Help me find an old cartoon strip

June 9, 2009 12:42 PM

I'm trying to find the title of an "independant" comic strip from late '80s and early '90s

I need help finding an old comic/cartoon that used to appear in independent newspapers such as The Chicago Reader. The cartoon was typically a single panel, anywhere from 10x10 to 25x25cm in size, usually square. It typically showed a bug-eyed guy who self-professed to having drunk too much coffee and being stressed out by it. The visual style was somewhere between a Plimptoon and something slightly more schizophrenic in nature (think: Comedy Central's Superjail). Text within the panel filled in details about the stressed out guy's self-image, his relationship problems, and angst/anger with the world at large. Artwork of his was popular on t-shirts I saw at university in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I lost track of him and his art around 1995.

Note: this is NOT about "Too Much Coffee Man" - the guy didn't have a coffee cup for a head, he was simply too stressed out on coffee.

posted by mrthotep to media & arts (9 comments total)

Everything you say about this except for "guy" makes me think of Hothead Paisan.
posted by Sidhedevil at 12:52 PM on June 9

Not a single panel, but could it possibly be Red Meat?
posted by Reverend John at 1:01 PM on June 9

It's only sometimes a single panel strip, but what about Too Much Coffee Man?
posted by crickets at 1:05 PM on June 9

Neither of those. I'm quite positive it was on the same page as Red Meat in the Urbana-Champaign alt weekly.
posted by mrthotep at 1:05 PM on June 9

Doh. Didn't read the whole thing. Sorry.
posted by crickets at 1:06 PM on June 9

I don't think he was published in the reader in the 80s but your description sounds like Ivan Brunetti to me.
posted by consummate dilettante at 1:36 PM on June 9

was it Amy and Jordan by Mark Beyer?
posted by kuujjuarapik at 2:06 PM on June 9

Is it this guy?
posted by mogget at 4:03 PM on June 9

Word mogget, you got it! thanks!
posted by mrthotep at 4:10 PM on June 9