Breakfast of the Gods!

We've lost our lease!

2006-12-18T10:44:00.000-08:00

Hey, gang, this is just a little note to fill you in on developments here at BOTG Central. In short, I'm closing up shop on Blogger as I've moved the entire dog and pony show to the wonderful Webcomics Nation website.

Why move? I'll tell ya. Because Webcomics Nation allows for larger graphics sizes, an accessible Table of Contents that allows readers to view the whole comic in proper sequence, and a nifty Cast section where I can write little bios of the players in my sugar-frosted epic. And the site offers RSS feeds and other means of seeding the Net with BOTG promotion. This has already resulted in BOTG getting a mention (and much traffic) from sites like BoingBoing.net.

I'm not going to shut this site down, but I won't be posting updates here. I hope you, the loyal few, will follow me on over to:

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/poyorick/botg/series.php

See ya there!

p.s.: Oh! And there's now also a BOTG MySpace page too! Be our friend! http://www.myspace.com/breakfastofthegods

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Of cameos and walk-ons....

2006-08-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

Hey gang,

No new page today (later in the week, I promise) but I thought some of you might appreciate a full listing of the character cameos in the big two-pager of last week, specifically the top right panel on Page 17. For that particular illo I wanted a great mass of characters swarming the wide-open spaces of Cerealia, characters from the earliest days of cereal spokescharacters and just plain obscure folk that nobody would recognize (except for maybe one remarkable guy - more on him at the bottom).

Well, here goes - all the characters in that very busy little panel in clockwise order from the left:

Klondike Pete (Crunchy Nuggets) sawing through the tree.

Elijah (Elijah’s Manna – 1904) the gray gent behind the tree.

Buffalo Bee (Wheat Honeys) in flight.

Baron VonRedberry (Baron VonRedberry) the red tri-plane.

Sir Grapefellow (Sir Grapefellow) the purple bi-plane.

Dandy, Handy and Candy (Sugar Crisp) can barely be seen behind Klondike Pete's hat.

Pajama Boy (Kix) the kid in the nightcap.

Hoppity Hooper (Cheerios) the frog.

Tony the Tiger (Frosted Flakes – 1950s) Golden Age Tony as he first appeared, with the big football shaped head.

Johnny Jet (General Mills Jets) the flying kid with the helmet.

Postman Lovable Truly (Alpha Bits) carrying his mailbag to the right of Tony.

Frosty O’s Bear (Frosty O’s) you can barely make out the tip of his white nose past Lovable Truly's blue hat.

Kaboom (Kaboom) the clown.

Cheeri O’Leary (Cheerioats) the red-headed, pigtailed girl.

Jose (Cocoa Krispies) the monkey in the straw hat (he's holding a map).

Linus the Lionhearted (Crispy Critters) the lion in the top hat standing right beside Jose and pointing off in the distance.

Apple Jacks Kids (Apple Jacks) the crayon-scribbled boy and girl running off panel right.

Marky Maypo (Maypo) the energetic kid in the big cowboy hat coming right at us.

Snap (Rice Krispies – 1937) you can just make out the chef's hat of this early version of Snap as he peeks over the top of the tree stump.

Wheat Germ Weightlifters (Instant Ralston) the two tiny yellow blob-looking guys carrying dumbbells to the left of the tree stump.

There.

Now, before you ask, no, I'd never heard of most of these guys before either. I owe a lot of my "research" props to the one man I mentioned above who puts my cereal knowledge to shame - a fella I only know as Topher.

For years Topher has run a site that is a one-stop repository of cereal character history, divided by company and brand. Seriously, it boggles and without it I never would've been able to get this far on BOTG. Check out his efforts at:

http://www.lavasurfer.com/cereal-guide.html

(And Topher is aware of my modest epic and has given it the thumbs up. Barring the infinitely unlikely acquiescence of the corporations whose licensed properties I'm borrowing, this is as close to a blessing as I'm gonna get.)

Oh! And there's a couple more cameos on those pages, but I'll wait for somebody else to spot 'em.

The Last Good Morning Pages 16 and 17

2006-08-20T16:14:00.000-07:00

Welcome back, dear readers! Again let me apologize for the extended delay. Not only did I move once again but I was also wrestling this latest installment into shape. Without going into all of the nitty gritty details I can tell you this: the double-page spread is no walk in the park on a lazy day with ice cream cone in hand. No sir.

But I hope you dig it because we're laying some groundwork here. It's a social studies lesson about the geopolitical origins of this land of Cerealia! New characters introduced! Many more with sneaky cameos (how many can you identify?)! And a boat that was really hard to draw!

(Tech note for the nitpickers: you will notice that the file size is greatly reduced as is the resolution. Sadly this was the only way I could fit the file onto Blogger, so I hope you'll forgive me.)

More to come on a (hopefully) regular basis!*

* But no more double-page spreads.

The Half-Way Point Hiatus (and other excuses)

2006-07-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

Hi loyal fans! Both of you!

So, I've officially reached the half-way point of my soggy saga of breakfast icons gone awry and, yeah, it feels good. Some kinks have been worked out and the work is flowin'. Which is the perfect time to bring the proceedings to a grinding halt. Whaaa-?

A quick explanation of the silence to come: I'm moving - again. Yeah, the dream that was is no more and I must pull up stakes and try to find new dwellings in a hurry. The deadline is near, the prospects few and the stress is at an all-time high. "Sure," I can hear you say, "sucks to be you, but what does this have to do with us and our demand for more BOTG?" Well, simply put, I got more pressing matters to attend to so I've got to put the brakes on this project for a couple of weeks at most.

But, when I return, it will be with an event that I humbly predict will break the internet into misshapen and impossible to reassemble eighths!* By this I could only be describing - my very first double-page spread! Can you feel it? The excitement in the air? Can you smell what the Rock is cookin'? What is that anyway? Some kind of stroganoff?

As I was saying, thanks again for your support and your patience - and I'll see you in a couple of weeks!

* Take THAT Brian Michael Bendis!

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2006-07-16T18:38:00.000-07:00

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2006-07-04T09:40:00.000-07:00

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2006-06-24T18:39:00.000-07:00

The Last Good Morning Page 11

2006-06-18T20:10:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody, I'm back on track and I'd like to thank you all for your patience. But special props go out to the selfless trio who helped me move a lifetime's worth of geeky detritus to my new digs. Page 11 is hereby dedicated to Kristen, Constantine and Tarik. Thanks, guys!

A Quick Newsflash

2006-06-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody.

First off, thanks to everyone who's emailed or commented here. I really appreciate the feedback and (so far) near unanimous compliments. It means a lot, really.

I'm determined to keep on trucking to the end of Book One (I'm a third of the way there) so that I'll have a full comic as a calling card/sample of what I can do. But there will be a slight delay on updates for the simple reason that I'm getting geared up to move in a week or so (to a lovely home up in the hills where I will be the token slacker leech off of friends' hospitality).

But keep checking in as there will be more pages to come in a couple weeks' time. In the meantime, treat yourself to a big bowl of the cereal of your choice!

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2006-05-11T22:47:00.000-07:00

Breakfast of the Gods Book One: The Last Good Morning

2006-05-11T22:44:00.000-07:00

The cover.

So, what is this, Mr. Jones?

2006-05-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

Glad you asked, kid!

What you're going to see here is a work in progress which has taken years to conceive and even longer to produce. And the best part? It's a work that I can never publish or see a dime from.

It's a comic book for grownups featuring some very familiar faces.

The impetus for this project came in 1988 when, as an art school freshman at Parsons School of Design in NYC, I and my buddies Greg Lovinski and Jason Mcdonald started a very loopy conversation very late at night. They were stoned - I, perhaps sadly, was not. "What if," one of us began, "what if the cereal cartoon characters got into a fight - who would be good and who would be bad?"

Like I said, it was very late.

But the idea grew more complex and over the course of weeks and months we would randomly renew the topic, chiming in with obscure spokescharacters and debating their motivations and moral leanings. It was fun and it was a great excuse for sarcastic rummage through our collective affection for pop culture icons who, we came to believe, must have lives outside of the limited glimpses allowed the rest of us on those long ago Saturday mornings.

I can't speak for Greg or Jason, but the idea of this brightly colored, vitamin-fortified Gotterdammerung never left me. Being the obsessive pop-culture alchemist I am, I kept expanding on the tale, fleshing out an actual narrative. This is the result.

Protected, I believe, by the specifics of parody law and the non-profit nature of this site, I'd like to share what I've done so far with the rest of you.

To start, here's a teaser illo I did for the comic sometime back in the early '90s featuring a couple of our main players:

"Breakfast of the Gods" is a three volume series that, at the rate I'm going, should see completion some time in 2021.

**** UPDATE ****

As it has recently come to my attention (see the reply to this post), one of my old art school chums - the above mentioned Greg Lovinski - would like it to be known that neither he nor Jason were zonked on "Da Crippla" when this late night talk occurred. So this leads me to only one conclusion; that while those fine gentlemen were clear-headed and straight, I must have been high as Tommy Chong in the space shuttle. I mean, just read this comic - you tell me.