Business, to us at least, implys an exchage of money. As we have never, ever, ever exchanged money with each other, we don't even know the meaning of the word "started." But if by some chance, you wanted to know how we started Dr. Lobster...
The story of Dr. Lobster doesn't start where you think it might. It goes much further back than that, it all goes back to when Jeff and I first met.
As you may know, Jeff and I met in juvenile prison. Neither of us were incarcerated, we both just happened to enjoy going there and taunting the children who were. It was Thursday, so that meant it was "Burning Toys" day. I had forgotten my matches and Jeff didn't have any toys to burn. Needless to say, a team effort ensued and our "friendship" began.
I didn't see Jeff again for two years, until college orientation. Jeff and I both joined the "O-Team" (orientation team) and were paired together. While the other group leaders showed the frosh all about the school, we charged them money for elevator passes and river boat rides. We later lost our jobs as "O-Team" group leaders.
From there, Jeff and I enrolled in some classes together. This wasn't so much an effort to take a class with a "friend," but an effort to ruin the other person's college career. Unfortunately for both of us, we were quite good at this, and although this game was entertaining, it also proved to be quite expensive and as we wanted to actually do something with our lives, we both switched from computer science degrees.
Jeff went into political science, and I went into history. Then Jeff went into communications, and I stayed in history. Then Jeff went back to political science, and I changed to forensic science. None of this has anything to do with the comic, as we were already doing it at this point, but I just thought you would like to know.
Anyway, we changed majors, yet we still hung out together (re: got food). It was one of these outings that we found Subway and Heather. Ahh, subway. Let me paint the scene for you: There we are, fighting space aliens, or something, when we get the urge for some food. Well, we head off to the campus Subway, and there Jeff sees some girl he met once through a friend of a friend's uncle. Well, we can't ditch her, so she joins us for grub (not the bug, it's slang for food). It wasn't very far into the conversation that we convince this girl, Heather, that she was actually a man named Don. It took little imagination (either because that's what we had or what we're offering you) to pervert a simple nickname into a story of a spanish mafia boss / conquistador. So we would hang out with Heather and get food at Subway.
This went on for a while, and during this time, a friend of mine, Ian, sent me a link to an online comic. I quite enjoyed it. I thought, "I can do that!" and mentioned it to another friend of mine. We talked at length about it, but never did anything.
While I was reading online comics, Jeff and Heather got jobs at a radio station. It was Jeff's second day, and Heather had never shown, when he called me and told me to come down there and get a job. I did, and we each had a show, later I was assigned a three hour block and, because my heart is full of love and good things, I choose to share that time with Jeff. When we were asked to provide a song list and premise for our show, we gave one basically containing the words "funny, electric, zoom!" and were promptly told we could do a show about indie rock bands, or some such related garbage, at 3 am on Mondays.
And it was 3 am, Monday morning, that the "Don Hasket Variety Hour" was born. Many of the things in the comic came from our show. Robot Fonze was one of the first characters on our show, followed by "Interviews with Satan." Without a doubt, our most famous character is Sincho. Everyone loves him, and I cannot tell you exactly why. Even Tycho Brahe (he does another online comic, you've probably never heard of it) loves Sincho. Well, here's the dirt behind that genetic mishap. While we were working at the radio station, there was a janitor, and he would often comment on our show, telling us that "a bucket of puke could do a better job" or that we "smelled like puke." He was a hateful man, and although he thought that he was funny, nobody else did. Also, he used to be Gallagher. You may not know this, but the John Nero in the fan comics section is actually the same John Nero from the London Whores band (one of the only things Jeff and I agree on is that John Nero is one of the greatest musicians ever). We met him through an interview with his "backup guitarist" Kitten Phart (his real name, unfortunately). John couldn't make the interview, but we did get a call and an invite to a concert. Kitten Phart was the inspiration behind a character you never saw and probably never will see.
Anyway, the fact that we did things like that, combined with the fact that we usually neglected to play any indie rock or anything else that they assigned us, tossed in with the fact that we just stopped showing up one day, got us fired. Technically, I got "terminated" and Jeff "called in dead." We're going to apply again once the station manager is gone, either that, or just show up and claim that we were sick.
It was about this time that I asked Jeff about an online comic. He said no. I offered to pay for it. He said no. I bought him dinner and said we would split the bill. He said yes, not knowing that I was referring to the server bill. It was then that we began the long and detailed process of "coming up with ideas."
The first idea we had was "Just Dr. Lobster and Steve." Very close to what you've got now, only with a few exceptions. You've never seen this before, it's the original character sketches. After that, we changed the name again, trying things like "The Adventures of Lenny: IN SPACE" and "Gandhi's Posse," finally changing the title to "Dr. Lobster and Steve." Jeff then began the drawing the first comic, and, as you can see, we didn't even get past the second panel. That was the last we spoke of DrL for about three months.
After some time passed, the idea resurfaced. I got Jeff to sit down and draw again, and then we came up with the greatest idea since sleeping. We just use the same images over and over again! That's right, I bet we had you fooled. It takes a little more work when he first does it, but after that it's really easy.
So now we had everything we needed except for comics, a site, and readers (this was before they were readerds). We went to the beach, and on the way there (and back, and to Wal-Mart) we wrote the first twenty four comics. We didn't have anyplace to put them, so we stuck them on Jeff's web space. You can still see it here. After a few weeks, we registered the domain, paid for the space, and set it up. You already know the hell we went (go) through with servers, so I'll just skip that after a hardy "Fuck You" to TopHosting.com.
Well, we had the site, the about twenty readers, and we wrote the comics. It was very exciting. Anyway, after we had been doing this for a while, with no real "outside results" (readers who were not family), I wrote a note to a few other comics. I just asked them what they thought and what they could suggest we do to change anything. The response was very well received. You may know how we were linked abound for a while, and how our readers skyrocketed.
Long ago, one of our fans promised us a theme song. He sent us lyrics, but we've yet to receive the actual song. I've noticed that other web sites are looking for theme songs now, and I think it's important to know that we were there first, even if we're yet to be there.
We gave out my phone number. It's still up, and it's still my number. You can still call it and I'll answer. The first call we ever received is now used as the icon sound on Big Panda, and you can listen to it here. Also, as I write this, I think you should call Jeff, too. His number is 407-277-8996. Call him in the early morning, I'm sure he'll be up.
We were faced with people actually reading what we did, so we did a movie. We filmed it at Jeff's house. We made the labcoats and ad-libbed most of the dialogue on the spot. The original version of the movie was full of curse words and, in the original concept, they were to be bleeped out. In the interest of time, we just cut them.
The titles of the comics are usually much funnier than the actual comics themselves. I had planned, along with Jeff, to go through the comics and explain each one, in detail. However, Jeff has explained to me that this would be a lot of work, and might cause you to not find something funny you at one time did, find funny that is. Also, we're very lazy, I mean, Christ, we use the same images over and over.
So now you know. And as a special treat, Jeff threw together a page of never before seen preliminary scetches that we abandoned, and never looked at or used again....
