The Program

In late 1975, Wes Oleszewski was expanding his cartoon abilities. It was then that he wrote his first movie parody.

A take off on the famed disaster movie “Airport”, Wes’ version was given the moniker “Scareport”. At the time the teenaged cartoonist had no idea that far away the Zuker brothers were developing their version of a an airport disaster parody that would one day come out as “Airplane” and would earn zillions of dollars. Wes’ “Scareport” would not have such a lofty goal.

As with all of Wes’ very early work, the original “Scareport” was drawn into remarkably tiny frames, in pencil. The story contained plenty of the author’s dysfunctional spelling, ( notice the word “dollers” rather than “dollars”) his odd-ball humor, and some jokes that, to this day, only he understands.

The following year, 1976, Wes wrote a sequel to “Scareport” which was appropriately titled “Scareport 76”.

Again this work was done totally in pencil, in very small frames and contained all of Wes’ usual grammar glitches. It is clear, however, from reading this sequel, that his ability in constructing a plot was evolving for the better.

While away at college in the autumn of 1978, Wes decided to re-write the two Scareports. The re-write of the original “Scareport” was started in October of 1978 and the re-write of “Scareport 76” was started on Feruary 28, 1979 with both cartoons having their dialogue edited in 1982.

In the 1978-1979 re-write, both cartoons were done in pen, the text was proof-read to correct any spelling errors, the humor that only Wes understood was removed, and most importantly, the jokes were re-worked to be in a standard “4 frame order” to allow the readers to more easily follow the plot while also allowing the production to perhaps be published at some later date. Additionally, the artwork in each frame went far beyond other cartoons drawn by Wes- this being a sign of a cartoonist locked up in a dorm room for way too many days at a stretch. The project took months, but eventually the new versions of the Scareport cartoons were committed to paper.