The Drunken Fools

Title: 1977 – Life, one toke at a time
Author: W. Byron Wilkins

1977: Star Wars
1977: I was 5 years old for a little portion of the year
1977: Year when my parents moved from a big city to a little town in the boonies

1977: The Comic

While I don’t remember too much of  the 70′s, the musical culture of this period is strongly present in my life and occupies more than 77% of my I-Pod and 77% of my downloaded content in Rock Band.

Last Sunday, at the TGT Webcomics Podcast, W. Byron Wilkins, author of 1977 was the guest of the show. I never heard of the comic before. Before the show, I quickly looked at the comic and saw enough already to get my attention and to log into the show. Before the comic itself, I first discovered the author. Only after a few minutes I told myself, my God, this guy sounds like a radio host. And surely enough, we heard later he did for a News Station, and spent 30 years creating/producing/directing videos (quoted from his own Bio). Something I couldn’t confirm is that I thought I heard him saying he did some Radio Hosting at some point, if he did, I wouldn’t be suprised. On Twitter, Byron describes himself as a “Loveable old fart who draws comics. I could tell, only by listening to him, his Twitter description wasn’t a lie. Byron is a storyteller both “live” and in his webcomic.

If you don’t know the comic yet, now you know for sure when the story is happening. 1977 is about 4 friends, living together, two dudes and two hot chicks and they play in a band; typical dream back in these days. I don’t want to tell too much about the characters and the story as I want you to discover them by yourself, like I did myself Sunday night. What I want to say is that 1977 is all about young adults enjoying life as it was in the 70′s:  Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll, not in that specific order. Follow the heroes of the comic in road trip mini-stories, beer jokes, couch situations and even some fantasy and Sc-Fi situation (are they real or simple results of the weird cigarettes they are smoking, I’ll let you decide!).

Okay, I’m a grown up guy and I have to admit one thing I noticed right away: women with big boobs. But honestly, what really kept my attention and helped me to go through the entire archive,  are the music references in each and every post. The big majority of the strip’s titles are a reference to a song or an album from a Classic Rock band/singer from the 60′s or 70′s.  I did notice a few exception such as when Byron made a reference to Abba, which actually disturbed me for a few seconds or a Title “Pop Goes the Pringles” which is a reference to a 80′s song by Men Without Hats which made me laugh a lot.

Also, what I love about the comic is the fact Byron takes the time to tell a story in his blog linked to the strip, thing that not all fellow webcomickers are doing, unfortunately.

If I had to compare 1977 to a TV Show, I would say a merge between “How I Met Your Mother” and of course, “That 70′s Show”

Finally, if I could suggest something to improve to Byron is the actual Website. It has too much of the Comicpress Theme Layout, and could use some design upgrades. Don’t get me wrong here, Comicpress is a wonderful template for us to use for our webcomics, but the look of your site is also another factor to get some extra readers.

Enough said, I love 1977 and it is now in my Top 5 webcomics!

Cheers!

- Antoine