Cruisin' 1977

"Cruisin' 1977" by Mike Royer (2022, pencil and ink on bristol board). 

My wife Kara and I collect alot of records and along the way somehow we started collecting the Cruisin' series, a nostalgia title that came out in the early Seventies featuring oldies from the 1950s and 60s interspersed with classic radio dj chatter and station ads. The whole collection is made up of 15 records, from 1955 to 1970, and the unique thing about the series is that the cover of each record features the same group of characters in different scenes through the years. The main protagonists are Eddie and Peg, two teenagers in love, who go through many ups and downs, including the Vietnam War and the student revolts of the Sixties, before finally getting married. Each cover was illustrated in classic comic book style, with word balloons and many background details specific to each year. It wasn't until we had collected these records for many years that I realized that the artist who drew these covers was Mike Royer, a cartoonist famous among comic book fans for his association with Jack Kirby, inking and lettering most of Kirby's comics throughout the 1970s, including The New Gods, Black Panther, and The Eternals.

When we sold our record store earlier this year, I got the idea to memorialize our run with some special art, so I contacted Mr. Royer to see about commissioning him to create a version of one of his classic covers as an homage to the Cruisin' series and to our time at Royal Cat Records. I chose his cover to Cruisin' 1967, which takes place in a hippie headshop, and asked him to update it to a record shop in 1977, the year punk broke, and place Kara and myself in the scene. The results were beyond my wildest dreams! I asked local cartoonist Jay Stephens to add colour to the black-and-white masterpiece Mr. Royer created, and I gave the whole package to Kara for Christmas this year.

Thank you Mike and Jay and Merry Christmas from Bryan and Kara!