Comic strip tease

Got a lovely note recently from Duane Abel, who does the comic strip ZED. He listens to my podcast, which is really cool because I’m a fan of his work. And it reminded me that at one time I too wanted to write a comic strip. I’ve always been an amateur cartoonist. You can see an example above. And I did have a comic strip appear in the local Woodland Hills newspaper when I was in high school. It was a weekly paper and after a few months I was let go for budgetary reasons. They couldn’t afford me. I was making $5 a week. They must've really been strapped because I offered to do it for free and they still said no. 

I investigated how you got a comic strip into real newspapers. You had to go through syndication firms. The big one I seem to remember was King Syndication. I don’t know what it is now, or even if the process has changed. But I did learn this – it was HARD to get accepted by King Syndication. Lots of people submitted strip ideas and only a select few got chosen.

That was discouraging but not crushing. I knew I wanted to somehow get into comedy and figured that any avenue I chose would have strict gatekeepers.

No, what really put the brakes on my comic strip career was this: the pressure. At least the presumed pressure. The drawing was no problem. I could draw and was quite comfortable working in pen & ink. But I would have to come up with a joke every single day. That’s SEVEN whole jokes a WEEK. On Sunday it had to be a longer joke.

For God sakes, I’m not a machine!

The irony of course is that as a comedy writer I had to come up with seven jokes every fifteen minutes. Still, there’s a part of me that always thought, what a great life comic strip writers probably have. I’d see pictures of Charles Schulz (PEANUTS) working in his beautiful studio and sigh. (Of course later a Northern California fire destroyed that studio, but still.) I hope I’m right. I’ve always loved comic strip art and admired many of the artists. I just assume they love their work. And what could be better than that? Okay… a cartoon series based on your comic. And maybe a movie… and merchandising..

from By Ken Levine