25 years ago next week, during my last semester as a senior in high school, I created a comic strip for my friends. Sgt. Suarez and his Howling Commandos was poorly drawn, crudely lettered, and barely plotted, with a title that was a huge copyright violation all by itself. It was a mix of action and comedy designed to make fun of my classmates while kind of commenting on what was going on in the world at the time. Then final product wasn’t anything great, but the period of April-June 1986 is one of those crazy, ultra-creative periods of my life, and I’m happy with what I produced back then, eye-straining artwork and all.

The reason I’m thinking about this strip now, and writing about it here in this blog, is because of the massive case of deja vu I had when I realized this was its 25th anniversary. As I mentioned, the strip included current events in between the bad jokes at my friends’ expense. And two 1986 events that got major play in the strip were the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl and the bombings of Libya. And this week, as I contemplate a 25-year-old comic strip, what’s dominating the news? A nuclear disaster in Japan and the bombing of Libya. The more things change, huh?

Near as I can recall, in the comic strip an invasion of Libya accidentally led to a war with Canada, and somewhere in the middle of that the title character gains some sort of super power after being involved in a nuclear accident. Hey, I said it was barely plotted, and it’s probably been at least a decade since I read the damn thing. But nuclear disaster and Libya were definitely in there.

Later this week I’m gonna have to dig out the old strips and read them so I can see how all of this is gonna work out. I could scan some of them in and post them, but they’re so bad looking I’m not sure I should. And considering some of the stuff I’ve been willing to share with the world, that’s gotta tell you how bad these really must be. And yet they unknowingly offered a peek at the future, so that should count for something.

If only I could match that 1986 level of creativity and work in 2011. Then I’d have something.

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