Misspent Youths


From the 1997 sketchbook, a page of Misspent Youths characters. I’ve come to (mostly) accept that I have a cartoony style. When I’m just drawing, not thinking about trying to acchieve a specific look, my art has a cartoony flavor. It has a cartoony flavor even when I’m trying to draw something serious and horrifying. When I was drawing Misspent Youths back in 1991 I was trying to draw realistically. Really.

On this page I was purposely drawing the characters in a more cartoony fashion than usual.

The characters are, from left to right, up to down –

Buffy Crawfield – Buffy first appeared in the Moe and Detritus minicomics in ’89 or ’90, predating that other, more famous young woman with the same name.

Moe – Moe either has no last name, or many last names, depending on which version of Moe he’s being in my imagination.

Lili Veracruz – Lili is a terrorist. I got a fan letter back in the day suggesting that Lili was a fan boy fantasy. I’m not sure what the writer meant. Lili is a serial killer and not an especially nice one. She’s not one of “bad girls” that are often popular in comics who wear skimpy outfits and stand around looking provocative.

Cherice Unomuro – Cherice wasn’t intended to be a continuing character. She was part of a gag in the first issue. She seemed too lively to ignore so she ended up joining the (ever expanding) cast.

??? – This character only made an appearance in a couple of the Misspent Youths calendars I did for friends. (The art of which will show up here eventually.) I would need to hunt down a calendar to be reminded of her name and that’s too big a job to attempt at this hour.

Trouble Coyote – Trouble was inspired by my friend Schuyler, though, other than being thin and blonde, she neither looks or behaves much like Schuyler. Schuyler came to California to visit a couple of friends she’d met on the Peace March and she got adopted into my circle of friends. Trouble came to the City to go to college and got adopted into Moe and Detritus’s circle of friends.

K.Z. O’Neil – I got a fan letter from someone (not the same someone who wrote about Lili) who thought K.Z. was hot. I’m pretty sure I wrote back thanking him for the compliment. At least I hope I did. Given my drawing skills at the time I consider it a compliment to his imagination as well.

4 thoughts on “Misspent Youths

  1. Cheers! The secret’s out!

    I usually don’t tell people when it happens. Sometimes the reason that the person inspired the character isn’t a flattering one. I’ll never admit to which awful characters were inspired by real people.

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