Chili & Chester

A Pipedreams spin-off...?

So, this newsletter of mine seems to be evolving into a process type thing or a ‘hey, look what I did before the socials!’ kind of thing. I hope that this works for people and I’ll always do whatever comes along, but if anyone has any comments on the subject, I’d love to hear them.

And speaking of 'Before The Socials, up next are some sketches for a strip that I was developing way back in the 90’s. Back then, my friend and fellow collaborator, Darin Palmer and I would try to develop comic book stories and cartoons. We did a strip back then called Pipedreams and it looked kind of like this:

Those were the introductory strips featuring three of the main characters, Chili, Chester and Joe. The strip was about our lives working in a mattress factory and I do believe that every single character was based on someone real, including Chili (Darin) and Chester (me). The name Chili came from the movie Get Shorty with John Travolta’s character name was Chili Palmer. Darin’s last name. Chester came from the song The Weight by The Band. You know, the one… “Hey, wait a minute, Chester…” I was often heard saying that line because I thought it to be funny for some reason. Hence, the name Chester. Joe was actually, Joe.

Anyways, as I was scanning all those Workplace Cartoon stuff, I came across these next images. I’m not sure if this was supposed to be a spin-off from the Pipedreams strip, or what, but they are definitely Chili and Chester. Or they could easily be just Darin and myself. We were into metal detecting at the time. We were cool like that. So, the premise was, the guys would die doing something stupid and go to Heaven, a place that neither of the two really believed in, but would be inhabited by famous people and cartoon characters, instead of God or angels.

The above drawing is really why I wanted to do this post. I had a hard time believing that I did something that came out so well…

That’s as far as I went with this and didn’t take any further notes, so I’m not sure how any of this was supposed to play out. Knowing me as I do, I was just winging it anyways. Darin and I have been talking about taking those old Pipedreams strips and elaborating the stories some for animation. Perhaps something like this would work for something like that.

CREATIVE NOTES:

READING: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt Empire Antarctica by Gavin Francis

Listening: Easter Lily EP by U2