The Atlanta Sideshow

[Quato]

This is a work in progress as I locate issues.
It will eventually be a complete cover gallery of the defunct Atlanta Sideshow Magazine. What is the significance? Well, I had a poorly drawn serialized off-color humor cartoon published in the magazine for about two years. Not all issues had my cartoon published, but most did. Some had two episodes published.

tinyurl.com/gnxbn

sideshow.fateback.com/Atlanta_Sideshow.html
(link updated 8/12/2010)

Q

[gowaltrip]

Id be interested in seeing some samples of your cartoons.

[Quato]

gowaltrip said:

Id be interested in seeing some samples of your cartoons.

There are several reasons I don't post them online.

First and foremost, the comic strips were written desgned to pique curiosity. They were designed to make people curious, even if they didn't impress anyone. Posting them and answering questions defeats the purpose for which they were created. The fact that you are curious is more important to me than whether you'd understand anything I'd written or drawn. I was creating a marketing tool.

Second, I quit drawing because I'm siimply too slow and don't have time to draw more. I'm not even very good at it, but my friends tell me that's part of the appeal. I already knew that, but if I was a hair better at drawing, I could produce a lot more work.

I'm 100% confident in the commercial potential of the characters. People used to beg for t-shirts and buttons and spin-off merchandise even if they didn't know the full story behind it.
I've always been very concerned about my characters or story ideas being stolen or modified slightly. My creative ideas for plots were sometimes so similar to Southpark that I had to quit watching the show. I'd plot out something and then 6 months later through uncanny coincidence Southpark would have an idea so similar that I'd have to throw mine out and start over from scratch. I just read a comic with a visually similar character to mine. One of the creators involved has likely seen my cartoon. Until I'm able to fully develop my characters and get more involved stories in print, I don't want to hand them out to the public to use. If movies like the incredibles will steal from Fantastic Four and have no shame, how willing would they be to steal from somebody like me that only has samples in print? I'd just like to have a larger body of work in print. When one of my freinds found out I was not going to be published anymore, she came to me in almost in tears telling me that she wanted to meet a producer for the Southpark show. I never met the producer because the woman kept insisting that she be creatively involved. Every role she insisted on having was a role that could be entitled to future profits. It just reenforces my belief that I have some good ideas that I need to release when I'm ready to do something with them.... on my own. I was so bitter after that experience that I couldn't even think about my characters for about three years without getting pissed. If not for coworkers begging me to produce more stuff, I wouldn't even be scanning these covers. Some far more talented people than me keep encouraging me to draw more. The art director for the Mellow Muhroom pizza chain knows me by my cartoon. A cartoonist in town that used to publish a cartoon newspaper in town had me sign a copy of the Sideshow magazine for him at Dragon Con one year.

Last but not least, I'm ashamed of certain cartoon panels because I experimented with the art and I drew some crappy panels which just didn't work. I had no art training when I drew those and I literally just picked up a pen and started drawing from scratch.. I have idiot savant hand/eye coordination. Sometimes I draw excactly what I want to draw. Other times I can't even draw a circle. My first real art tool was an electric eraser.

Q

[Quato]

Added some more scans to the page. My stuff started appearing in the December 1997 issue and lasted until late in 1999 I believe. Half of the scans I've added won't feature my cartoon.

Q

[Defiant1]

Added some more scans including some covers that pay tribute to TMCM, Milk and Cheese. Flaming Carrot and more...

www34.websamba.com/quato/Atlanta_Sideshow/Atlanta_Sideshow.html

sideshow.fateback.com/Atlanta_Sideshow.html
(link updated 8/12/2010)

Defiant1

[Quato]

Added some more scans.
My first published cartoon is in this..



Q

[Brother J]

Bumping this up, do you still have the cover scan gallery up anywhere? I see the original host must have went belly up.

[Defiant1]

I may have to take this down. Not sure how much space the server has.

sideshow.fateback.com/Atlanta_Sideshow.html

It is not complete.

Defiant1

[Defiant1]

I deleted some content that I will no longer be hosting. That will free up some space for this gallery. I found some issues that had not been scanned, so I plan on updating the page and the link at that time.

Defiant1

[vikingspawn]

Cool cover gallery. I like collecting programs like that.

[Defiant1]

This was a free pop culture magazine distributed around Atlanta. It had a loyal following at some colleges in the city. Atlanta has an area called "little five points" that is a creative subculture of it's own. Several Tattoo parlors are there. Alternative clothing is there. If you need to dress like a rock star, you can find exotic fashions there. Outdoor cafes, clubs playing live bands etc. There is a record store there that has magazines, comics... hand collated comics and fanzines also. The Atlanta Sideshow was popular there also. The publisher told me an employee at a shoe store in the area that was cutting out my cartoons and taping them to a register. John the publisher was a pop culture junkie. I think he did an interview with Ron Jeremy once. My friend at the time wrote a rant column that was off the wall. The program director from Turner Broadcasting went out of his way to compliment my friend and make a small article correction. This publication has early cartoons by Brad McGinty and Josh Latta from Cute Girl Demographics. I periodically post some of Brad's animations and they both set up at Heroes Con every year. If you look at their early work vs. the later work it seems apparent to me that I inspired a slight change in the humor they convey. There was a comic section. Jim Lee was interviewed in one issue. I'd setup an interview with Jim Shooter that never saw the light of day. My friend refused to discuss it. There was a comics column that I never thought was that good. I told the guy to his face. We get along well, so there are no hard feelings. It was a fun publication and it was one of the later pair of cartoons in one issue that almost had me flying to California to pitch my cartoon idea out there. I think it filled a void in the city, but it had gotten very tough to sell ads towards the end. John now writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper in Atlanta.

Defiant1

[Brother J]

In the latest issue I'm reading, I saw the ad for Wooden Avenger buttons. Cool that you had your own promo items!

[Defiant1]

I was going to send you some buttons, but the ones that I had left (that I could find) got wet at some point and were starting to rust. I think they were one of the few things that got damaged in my office flood. I don't remember running an ad. I do remember the publisher of the "Drawl" cartoon newspaper being interested in them. I still have some business card magnet blanks. I have some 9.5" x 11" blank puzzle sheets. Somewhere I had a word search puzzle created with freeware. The magazine and everything i was doing was for the sole purpose of promotion. The key problem being is that it was succeeding even better than I anticipated. There were other "mystery" promotions that I was linking to web ventures. I never made the connection public to people and it was garnering attention at even a faster rate. I was handing out and signing between 30-50 copies a month. I sold some buttons in very small quantities. I was trying to design a cheap action figure with wood pieces available from the local hardware stores. There was a lot going on until my workplace started occupying all my spare time. It's like a small viral marketing campaign because people still talk about it by word of mouth. Newer employees that weren't around when it came out do get told about and I'll walk up on conversations where people are laughing about it and sharing the fact it exists... a decade later. Women that paid no attention to me were immediately fascinated by me and talking to me as if I was Picasso or something. It was a very surreal period in my life.

Defiant1

[Defiant1]

April 1998


Not the best copy to scan, because stuff in this box got slightly wet.

Defiant1

[Defiant1]

This one came out before i knew about the magazine.

October 1997


Defiant1

[Brother J]

could never figure out why Dusty Rhodes was so popular among wrestling fans. I always hated him and loved it when the Four Horseman would beat the snot out of him.

[Defiant1]

I saw a wrestling match at Channel 17 (TBS) when I was in Cub Scouts. I didn't like it or understand it then and I've never really liked it since. The publisher of this magazine was a wrestling fan and I think he has something to do with the staged wrestling matches that take place at Dragon Con every year.

Defiant1