ZLM_Weirdos

Don't worry, he Purelled afterward.

Zero Like Me #149:
Weirdos

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-First Comic-
Easter Eggs: "Yale" and names in the grass. A technically-yellow Green Monkeys shirt (customized with a frown, natch). Tetris tiles. Today's setting is a secret...

Fun Facts: This comic was inspired by a gift from a then-future Bonesman, a book of Garry Trudeau's Bull Tales. The Trudeau, a Keywee, did a couple comics set at a Skull and Bones swimming pool, starring a "Bones buddy" named "Don Fish," whom I assume was based on a Mexico City Olympics gold-winning Yalie.

Baa: I love reading The Trudeau's early stuff because you get touches of long-gone diction and quaint turns of phrase (which you might've noticed often still comes up when the modern Mike Doonesbury speaks, kid). The Trudeau's writing circa 1969 can in fact be a bit rough to modern sensibilities, and in this particular series of his on Skull and Bones, George, the unseen Bones butler, begins his single dialogue bubble with "Yassir," which is a little weird...

I don't take George's lines as a racist depiction, I just take it as the writing of the time (but then again, I'm assuming the never-seen George is a black butler type, so maybe I'm the racist. In fact, I probably am, let's be honest). Admittedly, it's much harder to write off the episode where the punchline is Mike Doonesbury's desire to take advantage of a woman (to put it mildly) out of spite for her declining his invitation to dance and for her subsequent cackling at his being a "gross, skinny little frosh." But that's another story.

I highly recommend looking up Bull Tales via Beinecke, Bass, 202 York, or hardcore googling. And no Trudeau fan or Yale Football fan (do those still exist?) should go without seeing the documentary about the 29-29 Yale-Harvard Game. The Trudeau isn't in it, but he gets his own segment because he was undeniably a part of the Yale football scene. Interesting to learn how his--for lack of a better term--subjects viewed his portrayals of them. Nowadays the YDN generally doesn't let you use real peoples' names and stuff, and this is a policy I somewhat agree with and hold myself to on this site and in my comics (especially in a college context), but I think I'm going to relax my personal policy just a little bit...

Reuxben