I’d like to start by putting this book into context:
This is an underground comic by a teenager!

If you are a fan of my current work, please know THIS IS NOT FOR KIDS!
This is a formative comic that I drew in college, from 2006 to 2007. Please look at this artifact through that lens.

Here’s the backstory:

I had been drawing comics since middle school, and in high school, I teamed up with my best friend, Frans Boukas, to make our own imprint, SugarBoukas Comics. We drew comics together, and with the help of my graphic designer dad, we printed and stapled zines at his office and then took them to local comic cons to trade and to give to our heroes.

I had a comic idea called Bonnie and Jess, about lesbian bodyguards traveling the country, helping people and fighting people. Bonnie and Jess bonded because they were both fans of a comic called Pug Davis. Pug started as a comic-within-a-comic, a stand-in for my favorite comics at the time: The Goon, Hellboy and BPRD. I never ended up making Bonnie and Jess (though I reused many ideas from it in later projects), but I did make Pug. I threw it online unceremoniously (the website had the tagline “In Pug Davis, No One Can Hear You Pug Davis”), and I tabled with it at SPX, Otakon and MoCCA, selling very, very few copies.

Pug never quite had a place to live. It didn’t fit with indie comics, but was too raw to come off as mainstream. While the covers promised space adventures and ray guns, the interiors were actually emotional stories about Pug and the Blouse. I wanted to put my spin on the antihero and the “gay sidekick,” and have the adventures take a back seat to the moments they shared privately, worrying about each other and themselves. When I look back on it, I’m alarmed by how honest it is under all the sci-fi tropes and goofy action schtick I was lovingly emulating. I put a lot of myself into the characters, especially into the Blouse … the way his naiveté gets him into trouble, and how he can’t help but be himself no matter how much he’s punished for it. The Blouse can’t quite tell if Pug actually wants him around, and he can’t shake the feeling that he’s a burden. But he’s so proud just to be there, to know Pug personally, and to care about him more than anyone else. So much of this is how I felt during the mid-2000s–trying to break into comics, trying to fit in at art school, navigating sexist jokes and homophobic slurs, and quietly hoping my heroes and peers actually wanted me to be there instead of begrudgingly tolerating my presence.

I wish I could have joyfully, unapologetically expressed myself at age 18, but I just wasn’t there yet, so Pug will always be bittersweet. Trapped in this book is my overflowing love for comics and the fantasy that comics might love me back, even if comics would never admit it in public.

But the end of the story is that my fantasy came true. I gave this book to Eric Powell, and he loved it for what it was. He gave me my first job in comics (a short backup in The Goon), and he published Pug Davis through Albatross Exploding Funnybooks in 2010. Now he’s doing it again, almost a decade later–and in full color, thanks to the brilliant Rachael Cohen.

Thank you for reading,

RS
-Rebecca Sugar