In which Jennifer Johnson cannot handle the truth.
FIRST APPEARANCE – Scwonkey Elliot Dog (hologram)
Scwonkey Elliot Dog, of course, is the title character. Created when I was about two or three years old, he went from just a funny character that was a riff on how dogs are always sticking their heads out car windows, to a superhero, to an alien dog-man peacekeeping agent with a laser gun. Which is more or less where he has stayed for about twenty years. There is not a year that has gone by since I created him where I have not drawn him in the corner of some notes, on some scrap of paper, in a sketchbook — or really anywhere I could get away with doodling a quick Scwonkey head. When I was little, because I didn’t have any interesting or exciting things to talk about, like vacations or family or sports or anything, just so I could be a part of the conversation I would tell the other kids at school made-up-on-the-spot Scwonkey stories relating to whatever the kids were talking about. That got old really fast, so to pick on me the kids at school would call me Scwonkey, which made me really mad, because I was an easily annoyed child. It didn’t really stop bothering me until I was in middle school, when the other kids found other things about me, things that were less my fault, to make fun of. Despite this, he has remained in some ways my alter ego, my fictional counterpart, the little sarcastic voice in the back of my head for nearly my entire life. Make of that what you will.
