Earth Dude Comic #1: Preview + Bonuses

Read "Dude or Die!" See preview pages, script, backstory and more. This full-color book is on Kindle now and in print soon from writer Walt Jaschek, artist Craig Skaggs and colorist Don Secrease.

Here’s what in this post! Earth Dude comic #1 preview pages • Walt’s original script • Project backstory • Bonus videos • Creator bios

The dynamic Earth Dude™, eco-warrior with a cool chill and prominent hair curl, exists in the daydreams of a 12-year-old boy. His imagined tales of superhero adventures are being recorded, brainwave by brainwave, by a corrupt corporation. Its mission: steal the Earth Dude concept for the next big entertainment franchise. But what if this blue-skinned “planet skater” isn’t just a concept? What if he could… come to life?

Note! The completed comic is now on Amazon Kindle, and coming to print soon. Meanwhile, enjoy these preview pages and bonuses below!

Part 1: Earth Dude comic #1 preview pages

Earth Dude #1, page 1 - Earth Dude makes a splash

Earth Dude #1, page 2 - Earth Dude spots some pachyderm pals

Earth Dude #1, page 3 - Oh, no, the Zomboids want… tusks

Earth Dude #1, page 4 - Earth Dude strikes back

Earth Dude #1, page 5 - Earth Dude protects his pals

Earth Dude #1, page 6 - The Zomboid King watches with Big-Hair Babs

Earth Dude #1, page 7 - Big-Hair Babs has had enough TV

Earth Dude #1, page 8 - Zomboid King offers Big-Hair Babs a job

Earth Dude #1, page 9 - Cut to Braindrain Corporation

Earth Dude #1, page 10 - Dr. Drooping makes an ominous announcement

Earth Dude #1, page 11 - Dr. Drooping checks back in on the “Earth Dude” storyline

Earth Dude #1, page 12 - Back to the story, as Earth Dude meets… Big-Hair Babs!

Earth Dude #1, page 13 - An attempt at introductions

Earth Dude #1, page 14 - Earth Dude is falling for Big-Hair Babs — or at least falling

Earth Dude #1, page 15 - Big-Hair Babs wants to put Earth Dude down

Earth Dude #1, page 16 - Big-Hair Babs and Earth Dude decide to shake

Earth Dude #1, page 17 - Earth Dude explains his love of planet Earth

Earth Dude #1, page 18 - Earth Dude enters Big-Hair Bab’s hidden cave

Earth Dude #1, page 19 - A scorned Big-Hair Babs throws a fit and throws a switch

Earth Dude #1, page 20 - Ah, yes, the old “cave floor opens to a trap door” routine

Earth Dude #1, page 21 - The Zomboid King celebrates the demise of Earth Dude™

Earth Dude #1, page 22 - Both Earth Dude and Alan are “fading fast"!”

Earth Dude #1, page 23 - Yuri Yoo seems some “signs”

Earth Dude #1, page 24 - Earth Dude finds a ray of hope

DUDE BE CONTINUED ON AMAZON KINDLE

Part 2: Earth Dude™ Comic Book #1 Script

Read Walt Jaschek’s original Earth Dude™ script in this free PDF.

Earth Dude Comic Book Script #1 By Walt Jaschek

1.22MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

DownloadPart 3: Earth Dude™ Comic Book Backstory

Earth Dude, the sky-boarding eco-warrior with the chill vibe and pointy hair, made his comic book debut in 1994 in Slightly Bent Comics, a two-issue, black-and-white humor anthology, self-published by me and distributed by the now-defunct Diamond to comic book stores nationwide. It sold in the hundreds.

These are the covers of those two issues, with logo and design by me, and art by incredible St. Louis comic artist buddies Don Secrease, Craig Skaggs and Tony Patti.

Those same artists and more — Rick Burchett! Paul Daly! Darren Goodheart! — did the interior art, too, showcasing our original characters. It was early incarnation of our intellectual property in crisp black-and-white, as was the printing motif of choice as 1990s indy comics exploded.

In addition to this prototype of Earth Dude, Slightly Bent Comics featured:

• Danger Dad™, the over-protective super parent

• Attorneys in Space™, bringing law to the final frontier

• Corp Rut™, anticipating “The Office” by decades

and

• Mel Cool: Mall Cop™, the original Mall Cop, pre-dating Paul Blart by decades.

But it was the Dude who headlined both issues, with a 30-page story told in two parts. He was called Dude-Guy in this version, only because I got typical cold feet from using my original name idea, Earth Dude. And speaking of overthinking, I wrote the script for the thing. Craig Skaggs was the penciller and inker, over layouts by Don Secrease. Grey tones by Bill Lux. Craig has gone on to become a famous painter in the Disney pantheon, Don is a comic book legend who’s drawn many features, and I have gone on to make videos about all of us. No, I’m kidding, I’m still writing, it’s till the 1990s to me, man.

So what happened to the Slightly Bent Universe? There were no digital versions of comics in 1994: no World Wide Web quite yet, and the creation files were In formats now more obscure than we were. What was in your print run was it. So low-run books like this had a natural fading into obscurity, or perhaps an accelerated fading into obscurity.

One day recently Don Secrease and I were having a comicy lunch; we’ve made progress lately in taking some of old material, coloring, rewriting and finally, finally digitizing our creator-owned characters, and over an omelet, one of said to each other:

“I wonder if Craig Skaggs still has those Earth Dude original pages.”

“I’ll ask him,” Don said.

Spoiler alert: Craig had the Dude pages. All of them. Thank you, Craig. This means we could scan the originals once again, this time preserving as 300 dpi Photoshop files, I could re-letter the book using my software jam, ComicLife, and Don could finally bring Craig’s wonderful art to life in color.

So we not just could. We are. The Slightly Bent Universe is bending… toward renewal!

Don has really honed coloring skills on multiple books and strips in recent years, and he went to town, coloring all 30 pages in just about as many days. Each time a page came in via email, I was like, “Gadzooks. So that’s what that was meant to look like! Easy, eyeballs, easy!”

Finally in color I could see our characters. Characters like…

Big-Hair Babs

The Zomboids

The Zomboid King

Doctor Drooping

Alan Q. Allen

Yuri Yoo

So consider this an advance plug, of course, but really, where I’m going with this is encouragement to fellow creators, especially those of a … Silver Age.

If you have old comic art that predates the digital age and is just sitting there, get off your assets and get them to a scanner bed. You will never regret it. Having the pages in digital format gives you so much potential: to turn into eBooks, at least, as we do – see our new comic book Herobots, for example.

You might think reclaiming and revising old characters is work, but it’s the opposite: it’s so much fun. It’s fun at a transcendental level, and that’s not just the Starbucks Medium Roast talking.

I feel if we can, you can, too, can take your original I.P. from semi-obscurity. To semi-less obscurity. That’s our goal, anyway.

Come along for the ride!

Part 4: Bonus Earth Dude Videos

Video A: Here’s a preview of our Earth Dude revamp in progress:

Video B: short of the steps in making an Earth Dude splash!

Video C: Walt “unboxing” Earth Dude comics

Part 5: Earth Dude comic #1 creator bios

Here are the Dudes who created The Dude, now appearing in “hero pose.”

Walt Jaschek, script and lettering

Walt has long dreamt of unleashing Earth Dude. Now he gets to dream in color. The St. Louis-based writer originally crafted the character’s launch for the mini-series Slightly Bent Comics in 1999, where it was brought to life by artist Craig and published in affordable black and white during comics’ great “indy boom.” Walt eventually returned to his career as copywriter of funny ad campaigns for CBS-TV, 20th Century Fox and other entertainment brands. In 2018, that Clio-winning body of work earned Walt induction into the St. Louis Media Foundation Hall of Fame. Walt, thinking “Hall of Fame” meant “time to retire,” eagerly returned to his first loves: books and comics. He’s since published The Denny O’Neil Tapes, a tribute to the late comics writer from St. Louis — and with E.D. cohorts Craig and Don the original comic book Herobots. The team then retrieved Craig’s original art for this issue’s tale, and this time, enhanced with Don’s kaleidoscopic colors, Walt’s dreams of the Dude turned chromatic. See “Walt” else is new at WriterWalt.com

Craig Skaggs: pencils and inks

Craig is an official fine artist for Lucasfilm Ltd. and The Walt Disney Co. Craig was born and grew up in St. Louis. His love of art developed at an early age, drawing from newspaper cartoons, comics, dinosaurs, etc. Craig began his art career while still in high school, illustrating children’s books. He became a full-time freelancer in 1993, doing commercial art, storyboards, etc., for a small ad agency. About a year after that he submitted samples and was hand-picked to illustrate Star Wars art for Brown Shoe Company’s lines of shoes. This began a long connection with Lucasfilm, through illustration, production design and fine art. His work soon branched out into book cover art, toy, display and product design, medical illustrations, children’s books, video and roll-playing games, convention art, and finally to Lucasfilm and Disney. Check out his work at https://www.facebook.com/craigskaggsart

Don Secrease, layouts and colors

Don Secrease, layouts and colors

Don has been around comic books and comic strips since he was eight years old; Third Grade being the jumping-on point with his childhood friend, Wayne. They created their own characters and stories through the years, expanding their interest in art during high school. Marriage, children, myriad jobs and some college art/drafting lead him and fellow friends, Paul Daly and Rick Burchett, into publishing a series of strip-oriented magazine and mini-comics. Don came to the attention of AC Comics’ Bill Black, and he started working with Bill on the AC’s comics line. don has worked on projects for such publishers as Caliber, Solson, AC, Atomic Pulp, Fantasy General, Creative Images, and ComicMood. For First Comics, Don inked background on E-Man, and for DC Comics, inked backgrounds on Blackhawk, JLA, Black Hood (all for artist Rick Burchett.) During his commercial art years, he also owned a comics shop in Kirkwood, Missouri. Check out his work (as well as other creators) on HighAdventureComics.com.