Do What The Monkey Says (or he’ll turn your head into a stack of pancakes)

When Gerard was young he got his tonsils taken out and his grandmother bought him a stack of Captain America comics for him to read in hospital, kick-starting a love of comics. He started buying comics for himself (the first comic he bought with his own money was an issue of X-Men that had Wolverine being crucified on the cover), and quickly decided that he wanted to make a career out of comics. When he was in middle school his mother would drive him to the Newark library so that he could look at art books. He got a job at the local comic book shop when he was 15 (he got held up while working there; the robbers put a gun to his head execution style). As a teenager he discovered comics like Watchmen, Dark Knight, Doom Patrol and Krom. After finishing high school he went to the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, where he majored in Illustration and Cartooning. He showed up in drag one day because he’s a cool guy like that. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

Gerard's SVA yearbook photo.

After leaving college Gerard interned a lot, also working in toy design for a company called Funhaus. He interned at DC for Joe Boyle, working mostly as a photocopy boy. While there he met Jim Krueger (celebrated comic book writer), who paid him out of pocket to do stuff for him on freelance projects. After a while Joe Boyle got a new job at Curious Pictures helping with Sheep In The Big City, and brought Gerard with him as his intern. While there, he met Stu Horvath, with whom he started a project called The Amazing Goffo Brothers, Piano Movers Extraordinaire, which was about a pair of Italian brothers who had surreal adventures in a dark, creepy city. One of the minor characters was a little monkey that slapped people in the face with a spatula if they disrespected breakfast. Unfortunately, Gerard and Stu had a falling out, and split the characters between them. Joe’s only request was that he was allowed to do something with the monkey.

Soon after, Joe and Gerard started working on a new project called The Breakfast Monkey, about a Scandinavian flying imp that talked like Bjork and could harness “Breakfast Magic”. The idea came from a stuffed toy monkey Gerard used to have. Whenever his girlfriend at the time was sick, Gerard would put on a squeaky voice and make the monkey talk about how wonderful pancakes were to cheer her up. Gerard did the penciling, Joe did the inking, and they both came up with the storyline. The animatic available on YouTube features the song “Crusin’ For Crazy”, which was the first ever song written by Gerard and his friend Ray Toro. There was some interest in the show from Cartoon Network, but Gerard quickly realized that he had very little control over what would happen to the project. Eventually, Cartoon Network dropped The Breakfast Monkey because they had just signed Aqua Teen Hunger Force and didn’t want another food show. Their loss.

This is the animatic Joe and Gerard made. Joe did the voice of the wrestler, Gerard did the Breakfast Monkey, and they split the other characters between them.

And this is the Breakfast Monkey Documentary. It was filmed by one of their friends who was studying film as a school project. It features Gerard with a bowl cut and Joe in a coat lined with black fur.