It was the early ’90s. Sea Isle City, New Jersey. 3:00 AM.
Sean, Joe, and I decided to take our six-pack of Killian’s Irish Red down to the beach and drink until sunrise. We were already flying high, but it was a manageable drunk—the kind that makes you feel like everything is right in the world. My future felt wide open, and I was celebrating life with good friends. We were young, away from the real world, and I was in a band with real potential. I was writing songs nonstop. Sitting there on the sand in the middle of the night, just talking—it felt perfect.
Then Joe decided to go into the ocean. It didn’t matter that the fog was so thick we could barely see in front of us. It also didn’t matter that Joe was in no condition to swim. Sean and I waved him off and went back to our Killian’s. A little sand got on the bottles, but I drank mine anyway. Only the first sip had that crunch. After that, it went down smooth. I don’t remember what Sean and I talked about—probably life, or one of those “I love you, man” conversations that became a Bud Light commercial later that decade.
What I do remember is that mid-sentence, Sean held up a finger—the universal “hold on a sec”—turned his head, puked in the sand, and then went right back to talking as if nothing had happened. I wasn’t even concerned. That’s just what you did back then: you drank, you puked, you kept drinking.
An hour or so later, we realized Joe hadn’t come back. We didn’t panic or even call out. We just looked at the water and wondered where he was. Not long after, he came staggering out of the fog—soaked, out of breath, and grinning. “The waves were great,” he said. We sat together and watched the sunrise before heading back to the beach house. (You can read more about that place here.)
This whole thing became a cartoon idea I’d been sitting on for a while. I wanted to draw it the way it still exists in my mind. Most memories aren’t movies—they’re snapshots. Unless it’s something monumental, like Kennedy’s assassination or 9/11, we remember in flashes. These three panels are my flashes: the beer on the beach, Sean puking, and Joe emerging from the sea.
I didn’t want dialogue or exposition in the comic. This post is the explanation. Maybe the strip wouldn’t make sense without it. Perhaps that makes it a failure. But I drew exactly what I wanted, and that makes it a success to me.
It’s also the first time I’ve used ink washes to create shades of gray. I might do more like this.
That’s all I got.
Take it easy,
James