It’s impossible to create anything new today completely free of influence of past creations. Let’s face it, we grow up, almost from day one, with television. So, I will attempt to correlate some of the inspirations for Caveman Comics that are buried deep within my subconscious mind.
Take the main character, Ug Lug. Ug Lug is basically just a short bad-tempered caveman. Things tend to go wrong for Ug whenever he tries to fix things, or do things for that matter. He reminds me a little of Tim Allen from Home Improvement in that regard, but at least Tim the Toolman had the benefit of growing up with power tools, cars, etc. Ug didn’t even have the benefit of growing up with indoor plumbing. Poor Ug has to learn how to do everything in the modern world from scratch.
As far as his temper, I guess I draw a little bit from cartoon characters like Donald Duck, Daffy Duck, and Yosemite Sam. There’s just something hilarious to me about watching someone just lose their cool. It’s funny as long as I’m not actually in the room with a real person. There’s nothing funnier to me than hearing made up cartoon swear words.
Ug doesn’t really get nearly as mad as often as some of those characters, but he does have his moments. When it comes to smarts, Ug is no Bugs Bunny, or even a Elmer Fudd for that matter, but he does have his moments for the occasional bit of wisdom, especially when it counts the most.
Ug’s speech is basically what you’d imagine a caveman might talk like, some kind of mix of Frankenstein meets Tarzan before Jane taught him how to speak properly. It’s always, “Me do this or that” or it’s “Ug not happy” or “Ug tired”.
Ug is quite the romantic when it comes to the love of his life, Dr. Ann Brainsmart. He’ll do anything to protect her and Ann will do anything to protect him from himself. A caveman running around a modern day world is the literal definition of a loose cannon running around.
Oscar the Robot Dog was Ann’s co-pilot and family dog before she met Ug in the past. He’s a good dog to have around and Ug likes him well enough, but the dog also really knows how to push Ug’s buttons. Oscar and Ug basically play off each other comedically like any other great duo of the past like Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny. They are two friends that are completely different.
One thing to keep in mind about Oscar the Dog is that he is only half robotic. He’s still mostly flesh and blood even though he can pull a helicopter blade out of his head. Whatever happened to him hasn’t been revealed yet as of book three, but keep reading the series, we may get there yet.
Basically, as a child from the 70’s, I grew up with robots, bionics, and cyborgs. On Saturday mornings, there was Dynomutt the Dog Wonder, who was one of Scooby Doo’s pals. On prime time there was Max the bionic dog, from the Bionic Woman. Of course, there were countless other less popular examples from kid’s television of the day, but those are the ones that pop into my mind. I was a huge Six Million Dollar Man fan back in the day, but alas, Lee Majors had sworn he’d never work with dogs on the show. For you younger kids out there the Six Million Dollar Man was the most popular superhero show of the 70’s that spun off the Bionic Woman which led to the Bionic Dog. He was an astronaut that crashed and went from barely alive to half man half robot. I believe it was one arm and two legs, plus one eyeball, but the gist of it was he was faster, stronger, better than he was before, kind of like Oscar. Yes, I am aware that the Bionic Man’s boss was named Oscar. No relation to the dog I assure you. Well, maybe in the back of my mind. Everything is connected somehow.
One thing you may take note of, besides the fact that cartoons seem to never age, we can assume that Oscar the Dog doesn’t age like normal dogs. After all, in the first book, he’s serving Ann as her co-pilot when they land in the prehistoric past, and at least 9 or so years later when they finally make it back to the present he hasn’t aged a bit. Typically, we know that 8 years is a lifetime in dog years, but not so for Oscar. Could it be that Oscar will never age thanks to his mechanical parts?
And then there’s Dug Lug son of Ug and Ann, just why is he so big. He’s only 8 years old and he’s twice the size of Ug. Is it because cavemen were so much shorter back in the day and Ann gave him modern height genes, but even so he’s as tall as she is. From a creative standpoint, I just thought it would be funnier if Dug, the son, was twice as tall as his father. It kind of reminds me of the old Baby Huey cartoons where the baby duck is three times the size of the Papa bird. Hopefully, at some point, we’ll explore in future books Dug’s time at school in the present with all of his school pals. That should be interesting. I can tell you this much, more than likely one of his classmates will be Smelly Sam from his short novel I’ve recently released. By the way, it’s not a graphic novel like Caveman Comics, but there’s some fun art in it as well. Give it a look.
That’s it for now, but maybe next time we’ll discuss the upcoming book featuring Claw the Kung Fu Cat and how he’s appeared in the book series thus far.