Give a Kid a Pen and You'll Get Poked in the Eye.

Cartoons from a punk kid who shouldn't have been encouraged to create.

I was cleaning out my garage the other day. It’s a Herculean task to clean out all the boxes of junk that I saved for posterity.

Thankfully, though, I finally faced the hard truth that all hoarders should realize. Posterity (or a future archeologist) doesn’t place any value on old Halloween costumes, video props, VHS tapes, old stag 8MM films, various scraps of drawing paper, neuro-linguistics training cassettes, broken electronics, or the collection of random cables and chargers to connect said broken electronics.

Looking at all those boxes, I decided it was time for some serious Swedish death cleaning. “Let Go, Let God,” as they say, which ironically presents a whole other philosophical debate when spoken by an atheist seeking to toss out old rubbish.

While wading through the boxes, I discovered one small dust-covered box. It was a collection of comics created when I was 14-23 years old. I thought I lost all these 3 moves ago, but here they were, paper and ink reminders of a young artist’s early cogitations.

Sure, they’re horribly drawn, half-assed comics with barely coherent concepts, yet being the shameless fool that I am, I submit these for your amusement (or horror) to get a glimpse into the early foundations of an artist.

Looking back at these now, if I had a time machine, I probably would travel back to drop all this art nonsense and become a plumber. But alas, no sense in crying over spilled ink.

The Rotten Teenager Years

Here’s a collection of cartoons created when I was 14 to 18 years old. You can see that I studied wayyyyy too many Mad and National Lampoon magazines. Also, there’s a heavy dose of Socialist and Anarchist ideologies, which I guess came from my love of punk rock music.

These would have been much better if I had spent as much time studying spelling and grammar. For crying out loud! I was too lazy to pick up a dictionary to learn how to spell Beaurocracy…er…I mean, Bureaucracy? Agh, teenagers.

Speaking of anarchists, one of my first published cartoons (Andy Anarchy) appeared in the “Fifth Estate,” which was a U.S. anarchist-anti-capitalism paper, based in Detroit, Michigan. I think I submitted to it upon seeing its listing in an old Artist’s Market Guide compendium at my local library. (Oh, those crafty kids and their well-stocked libraries!) My second published cartoon (Smut Banning) appeared in my local hometown paper, The Star Gazette, long before they were taken over by the lousy Gannett group.

My parents laughed about that one. Although I vaguely recall that while attending church, my Dad had to disavow any knowledge of “some rotten cartoonist that shared the same last name.”

ER Flynn Comics - The Teenage Years

After reviewing this batch of adolescent applesauce, I’m sure you agree with my 12th-grade math teacher, Mrs. Fisher, who, upon seeing my art (or mostly my math homework), used to proclaim, “Eegads and little fishies!”

Go west, Young Man…Just Go, Will Ya?

Somehow, despite these poor attempts at political cartoons and commentary, my folks still encouraged me to continue my pursuit of becoming an artist.

My guess is they urged me to attend college as a ruse to get my “nogoodnik” ass out of their house. Unluckily for them, I stuck around for a couple of years, attending community college and playing in rock bands.

Eventually, I “shuffled off to Buffalo.” The University of Buffalo’s art program, to be more exact.

Here are some cartoons from that time.

You can see that my art abilities are progressing slightly. Although the progress was slowed, due to my penchant for beer drinking and various rock band forays.

Note the comic about playing in bands in Elmira, NY. The old man featured in the comic was the infamous Walsh Maholick, owner of the greasy restaurant and bar, Maholick’s, which had a stage that all the top Elmira bands fought over. Why, I have no idea, since the acoustics in that place were really awful.

There are also a couple of examples of the cartoons that I got published in the UB campus newspaper. That was fun while it lasted. I got dropped after one of my comics offended almost everyone on campus. I don’t have a copy of that cartoon, which is probably a good thing since it was a really poor attempt at satire. (Not that any of these included examples are award winners! Oy Gavolt!)

ER Flynn Cartoons from 19 to 23 years old

I hope these samples of ink-soaked silliness didn’t horrify you too much. I thought from a purely biographical approach some of you would find them humorous.

I’m promise I’ll be back with some truly well-crafted comic hilarity next week.

However, as I mentioned previously, I’m shameless and not afraid this week to suffer the slings and arrows for my misguided artful(less?) past. Feel free to string your bows and start aiming.