If you’ve enjoyed the feeling of laughing while watching TV over the last 20 years, it’s probably thanks in part to comedy writer Tom Gammill.
Tom and his writing partner, Mitchell “Max” Pross, started out on Saturday Night Live in 1979, and went on to be hilarious for It’s Gary Shandling’s Show, a memorable run on Seinfeld (where he kindly tolerated the terrified retardedness of a young Matt Selman), The Critic, Futurama, and Monk. For the last eight years or so, Tom and Max have been making Thursdays in the writing room sizzle, slamming zingers as consultants on The Simpsons.
While writing for all these classic shows, Tom left something very important behind. Doodles. Tom’s signature doodles. His scripts were always covered in these hilarious cartoons of horses and dogs and hobos and just regular folks. Often, you would see a writer reading a script and laughing, and then find out later it was an script from three weeks ago covered in Tom’s doodles.
Tom has always been a cartoonist blessed with a signature style, but now he’s taken his talent to the big leagues: a daily strip. The Doozies.
The Doozies can be found on GoComics.com, which seems to be the future of newspaper comic strips on the internet. (I hope there is a future for newspaper comics on the internet.)
The Doozies is pure Tom. A little bit mock-square, a little bit genuinely square, and a whole lot of smart and silly and insane. Check it out. Check the whole site out. (Just be careful when reading those ret-conned For Better or for Worses, where Lynn Johnston has taken her characters back to being babies again. You think you’re gonna goof on them, then you start to feel really really old.)
