The Lloyd Dobler Effect

by David Gallaher

There's a scene in Say Anything...you know the one...where Lloyd Dobler, with his whole-hearted conviction, tells Diane's father:

I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.

And the everything goes still. Like everyone's waiting for him to apologize for wanting something different. But he doesn’t. He commands the moment.

I think about that line more than is probably healthy for a man my age. And not just because I still half-believe Dobler went off to become a trained hitman in Grosse Pointe Blank, folding mixtapes into body armor. I think about it because, more often than not, it echoes how I’ve felt in my career (that and when I was younger, my resemblance to John Cusack was uncanny).

I have a friend...brilliant guy, wildly talented...who grew up dreaming of drawing DC Comics ' Superman. That was the north star for him. And wouldn’t you know it, he made it happen. In comics. In TV. In ways that helped redefine Kryptonian mythology for a whole new generation. And I couldn’t be prouder of him.

But that was never my dream. Not really.

And it's not envy talking. It's not disdain for the legacy characters or the mythology we all grew up with. It's just...look...I never wanted to play trumpet in someone else's orchestra. I wanted to build the damn instrument. Tune it weird. Make it sing in keys the rest of the band didn’t recognize. (more on that here)

My point is ... in an industry addicted to franchises, sequels, multiverses, and regurgitated IP, I didn’t want to be a cog in the machine. I wanted to build my own machine. Weld the gears out of old heartbreak and Scotch tape. Wire it with emotional resonance. Design it to catch fire and still keep going. That's the Lloyd Dobler effect. The refusal to define your life by what's been handed down. The hunger to chart your own constellations.

And that's what I’ve been lucky enough to do...again and again. From The Only Living Boy to High Moon to Box 13, I’ve carved out strange, stubborn little stories...some gritty, some bright-eyed, some haunted. All mine (well, technically co-owned, but you get the idea). And I’ve made them for readers from 8 to 80. Not to sell them something processed, but to offer something earned. Something lived.

That's the other half of the Dobler Effect nobody talks about. It's not just a rejection of the commercial meat grinder. It's a call to arms. A challenge to make something...not just a character or a comic, but a myth. A moment. A thing that wouldn’t have existed if you hadn’t been there to pull it out of the fire.

And yeah, that means building your own IP. Not just in the boardroom sense. I mean the kind of intellectual property that's soul-backed. A character that bleeds your insecurities. A setting that breathes like a place you once lived. A plot that fractures and reforms the way memory does after a breakup. You need a story that is so unmistakably yours, nobody could fake it...not even a good mimic with decent SEO.

And here's the part people forget: every great franchise started with somebody sitting at a kitchen table, up too late, scribbling like hell. Star Wars wasn’t a brand, it was a gamble George Lucas nearly lost everything on. Jack Kirby was inventing entire universes while eating cold beans out of a can. Ruth Wakefield didn’t stumble onto Nestlé's empire by playing it safe...she burned the edges of her cookie dough and sparked a cultural phenomenon. Every towering piece of IP, every billion-dollar logo, every cape, laser sword, or enchanted cookie began with someone who was hungry, unproven, and bold enough to not lower their standards.

That's the difference. It's not about avoiding the mainstream. It's about earning your way into it without compromising what made you special. You don’t break into the canon by imitation... you do it with stubborn originality. By refusing to sand down your story's edges just to make it fit the mold. You don’t need to play smaller. You need to dream louder. We owe it to ourselves to make the remarkable happen...not by waiting for permission, but by declaring: this is worth making, even if nobody sees it yet.

So build the thing. Protect it. Shape it like a weapon. Name it like a child. Throw it into the world with your name carved into the spine and your convictions wrapped around the core. Not because you think it’ll make you rich or famous. But because it's yours. Because you have to.

That's not rebellion. That's authorship.

That's the Lloyd Dobler effect.