I met Chetan back in 1991, when I was attending OCA (yeah, I still call it that!) taking Illustration. I am pretty sure I had seen him around before, but my memory is still fuzzy about it.
Ken Gallant, a friend of mine from high school, had been raving to me about some new guy he had met that was working at the Dragon Lady comic book store. He was impressed with a conversation they had, and they started to work together on a book called Kuhlbox. Needless to say, I heard about Chetan before I had really met him. When I did, I had remembered I did know him the whole time, from Dragon Lady. We were all really part of the same club, comic books.
Ken was really the one that introduced me to Chetan and TIC TOC TOM. He had written stories and contributed artwork for the book. Often, bringing in copies along with him as we chatted. I was very preoccupied with school and working on another comic book anthology with Ken called SUICIDE, at the time.
Chetan was very laid back and cool from the beginning, talking about comics and cracking jokes. He was always showing new pages in progress he had been working on for TIC TOC TOM. Back then, comic books weren’t done digitally, so it was always interesting to see these pages because you couldn’t hide anything, no undo button.
Chetan would be working on them in-between courses, sitting outside the class room at the tables. It felt like everyone lived at school. If we weren’t in school, we might have all been at the Beverly Tavern, having a beer and wings.
I had illustrated three short stories for TIC TOC TOM during my time at school. Two were plotted by myself and scripted by Chetan, and the other was written by Ken (How many times I mention his name already? lol).
Chetan did dialogue for two stories, which was fun because I had no idea what he was going to write, and was surprised when I got the see the finished results. It was very raw and spontaneous.
My memories of Art school are still a bit of a haze and the details are sketchy.
I mostly just work on painting these days, but I still have a fondness for Comic books, and my experience on TIC TOC TOM.
Thanks Chetan.
– Victor Ramirez
September 2015
