When my friend, Ned Ehrbar found employment at the daily Metro in NYC, he needed a new comic strip, and naturally asked the greatest cartoonist he knew. I said yes, of course and the subtle genius that is TOBY, ROBOT SATAN was born.
And now… what really happened…
I was broke. More broke than I am now and I knew my friend Ned was working at the daily NYC paper, Metro. I emailed, IMed and called begging him for a job. After a relentless month of prodding, Ned agreed to give me a comic strip gig. Surprised and caught off guard by his sudden caving, I realized I had no idea what the Metro strip would be. I quickly wrote down words that popped into my head: robot, evil, round, vikings and Satan…
Enter TOBY, ROBOT SATAN
In the beginning, TOBY was near impossible to write. It’s a departure from what I usually write and back when it began, I had no idea what I was doing – I say that like I have a clue now. ANYWAY, it was hard and I had a particularly difficult time with TOBY’s origin story. I originally wrote a series of strips where he falls off a “science” truck in Times Square, activates himself and immediately steals a kid’s toy viking helmet. I wrote in the kid as his snarky sidekick for a while, but it just didn’t feel right.
How TOBY gets his horns: the final cut.
Enter, Morris Gumboot.
Morris Gumboot’s name is something I’ve kicked around in comics for a while. The phrase comes from what I think is lyrics to The Beatles’ song, Come Together. It’s not what John Lennon says, but it sure sounds like it. As far as character goes, Morris is the ultimate disappointment. He is his own worst enemy, tripping up his opportunities without the help of anyone else. Morris is kind to fault, giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, eve after they set things on fire. Taking in TOBY is his biggest blunder to date. Together, he and TOBY are the modern day Odd Couple… Only with Satan and occasionally plutonium.
Because of budget cuts and this 2nd Great Depression we’re in, TOBY no longer graces the pages of Metro, but his mechanical malevolence still roams free over at GoComics.com.
All hail, TOBY!
If this story makes you happy and you’d like to see more of TOBY for the years to come, you can show your support through a small donation through this week’s BIG TURKEY of a FUND DRIVE. It’s once a year, thank God.
Thank you all for your support so far!
-Corey “FRS” Pandolph
