I'm kinda interested (in a morbid matter ) to read guties comic
If I wasn't so paranoid about him finding this thread and using it as an excuse to bother me again, I would link you (the guy I was seeing during the Botherguts era has stalked me for ten years so I'm a bit cagey). I might grow some balls at some point and post but I really, really don't want to out myself.
So in this part, I'd like to introduce some of the other people I got to know through Botherguts, but first I'd like to talk about how he got me stranded during an active bomb threat.
I mentioned when talking about the content of the comic that Botherguts' inking process was to mark off inking places in pencil and go over them, assuming they would be covered. Unfortunately a high-resolution scanner will pick up on those areas so when we went to get them printed the pages were covered in pale little crosses. On top of that, the CD was so badly scratched that half of the pages were mangled.
This is probably a huge tell as to what country we're based in, but Botherguts had decided to get the printing done across the border in an area that was known for terrorist activity, because it was slightly cheaper. This entailed a three-hour bus journey and an overnight stay in an area that was dangerous even by the standards of this region. However, once the problems with the CD and the pages were discovered, Botherguts had a great big foot-stomping meltdown over the wasted journey, and wanting to save the effort I offered to take the bus back to his house, fix the pages in photoshop, load it all onto a USB key and get back for printing the next day.
It took hours to run the photoshop repairs, and by the time I got on the bus for another three hours it was already dark. The bus had to run through a new checkpoint because a bomb threat had been issued and the whole region, particularly the city, was on high alert. We were warned not to make any unnecessary journeys. Around this time I was trying to call Botherguts to arrange where he was to meet me, but he wasn't answering his phone.
Bus pulled in, everyone got off, I was stranded in the city and Botherguts was nowhere to be found. He had arranged for me to spend the night at a female friend of his brothers' but hadn't told me where she lived so I could make my own way out, and even if I had known the taxis weren't running. My phone was running out of battery and I had nowhere to go. In total I think I called him around 30-50 times. Please remember that I was nineteen, very sheltered and had hardly been outside the country before.
Finally a passing police car asked what I was doing on the street and I explained what was going on. They took me to the station, which was more like a military base, and charged my phone for me. Botherguts then decided to pick up his phone at the grand old time of 1am and gave me the address I was to go to, where the woman I was staying with was worried sick. The police drove me there.
After that, I always made my own travel arrangements. And he never thanked me.
...
Botherguts did manage to gather some talented people for his comic, but Dave was not exactly one of them. Picture the serial killer from Wolf Creek but with murder replaced with endless monologues about Dr Who, and you've got Dave.
Dave lived with his wife in a tiny little cottage that was always kept heated to tropical, supposedly so they wouldn't get homesick for Australia. He was fifty and he had open contempt for Botherguts, which Botherguts himself seemed to miss, even when Dave was clearly laughing at him. He was obsessed with TV shows but mostly Dr Who, and could turn any conversation into a Dr Who Ted Talk. I think he knew when you were just nodding along to be polite but kept going for shits and giggles.
He smoked a lot of pot. As in, round the clock, all day and all night. I must have been coming home stinking of weed from being in his house but my parents never seemed to notice. I never smoked it myself but I got a lot of contact highs. He solicited me for sex twice, which I politely turned down.
His art was pretty good, but it was incomprehensible. Sort of like if Salvador Dali and Gary Larson did a webcomic together. He was the most interesting member of the team, everyone else was pretty ordinary and not really worth talking about.
...
Steven was an old friend of Botherguts, no involvement in the comic and mostly of interest because Botherguts saw himself as so clearly superior to Steven. Apparently Botherguts had catered Steven's wedding and the food was so good that nobody realized it was vegetarian. (I would call bullshit, but this was said in front of Steven and he didn't refute it.) Botherguts had cooked for me before, and the results were....not good. Even discounting the low level of hygiene he was known for.
Steven was another of Bothergut's friends who had married an Asian woman, and although Botherguts didn't hate this one like he hated Molly, he made a lot of jokes about Steven having to carry her pink luggage around for her, as this apparently meant Steven was less of a man. Steven was in good shape, relatively good looking, had a decent job and married so Botherguts just had to try and bring him down somehow, but I could never figure out why Steven kept hanging out with him.
At some point, Steven just cut contact and we never heard from him or about him again. This happened to Botherguts quite a lot.
...
I spoke about Paul's wife Molly, but not so much about Paul himself. Paul was Bothergut's oldest friend, I think they had been in school together. He was an intellectual guy, really great to talk to about history, literature and art but he was a nervous sort, a bit twitchy. The kind of guy that's easy to talk over, which Botherguts did a lot.
Paul had a lot of things Botherguts was probably jealous of; he could drive, he owned a house and he was married to an Asian woman. So Botherguts insisted on getting Paul to drive him around, he complained that his house was cold and run-down and he thought Paul's wife was a demanding hell-beast.
On one occasion that really makes me cringe looking back, a TV show that Botherguts was mildly obsessed with was being rebooted and he wanted to watch the premiere. It was recorded, but his younger brother refused to let him watch it in his bedroom (as he had a right to do) and Botherguts threw a strop. Next thing I know (as I'm sitting in his living room correcting a script) we're going to Paul's house to watch it. I don't know if he called Paul and was refused, or if we were just turning up unannounced, but either way you could tell Paul was furious.
He offered me tea and biscuits but ignored Botherguts, which Botherguts laughed at. I made small talk with Molly, who showed me her latest painting, and of course Botherguts had to throw out a criticism. We watched the premiere in awkward silence, and when it was finished Botherguts insisted on being given a lift back. To really gild the lily, Botherguts asked to stop at a takeaway on the way back, but Paul finally put his foot down.
...
As an aside, let me tell you about his eating habits, because Botherguts had to be exceptional in all areas.
He was a vegetarian, but also morbidly obese because he consumed everything in massive quantities. His favourite takeaway was a curry tray, rice and chips (french fries) covered in curry sauce, and he would bring this home to put it on a slice of bread. Four different types of carbohydrate, washed down with half a litre of coke.
When we went to the cinema, which we did quite a lot, he would go to Mcdonald's first and then sneak in the bag to eat as a snack. A whole Mcdonald's meal as a snack. And then dinner afterwards.
He ate hardly any vegetables, his diet was all starch and sugar. It probably contributed to the smell he gave off.