The Parking Lot is Full is a comic drawn currently Jack McLaren and written by Pat Spacek, with past authors including Rob Green, John Winston, Eric Lippert, Jeff Couckuyt, Mark Pitcher, and Jef Theysmeyer.

The Parking Lot is Full is normally in a single panel format with a picture and a caption. Occasionally multi-panel strips are published, still with a caption. The subjects and content are usually dark, surreal, controversial, or obscene often dealing with violence, religion or pop culture.

The comic was originally an idea by Jack McLauren and Rob Green intended to be "based upon university life and featured various psychotic professors and a suicidal freak named Mr. Grenade Head". However, the would-be creators didn't follow through until about a year later.

When Rob and Jack moved into a house together with a circle of their friends they revived the idea for the comic. It became evident that Jack was the best artist of them, so he drew all the comics. "The comic's original premise and characters were speedily ditched in favor of a mixture of surrealism and violence fueled by the "Bunker residents" steady diet of horror films, psychoactive drugs, and extremist literature. Nasty, self-reflexive, absurdist and crude, this first incarnation of The Parking Lot is Full was produced as more of an in-joke than as anything consumable by the general population."

The authors managed to get The Imprint (the student paper of the University of Waterloo) to publish the comic. During this time, the Parking Lot is Full some of the authors began to stop contributing. Eric Lippert was the first to go, finding himself too busy to continue contribution, and Jon Winston "having drifted away from the comic-creating group into the shady drug underworld of Kitchener's inner city" was next. The four remaining authors created the strip for several months until Rob Green's relationship with several other of the authors deteriorated with the other authors and he finally stopped working on the strip.

After this, the comic gained a more consistent style from having one artist, one writer, and person to do post-production work on the computer. During this time, The Parking Lot is Full was published in several small press independent magazines and newspapers and The Parking Lot is Full became a presence on the internet with its web page. Jeff Couckuyt eventually left after graduation, but not before getting the post-production system down to where Jack and Pat could perform the work themselves.

In 1996 the first book was published, A Brief History of Fear. The Parking Lot is Full lost its web hosting because Mark Pitcher, who provided the hosting, ended his ISP business. To add to their dilemmas Pat Spacek graduated from the university soon after and secured employment in Korea as an English teacher.

As of currently, The Parking Lot is Full exists mostly on the internet, and Pat and Jack correspond through email and publish on their website plif.com.


"Little-known fact#6875:
There has never been a comic called "The Parking Lot Is Full".

Update: As of May 05, 2002, The Parking Lot Is Full is no longer being produced. The authors may, however, be starting another project soon. Rest in peace.

'Little-known Fact #6875:
There has never been a comic called "The Parking Lot Is Full".
'

As of May 5, 2002, PLIF is done. Jack and Pat have a letter up on the site underneath the last comic, which explains their decision, saying, in part, that "the two of us have basically outgrown both the form and the content of the comic." The end comes as no surprise to some regular readers of the comic, who correctly guessed that it would be done when the Rocko & Socko storyline (the only continuous storyline in the comic's history) came to a close.

I must say, it's provided me with a lot of laughs over the years, and I'll miss the twisted humor. However, Jack and Pat state that they intend to leave the site intact, so we should be able to enjoy the many, many comics in the archive for years to come.

If they do leave the site exactly as it is, you should be able to find the last comic and accompanying letter at: http://www.plif.com/thisweek/thisweek.htm

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