How Mascot Comics Came to Life

By Matthew Solberg, Founder and Publisher, Mascot Comics.

Ten page comic book stories used to be a standard back in the 1940s through the 1960s.  Comic books would feature a collection of two or three stories, ranging in length from ten pages to fourteen pages featuring different characters.  Amazing Fantasy, Tales of Suspense, Journey into Mystery, Tales from the Crypt, Dell Comics Four Color Comics, and Walt Disney Comics and Stories followed this trend, among others.  The Amazing Spider-Man made his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), the version of Thor that we know from the movies made his first appearance in Journey into Mystery #83 (1962), and Disney's Uncle Scrooge made his first appearance in Dell Comics Four Color Comics #178 (1947).

I first became aware of this as a comic book reader when I started to read the works of Carl Barks, who wrote and drew Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic book stories from the mid 1940s till he retired in the mid 1960s.  Carl Barks created the character of Uncle Scrooge.

Almost every Sunday after church, my parents would stop at Tom Thumb, the local gas station and convenience store on our way home.  They would gas up the station wagon, drop off empty glass Coca Cola bottles for the bottle refund money, and restock the supply of soda for my dad.  My parents would let me get a comic book from the comic book spinner rack located at the back of the store.  I now wonder if they purchased anything for my sister during those trips?

I started my comic book reading hobby with G.I. Joe and Transformers, got into Captain America (thanks to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee), and was off to the races with superheroes.  I was a Marvel kid.

One particular Sunday while at Tom Thumb, I did not see any superhero comic book that I wanted or did not already have.  There was an Uncle Scrooge cover that caught my eye, though:

There's a big machine swinging an axe from left to right!  Was such a thing possible?!

It's called the Paul Bunyan machine, and Paul Bunyan is part of Minnesota folk lore!!

Uncle Scrooge is hiding money in trees!!!

And Donald is clearly concerned about the machine and the destruction of the trees!!!

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!  I MUST READ THIS AND FIND OUT!

What I came to learn  is that the inside story was called "The Paul Bunyan Machine", written and drawn by Carl Barks and published in 1960, and the cover was drawn by Don Rosa, who in the late 1980s and early 1990s was (and still is) considered the heir apparent to Carl Barks, with regards to his own Duck stories.  This particular comic book was a reprint of that story, published in 1990.  I was 15, I still remember how I felt when I saw that cover, and yes, I still have the copy of that issue in my collection, signed by Don Rosa, of course.

All I knew at the time was that this story lived up to the expectations of the cover art, and I was hooked.  I began to search for other Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck stories, and as various publishers reprinted the complete work of Carl Barks in premier formats, I bought them.  

During his more than twenty year career of writing and drawing Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic books, Carl Bark created monthly ten page stories for each character, along with longer stories which varied in length depending on the printing format.  He created over 6,000 pages of published art during his twenty-four year career and repeated story plots only twice.  Carl Barks is considered one of the greatest comic book creators and was one of the three inaugural inductees into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame (the comic book industry's Hall of Fame and top creative award is called the Eisner).

 I've since owned and read every Duck story that "The Good Duck Artist" Carl Barks created.

Bringing us back to the present day (because I do love a good historical tangent), I looked to Carl Bark's ten page stories as inspiration when writing the second Sunset and Meteor ten-page story.  Each of Carl Bark's ten page stories were complete and were meant to be read in any order (it was assumed in the 1940s to 1960s that a comic book would be purchased, read, and discarded).   Each story was an adventure or journey, they contained visual gags, humor through the character's dialogue, and embedded throughout was a spirit of heartwarming. They were considered "funny books", in the historical parlance of comic books.

I clearly set a high bar for myself and for what Travis and I can accomplish.

I did not want the second ten page story I wrote for "The Adventures of Sunset and Meteor" to be read as light or fluff.  While it would be read and discarded, as I imagine most if not all of the copies of that original ten page story in the 2023 Fan Fusion program guide were tossed, I wanted this second story to hold up and be memorable, and to evoke the feelings I felt when I read those ten page stories by Carl Barks.

Throughout the summer of 2023 I gave thought to the characters of Sunset and Meteor and to their world.  As we used the trope of "two robots from a distant planet crash land on Earth" I did not want to go back to the trope of outer space.  As Travis Hanson created additional visually compelling and cool looking characters that we've used for the convention, I needed to come up with a way to bring those characters into this world.  I wanted the story to be an adventure, I wanted humor in the character's dialogue, and I wanted it to be heartwarming.  Working with Travis, who is so good with visual and sight gags, I knew he could deliver that part in a way I could never envision or achieve on my own.

I kept a journal and wrote down story ideas.  

I knew I wanted to include two new characters in this story that Travis had previously drawn that I thought looked so cool:

I wrote down character ideas for each.  Would they be a hero?  A villain?  How do they fit into the story and what purpose do they play?  

Over the next five months of ideas swirling, the pieces came into place, the story began to flesh out, the characters became more defined, and in October 2023 I sat down to formally write what would become our second ten-page "The Adventures of Sunset and Meteor" story.

My draft was twenty-two pages.  "Ok, so this story may be longer than ten pages, maybe like twenty or twenty two," I thought, "That's ok, this will be like Carl Bark's longer stories, like "The Paul Bunyan Machine."  

I sent it to Travis.  "This is going to be longer than ten pages," he replied, "I'll thumbnail it this weekend and let you know how long it will be."

That particular Sunday, Travis texted me, "I'm on page thirty-two of thumbnails, and I'm only halfway through the story.  What do you want to do?"

"What do you think we should do?" I called and asked him.  

"It's your money, boss," he replied with a smile and goodnatured chuckle coming through the other end of the line.

"I think we should tell a great story.  Keep going," was my answer.

The original thumbnails came in around 64 pages.  I immediately had Travis begin pencils as my goal was to have this story complete and released in time for Fan Fusion 2024.  

Soon the page count began to creep up. 

"Hey, boss.  We need an additional page here for story flow and a second one at this section for flow."

"Ok.  I also think we need to expand this section here by two to four pages, as I don't think we're giving readers enough of what they are coming for."

"There's a lull in the action at this point, do you have an additional story plot we could put here?"

We were soon at a seventy page count.  Then eighty and pushing ninety.  I was doing math in my head of multiplying Travis' page rate times the number of pages, and the publication price of cost per page multiplied by the number of printed pages, and it was very quickly going from a low marketing expense (at a ten page story we give away) to a significant investment of time and money.

I was having fun, more fun than I had in a long time at my "day job" of running the convention, and I was greatly enjoying the creative process and exercising that part of mind that had not been regularly used in decades.  I was growing excited to work on this comic and project, and found myself wanting to spend more and more time with these characters and less time with the convention.  While I was acknowledging I was having fun, I also knew there were better ways I could have fun that would not cost as much money.

I needed to monetize this project.  

I am an entrepreneur, and I want to continue telling stories featuring these characters.  

I need to make this into its own company, I need to use my resources and leverage from Fan Fusion to launch this book, and I want to see how big we can make this company and how far we can take Sunset, Meteor, Buff Titanium, La Integridad, and this world Travis and I are creating together.

In rapid order I delayed releasing this full story by one year, from Fan Fusion 2024 to Fan Fusion 2025, in order to give Travis and I more time to work on it, creatively.  I plotted out a publication and release schedule, merchandising, ideas of distribution, hired additional staff to help take the convention workload off myself and to help assist with this company, wrote down additional story and character ideas, including writing story outlines for what could become Books Two and Three, and, after going through a handful of possible company names that didn't feel right and were discarded, my lightbulb clicked when I understood, "These characters began life as mascots, so let's name this company Mascot Comics."