Mission Man comic

Back in 1998 to 2000, when I was an up­per­class­man at Mission San Jose High School, I drew a monthly comic strip for The Smoke Signal. (I was also the graphic artist and then the Special Feature ed­i­tor, but I think more peo­ple cared about the comic.) It was called Mission Man, and it was about … Mission Man!

I’m not ex­actly sure what Mission Man was (is?) or why he was there. He was kinda-​​sorta the school mas­cot, but not re­ally. MSJ’s mas­cot was and still is the war­rior, but the logo was a Native American Indian. After the Natives com­plained, stu­dents voted to have the logo be­come Mission Peak, Fremont’s pa­thetic lit­tle moun­tain. But Mission Man was al­ways around, ap­par­ently to be kid­napped by other schools in those aw­ful home­com­ing skits.

Anyway, when I was asked to do the comic for the pa­per, I de­cided to make him the main char­ac­ter. But rather than mak­ing him this mys­te­ri­ous guy who em­bod­ied MSJ’s school spirit (ugh), I made him this skinny, goofy, com­plete loser who every­body could laugh at. No I didn’t base his char­ac­ter on me!

Here are the first two strips.

I’m glad I kept these im­age files be­cause I have no idea where the orig­i­nal draw­ings went. I’ll post more an­other day.