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The Fuzzy Wet Nosed Hounds of Justice!

Published Sun, 20 Aug 2017 18:00:46 -0500

John Chihak writes,

Because of the inspiration I get from comic books, professional wrestling and my dogs, the Bubba Patrol is probably the most personal project I have ever worked on (including my flagship title Youth in Asia). At its core, the Bubba Patrol is a comic book about my dogs as superheroes. The concept itself started in 2007 when my then girlfriend woke me up early on a Saturday, jumping up and down on the bed saying, "we're getting a dog." My thought on this was, I already had a dog named Cypress, who lived at my mother's house. I had her since 1992, which had been my freshman year in high school. Cypress helped get me through, not just high school, but depression, a cancer diagnosis and then college. The dog we were getting was a small dog. And, at that time, I made fun of people who had small dogs saying things like "they're not real dogs." But the instant I saw the 8 week old teacup Chihuahua/Rat Terrier mix I fell in love with him. He was dubbed Sabu, after my favorite wrestler at the time. And he fully lived up to the moniker, running around, crashing into things, even flying off the bed, hitting the floor and then taking off on some figure eights through the apartment. So what does a tiny dog have to do with a comic book? Everything.

Sabu, who was preceded by Cypress, "the first Bubba," was soon joined by Grrry (named after the character in Youth in Asia) and Foley (named after professional wrestler, best selling author and standup comedian Mick Foley). They became affectionately named the Bubba Patrol and it was shortly thereafter that I decided they needed to be a super hero team. I just needed to decide on code names and powers. But the concept never took off with any real priority for me, until 2017. A year ago I began to make some serious life changing decisions, like getting sober, quitting smoking and ironically enough adopting the straight edge lifestyle (which intrigued me because of CM Punk). In the first quarter of this year, I finally finished the script for issue one, printed it and put it on my art desk as to not be able to postpone it any longer. And it sat there, until May 26, when four years to the day that "the first called Bubba," Sabu passed away, Grrry, also became one with the Force. That night I rearranged my house, as was the plan and used my newfound positive mental attitude, which is synonymous with the straight edge ideal, drew a sketch card of Grrry as the Space Dog.

In the two months following Grrry entering "the Ether," I finished the penciled interior artwork for the inaugural issue of the Bubba Patrol. Like with my comic books Youth in Asia and Fuzzyface (which was not successfully funded, but got a nice shout out right here on Bleeding Cool), I included a lot of homages and Easter eggs for fans of comic books, pop culture and wrestling. The campaign launched on Wednesday August 9th, for a 45 day run on Kickstarter. Within the first 24 for a 45 day run on Kickstarter. Within the first 24 hours the Bubba Patrol reached the minimum funding to have the comic ready for Tucson Comic-Con, November 3-5. So I decided to add stretch goals. At $700 funding, the Bubba Patrol would be printed on newsprint. We reached that days later. So a second stretch goal was needed. And at $1,000 the Bubba Patrol will have spot coloring added, in a second homage to Frank Miller's Sin City.

My goal to you, is I will open a reward tier for the Bubba Patrol lasting until Monday, that gives you the option to get a wrestling themed variant cover. To pay tribute to the WWE stable, The Shield, for the remainder of the weekend you can pledge to get a copy of "The fuzzy, wet nosed, hounds of justice" variant. Just comment after pledging that you saw this story on Bleeding Cool.