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I wrote this in my diary at 8:27a.m. on Thursday, April 12th, 2001.
The most essential part of a syndicate strip is humor, but this doesn't mean that the other parts aren't equally important. most have a small cast, maybe six central characters, maximum, ideally three. Use incidental extras where necessary. Even if doing a strip like "Doonesbury" or "For Better or For Worse", you have to establish the core first, worry about expanding your cartoon's universe AFTER syndication.
It must be tightly drawn. No pencils or grays in the final art. Period. Even Dilbert, which illustrates no skill in the rendering, is still both tightly and cleanly drawn. This sondept also extends to lettering. Big block letters. they must be very clearly legible even when shrunk to postage stamp sized smudgy newspaper print. If your lettering is terrible, scan it inot your computer and replace it with the "comic" font.
Remember your audience is middle America. And people in general want to read what they know. The most popular strips illustrate this best, "Dilbert" in the office, where most Americans spent most of their lives. "For Better or For Worse" because most people have some sort of family unit. "Peanuts" or "calvin and Hobbes" both because they touch on philospohical ideas most of us have thought of, but also because we all (I presume) have at one point been children.
The other significant thing about readership is that people want to be able to hand their newspaper to their kids without a second thought. Obviously this means no profanity. Also no sex. I believe that in America's current "political correct" climate, that "Beetle Bailey" would never make it to syndication if introduced now.
And I guess that leaves us with humor. Difficult to define. In all my creating, reading, and studying; my base definition for humor is "substitution", where you set people up to expect something, and give them something else. "Mom, I'm going to the store to pick up some bread, butter, milk, and a prostitute."
Again, all these points are essential, but humor is the MOST important. "Dilbert", "The Far Side", "Calvin and Hobbes", "Bllom County"; they were all good, but they were GREAT because they made us laugh hard. Really hard.
And with strips like "Calvin and Hobbes" where they are so touching that they can bring you to tears, I think that is poetry, is art; but I don't think it is needed for syndication. Even "Calvin and Hobbes" was shallow and silly in the beginning, worry about character development AFTER syndication.
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And then, a couple weeks before beginning to create "Madge", i wrote thi, at 8:09a.m. on Monday, October 22nd, 2001
The idea of simplicity is important in a "gag" comic strip. Strips like "Doonesbury" or "For Better or For Worse" or even "Bruno" are soap operas, they may have humor but their fan base is largely devised from the epic curiosity for the lives of the characters.
And might as well get it out of the way, there are always exceptions, "Bloom county" being the first that comes to mind, a sort-of cross-breed of the two.
I view "Calvin and Hobbes" and "Krazy Kat" as the ideal gag strips. The reason being that you feel compassion for the characters, but at the same time you are never wondering what will happen to Calivin tomorrow in the grander sense of his life. You know he will talk with Hobbes, he will be attacked by his bike, and he'll throw snowballs at Suzie. A "gag" strip is a character stuck in time, with no future.
"Krazy Kat" always had a brick coming to him, and Officer Pup would throw Igantz in jail. But why was it always fresh? The art and poetic writing were enormous factors. But I feel that the compassion is the most essential ingrediant.
At the same time, this does not mean that i find Calvin" and "Krazy Kat" to be the end-all-be-all of comics, any unique comic will have it's own thing to offer.
Strips like "Doonesbury", "For Better or For Worse", or "Bruno" are valid and important, but I view them as a different format than a "gag" strip. Like an opera vs. a musical, a simple description would be identical, but they are very different.
"Garfield" is one of the best example of what gag comics are (which doesn't mean that it's a good strip). Garfield's life will not change. But the strip itself I view as having two lives. In the first year or so, Garfield was a pathetic and mean cat; and so in being that, he was a tragic, farcical character. One could feel compassion for him, the Falstaff of cats. I found it (and still find) the first year hilarious. Nowadays he has absolutely no character. I think the best example of this is that he complains of being fat, and yet his head is as big as his body. The simplicity of the gags have not changed, but the losing of compassion has become forefront.
So far in my two submissions (discounting "Bruno", which wasn't designed for syndication) "Sheppard and May" was recieved better than "Kim in Love". I think I achieved the two most important things with the strips. "Sheppard and May" was a strip where one would feel compassion for the characters, almost to the point of being sentimental. But it was a loose world, not enough reins, to many ill-definied lines. And also, it wasn't out-loud laugh daily, and frankly, a lot of it was trite, gags and situations done already a million times. "Kim in Love" was the opposite. Funny every day, but no compassion, no emotion. Kim is a tragic figure, but i would never allow the reader to view it that way, it's world is ONLY the world of silliness. And the strip was tight, the boundaries were so tightly defined, it was a perfect creation. Well, it was a perfect creation for what I was trying to do. Of course I saw that the syndies would probably cough up a bagel when they saw a well full of dead bodies. That's not "newspaper" funny. I laughed my head off.
But what's interesting is that I have gotten the feel that syndicates know the formula, the rules (which I've outlines in the "rules section") but that they are still ruled by their emotions. So they responded much MUCH more favorably to "Sheppard and May" even though I feel that "Kim in Love" was exactly on the money as far as what they are "looking for".
So what's the answer, now that i have done both extremes, i gotta' find the middle ground. of course, i find doing a NEW comic strip, a very slow getting-going. I have to basically mull over ideas for maybe a year or longer, occasionally do flopped sketches, and poorly looking strips. But then one day it begins to gel, and it overtakes me. Just how that works I suppose.
Of course, I find anything that defines me to be bogus, and so that is why i am beginning "shep's sis" to spite myself. Jumping in unprepared, we'll see whare it goes.
What Jay Kennedy of King, and Amy Lago of United Media had to say about "Sheppard and May":
(nobody had ANYTHING to say about "Kim in Love")
And then advice King gives to everyone about submitting a comic:
Where one shold submit:
Lee Salem, Editorial Director
Universal Press Syndicate
Dept. AM
4520 Main St. Ste. 700
Kansas City, MO 64111
Mark Mathes, Managing Editor
Tribune Media Services
Suite 1500
435 N. Michigan Ave
Chicago, IL 60611
Jay Kennedy, Editor in Chief
King Features
216 East 45th Street
New York, NY 10017
Amy Lago, Executive Editor
Comic Art
United Features Syndicate
200 Madison Ave
New York, NY 10016
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