when someone finally e-mailed me back. The e-mail consisted of nothing but Mike Kazaleh's e-mail address but it made me the happiest man alive. I opened up a new e-mail and began to write. What exactly did I say? I kept it simple. I explained who I was, the comic book I was doing, and the four-page story that I wanted to use Captain Jack for. I offered Mike the script of the story and completely begged him to use his character.
A few short days later I had an e-mail back from Mike. First off he was actually flattered that I took the time out to try so hard to track him down. He then informed me that the Captain Jack series was a huge labor of love for him and he was very protective of the character. He didnâ??t say no to me using him, but he had a few stipulations like reading the script first, that my story wasn't a full length Captain Jack adventure, copyright notice issues, and some other small things.
Of course I typed up my story and sent it right over to him. I sat back and waited for a response, hoping that my story could come to fruition exactly as I planned it. Days later Mike got back to me. He didn't find the story objectionable at all and actually thought Captain Jack was used too nicely, as the cat is not usually known for being a good role model (like he's used in this story). I got the go-ahead to use Captain Jack and my dream to have my favorite cartoon cat back in action was a reality.
It was at this point when I remembered something else.
I had remember reading a few years back that Cerebus creator Dave Sim had made his character available for public use. This meant that any creator who wanted to use the character in their stories could simply do so. I had no clue if this was some old wives tale or something that was actually true. I already had my spirit animal for my story but started to think I could rewrite a small section to incorporate the aardvark should I get permission to use him to.
I found the address to Aardvark Vanaheim in Canada and crafted a letter to Dave Sim, explaining the story to him and asking if I could use Cerebus briefly in this story. I then started a separate draft of the story with Cerebus in it and edited the one without him. I saved both stories on my hard drive and went on to work with the nine other stories for the anthology.
A couple weeks later an envelope sporting the aardvark arrived in my mailbox. I quickly opened up the letter and read as Dave Sim informed that it has been his standing policy for some years that anyone who wants to use Cerebus is welcome to do so. The only thing he wanted was a few copies of the finished product and a copyright notice. Sim suggested that perhaps the copyright notice could go on Cerebus T-shirt. I wasn't sure if this was in jest or not but I found the idea of a creation wearing a copyright on his T-shirt to be funny, so I added that into the story.
In just a few short weeks my idea had become a reality and I find myself lucky enough to use Captain Jack and Cerebus in this silly little story of a fraternity boy learning a little bit about himself in a dream. Mike Kazaleh and Dave Sim made that dream a reality and hopefully I wonâ??t have any fans of the two animals screaming at me that I got them 'all wrong'. I was also lucky enough to find artist Scott Kellogg. Kellogg is drawing the story and his artwork on the pages shows that he is more then able to do justice to the characters when penciling them.
So Visit Wise Intelligence at: http://www.drunkduck.com/wise_intelligence
And visit my superhero book Philly at: http://www.drunkduck.com/philly
