Ted, the Chocolate Bar Drummer: A Mean Drum Solo, Played Straight-Faced

Every band has one member who takes the job dead seriously, and in Jimmy Pepper & The Chocoband that member is Ted. The print catches him mid-solo behind a green drum kit, sticks up, jaw set — a chocolate bar in a tracksuit playing like the song personally offended him. The joke is that he never smiles through it: the meaner the solo, the straighter the face.

Ted is the band’s strongman drummer in the studio’s cartoon universe: cocoa-brown, built like a bar of chocolate that lifts, and loyal to the backbeat the way other people are loyal to family. Drawn in bold retro lines with a drummer’s whole vocabulary — snare, toms, cymbals and that big starred bass drum — the design is a portrait of rhythm as a personality.

New to the gang? Start with the frontman’s own confession in The Chalkboard Confession: Why This Little Daydreamer Keeps a Hammer Behind His Back — then come back and give the drummer his due.