Now that I had this great full time job in Toronto, I would go out at lunch to the Silver Snail comic store up on Queen St and buy my monthly fix of comics. Some days, I'd spend a couple of hours there. Whenever I was late, Tom would go nuts and chew me out (even though I was spending 10 hours a day at the studio on average).
One day I found this on my desk after a long comic book binge.
First, it shows the S.S. Nelvana boat listing in the ocean after having hit a large iceberg with a dollar sign and "June" written on it, as the characters from the film jump overboard to save themselves On the deck of the ship are four characters. The first is a bearded character who is Frank Nissen saying, "Can I wear the hat now?" Next to him are Michael Hirsch, Patrick Loubert (wearing the captain's hat) and Clive Smith (bailing water).
Patrick is saying, "The 'Drats' are leaving... should we jump now- or should we go down with the ship?" The studio was in major financial trouble at the time and needed about $1 million to finish the film. This drawing was done in March and the money was needed by June.
Michael is saying, "Anybody want another cup of coffee? We got lots of cashews left over from the last promotional meeting." The pep rallies the studio held to keep our spirits high weren't working too well and at the one where they announced the problem, nobody ate or drank very much.
Off on the horizon is a drawing of Reg Hart saying, "Come to me children." During this period, Reg had sent out flyers talking about how he wanted to form his own studio to animate the film about Gilgamesh. It was supposed to be 12 hours long and if there was a World War III, the studio would stop production to produce war propaganda films to keep the artists busy. I still have those flyers somewhere.
The two characters in the water are saying, "What did you say Reg Hart's phone number was?" and the other character replies, "I only know Alvaro's!" Alvaro was an animator who had opened up a small farm studio to do work for Hanna-Barbera on Scooby-Doo at the time.
On the back of the drawing is written, "Brian Lee did not laugh when he saw this."
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