LAKESIDE — In his MySpace.com bio, illustrator Ethan Nicolle facetiously asserts that it was at the age of fetus that he decided he wanted to draw comic books. He writes that in his mother’s uterus he would use embryonic fluids to draw silly cartoons on the fleshy walls surrounding him, and that his ultrasounds were similar to a primitive Far Side cartoon.

However, the mother of the 1998 North Bend High School graduate remembers her son’s artistic beginnings as being far less dramatic.

“His grandfather made Ethan a small chalkboard when he was about five.” recalled Diane Beggs of Lakeside, “I would sit with him and show him how to draw lines, simple things.”

Simple lines eventually morphed into a career, recently culminating in one of his ideas being picked up by the Cartoon Network for a series pilot.

Nicolle explained during a phone conversation from his new digs on the outskirts of Los Angeles, where he moved from Portland  several weeks ago. 

And while he demurred from discussing dollars, Nicolle said he would receive a “pretty hefty chunk of change” for the cartoon rights and the pilot, but that if the project becomes a series he is expecting a “humongous chunk of change.”

The Bay Area D.A.R.E. program published Nicolle’s first comic book, “The Drug Busters,” when he 10. The gist of the story is that a ninja turtle rip-off team of drug fighters would rescue hip, mullet-bearing teens from the Marijuana Monsters.

The next year, he won the nationwide James Bond Jr. Create a Villain Contest with a story about a Super Nintendo and a box of Spy Gear toys that was shipped to his low-income duplex on the meth-laden streets of Coos Bay.

Nicolle also self-published comics while a North Bend High student, including one about a sumo wrestler on a blind date.

But it was his Chumble Spuzz graphic novels, which were published last year by the prestigious Independent Comics/SLG Publishing, that garnered the interest of  Cartoon Network.

Starring a duo of toothy-faced idiot vermin, the first volume of Chumble Spuzz, which was released in January 2008, features a satan-possessed swine and a vampire chicken.

The second installment was released in July 2008 and is equally twisted.

“Basically, the main characters find a man that was raised by pigeons in their front yard, and in the second episode the grim reaper commits suicide,” explained Nicolle.

In addition to the Cartoon Network, Chumble Spuzz has also generated recent interest from Electronic Arts and Universal Studios, according to Nicolle.

“But even though this is all exciting and very interesting,” he said, “I’ll always be a Coos Bay boy at heart.”