Jenn In Print - Animaniacs

Sean and I wrote, performed and generally squandered our free time together in a radio comedy group in college, and maintained our friendship and writing collaboration after its dissolution. In 1996, Sean was all het up over a new cartoon on the WB Network about Yakko, Wakko and Dot, the Warner siblings, and their head-trauma inducing brand of comedy.

Sean was a regular contributor to the online fandom of the show and, through his connections, managed to acquire the email addy for the editor of the Animaniacs comic. In a move that normally gets a door slammed in your face, Sean emailed the fellow, who must've been seriously hard-up for writers; why else would he agree to look at our unsolicited script? A week later, we were signing a talent agreement with Warner Bros.

	Issue: #20 Date: December, 1996 Stories: "Rebels Just 'cause", "East of Burbank", "Grande!" Backstory: This was not only our first Animaniacs issue, but the first issue we wrote entirely ourselves. The James Dean postage stamp was debuting this month, and Warner Bros. wanted to do a cross-media tie-in campaign: reissuing his movies in laser-disc, among others, and an 'homage' to the Angry Young Man's films in our li'l comic.

	Issue: #23 Date: March, 1997 Stories: "Hello Nurse - Agent of H.U.B.B.A." Backstory: Our editor charged us with the task of creating a backstory for the Animaniacs' tertiary Va-Voom Girl, Hello Nurse. We gave him the story of a crack spy operative nurse who was part of an international organization of undercover nurse-agents. Not only did we get paid for this pitch, it actually saw print, too! As far as I know, this is still the best-selling issue of the series to date. Comics industry lesson learned: Big Breasts Move Books.

	Issue: #24 Date: April, 1997 Stories: "Artful Dodgers" Backstory: For whatever reason, this issue was dedicated to all things Brooklyn. We ended up doing a story on the Brooklyn Dodgers and had all of the salient Dodgers trivia in it edited out in the final cut. Comics industry lesson learned: Research is Futile.

	Issue: #25 Date: May, 1997 Stories: "Silver Jubilee" frame-story, "Driving Miss Slappy" Backstory: It was in this issue that we crystalized the essential story formula for Slappy Squirrel (Walter Wolf plans to blow up Slappy; plan backfires; Walter explodes; Slappy makes a smart-ass remark). It was also in this issue that a two-panel throwaway gag got turned into a full-issue story later on in the series.

	Issue: #26 Date: June, 1997 Stories: "Pancake House of Horror", "A Paw Worth Fighting For", "Good Things Come in Buckets", "Tickle Me Evil", "Bubble Doom", "Claw Deal" Backstory: Our editor at the time was a very easy-going sort who let us have free rein with our stories. So when he said that he had a story idea that he wanted us to write for this EC horror comic tribute, we said "Sure!" Little did we know that his idea would involve a two-page spread of the Animaniacs cast vomiting copiously. The man signed our checks -- cut us some slack, huh?