(This post was co-written by Tom Martin, who also provided the character artwork.)

Breakfast at Timpani’s was not the only comic strip I was involved with. If those superheroes weren’t ridiculous enough for you, then get a load of this.

Back in 1992, I was taking French language classes in high school. Like any other student throughout the history of the universe, I doodled in the margins of my notebook when I was bored. My friend and classmate Tom Martin did the same, but his often evolved into full-blown comic strips. He had already begun a series of scratch comics entitled Straw Guy, based around a rather normal individual who becomes the victim of a nuclear reaction and becomes small enough to fit inside a large drinking glass. Straw Guy’s mission was to save the world from impending evil and mayhem.

Maybe six or seven issues into Straw Guy came the time when we were studying food in French. In the next issue of Straw Guy, Tom introduced the character known as Ail Man.

Yes, he’s a sentient clove of garlic. (In case you hadn’t guessed, ail is the French word for “garlic.”) He proved to be quite an asset to Straw Guy, so Tom used him in the next couple of issues. Eventually, like all good heroes, Ail Man was proved worthy of his own series of scratch comics. And thus, the Ail Man solo series was born. (Or grown. Whatever you want.)

Tom brought me on board with the project, and the real insanity began. Tom drew most of the comics, while I mainly contributed preposterous story ideas, created some new characters, and illustrated a few splash pages here and there. We usually went out of our way to draw the Ail Man comics as crude and simplistic as possible. Since we were rendering this stuff while we were supposed to be paying attention in class, there was none of the usual sketching, penciling, or inking process; ballpoint pen alone was the tool of choice. Most of the strips were only a few panels long, or still just doodles in the margins. There were a few Ail Man installments that filled an entire notebook page, however.

Here’s a rundown of the main characters, many of whom continued the tradition of horribly mispronounced French words.

	Ail Man, an anthropomorphic clove of garlic. His limbs look like twisted branches or roots. Ail Man’s true origin is unknown.
	Combat Boot Guy, Ail Man’s favorite comic book character. He never appeared with the rest of the cast, as he strictly remained a fictional character within Ail Man’s world.
	Yaourt Man, a former military commander and world traveler. He’s now Ail Man’s landlord. (Yaourt is French for “yogurt.”)
	Straw Guy, Ail Man’s original ally and best friend. Best known as a computer hacker and fledgling superhero.

Like any other good-natured protagonist, Ail Man had his share of miscreants to clash with.

	Mephisto, evil incarnate…in the form of a small fish. He gives orders to That Guy directly from his fishbowl.
	That Guy, Ail Man’s archnemesis. He appears as a stereotypically Satanic figure, but is not actually a demon. His costume creates a thick mist which constantly envelopes his entire body; often, only his head and hands are visible. That Guy can hover, as well as teleport from location to location, often accompanied by a burst of flame (usually indicated by a thundering “FOOM!”). He serves Mephisto, and has an overinflated ego. That Guy often announces his presence with an unnecessary shout of “It is I!”
	Homme de Garlic, an evil form of Ail Man when he’s possessed by That Guy’s demonic familiars. He sports a goatee on principle.

Other than just characters, we fleshed out a few other concepts for use within the Ail Man universe.

• Place de Yaourt, an apartment complex that leads to a secret underground fortress. The Place is home to Yaourt Man, Ail Man, and Straw Guy.

• E-Ville, the hidden dimension from which Mephisto and That Guy hatch their schemes.
• Manger les yeux, a dark spell that has unpredictable results when spoken aloud. (It translates to “eat the eyes.”)
• Voulions – Alien invaders from the Zeta Reticuli system driven by a desire to conquer. They looked like the stereotypical Greys, of course. Voulions is the first-person plural imperfect indicative of the verb vouloir, “to want.” e.g., nous voulions, “we wanted.” (And what the Voulions wanted was Earth!)
• V.E.R.I.F.I.O.N.S. – Armor system created by Yaourt Man in order to fight the Voulions. Unlocked by using a spoon-shaped key. I don’t remember what the acronym stood for. Verifions is the first-person plural present indicative of the verb vérifier, “to verify.” e.g., nous verifions, “we verified.” (“All systems are go!”)

No, we weren’t smoking any wacky weedus. (But perhaps it would’ve helped.) The Ail Man comics appeared rather regularly for over two years. Once our senior year in high school came along, new adventures were harder to produce. College was next, and it was determined that Ail Man must not die; but efforts to continue the series and idea were placed on the back burner. Tom and I were attending schools in different states, so outside of summer and winter breaks, it was very difficult to collaborate.

Still, Ail Man still showed up from time to time. If I remember correctly, I drew a picture in college depicting Ail Man as a “real” comic book character, complete with a clove-shaped head, musclebound humanoid body, and bristling with weapons. (I wish I knew what happened to that drawing.) Later on, Ail Man even made a pair of cameo appearances in Breakfast at Timpani’s.

Yes, they were crudely drawn and unbelievably silly, but the Ail Man comics were still great fun to produce. The point was not to make fine art. The point was to be ridiculous and provide a distraction from the boredom and annoyances of high school.

Despite all of this nonsense, somehow our French teacher gave us a passing grade.

Will Ail Man ever make a return to comics? As entertaining as it might be, the odds are extremely unlikely, since it might end up getting us sued.

Wait, what?! Well, take a look at Boy Bawang.

He’s the mascot for a Filipino brand of flavored corn nuts, and his name is Tagalog for “Garlic Boy.” I saw a bag of the snacks at the local Asian supermarket last week, and I was floored. He looks just like a younger version of Ail Man! (Quite literally, if you go by their names.) KSK Food Products debuted Boy Bawang in 2003, and the marketing campaign has apparently been quite successful.

Obviously Ail Man predates this by at least a decade, but it’s not like we can claim royalties or anything. It’s nothing but a simple coincidence. However, any hope of Ail Man making a glorious return is dashed by Boy Bawang’s existence, as KSK Food Products would almost certainly take us to court. I seriously doubt that the two of us could hold off a lawsuit from a major corporation.

At least a garlic-themed hero is still around in some form…

Don’t forget to read parts one, two, and three of this series first!

Breakfast at Timpani’s did indeed fall apart by December 2003, and this post will reveal the reasons why. No, John and I did not have some horrendous falling out.

Short answer: real life concerns took precedence.

Now for the long answer.

For starters, John was a very busy man at his office, working with countless charities. He was also pursuing further education by attending divinity school. This was not some kind of religious Hogwarts, though I sure as hell tried to convince myself that it was, because that sounds awesome!

Comic scripts fell by the wayside, as well they should have; I’ve always been a proponent of the fact that no matter how much fun your hobby may be, real life always comes first. (One of my catchphrases is “There’s more to life than comics.”) I actually would’ve been upset if John was spending his time scripting at the cost of his coursework.

Meanwhile, I was having troubles of my own. I had more than one person tell me that the comic sucked, often using less polite words than that. One quote that really stood out was “Where’s the hilarity?” Ouch. I’m not saying that Breakfast at Timpani’s was comedy gold, but jeez, a good chunk of it was at least chuckle-worthy.

Snide comments about the art made their way to my ears, as well. This only added insult to injury, as even though I’d been illustrating the strip for years, I felt that my art was getting worse rather than improving. Since it was a comic strip, I was able to oversimplify things like hands and feet (drawing those were always extremely difficult for me), especially at a distance, but it didn’t help. This had always been an endless source of frustration for me, and now it was really gaining steam.

I received a serious blow to my confidence in 2002. I had applied to graduate school in order to pursue a master’s degree in graphic design…but I was rejected. Why? Because my portfolio and artwork “was not of a professional caliber.” The school even had the gall to suggest that I go through their undergraduate graphic design program first. I must point out that this school was part of the same university system as the one where I had earned my bachelor’s degree…with the same credits! This did unbelievable damage to my confidence and artistic abilities, and I don’t think I ever recovered from it.

Finally, I was going through some personal issues at the time, which I will not detail here. Everything added up to a perfect storm, so John and I decided to just let Breakfast at Timpani’s die a quick death. The final strip was posted on December 31, 2003, sadly breaking things off right in the middle of a story arc. We probably should’ve ended the story we were working on first, but we felt it was better to just kill it off rather than risk an incredibly delayed shitty ending. Lesson learned!

For the next few years, I left Breakfast at Timpani’s on my site for archival purposes. It got deleted a few years ago when I did some upgrades and such, but since I’ve got all of the files backed up elsewhere, it’s no big loss.

In the end, over a hundred strips were produced, plus fake advertisements, holiday special splash images, and parody posters. I had a few other Breakfast at Timpani’s projects in the pipeline at the time of the series’ demise, like parodies of classic comic book covers like The Uncanny X-Men #141 and Tales of Suspense #48. I’ve still got the rough layouts of those; maybe I’ll finish them someday. Perhaps I could use them as a cover for the PDF collection?

It only lasted just under three years, but Breakfast at Timpani’s was one hell of a trip. While writing this retrospective I reread every single strip in order, and it brought back memories, believe me. Sure, some scripts and artwork didn’t quite pan out the way we wanted, and some of my contributions in particular were rather weak, but I’m still pleased with the comic as a whole. In fact, it’s one of the few creative endeavors I was involved in that I can look back on without a heaping helping of regret.

Will Breakfast at Timpani’s ever return? I doubt it, but never say never…

Don’t forget to read parts one and two of this series first!

Breakfast at Timpani’s was going great for a while, but problems eventually reared their ugly heads. Our buffer of finished strips depleted after about six months, as John and I were both busy people. Aside from settling in to jobs and such, we were also both apartment hunting, buying new cars, and taking care of other such “grown-up” responsibilities. Couple that with family commitments, vacations, and other facets of daily life, and things started to slow down on the comic front.

Sometimes, to be completely honest, our hearts just weren’t in it. We’ve all had long days at the office where we come home and just need to relax for the evening rather than hunkering down to do more work. I’ll admit that my drafting table was not my friend at times.

To help keep the creative spirit going, we’d still have our breakfast meetings at the diner whenever possible, working up new characters and stories. I also made sure to give the site an annual design overhaul. The basic functions and navigation were the same, but the look and feel was changed. For example, the first year featured the Breakfast at Timpani’s logo seen at the top of this post, but year two showcased a design that paid homage to The Uncanny X-Men. For the third year, we went with a Matrix theme, complete with posters aping those of The Matrix Reloaded. (The first Breakfast at Timpani’s logo remains the official one.)

John and I tried to make light of the delays as best we could, often poking fun at ourselves in one-off strips. This one was my personal favorite:

Yes, that’s Faded Glory in his war-era costume frozen in the ice. Guess where that idea came from.

As the years went on, though, it got more and more difficult to get material out on time. Real life responsibilities mounted, and the dominoes began to fall. By the end of 2003, Breakfast at Timpani’s was dead in the water.

Now we’ve gotten to the point where you’re all wondering, “What happened? Why did Breakfast at Timpani’s end”? The answers are coming up tomorrow.

Don’t forget to read part one of this series first!

Yesterday was rife with technical details, so let’s move on and properly introduce the Breakfast at Timpani’s cast. Our main group of five heroes was the following:

	Faded Glory was a costumed hero who served in World War II and the Korean War. After a drunken bender, he reawakened just in time to fight in the Vietnam War…Conflict…whatever. His exploits were covered up by way of the comic book Tales of Faded Glory; whenever news leaked out, people just assumed it was fake footage or a publicity stunt. After retiring in the mid-1980s, Faded Glory grew annoyed with modern society and its lack of patriotism. He continued to fight the good fight in Midsize City, though he often spent more time trying to get his new friends in gear. After retirement, he worked as a security guard. He also had a daughter named Lisa (secretly the heroine American Princess). In case you hadn’t noticed, “Fade” was our Captain America homage, and his current appearance was based on Ed Harris and Clint Eastwood.
	Social Butterfly was so named when she sprouted a pair of wings while dancing the night away at a local club on her twenty-first birthday. Embarrassment nonwithstanding, she was a huge hit, and remained the life of the party. For powers, she obviously had flight, plus a “map-sense” that enables her to instantly recall any location. Social Butterfly’s creation for the team was a no-brainer: we needed a flyer!
	Just-Like Mike has all the athletic prowess of a popular sports icon (without the endorsement contracts)…except that he can’t play baseball to save his life. This is a constant source of amusement for his friends. He carries a flaming basketball for a weapon.
	She-Devil was exiled from Hell because she couldn’t pay the rent, and now she spends her time on Earth, having defected to the good side. A bombshell in her own right, she is the primary object of affection for Chick Magnet; she’s also resistant to his powers, being a demon and all. In addition to fighting the forces of evil, she has started a letter-writing campaign to get all of the CW’s vampire shows canceled. She-Devil has the usual array of demonic powers (flame blasts, teleportation, summoning spells), and her design was heavily influenced by Coop‘s devil women.
	Chick Magnet is a real ladies’ man, even though he doesn’t look it. He’s a self-described player who can exercise limited telepathic control over women (with the aforementioned exception of She-Devil). His ability to sway women in his favor has earned him quite a reputation. He continually hits on She-Devil (much to the consternation of Social Butterfly, who has a huge crush on him). His arch-nemesis is the Feminazi. Yes, Chick Magnet could be interpreted as a date rapist, but we made sure not to go too far over the line.

As for villains, the first few story arcs featured:

	The Mysterious Leader, your typical “big boss” who oversaw such villainous organizations as S.E.X. (the Society for Evil Exploits) and D.R.U.G.S. (I don’t recall if we thought up a meaning for that one). His black costume and question mark emblem was based on the classic “unknown person” image used in newscasts for decades.
	Feminazi, a radical feminist who commanded a group of misandrists. I realize that “feminazi” is a term coined by insufferable blowhard Rush Limbaugh, but there’s a reason for that. In-universe, our character actually took her name from that asshole pundit as a way to fight back and make the term her own, the same way many real world ethnic groups have adapted slurs in the same fashion.
	General Kwang was a flag officer in the Martian Armed Forces. A decorated Assault Trooper, Kwang had turned his fortunate status as an Immune into a play for power. When the republic of Mars was decimated by the cold virus during their war with Venus, Kwang assembled a force of Immunes to capture control of the planet. A coalition of Susceptibles was on the verge of removing Kwang from power, having finally recovered from the cold plague. The outbreak of new infections solidified his hold on power for the time being, propelling the red planet into a new conflict and driving Kwang to seek a new, final solution on earth.
	The Free Agents, genetically engineered super-jocks used by the Mysterious Leader to take over professional football and secure lucrative endorsement contracts.

There were loads of supporting characters, too, some of whom only appeared once or twice (often as the butt of jokes). Not only that, Breakfast at Timpani’s included many cameo appearances from real life people. For example, the staff of the Inkblot Comic Book Museum was based on the folks who worked at Buried Under Comics (one of whom was Moon Freight 3 creator Luke Foster). Other cameos included Dina Simmons, the model for George Pérez‘s creator-owned comic Crimson Plague, and John and I showed up ourselves a few times.

Fictional characters from outside of the Breakfast at Timpani’s universe appeared as well. Ail Man, the star of an eponymous comic strip created by Ryo-Ohki way back in our high school days, showed up as a disgruntled patron of the diner and later was seen on a poster. Breakfast at Timpani’s even had a brief crossover of sorts with another webcomic, because hey, that’s what superheroes do!

As for the actual story arcs, Breakfast at Timpani’s began with the theft of some comics — including the rare Tales of Faded Glory #1 — from Inkblot, which spurs Faded Glory to action and sets up his meeting with the rest of the heroes. From there, the story segued into General Kwang’s plans for interplanetary conquest. Then, the Mysterious Leader created the Free Agents as part of a vast plan to make tons of money and take over various industries.

Breakfast at Timpani’s was off to a great start when it launched in early 2001, and everything seemed peachy.

Next…the thunderclouds on the horizon start to move in.

With all of the history lessons I’ve been providing lately, it’s high time that I tell you the lurid tale of Breakfast at Timpani’s. Okay, so it’s not really lurid. But it should make for some interesting reading, or you can just skim it while you’re on the pot. This was originally going to be a single post, but I wrote so much that I had to break it up into four parts. Each installment will be posted on a daily basis so you won’t have long to wait.

Breakfast at Timpani’s was a superhero comedy webcomic drawn by me and written by John “The Reverend” Longworth that ran from 2001-2003. (Fun fact: I nicknamed John “The Reverend” shortly after I met him in the fall of 1996, as he is wise beyond his years. Many years later, he was ordained as a Lutheran minister, and his nickname became his official title. Convenient, huh?)

I’ve been digging through the Breakfast at Timpani’s archives on my computer lately, posting sketches and other pieces to my deviantArt account. There’s none of the actual comic strips up there, as I may eventually compile the entire run of the series into a PDF file which will be made available for free download. (I refuse to charge for that shit.)

I also realized that 2011 is the ten-year anniversary of Breakfast at Timpani’s, so there’s no better time than now to offer a retrospective on the series. (Wow, yet another decade marker. Ugh.) The Reverend himself is joining me to write this piece, so consider yourselves lucky!

Now…let’s get ready to ramble!

Set your time machines to January 2001. John and I had both graduated from college, and we kicked around the idea of starting up some kind of creative project. Since I had just received my art degree, and John was an accomplished writer, we settled on making a webcomic. John would script it while I would handle the art chores; plus, I had a website of my own on which we could host the comic.

Now, I need to mention that the early 2000s were a very different era for webcomics. Nowadays, they are almost universally motivated by profit, but ours was motivated by shits and giggles. (And lots of coffee.)

These were also the days before WordPress, ComicPress, and other software made it a cinch for any schmoe with an idea in his or her head to dump a scribble on the Internet and call it a webcomic. I had my own domain and website, but in the absence of easy webcomic production tools, I had to hand-code the entire site and manually update everything each time a new strip was ready to go. I can hear modern webcomic creators shuddering in horror.

Anyway, John and I decided that our comic would feature superheroes, as that’s the genre of sequential art that we were most familiar with. We also chose to make things humorous, as superheroes by their very nature are absolutely ridiculous, and professional comics had gotten far too serious.

John and I were (and still are) connoisseurs of diner culture; not a week went by where we didn’t meet up at a local diner to eat breakfast, regardless of the time of day or night. After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. With my being unemployed at the time, hitting up the diner was also a relatively cheap way to get out of the house. While chowing down, that’s when inspiration struck: why not have our motley crew of superheroes hang out at a diner of their own? Timpani’s Diner was soon created, and lent itself to the title Breakfast at Timpani’s.

Quite a bit of the legwork on the comic strip was done at the Vernon Diner, which aside from serving excellent food, was close to both of our residences. Over plates of scrambled eggs, bacon, and home fries, John would have his notebook next to him, and I’d come armed with a sketchpad. Even though John was the writer and I was the artist, we created the characters and world together. There were probably a few characters that we thought up independently, but I honestly don’t remember which those were, and it’s really not important; we’ve always shared the credit. Aside from the usual heroes and villains, John and I also laid down some ground rules.

First of all…few to no costumes. Our heroes’ outfits were just everyday clothes. Sure, they happened to be wearing the exact same thing in nearly every strip, but the fact remained that it was just off-the-shelf clothing rather than some spandex getup. The few characters that did wear costumes were some of the villains and a few wannabe superheroes, and we made it a point to make them look ridiculous. (The Cheez Weasel’s cape was a goddamned bath towel.)

Secondly, we made sure that the world our characters inhabited was one where superheroes and supervillains were commonplace, but often ignored. There were no world-destroying plots, and even when the bad guys revealed some terrible plan, the general public was used to it and practically indifferent. We’ve got billionaires and politicians who get away with James Bond-esque scams in the real world; why would it be any different in a world populated with superheroes?

Which leads to our third premise. The world in which these characters lived was a mid-sized city in a fairly generic environment. (Their home was even named “Midsize City.”) Part of the fun of exploring and laughing at the everyday problems of these characters was putting them in a setting that was ordinary apart from the presence of superhumans. New York City, Los Angeles, London, and Chicago are all overrepresented in the comic genre, especially in superhero titles. Breakfast at Timpani’s was a shoutout to people from the “everywhere else” places around the country.

Last but not least, we made sure to break the fourth wall. A lot. In one notorious instance, our primary hero Faded Glory was angry about the way a plot was resolved, so he climbed out of the comic to voice his displeasure to the creators. (Using his fists.)

Breakfast at Timpani’s was a black and white comic with a few color specials appearing here and there. I was much more comfortable illustrating with just pencil and ink as my coloring skills left much to be desired. I lettered the strips in Illustrator and prepared the final product in Photoshop. There, I did some digital inking (filling in large black or gray areas) and added special effects if needed.

The comic debuted on March 14, 2001 with new strips going up every Wednesday night. We had about five strips in the can before we launched it, thus giving us a buffer zone to work with in case any scheduling problems came up. (Which they did. But that’s fodder for a future post!)

(Click for fullsize version)

The first of many.

The first fifteen strips were in a half-page format, but we moved to a full-page format by #16. This gave me a lot more room to draw and experiment with panel sizes, layout, angles, et cetera. Each strip led directly into the next, as if they were pages in a printed comic book. We even included parodies of the legendary Hostess snack ads, using our characters to promote a product known as Crispy Cakes. Each strip even had a clever and/or ridiculous title. These webcomics were a celebration of the style and mood of the fun (if slightly campy) books we grew up on. Plenty of other teams have covered the superhero genre with dark or adult themes.

Tomorrow…meet the cast!