Ever seen a Bugga Bear?
Anyone who’s watched Duke Football has, whether they realize it or not. “Bugga Bear” is a favorite term of associate head coach Ron Middleton. It’s also one of the many inside jokes included in junior cornerback Johnny Williams’s “Hard Hit Comics,” published before every home game on GoDuke.com.
“[Bugga Bear] is someone who’s really, really good at what they do,” Williams said. “[Freshman running back Josh] Snead, in reference to him, he does really good things out there on the football field. [Middleton] calls him a ‘Bugga Bear,’ or a ‘Train Killer’ or a ‘Boy Dog,’ so I used the ‘Bugga Bear’ thing.”
The “Bugga Bear” joke exemplifies Williams’s brand of funny, lighthearted humor, conveyed through his portrayals of himself, his teammates, his coaches and their football lives in a charmingly minimalist, caricature-heavy black-and-white drawing style. Some of the jokes, like this one, are drawn straight from things he sees at practice. Others are a little less reality-based—like sophomore wide receiver Conner Vernon giving a massive thumbs-up in the first installment [pictured at left].
“I just wanted to make fun of him,” Williams said, laughing.
When reading the comics, the first thing that stands out is how funny they actually are. What’s also apparent is Williams’s ability. He’s a Visual Arts major, and “Hard Hit” is part of an independent study he’s doing with his advisor Merrill Shatzman, associate professor of the practice of Visual Arts.
Artistically inclined all his life—something he said he picked up from his father—it wasn’t until Williams got to Duke that he began to culture and develop his skills, taking a silk-screening class, a course on mapping self-identity with Shatzman and a comics class with Bill Fick, a visiting professor of the practice of Visual Arts.
“What [Williams] is doing is he’s doing these initial drawings—and it’s very important to Johnny to keep his hand-drawn skills involved in the projects he’s doing so they’re not all digitally generated. And then he scans the drawings and manipulates via text or color tones in the background—or even how he might design the images, by cutting them up or rearranging them—all using Adobe Photoshop,” Shatzman said. In embracing this technology, Williams can take what he used to draw in his notebook and turn it into story-driven, sequential comics.
But back to the jokes, which, Williams said, are the main motivation for “Hard Hit Comics.”
“I can do portraits and all that, but I really like being funny and making people laugh,” Williams said. “People say I’m funny, I don’t see it that much—but I just like seeing people happy and laughing.”
Knowing this, Shatzman and Williams came up with the concept for “Hard Hit,” and they met with head coach David Cutcliffe, who had some ideas for the project.
“Coach Cut, he was like, maybe we could put it on GoDuke,” Williams said. “I think this was the best idea, for everybody to see it instead of just people who come to the games.”
Thus began the three-step schedule in which Williams completes his comic by the Monday before a home game and then sends it to Shatzman; from there, people in the Athletics Department look at the piece and by Thursday a final version is submitted.
Shatzman said Williams meets the deadlines without fail, and Williams said each installment takes up to 10 hours to produce. Then they go online, the team sees them and he hears about it.
“It’s all for fun, so I’m not going to put anything in there that I know somebody really wouldn’t like,” Williams said. “I also tell them before I put them in there—I don’t ask them if I can put them in there, I tell them. It’s been a fun process doing this.”
Cutcliffe has been following along with “Hard Hit Comics” closely, and he said Williams has talent and has been doing well staying within the parameters of what he can and cannot depict. But also, one of the reasons he thinks the project has been so well-received is that even though Williams goes after his teammates and coaches, he manages to provide a certain balance.
“He’s clever, he is, and I think all of us are capable of handling these renditions of certain people because he’s not so kind to himself in some of these regards,” Cutcliffe said. “I think it’s fun, and it’s all meant in fun.”
Teammates Donovan Varner—a junior wide receiver and Williams’s roommate—and Vernon seemed to echo Cutcliffe’s assessment—and unlike Cutcliffe, both of them have been featured, Vernon’s thumb in particular.
“Johnny, like [Varner] said, he’s just a comedian, and he’s very artistic,” Vernon said. “He’s always drawing, so that he’s able to do that actually is just great for us and him. And if he has to put me in there to get an ‘A’, I’m happy.”
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the comic is its levity even when dealing with serious issues. During the home game against Alabama, Williams sustained a concussion—the only Blue Devil to suffer such an injury this season—and in the comic’s third installment, he draws up a number of dreams he supposedly had while recuperating in the hospital.
Williams said he created the dreams as a way to be playful about his injury, even though the incident was frightening for everyone involved.
“I’m glad he made a good comeback, but at the time, it was pretty bad,” Varner said. “He was in his room asleep all day and had headaches constantly, stuff like that, but I think he made a strong comeback.”
Williams has fully recovered from the injury, and his playing—and hard hits, a notion he’s all too familiar with—has continued.
As he pursues Visual Arts academically and in his own work, he and Shatzman strive to achieve an ideal harmony of school and football. Williams said having a major that he’s passionate about gives him a little bit of an edge, and it keeps things new.
“It makes it real interesting. The art world here is probably the best art world you can get,” Williams said. “You can do anything you want to…. When I came in, I wanted to do graphic design, but they were like, you can do this, you can do that, and it changed everything—in a good way.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.