Lost Side of Suburbia References
LSOS created by Kory Merritt

Compiled by Curtis Hoffmann. Contact me for corrections or additions.

Kory attended SUNY Brockport, which is probably what gave us the town of Brockleport in LSOS, and received the John Locher Memorial Award in 2007 for his weekly strip Brockport Chronicled. While the BC comics aren't available online, some of Kory's other works prior to the start of LSOS are. In 2009, he appeared in the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) college weekly - the Reporter. Most of the cartoons that ran in the Reporter are topical and student life-based, but there are a few panels that hint at what he would do later on in LSOS (such as inserting Opus and Bill the Cat references, as well as a fully-formed, but unnamed, version of C. Percival Trullus) . The female character that appears occasionally looks to be a very early version of Margo, but she's not named in the strip, either.

Trullus
Dobbs and Calvin
Dobbs, Bill the Cat and Opus
Trullus
Trullus
Dobbs and Bill the Cat


In 2009, Amazon had a contest where the winner might get a syndicated newspaper deal. Kory made the top ten, but was disqualified for getting a contract with a different syndicate. Regardless, his entry, CounterCulture is still in the archives, and it shows Margo Bower (AKA: Birdsfoot) and the Ermine Queen as fully-formed characters. Margo's boyfriend Dobbs is also shown (actual name is Berkeley).

Announcement of the Top 10 finalists
CounterCulture Strips


Kory's name shows up fairly heavily in a google search, but most of the hits are on his LSOS e-books. So, I weeded through the list and found the links to articles that are a bit more relevant.

Announcement of the 2007 Locher Award Winner
List of past Locher Award winners
Interview with the Masons About Derring-Do Dan having a Masonic symbol on his arm
Welcome Page for the Glenn Curtiss Elementary art program
Mention of a mural that some of Kory's students worked on


Kory also appeared briefly in The Rochester Labor News but he's not in any of the online archived issues that I've sifted through.