
Monkey was a parody of ALF, who instead of crash landing into a garage, crash lands into a basement. He's super intelligent, but accident prone, and all of his inventions blow up. The father is a clear parody of conservative TV dads such as Red Foreman, Ward Cleaver, Jim Anderson... eh, you get the idea, and Rob the son, is your basic idiot. Stacy went through a couple of changes, from a depressed goth girl to an outright sociopath who nearly murdered others on a few occasions. She was actually my favorite character to write for, as the conflict between her and Rob was good, and frankly, I like dark humor. Mom herself went through several changes, too. Initially a flapper (the absurdity tickled me) and then an alcoholic, and then a regular, and then a general exasperated TV Mom in its initial run, and when I rebooted it on its own domain, a not-so-secret alcoholic again. Mostly done because I thought the initial character, while workable as a straight-man type, just wasn't very interesting and a weak link in the comics.
My biggest lament with Damn It, Monkey was rebooting it to begin with. I should have never, ever done that. The pacing was all off for a page-an-update serial, the serial format just didn't work for its style of humor and the story was too weak to carry it (the comic was never about story), and I really couldn't keep up with the schedule of regular updates (a flaw very common with every project I've ever done.) The character of Mom was the only real improvement. Squirt too - initially a simple youngster parody, and a vague, untouched parody of adopted children in sitcoms, I was able to touch on his character a little more in the reboot.


As a note, I'd also occasionally sneak a few visual tributes to some cartoonists in some episodes, too. Slight references to the golden age of cartoons can be seen (notably Clampett and Jones), but also modern ones such a Jhonen Vasquez showed up, too.
Unfortunately, a serial was just the wrong format for the comic when I rebooted it. Running gags could go on forever or die young, and each page really has to end on both a note that was intended to be funny, but wraps up the page, for the moment. I retooled the characters a bit, too, and while mostly for the better in some respects, Mandy and Rob's relationship turned unintentionally into Billy and Mandy. I never watched the show too intently, and I never intended on this, but I definitely recognize those similarities. Frankly, if I ever re-re-booted it, I'd go back to something much closer to my original ideas. Not that I'm saying I would, but I'm saying I have thought about doing so a slight amount, and I stress slight. A serial works much better for what I'm doing with Ratboy - allowing for character development and a progression of a single linear story. Much, much better. And frankly, I need to keep going on that before I can think of working with Damn It, Monkey again, anyways.