I’m a dad. And I love it. When I had my first and only child, I changed my whole career to cater to those who felt the same, just so I could end my horrible ad biz hours. I figured, why spend all my family time building someone else’s fortune when I could be trying to build my own? More about that somewhere else. The point here is, there’s a funny thing I hadn’t really considered. Babies, they grow up. The little guy we dragged to the big gift shows (like NY Now, Atlanta Gift Show, ABC Show in Vegas, and more) eventually became a teen. And, while still game, he was NOT super stoked to be in a trade show booth for weeks. I have no qualms about declaring myself the King of Distraction for kids. I can make a game out of anything, any time. Ask anyone who knows me. So it was a slow day at NY Now, and Kelly was off doing store visits when I decided to gamify our boredom. In my notebook, I outlined a page of cartoon panels. Then I drew in the first panel. No words, just a character talking. Then I passed it over to my extra-bored 14-year old son and said, “Write what he’s saying.” In the second panel, I drew another character and I let him name them. That was the beginning of Wilbur & Milimur. So there you go for your first question, “WTF with names like Wilbur and Milimur!?” To this day, I don’t know where he got those names.
Look, these get inappropriate real fast. But keep in mind who starts it. I draw the first panel, my then 14-year old boy writes it’s copy. Then I draw the next panel for him to fill the words into. Two dudes messing around trying to throw each other off balance and CRYING LAUGHING for hours.
We kept at it. Back and forth, back and forth. I’d draw a panel, he’d write it. When we got to the end of a page, we agreed the whole story had to resolve. We finished the first one and then it got really interesting. And also, kind of inappropriate. Since he had the hang of it, I started drawing curve-balls to see how he’d write himself out of it. He, of course, started doing the same thing right back, writing really weird stuff to throw me off. And then it got even weirder. We were in absolute hysterics. It was so hilarious we forgot we were in the Javits Center, in the middle of a big trade show, in Manhattan. As we drew the fourth panel, both of us in tears from laughter, we were 100% shocked to look up and see a buyer in our booth, standing there, literally, open-mouthed. Apparently she’d been there for a bit. Old, white, cranky. It turned out she was the buyer for the NY Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and she was decidedly put off by our indifference to her status. She was super shitty to us both (yes, both me and a 14-year old), and she left abruptly without order anything. I often think back on that lost opportunity. And I always come to the same conclusion – that I didn’t miss an opportunity. When you own your own business and you put as much into it as we all do/did, sometimes there are more important things to gain from a trade show than a momentary sale. I had a much more valuable experience with my boy that day than any buyer could lavish on my business, any day. Priorities and perspective, friends. Priorities and perspective.
A little before and after for ‘ya. I kept the original drawings and, when I got home from that trade show, cleaned them up in Photoshop. The boy asked me to re-type his hand writing, but I kept it in places (like the sign on Baxter’s Happy Place and below when Wilbur attacks). This one is still on of my favorites and we still use the final punchline together.
Note: Wilbur and Milimur both die frequently in these. And I hate to be that guy, but remember it’s a 14-year old who wrote all these. At this writing he’s 19, a college student at a respected institution, and not in jail or an asylum. The square gag was a joke we shared about playing Grand Theft Auto on Playstation. I think you can figure it out.
I grouped the most depressing one with the most inappropriate one so you could be twice as appalled at our bored juvenility.
The fun was in the fact that neither of us knew where each story would go. These two ended with my favorite copy and art twists.
The one on the left doesn’t have much copy because it was near the end of the day and the boy was getting bored with the game. We did try and keep the comic going when we got home from that trade show, but it didn’t have the magic of our initial bored spontaneity. We finished a three-part series of Wilbur and Milimur entering something in their county fair. And, for some reason, we brought them to ancient Rome in a time machine. I think the boy was studying Roman history or something and it was my last chance to try and keep him engaged. Hahaha.
Yes. I made Moo cards with links to the complete Wilbur & Milimur collection on Tumblr.
DAVE SOPP – Creative
Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com
