Mama The Butt

All of my comic characters are creations of my own, with ideas I got from my childhood. Sometimes the characters were inspired by friends and relatives, but sometimes I would either just completely make up something original, or make a parody of something. However, in doing this, sometimes my friends would take offense where none was intended because — like with Pro Wrestling for example — the line between the fictional character and real life person playing them would get blurred, as fiction was sometimes a grossly exaggerated reflection of reality and vice versa.

For example, this Mama The Butt was a meta hodgepodge character of an easily angered overweight mom who ate herself to death and slave-drove her kids. Clearly, it was a sad case that some people do that. It wasn’t a real person, and almost a Jabba The Hutt parody. Years later, Monster House had a similar stereotypical cranky fat lady.

But I *did* have friends who had moms who were kinda’ mean, slave-drove their kids, and were overweight. This Mama was a gross exaggeration of that. And because my friends inspired my characters, some of my friends would think I was completely making fun of their mom. No, it wasn’t meant to be a slam on their mom, but a generic observation of some moms meant to be comical. My mom was overweight as well, and would sometimes be cranky, but she didn’t slave-drive me or my brother, yet some parts could inspire this mom without being my mom, whom I love dearly. Like I said… she was a fictional character based on a mix of real life stereotypes, and no offense nor targeted mockery of a real life person was ever intended.