Dr. Mondo came to life back in the previous century in the pages of my (sadly unfinished) comic, “Mad Science”. He’s a mad scientist created by aliens who, with the “help” of his simian minions Mr. Ook and Mr. Eek, tries to get the key to his escape; a brain in a jar. He’s thwarted by a group of Santa Cruz high school students. The whole thing would have ended with the Santa Cruz Boardwalk turning into a giant robot and nearly crushing the town.

This is the original character sheet for Dr. Mondo. He later got a wardrobe upgrade to a casual straitjacket.

The idea for “Dr. Mondo’s Mixed-up Monster Mayhem” came from my love of cheesy monster movies and comics, the Muppet monsters, “Where the Wild Things Are”, “Monsters Inc.” and Topp’s monster cards by Jack Davis, Basil Wolverton, Wally Wood.

First came a text-only version to test out game play… again and again and again and…

To make it easy on this severely color-blind cartoonist, I came up with the six monster types (Insectoid, Robotic, Aquatic, Alien, Reptoid, and Fuzzy Wuzzy) using the three primary and three secondary colors. Then I designed borders for the cards using graphics that matched.

Next, I added those borders to three types of monster layouts. One for a monster with two heads, one for a monster with four arms, and one for a monster with four feet.

I printed up an 11” X 17” template (with two areas for thumbnail version). Note the guidelines so the the necks, arms, and legs would all line up. Then I started scribbling.

A (very) rough pencil of original Essential Earls before I completely scrapped his heads and base it on a real-life creature called a Velvet Worm.

Using a lightbox, I traced and cleaned up my messy, messy pencils and printed them on watercolor paper to paint.

Raw scan of Earls on water-warped watercolor paper.

Cleaned up Earls, ready for printing.

ALL THE ART! (Took about six months, off and on, to paint them all).

Once all the cards were done, then there was only everything else… writing out the rules, designing the box, setting up the Kickstarter campaign, getting the files to the printer, etc…. all so Dr. Mondo’s creations can invade your game table for some good, ol’ fashion monster building goofballery!