My life with the Thrill Kill Kult
(Or, working on an underground comic in the nineties)
I was brought into the Tic Toc Tom fold in ’93 shortly after graduating from OCA (pre-D) by none other than Kenneth Gallant (Walrus Boy to some), who I was working with on “Suicide” at the time. I think my first drawing for the comic was a b/w illustration for the “Swimsuit Issue”. Something about a gothy girl’s afternoon lie on the beach being interrupted by the giant hand of Tom rising from the sand. I wish I could remember it with more clarity but I can’t find that drawing now. The next was a somewhat surreal poster of Tom as a “T” in a weird configuration of clocks. That one I do have.
There was another poster sketch of my version of Tom as a cyborg-cyclops, and of course the Tom collector card I did which I completely forgot about until Chetan posted it on tictoctom.com. Finally the pièce de résistance (or, as I like to say, the piece of resistance): a wonderfully penned story by creator himself, Mr. Patel, which I had the honour to illustrate. A snippet of the on going saga of Tic Toc Tom in which Tom and his female companion cross paths with a mystery man, from the same race as Tom, in a dingy roadhouse. Ah the nineties… it was all bars, clubs and coffee shops in our stories. How many times did I have to study the uninspiring decor of a Second Cup or a Firkin so that I could accurately render it in some story I was working on?
Nevertheless, working with Chetan and the tremendous talent that was the Tic Toc Tom team was key to my development as a young artist, and a point in my formative and penniless years that yields fond memories (some of them possibly other people’s memories). Before the turn of the century I was fortunate to work with Chetan, Kenneth, Peter Macchione and Mr. Yeo on yet another forgotten anthology: Idle Worship.
Currently spending my days as a graphic designer, and my nights working with Ken on our site horrormetalsounds.com, I pay tribute to the legend of Tic Toc Tom by shamelessly recycling my work on the mini as sketch-of-the-day features for our FB page. Done so with love for my time on Tom (but mostly as a way to mine the past for present material), I do my part to bring awareness to the hard ships of my past life as a comic book artist in one of Toronto’s most fashionable economic recessions.
Richard Leggatt
Clean shaven and short haircut,
this is what a married life will
do to you. In a future post, we
will visit Rich in the long hair and
Spanish moustache days.
