THRILL SEEKER COMICS ONLINE COMIC STRIP

THRILL SEEKER COMICS ONLINE COMIC STRIP
May 20, 2024 - Visit www.thrillseekercomics.com for Previous Episodes by Clicking on Most Recent Comic Strip above.

Monday, March 25, 2024

Well... "Blow Me Down!"


I've got something in the works for next year...

(TEASE).

 

"New" THRILL SEEKER COMICS character is actually an "Old" character I created over 20 years ago...



The new character, Gapefmouf’ Dudley, co-starring in the new THRILL SEEKER COMICS series featuring MS. TITTENHURST: FINDER OF LOST THINGS is actually an “old” character that I created twenty years ago for an unpublished THRILL SEEKER COMICS story focusing on the origin of YELLOW JACKET: MAN OF MYSTERY entitled “Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Out”. He’s been rattling around in my head these past few decades and I finally found another story to place him in that made sense and works. I’m really enjoying the chance to showcase the character.

I do have plans to tell this tale with Gapemouf’ Dudley in an upcoming THRILL SEEKER COMICS ANTHOLOGY about the first time that George Clark put on the yellow fedora, mask and striped trenchcoat. He comes to the aid of our Mystery Man who is launching his vigilante career and gives him some well-needed advice. I digress. A story for another day.

Gapemouf’ Dudley is a fictional character that is an old Mississippi bluesman that plays a blues harp (aka harmonica) – which I haven’t shown him playing yet – again I digress. Forget that he is missing his two front teeth and is blind in one eye, he still wears a toupee when he is out and about underneath his Trilby short-brimmed fedora. 

The inspiration to Gapemouf’ Dudley actually comes from something in my real life. My Granddaddy McCullar was from Batesville, Mississippi and lived in various towns in the area including Pope, Mississippi and Clarksdale, Mississippi where my Daddy was born.

Back in the early 1980’s when I was a boy living in Illinois, my parents sent me to stay with my grandparents in Memphis for a few weeks one summer. It was probably one of the best experiences of my life now looking back in retrospect getting to know my family a little better. On my mother’s side, I stayed a few days with my Aunt Eyvette and got to learn about snapping green beans. Thankfully, between chores and being forced to eat my vegetables, my cousin Robert let me play with his vintage G.I. Joe collection – which was AWESOME! Again, I’m digressing…

But on that trip, one day, my Granddaddy put me in his pick up truck and said to me that we were going down to Mississippi to see his old stomping grounds. He wanted to show me where he grew up and where my “kin” were from. I remember going down and spending a little time fishing at Sardis Dam near Bateville as he sipped on his beer in a paper bag. A little later that day, he was driving around and wanted to show me near his old home. If memory serves me correctly, he was telling about his own father who had a sawmill. I had heard a tale once that my great-grandfather had accidentally cut his finger off at the sawmill – but I never knew what to believe as he died before I was born.

As were driving around out in the country, he pulled off into the backwoods on a dirt road. Where they heck were we going?!?!

He then drove towards an old tar shack deep in the woods that looked abandoned. Haunted. He told me that this shack belonged to an old black man and his wife that worked for his father at the sawmill. He told me that when he was a boy, the man’s wife was pregnant and was going into labor. My grandfather saw what was happening and went to fetch his father and a doctor. My memory is a little hazy, but that is the story that I remember from my childhood. Granddaddy pointed at the window of the beat up tar shack and said that he went up to the window to peek in and saw the baby being born.

I don’t think he expected to happen what happened next… but maybe he did.

He started to walk around the house just a bit and the door opened to the tar shack. Then an old black man appeared that to my eyes looked about 100 years old. He looked like he just woke up. He was wearing what we now hear called a “wife beater” t-shirt – but to me – it what I grew up calling “a Granddaddy” t-shirt that was a white cotton ribbed tank top t-shirt. Just like my own granddaddy wore and what I would wear for a few years in my youth.

My granddaddy put on a big old grin, slapped his knee, and went over to embrace the old man who was also smiling. I remember he didn’t have his two front teeth.

Granddaddy said jokingly, “Sir, I’m the sheriff and this here is my deputy.”

They laughed and reminisced a bit. It went above my head. But I knew that they hadn’t seen each other in possibly decades. What struck me at that young age was seeing my old white Southern grandfather visiting an old friend who was an old black man. You learn of the stereotypes of the Old South with racism, segregation, and hatred. But I never once in my entire life ever heard my Granddaddy say anything racist or bad about African-Americans – and here he demonstrated that he was one of the better angels and above that. I’m proud that he showed me by example.

I remember him then saying, “Scott, I want you to meet my old friend, Mr. Dudley.”



I shook his hand and he smiled at me with his toothless grin. I was quiet and a little intimidated of someone so old to my young eyes. 

“Hello, sir.”

They laughed and talked some more. Then said goodbye.

We got in the pick up truck and drove away as the old man named Dudley went back inside his tar shack. I never saw him again.

But that one moment. That memory. It stayed with me. I never knew much else but meeting that older gentleman that was friendly with my granddaddy stuck with me and gave inspiration for me to create the fictional character Gapemouf’ Dudley that you’re reading here now in THRILL SEEKER COMICS webstrip as a supporting character that I’ve also morphed with other legendary forgotten bluesman from history.

I thought this would be an interesting tidbit to share into the creation of this new "old" character...

Thursday, March 21, 2024

THRILL SEEKER COMICS ANTHOLOGY #1 Now Available on IndyPlanet

You can purchase the premiere issue of THRILL SEEKER COMICS ANTHOLOGY #1 in either print-on-demand print copy and/or digital download directly from IndyPlanet at https://www.indyplanet.com/thrill-seeker-comics-anthology-1 . If you buy a print copy, they will ship directly to your mailbox.

Saturday, March 02, 2024

Scott McCullar - Official Texas Rangers Baseball Fan

My wife Jennifer just gave me a belated birthday present that arrived in the mail moments ago. For the last four years, I’ve been watching the Texas Rangers games regularly with her on MLB tv (because the Cardinals games are “blacked out” here in Central Illinois from television viewing.) A couple of seasons ago I realized I knew the Rangers inside out and was following them closer than the Cardinals. Two years ago I converted over to being a Rangers fan because I couldn’t even tell you the Cardinals lineup any longer and I was cheering on the boys from Arlington. .

Last year, Jennifer had a hard talk with me and declared that I had converted over to being an official Rangers fan at the start of the last season. I told her early in June that the Rangers were going to the World Series and they did. She then bought me my first Rangers baseball cap last year. This season she got the powder blue one that I mentioned I loved. 

So, here I am. I’m a Texas Rangers convert now married to one of the biggest Ranger fans you’ll ever meet. It is official it seems. Go Rangers! I’ll see you at the ballpark this summer.

Friday, March 01, 2024

POPEYE Comic Strips

 

This year, I just recently began collecting actual newspaper Sunday comic and daily strips of POPEYE from the years 1938 to 1946 after the premature death of Popeye's creator E.C. Segar in 1938.
 
My interest to discover POPEYE stories during those "lost years" after Segar's death and before Bud Sagendorf took over in the late 1950's led me to look online for actual comic strips because King Features (at least to my knowledge) has never reprinted the entire 1930's through 1950's comic strips. I guess here and there they might have been reprinted in an old comic or two.
 
I had never even seen or read the POPEYE comic strips with the Tom Sims (writer), Doc Winner (artist), Bill "Bela" Zeboly (artist), and Ralphi Stein (writer) circa that twenty-year period between 1938-1958 that led me recently to acquiring some strips (thanks to eBay) from the World War Two era. 
 

It has been pretty exciting to see and read. I've purchased some portfolios and I've been placing and curating them carefully in those this past week.
 
I live in Springfield, Illinois. I purchased several years worth of POPEYE strips from someone in Chicago. To my amazement, the POPEYE comic strips I bought from this one dealer happened to be from the Illinois State Journal from the 1941-1945 which is actually the "local" newspaper (which merged with another local paper years ago to become The Illinois State Journal-Register. ) To my surprise, as I turned over the comic strips, I was reading local history. That was a nice bonus.
 
My friends in Springfield will like this... as I'm seeing pieces of history in the paper from those times about the Esquire Movie Theater, the Myers Building, the Carrie Post King Daughter's Home, Staab Funeral, and so much more. I'm also seeing some familiar last names of people in the obituaries and I have to wonder if they might be grandparents or great-grandparents of some of my friends.
 
One weird thing happened... I was watching a documentary on Golden Age actress Joan Blondell on YouTube... and at the same exact moment as I was watching the video, I was collating these comic strips into my portfolio and flipping them over to read the Springfield, Illinois parts... well, an advertisement for Joan's new movie CRY HAVOC was in the newspaper just as I was watching the video that brought up CRY HAVOC. Weird.
 
I've never seen the film, so it is now on my list because I believe synchronicity is calling me to go see it.