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 I’m not sure
how to start except to say that I’ve wanted
to be a cartoonist since I was twelve. When I look back on my life I
can
honestly say that I never wanted to do anything else except draw comic
strips
and comic books. I submitted my first comic strip to the syndicates
when I was
in High School (a strip called Twilight). It was soundly rejected, by
which I
mean I received only form letters back that told me in the most generic
and
ambivalent way that my work was of interest to no one. Undaunted, I
continued
to write and I made my second attempt while I was in college. I had a pretty
checkered college career, but
suffice it to say that I had submitted comics regularly to the college
paper
and in my second year was invited to edit the comics page. I loved it. I changed schools the following year and the
paper at my new college didn’t have a comics page. Obviously this was
unacceptable, so I went to the editor of the paper and asked if he
would give
me some space. My assertiveness was rewarded with half a page for the
rest of
that semester. The following semester I was given a full page, the
following
year two full pages and by the time I left, the comics page took up
three full
pages. I was a little picky about the quality and three pages is a lot
to fill so
towards the end I was filling a lot of the space with my own work. It
was time
to give the syndicates another try; however, despite all my labor, my
second
submission to the syndicates was as soundly rejected as the first (i.e.
a
familiar collection of form letters was received in response to my
solicitations). Once I left
college I had to find a job obviously
( I dig the starving artist gig as much as the next guy, but the comics
trade
was quickly beginning to look a little long on the starving and a
little short
on the artist). But don’t think this meant that I’d given up. I
submitted a
third comic strip shortly after college and this delightful entry was
merely
rejected (minus the ‘soundly’). I received a number of actual
responses! They
ranged from a short scribbled note on my cover letter stating that the
strips
were good but not what they were looking for, to a full letter stating
that
they had no openings but inviting me to submit work in the future. One
kind
editor returned my entire submission with short two and three word
comments
next to every strip, letting me know which strips he felt were funny
and which
he thought were weak. I don’t know that I agreed with him but I
appreciated the
response and after thinking on all the responses I’d received, I gave
up on
newspaper comic strips (that’s right, I said ‘gave up’). I realized from
comments of the various editors
that the syndicates were really only interested in gag-a-day strips and
I knew
that just wasn’t what I wanted to do. I decided to try a web page for a
little
while but I couldn’t figure out how to get listed on the search engines
and
after several months of only getting hits from friends and family I put
the
whole thing a way for a while (several years, in fact). But the love of
comics
was always back there waiting to get out. I had also amassed a pretty
extensive
set of characters and story ideas and I started to worry that they
might never
get a chance to sniff around for an audience that could appreciate them. A few short
years ago I picked up an old set of my
comic strips from college and even now, many years later, I still think
they’re
hilarious (I found that I still laughed out loud to some of them). So here I am trying to get back in the mix.
The world of web comics has grown a lot since my last attempt and maybe
there’s
a chance I might get some help this time. Anyway, I want my guys to get
their
chance to run around outside of the box for a while. I still have to
make a
living so I can’t promise regular scheduled updates but I’ll try and be
as
consistent as my schedule allows (anyone that can’t stand the wait,
feel free
to throw me a million bucks and I’ll quit my job and do this full time,
I
promise). I reserve the right to be an irritating perfectionist, which
means I
may pull a strip at any time and change the dialogue a little or
re-draw the artwork
if I think it improves the work. Never fear, however, with any luck
I’ll
eventually have enough work to put a book together and once they’re in
print
then they’re locked. If you can’t
tell, I’m a bit of a blabbermouth, so
feel free to contact me. It would be nice to know someone’s actually
reading
this stuff. Copyright
© 2006, www.wickedsmash.com
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