Cow-Boy Chronicles: Episode 3

Whoa, two days in a row. Guess whose on Spring Break?

Today in the Cow-Boy Chronicles we have the thrilling conclusion to the origin of Cow-Boy. With some surprising revelations. To me at least. I had completely forgotten until rereading this strip that the radiation had unlocked Cow-Boys latent mutant powers. Guess I was really laying it on thick with the whole goulash of super-hero origins. I just had to drag a veiled X-Men reference into the mix. One has to wonder how a human is carrying around a gene for cow-ness, especially since the two species are separated by a multi-million year chasm of evolutionary time. One might argue that any gene conferring cow-specific attributes must have arisen after the primate and bovine lines split. In fact, based on the available evidence, it looks like a character like Cow-Dog would have been more plausible scientifically. I should have done my homework.

In the first panel we see my first tentative steps toward actually using cross-hatching. It is only fair, since it was all the rage in mainstream comics in the 1990s. We also learn that Cow-Boy’s secret identity looks just like Hank Spelunker, the star of Spelunker, the daily strip I did as a graduate student. I won’t inflict any of that strip on you, but rest assured that I did not maintain that element of continuity. Cow-Boy eventually became a member of the Spelunker cast and frequently interacted with Hank. It just goes to show the seat of the pants nature of making a comic strip while trying to study, teach and do research.

In panel three I was going for three things. This first is I wanted to be gross. Mission accomplished with the battle udder. Never mind how the milk is dispensed. How long does that stuff keep before it goes bad? Second, I love the gender-bending aspects of a boy assuming the female characteristics of a species.  I mean, Spider-Man could be modeled after a boy spider, but a cow is always female. Finally, a nod to the absurdity of a high school kid building something as advanced as a battle udder or industrial strength spider webbing. Yeah, I  used to read a lot of Spider-Man.

The puffy clouds at the corner of the panels were an experiment in depicting a flashback panel. Not only are they superfluous and probably ineffective, but they also make cropping and copying difficult on the copier. In the final assessment, they weren’t worth it and I don’t think I ever used them again.

Finally, Cow-Boy has an Bovine-Sense. OK, fine I was obsessed with Spider-Man when I was growing up. Happy? Anyway,a lactating boy allows me to squeeze one last gross thing in before the end of the strip. This would put most people off their feed, but if the image of lactating boy dressed like a cow has only whetted your appetite, you can follow your curiosity to this Wikipedia entry on real-world male lactation. The suggestion is clear: Cow-Boy must have also been on some kind of hormone treatment that  interacted with the radiation and his latent mutant cow-ness ability. Hmm. I’ll have to give that some thought.

Did I mention I’m on Spring Break?