Sometime in the fall of 1986, in a study hall in Williamsport High, I was doing what everyone in study hall does: waste time. While I wasn't a comic book fan (and still really am not), there were one or two humor comic books that I had been writing and drawing. They had long, intermingling story lines and had started to feel very cumbersome. I wanted something where I could come up with the idea, draw it, and be finished with it all in one sitting. The Adventures of Rodney were born. While it was not the original plan, soon every episode followed the same basic formula: The Evil Sports Car Guy would steal something, and world's fattest forest ranger Rodney would try to get it back.
Sometime the next year, I sent a check to a band I liked at the time to join their fan club. It was apparently a scam, because I never received anything for my money. So, I did what everyone who gets scammed does: turned around and tried to scam other people. The Rodney Ranger Fan Club was born. Unlike the band scam, however, members of this club actually got something. For a measly dollar, the benefits of membership included a hand-made membership card and an 8 1/2 x 11 B&W "poster" (xeroxed by my dad at his office, expanding the scam into personal use of office supplies).
My friend Matt McKee jokingly suggested that we try to make the Rodney Ranger Fan Club an official school club, the only goal of which would be to get our picture in the yearbook. Since there was absolutely nothing else to do in Williamsport, we decided to give it a try. If there could be an official club for future farmers, why not for us? Our senior year, we made it happen, along with Rodney appearing in the mimeographed school newspaper the Cat's Meow.
Shortly after graduating college, I created some additional Rodney comics: graphic novel The Fat Knight Returns, as well as The New Adventures of Rodney (about which nothing was new at all), which lasted 9 episodes.
In 2005, I decided to pick up Rodney's adventures again, partly due to the death of Cat's Meow faculty advisor Richard Hart. After so many years, it didn't seem right to continue The New Adventures of Rodney, so I began The Even Newer Than That Adventures of Rodney. A lot may have changed since 1986, but my readers can be sure that they will continue to get essentially the same thing over and over again.
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