Did you ever make something so odd it made you feel weird just to look at it? But you didn't throw it out? Instead you squirreled it away at the bottom of a drawer, and every once it a while, when no one was looking, you'd pull it out, shudder and hide it again? When I was 11, I put The Adventures of Barf-O-Man at the bottom of that drawer. I had decided I'd draw a comic strip that would be funny AND sexy -sort of like the comics in Hustler. Only I didn't know much about sex, much less girls. But that didn't stop me from crudely drawn figures of other kids in the neighborhood engaged in sex. Barf-O-Man - the clueless super-hero himself, was based on a kid who suffered from a head injury as a child. Not only was he a little slow, but his Mom made him wear a batting helmet when he was played the outfield at Little League. His alter-ego Barf-O-Man, would fly around trying to prevent his friend, Rabid, from being raped by a neighborhood girl. Obviously I had issues.

Ooze presents: The First Adventure of Barf-O-Man! by Matt Patterson (age 11)

A panel from Barf-O-Man #2. This crude plot device is clever enough to have probably been used in a porno. Meaning, an 11 year-old could probably write porn if, unlike me, he was familiar with the mechanics of it.

NOTES:
1) Barf-O-Man's tongue hangs out of his mouth in and out of his disguise. The kid this was based on had a similar, but much less pronounced, problem.

2) The narrator was based off the kid who lived next door to the original Barf-O-Man. He didn't have a terrible disease, but always had his hair in his face. Ironically, contrary to what the narrator says, in all three Barf-O-Man comics, the hero never upchucks on anyone.

3) The sex scene in panel 9 is disturbing on a multitude of levels.
a) Obviously I could draw a penis better than anything on a naked woman.
b) Even though the woman here is supposed to be raping the man, the guy is on top. Pretty confusing, if you ask me.
c) I guess I thought women said, "Ahhhhahhh" when they had sex.
d) All the males are victims of a sexually aggressive woman. I guess since I had no idea what sex was, the only way it was going to happen to me was if someone else "forced me to." Hmmmmmm.

4) In panel 10, the word "fuck" is scribbled out in another color ink, and the word "fit" penned in. I think the author (I) felt the word, "Fuck" was going too far.

Why was I so scared of these cartoons? My memories of them were that they were very dirty- something to be hidden. Sadly, they just come off as bad comedy - like the characters witty MAD-style names (Rabid=David ha ha)- and not like some genius-in-the-making's prodigal material. In fact, Barf-O-Man is surprisingly like the stuff I am still doing 20 years later. But now, instead of hiding it in my room, I put it on the internet.

Matt Patterson sadly still draws sexually inappropriate cartoons.