Our Friend Satan or: The Secret Origin of the Devil
We just reread the original “My Neighbor Satan” story. I am embarrassed. Surprisingly, it is the story that got the most acclaim from the original issue of Drunken Cat Presents, our first comic and anthology. I don’t know what that says about people’s taste at the time, but reading now, in 2016 you can really sense the undeveloped comedic sensibilities of two 18 year old boys, along with a desire to offend everyone. Not many people would name their company “Drunken Cat Comics” and fewer still would make their debut comic about Satan calling disabled children “re-re”s and spitting cookies at nuns (this description makes it sound more entertaining than it actually was). Clearly we were trying to thin the herd of our (at the time non-existent) audience as fast as possible.
Be that as it may, Satan was our first success. It was the comic Brian took to his first time at S.P.A.C.E. We even received fan art of Satan, and this was in the early days of the internet, when members of the small press community had to mail each other through snail mail instead of email.
I don’t remember exactly how the story started but at some point we were at either Dante’s Pizza, according to Brian, or Cooker’s Restaurant, according to me. We started writing and apparently wanted to offend, though I am not sure now who or why we were attempting to do so. I do know the term “re-re” was taken from the Clerks Animated Series. I also remember thinking it would be funny if there were an “Anarchy” political party, hence the lawn sign in Satan’s yard in the first panel. Brian thinks the design for the nun’s is based off of Shock from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Satan initially started as an angry and crude character, but by a few comics in we started figuring out that he worked better as an arrogant bumbling man-child. After his initial appearance in “My Neighbor Satan,” his next comic found him interacting with Satan worshipers. Two dimwitted teenagers summoned Satan using a flaming Star of David. The Prince of Darkness is none too pleased with the buffoons as they have interrupted his FRIENDS marathon.
His next and final appearance in Drunken Cat Presents found Satan walking his three-headed hell beast, Cerberus, and hitting on an attractive jogger, only to pull out a fake pager (a pack of gum) and claim some sort of emergency when he finds out said jogger has a kid.
Satan was popular enough to get his own one-off book, The Satan Spectacular, in March of 2002. The book opens with the return of the two Satanists introducing their fallen hero. The first short story finds Satan going to the public pool, where he can’t seem to catch a break. I remember writing the first draft of “Satan Goes to the Pool” on pieces of scrap paper in my mom’s Ford Taurus as I waited outside of a restaurant while she was setting up for some award ceremony. The next story is a short featuring the first (and only) appearance of Roger the Demon in “Story Time with Roger the Demon“. The book concludes with “Satan Goes Clubbing” which saw a celebrity guest lose to Satan in a dance competition.
Satan disappeared for the better part of a decade, resurfacing occasionally to write columns on an early version of the Drunken Cat site and make the occasional YouTube video. Satan wouldn’t make his next appearance in comic form until 2012, which saw the release of the Drunken Cat Comics’ Anniversary Issue (currently the only Satan story in print)! You can also see him in several of our online comics, like this one HERE, though it is nowhere near as rewarding as paying to read his epic high school reunion story.
Through these stories Satan morphed from angry, to bumbling and cocky to an overly confident idiot. He will continue to be a staple of the Drunken Cat canon until he ceases to be profitable… much like Fox and the Simpsons. So what we’re saying is, you can sleep easy, knowing that if there is a dollar to be made, we will continue to lug this corpse around.
Mayhaps a reprint book is in order of all the Satan comics tp date, with this as its introduction?
Not a bad idea… not a bad idea at all. Perhaps it is time to do something of that sort. Thanks for the suggestion:)