This is the short yet sweet story of how our hero was born.
It was a hot and humid afternoon circa May 1983. The scene: a crowded table of friends in a high school lunch room. Laughter and goofyness reigned.
Someone (I can't remember who) made a joke involving yours trully and a superhero. My response was a hastely spoken word dripping with sarcasm. It was, "Dudeman!" That fleeting moment grew into an inside joke that stayed with me all summer long. Towards the end of the summer, at the NY state fair, I had a characture done of me in a Superman's outfit flying over a city with the letters 'DM' on the chest. The picture got framed and, in college that fall semester at S.U.N.Y Oswego, it hung on my dorm room wall.
Well...by spring semester I had gotten involved with the school newspaper. Round about May 1984, just before the end of my freshman year, the paper needed filler material for the comics page. I stepped in to fill the gap (finals were over and I was just sittin' around waitin' for my ride home). I enlisted the help of my art major friend Larry to do the drawing according to my writing and rough sketches. Our efforts were approved and Dudeman went public.
We only had time to do two issues before the summer break. We returned that fall and jumped right in again. Dudeman was becoming a hit. (That tells you what kind of other cartoons were being drawn.) Larry went on to do his own strip while I took on the artists duties of Dudeman. (It's easy to figure out which issue I took over the drawing.) By late fall semester '84 the strip, and myself, had become one and the same. The popularity reached its peak that semester when more people knew me by 'Dudeman' than my real name.
Spring semester '85 arrived and with it came the real work of my major, which had to take presidence. Only one more issue of Dudeman was printed on Feb. 7th 1985. Dudeman quietly faded from the public eye, but the popularity stayed with me for quite some time. Dudeman was revived a few times (see below) with little success (due to time). Since then Dudeman has been reduced to being my username on a few obscure computer systems across the country.
Quickies:
* For 1987 (spring semester) I had transfered to San Jose State and while there revived Dudeman in a Farside type format for one semester. Again, too much school work to hit the deadlines. None of these issues were saved. Too bad, they were much better.
* For 1987 (fall semester SJSU) I became dorm president and once again revived Dudeman in the dorm newsletter. Only two issues were printed of the newsletter. No one had time to work on it. I wrote most of it in a weekend just to finish it.
* For 1988 I returned to NY and found Dudeman still in the memories of many people. (The graffiti was still there too.)
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