Chapter 7: A Tale of Two Men

In the wake of Jasper’s second disappearance, Casper swore off the comic life. He instead focused on rebuilding his family fortune (severely drained from the seven year fiasco of a renewed Undertoad). He liquidated a great number of Undertoad’s assets, including the noted headquarters building on Global Street. As a side note, the buyer of this property was none other than Bernadine Q. Tweedlehuffwiler-Jackson, who proceeded to launch CHIMP Press, the owner and publisher of The Global Street Journal, the fine publication you are currently enjoying.

Casper was soon incorrectly identified as an up-and-coming young entrepreneur. Being single, not outright ugly, and potentially fabulously well to do, it is no wonder that he soon became prey to a variety of potential gold-diggers, starting with the aforementioned Veronica Molitor. If she hadn’t soon been arrested for operating a dope ring out of her “golden gambling brothel” she probably would have been a contender for the lucky lady who got to steal Casper’s fortune. As it went, he got a great deal of attention from a wide variety of women, both vicious and merciless. Casper was practically drowning in models, strippers, unemployed actresses, and fortune-seeking swindlers.

In perhaps one of the wisest decisions he ever made in his entire life, Casper chose to marry a quiet, mousy, somewhat homely woman by the name of Mable Clunk. Why he ultimately chose her amongst a great number of far more “qualified” women is anyone’s guess. Mable was frumpy, stupid, ignorant, and unrelentingly dull. Her own son would later describe her as “the human equivalent of waiting in line at the DMV” and “the most unnecessary person I’ve ever met”. On the plus side, Mable was not interested in Casper’s money (if she could be called ‘interested’ in anything at all) and she had a severe loyalty largely compelled by inertia. It probably would have been too much work for her to move on.

Meanwhile, Jasper rejoined his gang before taking off in 1959 to “find America” by motorcycling across the country. According to a highly speculative letter from 1971, it was during this period that he met Dennis Hopper and “totally inspired him to do that Easy Rider movie everybody saw.” What is known is that he traveled the great breadth of North America for the next several years. It is likely that he visited all 50 states except Hawaii (which he couldn’t drive to) as well as traveling throughout Central America and having a long stint in Canada.

In 1965 Jasper found himself in a bar in Cleveland, OH where he famously overheard a conversation between two young men about “the old Under Toad stories.” Jasper joined in the conversation to learn that the young men loved many of Clara’s old comics because they were so real and “weren’t for kids” (though they were both quite adamant about their hatred for both of the two newest versions of the comic by Casper and Jasper respectively). Little did Jasper realize the great influence these two men would have; they were none other than Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar, both still to become well-respected producers of underground comics. Jasper took to heart much of what they excitedly spat about what comics could be and by 1970 had decided to make his return to the world of pictures and words.

a shot from Jasper's Roaching a Splif
c. 1971

He started by finding Pekar, still in Cleveland, who had nothing to offer in the way of advice (Pekar rarely made money off of his work and remained a file clerk until 2003), but he did offer Crumb’s new address in San Francisco. Traveling cross-country once more, Jasper arrived to find a thriving Crumb who did not remember him in the least and was not interested in again making his acquaintance. Luckily for Jasper, San Francisco was still a thriving artistic town and he fell in with a crowd of hippies who were fascinated by the idea of photos in comics even though none of them had the energy to pose. Jasper instead began taking pictures of his friends in their drug-addled states, lying on beanbag chairs with a giant homemade hookah in the middle. He added text that was largely based on actual conversations and crazy dreams and put them together as a semi regular magazine. Not wanting to be associated with Undertoad, he reused his old science magazine named, Transparent Life. Transparent Life quickly became quite successful amongst the “out-crowd” and Jasper became a local legend. Comics such as Sparking a Doobie, Roaching a Spliff, and Rocking the Ganja were wildly popular.

In 1972, Jasper and his friends were arrested and prosecuted for drug possession with the pictures in Jasper’s comics used as evidence. From that point on he took up the habit of taking photos of random people in public places and adding “appropriate” text afterwards. Most notable from this period are Sucking Grass, Toasting Herb, and Smoking a Joint. His popularity soared on the west coast. Unfortunately for him, his work was to be cut short. In 1975, during a gigantic drug-addled party at the Transparent Life Commune, he decided to jump fourteen of his friends on his ancient, badly rusted motorcycle. Amazingly, and to his credit, he had enough distance to make all of them. Tragically, one of the friends, “Chicken” Whitley, sat up at precisely the wrong moment (to relight his marijuana cigarette) and Jasper’s rear wheel took his head off.

Even though it was clearly an accident, Jasper was eventually convicted of murder in the first degree by Judge Connor Exonia (ironically the son of the aforementioned opinion writer Oliver Exonia) who evidently wanted to carry on his father’s vendetta against the Beck family. As of publication of this article, Jasper Beck is still incarcerated in the maximum-security ward of the United States Penitentiary, Atwater in Atwater, CA.