Planarian Man vs. The Norm
Then I drew him a picture of FERPOs shooting up Norm. He didn't like that very much.
Nah, just kidding, I didn't do that. Now that I think of it, though, it would have been kind of funny.
The irony here is that the book he gave me was a collection of his Star Wars story arc, which was the very storyline that turned me off as a Norm reader. I went back and re-read the thing in its entirety, though, and was brought back to the flock.
The Norm and Michael Jantze's world can be found at www.TheNorm.com.
The Planarian Man Pilot Series
I ended up ditching this story once "The Planarian Patrol" made its debut in these papers, opting instead for the now-legendary "Death of Planarian Man" storyline. Therefore, these four strips have never seen the light of day until now.
The Platte City Adventure
The comics were never completed, and only a small percentage of them were ever inked. As you can see here, even the panels that were inked never had the pencil erased. Don't worry that these un-connected panels don't make any sense together; I don't even remember how this story was supposed to play out. So enjoy them for the absurd little context-free pieces of whatever they are.
The Planarian Man Valentines
The Planarian Man Action Figure
Scenes from 'Planarian Man: The Movie'
Scenes from 'Planarian Man's Tour of Auburn'
Planarian Man T-Shirts
Planarian Man Air Freshener extinct
I met "The Norm" creator Michael Jantze at Comicon 2002 here in San Diego at his booth, where I explained to him how Planarian Man ran in the Daily Nebraskan because of the apparent apathy to The Norm's presence in the DN comics section. Little did we know just how many Norm fans there were until we replaced the strip with this absurd tale about robots and worm-men. I therefore said it was only fitting that I give him a copy of the Planarian Man Comicon 2002 Ashcan #1 (Limited Edition). He was amused by this story and in turn gave me a collection of his works which included this autograph and drawing of his character Norm crushing one of the FERPOs (from the book I gave him).
Planarian Man and the Planarian Patrol's first major exposure came through their two year print run in the Auburn Press-Tribune and the Nemaha County Herald. This all came about when I pitched the idea to Mark Cramer, then the owner and publisher of the Auburn Newspapers Co. I drew up this four-strip intro to a storyline to give an idea as to how the story would flow, the characters involved, and the style of humor. "Humor" is used loosely, as you will see. I think I had been watching too much "Airplane" at this time, and the groaners were alive and well.
While "The Power of Uranus" was about to enter its climax period, I began working on a "flashback" series of sorts that would run in the aftermath of "Uranus." This detailed the Planarian Patrol's adventures in Platte City, Missouri. Based loosely on an adventure my friends Nate and Brian and I endured there, the story revolved around the anti-outsider atmosphere in the city and the Patrol's friendship with The Talking House. Numerous inside jokes from our real adventure made their way into the story, but it soon became apparent that our own experiences were so bizarre, translating them to a fantasy world didn't do them justice.
Created in 1996 during the second series of The Planarian Patrol. Print them out and give them to your friends. But give props were props is due.
This was created sometime in the 90s. Its actual birthdate is unknown. He is shown here patrolling my cornfield, serving as plantbox scarecrow.
The movie was made during the summer of 1994. It was made on some cheap freeware animation program for Windows 3.1. I don't remember the name of the program but I remember the filename was aawin.exe and each frame had to be drawn in Windows Paintbrush and sounds were programmed to coincide with specific image files. The problem I encountered was that, depending upon the available resources of the computer and how long it'd been turned on, the pictures would play a bit faster or slower. This wreaked havoc on any attempts to synchronize the sounds with the pictures. Sometimes it resulted in some happy accidents, though.
This short film was shot in 1999. The people of Auburn were quite pleased to see Planarian Man return home.
There have been four different shirt designs made between the years of 1994 and 1996.
The Planarian Man air freshener was lost when he blew out the window of my dad's Ranger, which I drove at the time. All that remains is his head dangling by elastic string from the rear-view mirror. Actually I think my mom might've thrown that away by now.