So here we are with the original Basic Premise for Hubris. The name of the comic strip and the TV show Hubris hosted was to be ‘Because It’s There’. “Because It’s There” was the famous answer George Lee Mallory gave when asked why the heck he wanted to climb Mount Everest. I thought it was a pretty good excuse to do most anything outdoors. A nice syndicate editor told me to quit fooling around and use the name ‘Hubris’ instead. And who am I to ignore a good editor?
All through the original strips, Hubris’ name was painfully obvious. He was big and blustery and Doug The Dog (or Earl, in a lot of the first strips. Patrick McDowell’s ‘Mutts’ put a stop to me calling the dog ‘Earl’, because who wants to be accused of not being bright enough to avoid naming one of your characters the same as those in hotshot award-winning strips) had to pull his fat out of the fire on lots of occasions. As I wrote more and more strips and added more characters, Hubris’ character smoothed out to something more relatable. Still big and blustery, but not quite so blithely oblivious to his own shortcomings.
What is an Alpo? His nose? foot? Evidently not his hands.
Alpo is a dog food brand that’s been around long enough to be iconic. Like, say, “Twinkies” or “Kleenex” or suchlike.