The Secret Behind the Secret Monkey

And the secret origin of Dursin's Dungeon

As I’m sure a lot of us do, I constantly get a notice that my Google Drive space is at 80% and I should pay for more storage. I don’t see the point in giving them any more money for that, so I usually just go through my old junk and Marie-Kondo it.

In my deleting, I went into a folder titled “Secret Monkey.” I hadn’t thought about The Secret Monkey in ages. For those of you (well, everyone) who don’t know, The Secret Monkey was a comic that my friend John Hunt and I collaborated on about 25 years ago, which was actually my real first stab at comic book self-publishing.

The comic was a satire of old-school Marvel books written by Stan Lee. He was an albino monkey from the future who could talk, and he used his monkey agility and strength to fight crime. He was basically Spider-Man in money-form, and he wore a paper bag over his head as a disguise (hence the “secret” part.)

John was the actual creative force behind the book, as the true artist of the tandem. He would usually send me a plot synopsis and I would type up a script. Then I would send it off to him and he would draw it, ink it, letter it, and color it. In retrospect, I took way too much credit for this endeavor.

We published it online, in a time when digital comics weren’t really a thing. Still, we received quite a bit of positive feedback from those who did read it. We were even mentioned in Wizard Magazine, one of the preeminent publications on the comics industry back then. At the time, I loved telling people that.

Bouyed by that tiny bit of fame, we decided to print some copies and try and make a little money off of it. This obviously proved very hard, but while promoting the comic, John was able to make some waves in the industry and his full-time job to this day is lettering a lot of Manga. So, it was good for something.

But it was good for something else, as well. Personally, it was the most fun I’ve ever had creating something. John and I would frequently get together over breakfast with a spiral notebook and hash out the plots and jokes. We also loved coming up with fun side bits and things to post on the Secret Monkey website. These were things that used to be in the comics of our youth, like ads with super-heroes promoting Twinkies or not to bully each other. We would come up with fake ads, fake letters pages, and fake interviews with ourselves. We really got a charge out of it, and once or twice we even got asked if it was real, which definitely made us chuckle.

As one of these sends-offs to old comics, I tried to duplicate Stan Lee’s old Stan’s Soapbox with a column I called Dursin’s Dungeon (and yes, it’s 25 years later and I am still using that name. So if you thought the name of this Substack was a reference to some kind of sex thing, now you know.) For your reading pleasure, here is my very first Dursin’s Dungeon from about 25 years ago:

“I would like to start by saying that no one here at Turbo Comics is more pleased than I to see The Secret Monkey finally see his first issue. In my eighteen years in the comics industry I have never been so excited for one comic. Let me tell you why.

I work in the basement. Once in awhile, a man dressed in chainmail comes down to give me a slab of raw meat for supper and tells me who is winning the American League Eastern Division. It’s not an easy life, but what is? Anyway, last month, John Hunt came to me and said, “Mike, you’re one of my best writers, and I trust you implicitly.” “Thanks,” I replied, “But I’m Matt.” “Mark, I trust you, so that’s why I’m giving you a plum assignment as a writer on our brand new book. It will be the biggest book to hit the stands since The Death and very quick subsequent Rebirth of Superman. It’s called… (pause)…(more)… The Secret Monkey.”

Well, I was floored. John hadn’t given me a new book to write since I did the comic adaptation of the classic Gregg Head film The Lemon, but I have done my fair share of writing, most recently on The Purple Flower Gang. Don’t fret, though, Aaron “My God” Mihale has taken over the reins on that book, so it won’t lose a step. And, yes, I was made somewhat infamous because I wrote the first Turbo comic to feature full frontal nudity when I penned Phallus, the World’s Hardest Man. So, you may remember me from those rather humble beginnings, but here now is something completely new and different. And, God willing, you’ll all buy it so that maybe I can afford some garnish for my raw steak next week.

So,… yeah.

By the way, that picture was from an ad I had found and we just thought we needed to put it somewhere because it looked like our character was selling cheap bras (wicked cheap, even). I don’t know why I didn’t incorporate that into the post somehow. A missed opportunity for sure.

The unfortunate thing that I realized reading that old poat is I took myself way too seriously back then, and that version of Dursin’s Dungeon eventually moved away from the fun spoofs and morphed into my own personal blog. Reading those old posts made me kind of sad, knowing how much fun I had initially, and how I then eschewed all that for angry rants about the state of the comics industry, or even just the state of the world. I also eventually dropped the act completely and “came out” as an indie creator trying in vain to sell a comic, rather than someone who had been in the comics industry for “eighteen years.” By the way, I was only about 24 when I wrote that.

We ended up making 14 or so issues of Secret Monkey, but as I said, as time went on and John was getting actual paying gigs in comics, he had less time for side projects. That wasn’t really what spelled the end of it, however. What really did the comic in was my fixation on trying to sell the printed copies and not just writing the thing for the sheer enjoyment of it. It may sound silly, but that is one of the biggest regrets of my life. Probably because it’s kind of a metaphor on where my mental state was at the time; mid-twenties, single, broke, too much time on my hands, and latching on to this comic thing to try and gain some notoriety, maybe a job in comics somehow, and a little satisfaction that I had accomplished something. Also, I was no doubt feeling a little inadequate that John was the real creator of the comic and I just wrote some silly jokes for him, so I thought I needed to at least pull my weight somehow and make a few sales. Not that John ever made me feel that way. It was my neurosis.

I wish I had the perspective back then to really appreciate what I was doing while I was doing it. I wish I had the foresight to see that those fun times creating The Secret Monkey would one day be over, so I should just enjoy the ride. I wish… I had a therapist back then.

Eventually, I did make a comic of my own, which John did some coloring and lettering for, and you can read it here ( issue #0 is free). You can also listen to John and I and our friend Clay on our podcast. And if you want to support this Substack (since none of my comics made much money, hehe), you can become a paid subscriber, or Buy me a Coffee. How about this, since no one has ever done that, if you are the first to donate on Buy me a Coffee, I’ll send you a signed copy of Secret Monkey #1!

I also sell t-shirts and sweatshirts through Printify on eBay here. The holidays are coming, folks!

Thanks for reading. Keep on keepin’ on.