'The Darker Side' of Tomothy and Pals

'The Darker Side' of Tomothy and Pals

Sorry about the image sizes

The comic some of you all know and love, or have possibly heard of and would like to check out. OR you've never heard of it and such a thing will never interest you... Has always been surrounded by a dark mystery. One so DARK.. even GHOSTS have to turn the bed-side lamp on.

Tomothy and Pals began at some point in 1999. Developing and breaking off of an earlier creation of mine, 'The Freckled Face Kid and Shouty'. Maybe I'll tell you about them one day, or maybe I will not.

Anyway!
It all started with a young Tomothy and his best friend Simon.. hold on.. I'll do a quick sketch.

There you go. You MAY or MAY NOT have noticed the first problem here... they have GIANT SHOES. No.. but seriously now, if you are familiar with Tomothy and Pals currently, Simon looks exactly like VINNIE, the kid in the bubble.
But at this time, little Vinnie was not born yet. No SIRRY. and then he was...
Anyway, something amazing happened and both, Tomothy AND Simon grew up... to become.. say .. 13 years old. While Yo and Vinnie stayed the same age in the comics.
I'm talking about this as if you'll be able to look back and see these little adjustments. But unfortunately they are in little drawing books I took to school, which are.. well I'm not quite sure at this point in time.

But when I discovered animation, Tomothy and Pals came ALIVE. And Simon was there, and Vinnie was there, and everyone was happy.

Shot from (Tomothy Live 3) Avaliable to watch here

Then, due to voice acting issues and other things I was slowly deciding to GET RID OF HIM. In 'Tomothy and Pals episode 1' Simon mentions to Tomothy that he is moving away!! OH NO

And so unfortunately for Simon, he not longer appeared in most of the next Tomothy related cartoons. Although occasionally there would be a split second shot of him creeping in there.

Simon appearing for a split second in 'You can't handle the Knowledge' 

But what is this? He is smoking??? Yes, I didn't really want to show this very GROWN up character in my cartoons but the idea was that Simon, (Tom's best friend that moved away) was actually a bit of a smokey alcoholic party goer. Interesting huh? Hmm..

Anyway, 

soon enough I was making silly comics and Simon was BACK. Well, as an old favorite of the massive fan base he had to return, right? 

Yes, apart from the bad spelling and everything else, the story goes on and Simon comes back to where ever Tomothy lives (Penny Lane)

and Tomothy is a little jealous.

and SUDDENLY it never was a kids comic.. it was just a comic :O 

Anyway, I got tired of Simon and so did the imaginary fan base. He is just a BOTHER!

This is where things change.
Tomothy and Pals was getting reborn! I wanted to rebornitize it and make it kid friendly and lovely and funny and colourful and all that! And guess what, it already WAS kid friendly! Because I made it, and I am a kid... Simon was the only problem.

The fact that he looked almost exactly like the now world wide famous bubble boy character, 'Vinnie' meant he just... had.... to..... go......

So on paper, while searching for ideas on what to do for the new strips, I thought I'd give Simon a fitting ending.

Simon was a smoker, and according to the archives I've collected from 2012, Jerome (the dog) dislikes smokers. This may or may not be this case, but for this moment of paper drawn sketches, Jerome was coughtastic.
So whilst Simon was leaning on a wall with his bud, Tom, Jerome decided to push him over the side.

Jerome was never charged because he's just too adorable. 

If it was not clear, Simon fell to his death. I didn't take a picture of that panel because frankly, it was very badly drawn.

Of course, this may not have all happened, it may have all been a dream. But the fact is, Simon is not more. No more in the comic and no more in the animations. 

His friendship has been replaced by the marvelous, 'Peter' who fills the role with his head held high. 

As I say, the drawn up stuff may all have been a dream and Peter just moved away! That COULD be what happened.

Although, I ponder about that gravestone in the right hand corner... look closely....

The other possible answer to it all is that the new comics from 2012 onward have all been a prequel to those Simon events, this would explain why there is a cartoon somewhere online, set on christmas day where Tomothy dies.

We try and forget about this. In fact, it is forgotten! 

So long.

and so long Simon. You just looked a little bit too much like Vinnie.

Vinnie and Yo in new Tomothy and Pals comics

Simon Minool 

1999-2012

Trivia: Simon was actually the only character to ever get a last name.. o_O

- The Daily Crumb