About

The Comic

Johnny the Mediocre Human is a comic strip about college life. It ran daily in The Chronicle, Duke University’s student newspaper, from 1997 through 1999.

Johnny is an average Duke student, normal in every respect, which is why he was chosen to star in a big-budget daily comic. He shares a triple with William, a reclusive computer science major, and Ben, a depressed philosophy major, plus STU the Computer, Nick the Squirrel and Mo the Bat. And when a party needs rescuing, there’s Fratman, a superhero with a white baseball cap and the power to turn water into beer.

Along the way, UNC-Chapel Hill is swallowed by a fiery hole, Johnny becomes the art world’s favorite critic with two words, his tent group goes underground to wait for basketball tickets, and a big corporation buys the comic and suspends all punchlines.

Where It Came From

Johnny first appeared, in a larval form, in the school newsletters at Frank W. Cox High School in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in 1993 and 1994, as Johnny, the Mediocre Sophomore. In November 1996 I sent seven comics to The Chronicle, and in January 1997 Johnny welcomed his readers.

It ran every semester until the spring of 1999, when I put down the pencil. The comics were collected in a book, Prince Quirky, which came out in the spring of 2000, my last semester at Duke.

The Cartoonist

I’m Porter Mason. I wrote and drew all of Johnny, and I have published comics since I was 13. Besides Johnny, there’s Bassist Wanted, about the music industry, and One Nation, Thunder Dog, about politics.

I also used to perform and teach comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York and Los Angeles. In my spare time, I raise millions of dollars for nonprofits online.

These days I draw Roonie the Rabbit, a comic strip about a bunch of cute little animals with some very big feelings. I just Kickstarted its first book, Cute Animals for Flawed People, a beautiful hardback collecting the first 301 comics.