Another week, another quick story about the “Office Ladies” podcast.
On Saturday, veteran comic-book illustrator Tone Rodriguez was among a group of visiting artists who met fans and signed autographs at Denver’s Mile High Comics – the largest comic-book store in the world.
Rodriguez, in town from Louisiana, is perhaps best known for drawing stories for “Simpsons Comics,” “Bart Simpson’s “Treehouse of Horror,” “Radioactive Man” and “Futurama” – and is perhaps feared most for playing online killer Benjamin Alvaro in a 2007 episode of “Dexter.”
One of his greatest claims to fame was being asked to ghost-illustrate a comic book called “The Adventures of Jimmy Halpert” for Part 2 of a special Season 7 episode of “The Office” called “Classy Christmas.”
In the story, the character of Pam Beesly, a secretary-turned-salesperson who was long conflicted by a desire to be a professional artist, presents her husband, Jim, with the comic book as a Christmas present. Back when the episode was filmed in 2010, Rodriguez was brought in to hand-draw the cover and the only two inside pages that 7 million viewers would see – and he was given just five days to do it. (On the show, Pam worked on the gift for a year.) Rodriguez said yes, even though he had never seen the show.
On a recent episode of the “Office Ladies” podcast, Rodriguez tells the most charming story about the experience. The gist of which is that when he was introduced to episode writer Mindy Kaling (who also plays Kelly Kapoor on the show), he was struck mute. “She walked up to us and it was like the scene in ‘Wayne’s World’ where Garth sees the woman in the doughnut shop, the light radiating from behind her, and you are hearing ‘Dream Weaver' by Gary Wright,” he tells podcast hosts Jenna Fischer (who plays Pam) and Angela Kinsey.
When Pam presented Jim (John Krasinski) her handcrafted gift on the show, it was a huge, crowd-pleasing moment that created a fan-mail flurry from podcast listeners who wondered whether Fischer had illustrated the comic book herself. But it was all Rodriguez.
Even thinking about it now, 13 years later, “the hair still stands up on the back of my head,” Rodriguez said Saturday of meeting Kaling. “I do not know what it was about her. I just always find it amazing to discover people who are that sweet. She was just stunning.”
So stunning that, after Kaling gave Rodriguez detailed instructions on the comic-book plot he was to draw, Props Master Phil Shea had to repeat the info to him all over again, “because I remembered none of it,” he said with a laugh. (In the story, Jim gets attacked by a bear while biking to work and then, in very Nietzsche-like fashion, he turns into the bear.)
Because this was in the days before things could be drawn on a computer and rapidly reproduced digitally, there were only eight copies of the original, but Rodriguez now makes limited replicas available to fans at live shows. They are also for sale on various websites.
He’s currently promoting “Stray Dogs,” described as “a heartbreakingly adorable suspense thriller” about a dog with no memory. It’s written by Tony Fleecs, illustrated by Trish Forstner and colored by Brad (no relation to Bart) Simpson. He’s also got a three-part horror anthology called "OMG." You can follow him on Instagram at tonerodriguez2000.
Harlem Renaissance comic book
Here’s a phrase I’ve never written before: “In other comic-book news,” the Denver-based nonprofit Pop Culture Classroom this week released a new classroom comic and teaching guide called “The Harlem Renaissance'' by writer R. Alan Brooks and artist Marcus Kwame Anderson. The comic, designed for grades 9-12, looks at the history and social factors leading up to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ‘30s while introducing readers to W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Claude MacKay, Gwendolyn Bennett, Aaron Douglas, James Van Der Zee and others. It’s free and downloadable at popcultureclassroom.org
Tone Rodriguez is currently working on his series, 'Star Dogs.' Here's a look at his table at Mile High Comics on Feb. 11.