A lot of people ask me how Hamster Rage started…

Roosevelt was originally two different characters that I merged into one character. The first character was a big tiger guy named Tigron (who you can see on the cover to Hamster Rage #1) and a cartoon Hamster character I had drawn since I was a kid. He was pretty much nameless.

I really began drawing the character more in 2005 and then began drawing him into a series of illustrations at the weekly Chicago Drink N’ Draw. I started to dream up more characters from there to develop into the series and my idea about the comic changed drastically along the way.
I touched on some that in this interview.

The image above was painted in watercolor in one of my older sketchbooks, scanned in and then photo shopped a bit. As you read to page 35 I promise the image will start to make sense.

One other note… The “SuperGuy” in the book Roosevelt is reading is supposed to be modelled after the public domain Fleischer Brothers styled Superman. I’m a big fan of those cartoons and thought it made sense for him to be reading those.

Thanks for reading!

-B