The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
- Hunter S. Thompson

"Fear and Loathing on the Other Side"
Hunter S. Thompson is dead.

I heard the news on CNN on Sunday night, and it gave me pause.

I doubt many of you would peg me for a Thompson fan, but anyone who had to suffer me in high school will recall my strange penchant for gonzo journalism in the twilight years of the last millenium. It had a lot to do with Warren Ellis and Transmetropolitan. I'd be lying if I said I did more than skim his work.

I wrote a paper on him the first time I was a junior, for which I bought a copy of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 that vanished from the material plane at some point in the spring of '99, never to be seen again.

I was so enthralled with the guy that I made him a recurring character in the Clarky Clarkington III series. As Clarky made his long trek to the North Pole in Clarky Clarkington III Kills Santa, he runs across Thompson who explains that he's Clarky's guardian angel. This seems really inappropriate now, but if I remember correctly, upon hearing this news, Clarky asks Hunter how he can be his guardian angel since he's not dead, and Thompson's response is something to the effect of "I died in 1979. I was just too stoned to notice." Basically, he'd appear every once in a while to berate Clarky with the affection nickname of "Schmucko" while drinking heavily and chain-smoking with a zippo. (Clearly a rip-off of Ennis's Preacher, where the ghost of John Wayne was Jesse's constant spirit guide, but hey, how many of you actually know what I'm talking about? Two?) The Spirit of Hunter S. Thompson was a fan-favorite character (with Nick Neufeld, the one die-hard Clarky fan in existence), much like Dildo the Drunken Monkey in the Little Black Duck...

Actually, almost exactly like Dildo the Drunken Monkey in the Little Black Duck...

Thompson actually makes a very brief appearance in the LBD series, reluctantly introducing a series of scenes deleted from The Unhappy Duckling and then telling the reader to stop reading my work because "you're just fucking encouraging him." Not the best exit, so I always like to consider his last scene in "Clarky Clarkington III and the Machine of God" as his real swansong. He rides off into the sunset in a pink cadillac with Jesus, which could have made one hell of an interesting spinoff now that I think about it...

Of course, by the time I got to college, I was kind of burned out on Thompson. Which is ironic, because as I understand it, most people get into him when they're bumming around dorms and shitty apartments while skipping class and drinking heavily. And now that I think about it, I think most people get into Vertigo and indy comics during college, too, while I shifted away from all that stuff back to mainstream superhero books.

It's clear to me now that the butterfly in reverse here is me.

I will say this for Thompson's influence on my college years: He helped me with the history minor something fierce.

Of the fifteen hours of history I took at good ol' Mizzou, six hours were spent in big lecture classes with Robert Collins (God among History Professors). I had to write two papers for Collins' TA's, and both times, they took special note to compliment me on my choices of titles...

"Fear and Loathing in the White House," and "Fear and Loathing in the Land of Bad Things."

So that's my tip to those of you still stretching out in the corridors of academia when it comes time to title that history paper and your feeling all worn-out and bleary-eyed... When in doubt, go with your gut... 'cause chances are, it's full of fear and loathing...

NEXT:
The Orange County Liberation Front and other Venture Bros. references...