Creating Hodge was a conglomeration of several comic strip and cartoon characters I have always appreciated, while inserting a bit of myself into the mix. The psychological makeup of Hodge would be like taking Barney Rubble, the Peanuts Charlie Brown and Linus Van Pelt, along with my personality and putting them into a mixing blender. Once you had them minced and mixed, you end up with a (1)philosophical minded,(2) hapless lug who seems to be (3) pocket blocked behind the ole’ eight ball. Hodge is the kind of guy, that even when (4) he wins, he loses and in the end it’s the efforts of his (5) enduring wife that keeps him going forward, even if one step closer to his death. Hodge was designed to be the (6) “observer” of life and those around him, much like how Barney Rubble followed Fred Flinstone into mayhem, but never purposely (7) walked into it of his own volition!
After designing his personality, I then turned to giving him a little piece of me by tying in the places and the things of my life that had special meaning. His name for example, Matthias J. Hodge, was pieced together by taking the name of my childhood home street (Matthias), along with the name of a local ice cream stand that has fueled my ice cream addiction for decades (Hodgies of Amesbury MA). Since we are on the subject of ice cream, whenever the wife and I would go to Hodgies, the first thing I would say after having my first bite of my staple Coffee-Cookie N Cream hot fudge sundae, with whipped cream and no nuts, would be… “How Sweet It Is” !! …and I’ll bet you thought the name came from Jackie Gleasons famous saying from the “Honeymooners” (kinda-sorta), or the famous James Taylor song “How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You” (not so much).
