Sock

Let's Make Sandwiches

This was another bad one that we really fucked the dog on. It's a sock (which isn't clear) in a dryer (also unclear) dancing to "You Spin Me." Because it's in a dryer, which spins. It had arisen from the desire to make a joke about where socks lost in the dryer go, but it ended up not even being about that at all.

Borat

Let's Make Sandwiches

November 2006

This was just a retelling of a conversation we had. I was the guy in the hoodie and Frankie was the guy smoking, except that Frankie didn't smoke, and it wasn't about Borat, I didn't own a hoodie, and I don't think the last panel actually happened.

Remember Borat? How 2006 of me.

Office

Let's Make Sandwiches

November 2006

This comic arose from our propensity to animate inanimate objects, the premise of The Brave Little Toaster, and also the American version of The Office was taking off at this point.

Big

Let's Make Sandwiches

November 2006

This was a joke about a pretty stupid Mr. Big ad campaign pretending that the chocolate bar was unbearably huge and heavy (making this, I guess, slightly more topical than usual. I was disappointed in the art because I wanted to have him with his face turned slightly towards the foreground, but couldn't do that without making the head look like it had detached.

Joke

Let's Make Sandwiches

October 2006

The idea of a joke with a missing punchline was one of the earliest I had, and the only thing that kept it from coming out before it did was that I couldn't think of a good enough setup. I had even drawn all the panels before I knew what it would be. It was my then-roommate Jordan who got me started with "How about there's two guys, and one of them has like a funny hat or something."

Bear

Let's Make Sandwiches

October 2006

This one didn't quite reaches the jagged peaks of hilarity we had earlier achieved. When originally conceived, it was supposed to be a lobster, so the steam room thing would've made more sense. Unfortunately, lobsters are very hard to draw, and the whole reason we went with a one-panel comic was because we were both too busy to come up with anything good. Y'know what's really easy to draw? Polar bears. Yes, it's a polar bear. Note the white.

Vacation

Let's Make Sandwiches

October 2006

This installment turned out to be a bit controversial. After two weeks in a row of comics involving explosions, we decided to give explosions a rest, but every idea we had ended with an explosion. So we ended up with this. What we were going for was to personify inanimate objects and equate their relationship to one of predator and prey. Apparently the best we could come up with was a pencil hunted by a pencil sharpener. Unfortunately, setting it in Africa and having one character forcefully penetrate another from behind led to it being misinterpreted as a rape, and the whole comic further misinterpreted as being about the rampant AIDS crisis in Africa.

Sel

Let's Make Sandwiches

October 2006

Frankie was on the phone to Sara while she was cooking, and the cap came off her salt shaker, to which she exclaimed "Ah! My salt exploded!" I particularly enjoyed the expressive smiley face on the guy's shirt, and I recall it being my idea to make him speaking in French, because watching a French guy get hurt is funnier.

Kick

Let's Make Sandwiches

October 2006

As our success began to runaway with us, the usefulness of Let's Make Sandwiches on a larger scale was quickly noticed by several international espionage agencies. And while I'm contractually and legally bound not to reveal which agencies they were, I will say that they were Interpol, the CIA, and the Shin-Bet. We began incorporating codified imagery for use by agents in the field. Unfortunately, due to the spastic content of the strips and the poor quality of the art, our contracts dissolved when several agents misinterpreted our strips and were consequently executed. In retaliation, they cut the tips off Frankie's fingers, and put out a contract for my head. Last I heard, it was up to $150 million in uncut diamonds.

This was the first of many many Let's Make Sandwiches to feature explosions. I enjoyed this one in particular because I got to draw both a poof cloud and a person exploding. I was reading a lot of Jhonen Vasquez at the time, and may well have totally copied that explosion from one of his comics. It was my idea to have a guy get kicked and then explode, and it was Frankie's idea to have that guy relating a flashback in which he explodes and thus disappears in a puff of logic.

Snakes

Let's Make Sandwiches

September 2006

This was, and would remain, one of my favourite installments of Let's Make Sandwiches. I don't really remember putting it together but it more than our first one set the tone for what we were going for: complex characters with deep emotional resonance. 

Chicago

Let's Make Sandwiches

September 2006

It's the fall of 2006. York's student-run newspaper, the Excalibur, really really sucks, and among its worst offenders are the collection of not very funny comics at the back. The saving grace of Excalibur's comics, the hilarious Chudley Pie, hasn't been around for I think almost a year, and with few exceptions, every week is a disgrace.

Enter acclaimed demoniac Frankie Garofalo and I. We decide that the crudely drawn two-panel comic Frankie drew and taped to his wall is better than this shit. I re-draw it, submit it, it's published, and Frankie and I are now celebrated comic auteurs.

Let's Make Sandwiches was met with widespread critical praise and catapulted us both to the pinnacle of student newspaper stardom. It all fell apart quickly, I with my prostitutes and Frankie with his sandbags full of cocaine, but we shone brightly before we fizzled out.

Frankie had originally drawn a dinosaur-like monster but I'd been watching a lot of Samurai Jack and so re-imagined it as some kind of Genndy Tartakovsky octopus monster.