COMICS, PART 2: SYNDICATION

Here’s the rest of my comic making story (continued from PART 1).

It’s not really a funny story, so I injected some random comics into the mix: serious paragraph — light comic — self-pity paragraph — goofy comic — boring paragraph — dumb comic — dire warning — etc…

Enjoy…

As I approached graduation, I got a deal with Universal Press Syndicate to distribute Feet of Clay in grown-up newspapers around the world. This was something I had always wanted to do, but never dreamed I would actually get the chance.

But drawing comics pays less than delivering newspapers, and I had a truckload of student debt. So I needed a regular job too. Luckily, at the same time I scored a position at a very large greeting card corporation as a writer and illustrator. I was just happy to avoid working in advertising.

During the course of one year, I graduated from college, started a syndication deal, moved to a new city, started my job at the very large greeting card corporation, and went through a severely traumatic personal ordeal involving a girl, many tears, a judge, and custody of a sofa. With all this chaos, I managed to carve out for myself the exact opposite set of circumstances one would desire for producing a lighthearted daily comic strip. My personal life was in complete chaos when I started.

Being young, inexperienced, dangerously depressed, and extremely busy with my day job, I was not able to put the energy into the strip it required. I failed to define, or fight for, my own creative vision, and became extremely dissatisfied with the work I was producing. I lost my way, and was listening too much to other peoples’ opinions. My editor (a kind, patient man) tried really hard to help, but there’s nothing anyone can do in these situations. A comic strip can’t be done by collaboration.

My routine was: Wake up and walk to work. Write/draw greeting cards all day. Walk home and take a nap. Wake up again around 9 PM and work on comics until about 3 AM. Repeat.

Every Thursday I would meet my editor for lunch and bring him 7 inked strips from last week, and about 10 or 11 roughs for the next week, from which he would choose 7 for me to ink. (The syndicate often does that with young cartoonists– have them write 12 strips, and maybe 7 of them will be printable).

Since I never did really figure out my strip’s focus, after about a year of this I became as burnt out as I have ever been in my life. I was going to have to quit one job or the other. The strip was only in about 35 papers at this point– not enough income to make a living.

I remember one horrible night just hitting a wall. It might sound overly dramatic, but if you put a gun to my head, I could not draw one more comic. I had nothing more to say. I was done. The next day I arranged with the syndicate to end the strip, and they were very gracious about it. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made, and it felt like a huge failure. Twenty three years old, and already washed up.

But immediately after quitting, I felt great! I felt more free than I’ve ever felt in my life. I started getting enough sleep, exercising every day. I was physically and mentally healthy. For six years I had been endlessly trolling my daily life for comic ideas. At last I had time to spend with my friends and family without being preoccupied. It was an amazing experience, but I was glad it was over.

A few years later, I started messing around with animation. For almost nine years, I have not had one single idea for a comic strip and have never regretted the decision to walk away for a single second. I don’t know why it just turned off like that, but it just did. In retrospect, I was probably too immature to tackle something like this.

So that’s how that went down back in those days, yo. I’m not sure why anyone would care to read all this, but maybe it will be interesting to some young person who’s making comic strips.

For you kids, here are the lessons of a burnt out cartoonist:

1. Practice every day and try to publish somewhere so you have deadline pressure and public scrutiny.

2. Don’t listen to anybody. Especially me. Keep your head down and do your work, so you’ll know what you want. When the time is right, maybe you’ll get a syndication deal, including the standard, boilerplate million dollar signing bonus. Or, try building an audience on the internet. I hear that’s big these days.

3. Until that time comes, try not to work in a job that uses up all your mojo. If you put all your time and effort into trying to please your art directors and half-witted clients, you won’t have anything interesting to write about, or the energy to draw it.

4. With a daily deadline, you will inevitably find yourself in the position of having to say something when you don’t have anything to say. Be prepared for that. Try to think and read and live a lot, so there will always be material you can pull out of your ass during the hard times. (comic strip ideas are stored in the rectum, not the brain)

Good luck, kids!

Like you and your friends, me and my friends used to make comic strips back in the nineteen hundreds. That’s just what we did, yo. It was back before I burned out in a tragic blaze of sleep deprivation and mediocrity that led me to seek other forms of self expression, such as animation and drunk. As for all my comic-making friends, well, they just grew up and got over it, yo.

Recently, several nice people (mostly from Singapore) emailed asking about a comic I did for Universal Press Syndicate years ago. I looked back over some of that old work. Most of it is painful to see now, of course.

Anyway, I’ve never put any of that stuff online before, so I thought I’d post a couple things, if only for my own indulgence. If anyone is interested, here is the story of my comic strip making days:

COMICS, PART 1: THE COLLEGE YEARS

Back at the University of Arizona, as an engineering student, I started publishing some comics in our school newspaper, the Arizona Daily Wildcat.

As chance would have it, the Wildcat had an amazing lineup of cartoonists all publishing at the same time. We also had a local weekly paper called the Tucson Comic News, which published full-page Krazy Kat spreads. The friendly competition and exposure to George Herriman made our work better (at least, it did for me). Here are just a few of the people we had in our comics page scene back in my day:

Chad Strawderman – became a drunk, killed a man, moved to Alaska, killed an elk

Jeff Barfoot – became a drunk, moved to Dallas (necessitating additional drinking), briefly served time in El Paso for alleged involvement with a hooker known as “The Argentine Firecracker,” and for attempting to bribe the arresting officer with a roasted chicken

Wes Hargis – always has been a drunk, speaks fluent spanglish, recently injured while beating up a tree with a shovel handle

Joe Forkan – became a drunk, started painting pictures of the world “as Joe sees it”

Adam Rex – finally stopped drinking, wrote some great books, began drinking again, wrote even better books, spent the money on booze

My first two semesters, I started off with a couple of inconsequential comics that led to nothing but public embarrassment (in other words, practice). The first one was called “San Jacques,” and was about some people or something. The second was about squirrels, but I don’t remember the name. During that first year, I learned the two most important lessons in cartooning:

1. Yes, the comics tend to suck in newspapers. But have you ever tried to write a tidy little joke and draw it up… EVERY DAY…FOR YEARS ON END? It’s really fucking hard.

2. It might be possible to do a comic in which a squirrel character serves as a symbol for some aspect of human nature. But it is not possible to make a comic that is literally about actual squirrels. They have nothing to teach us.

Luckily, I was oblivious to how bad I sucked. The best way to learn to make comics is to just keep making them every day, under the looming fear of deadlines and public humiliation. I guess anyone’s first 200 or so comics are probably going to suck (and for most of us, so will the next 1000) so it’s good to get them out of your system. Eventually the thrill of seeing your work in print wears off, and you start trying to actually entertain your audience.

My second year, I took it more seriously. I got a quill pen and bristol board, and invented a cool cross hatching technique. I took a couple art classes. I started a comic called The Masked Galloot (a misspelling of the word galoot that I didn’t catch until 2 semesters into the strip) It was about the daily life of a Don Quixote-esque super hero. That is, he was a pretend, imaginary superhero, who had no powers other than his own delusion. Once in a while he’d try to fight crime, but mostly he just hung around with his friends.

Here is one example of The Masked Galloot. This comic was apparently constructed entirely around the phrase “bastard file,” a hilarious term I had probably heard for the first time that day:

It wasn’t great, but it was my first comic that actually sort of worked. It began to catch on around campus too. Some of my proudest moments in college were the occasions when I would find Masked Galloot graffiti scrawled on a chalkboard or a sidewalk. The next year, I began selling a collection of the strip in the student bookstore, called “Godzilla vs. The Masked Galloot.” A rare collector’s item! (as you can see on the cover, at the time I was going by the ridiculous pen name, “C. S. Harding”)

After three semesters I decided it was time for something new. I started a comic called Feet of Clay. It centered around a monkey named Abbott, who worked in various monkey jobs– science lab, circus, NASA test pilot program… Here is a sample:

During my senior year I even began self-syndicating Feet of Clay in other college newspapers. I think I got it up to about 15-ish papers– hot damn! I also sold a collection of those comics at the student bookstore.

Creatively, Feet of Clay began some characters and themes I’m still trying to figure out today. For example, there was a robot named Herriman, who later evolved into the robot in my first animated short, He’s a Good Monkey, and may even come back in a different form in a future project: (stay tuned for that)

And in looking through the old strips, I found a minor character I had forgotten about– a lab assistant named Dennis. I always drew Dennis with my left hand so he’d look weird. (in retrospect, he looks much better than the other characters– maybe I’m latently left-handed)

Anyway, that’s about what I did in college, yo. Maybe I’ll scan in a few more soon.

Tune in to the next post for… PART 2: SYNDICATION!

Here are some specimens from the ol’ robot entomology collection. Might these have anything to do with the Mystery Work in Progress? They might. But I’m not sure yet. The words that best describe the Mystery Work in Progress are: a) “Mysterious,” and b) “In Progress.”

So last night I put Post-It Notes on my fingers and waved my hand in front of a video camera for a few seconds. Why did I do this? Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. It’s much too high tech for me to explain. It’s all part of my patented Cargo Cult animation process.

This has nothing to do with the cartoon, but I noticed in the background of my weird little green screen experiment, you can see a hilarious NYT Style Magazine spread on my desk. On the left is an article called Starved to Perfection: Why Are We Not Entitled to Take Up Space?, which documents the horrible images many women have of their bodies, and their obsession with looking thinner at all costs. Fair enough.

On the page facing the article is an ad for Tummy Tuck Jeans shrieking:

INSTANT GRATIFICATION!
LOOK ONE SIZE SMALLER!

This is obviously a subject NYT Style and their advertisers take very seriously. And as you can imagine, it really got me thinking… about how fat and disgusting my hand looks in this video! God! It’s so fat and ugly! My finger is, like, bulging out around my ring! God!

I’m putting my hand on a lettuce and cigarette diet until it’s pretty again.

1. I’ve always signed my last name with a cool crossbar that zips, with reckless abandon, straight through the right stem of the “H” and ends somewhere in the space over the “ar” in Harding. (fig. 1)

I think everyone would agree, a crossbar swash stroke is kind of ’80s. Very dated and embarrassing. I needed a fresh look for the twenty-first century. It hit me the other day: eliminate the crossbar altogether! How hip and modern is it to have a capital “H” with no crossbar at all?! (fig. 2) It looks like the Roman numeral II. “IIarding!” Totally illegible! Pow! Look out world! I still have some kinks to work out, but I think it’s clear I’ve been spending my time wisely.

2. The other month, I dreamt that I was scheduled to give a lecture on the subject of Sharks, at some university in St. Petersburg, Russia. I showed up at the campus with some friends and family. They were planning on going to a museum while I gave my talk. I wished I could go with them instead.

About an hour before the lecture I realized I had forgotten everything I ever knew about sharks. (In the dream I had apparently given this talk before) So I sat in the hallway and tried desperately to remember something– anything– to say about sharks. All I could come up with were vague feelings of awe and fear. I remember realizing that I had probably been faking my way through the original lectures. I know nothing about sharks and never have. And I remember thinking that these people were idiots– not only did they fail to call my bluff, but they actually invited me back to speak again!

When it was time for the lecture, I said to the students, “Let’s make this an open discussion, rather than listening to me drone on and on about sharks. I want to hear what you have to say.” And it went pretty well.

I only mention it because somehow, deep down, that dream had something to do with my animation work.

Scene 2 of the Mystery Work in Progress is coming along nicely. (I’m only on scene 2! Dear God, when will it end?!)

Scene 1 was pretty much done when it became apparent a major character redesign was needed. At every step of the process, the characters have asserted their “robotness,” even though I wanted to make them very organic and bendy like the original sketches. They just seem to want to move and act like machines. I think it serves the story well, so I’m letting it happen. And by “letting,” I mean struggling through hours and hours of painful trial and error. But in the past week I’ve stumbled on bodies that are beginning to work, and am nearly done reworking scene 1 and some of scene 2.

In the early stages of animation on a short, it takes a while to get the rhythm of the characters. So there tends to be a lot of “over-acting” which mellows out as I move along. (get lazy)

To the right is a still from scene 2. I didn’t want to spoil anything, so I shrunk it down a little.

A bastardized quote:

How do we make beautiful films? General animation principles… are good enough to create elegance, but not beauty. Beauty requires an awareness of human affairs outside the studio.

…and another one:

When storytelling decisions aren’t made in reference to human concerns, they can only be made in reference to each other, leading to a self-referential bundle of nonsense suspended by a sky hook…

When we treat our stories as no more than conduits between human imaginations, grand vistas open up.

I’m pretty far removed from the main animation community, being an amateur who lives in the Midwest. But I do read some animation blogs and books here and there. Most seem to be concerned with industry related matters, or with technical issues. Rarely do any of them talk much about the big picture– why in the hell does anyone make or watch cartoons in the first place? Where does the original impulse come from? What is their real, useful function in the world, and how are they different from live-action films, comics, theater, and music?

It’s something I think about a lot. I find it helps me to put off doing my work.

Jaron Lanier is a computer programmer, musician, and humanist. Oddly, I think he has produced more inspiring and useful writing on these matters than (with a few exceptions) most animation critics — even though he’s usually talking about software. (also, he’d make a wonderful cartoon character, wouldn’t he?)

The bastardized quotes from above are from an essay he wrote for the Association for Computing Machinery, on the subject of “hope” in the next 50 years of computing. (with apologies to Mr. Lanier) I replaced a few words (”software” with “film,” etc.) and presto! the quotes apply to animation!

I suppose these particular exerpts are a bit like a fortune teller’s platitudes (”Love is precious to you…” “Love is precious to me! How did she know?!”) So, they would likely apply to just about any creative profession… try it at home!

Still, there are some strange parallels between the software and animation businesses. Both are faced with figuring out how to make money when everything can be duplicated and downloaded easily… Both are perpetually locked in struggles between the needs of large industrial proprietors, and those of the small, independent innovators off of whom they feed… If they expect to thrive, both must figure out how to escape the shadows and defy the legacies of some powerful, looming corporations (Microsoft and Disney)…

For me, all this reinforces the notion that there might be real human usefulness to be found in both fields. Maybe (as Mark Mayerson has suggested) animation has never warranted this kind of discussion. Maybe it’s all counter-productive navel-gazing, anyway.

I don’t know what my point is. I’m just putting off my work. I hope I have helped you put off your own for a few minutes. Get the hell back to it! Make something useful!

Below are the original quotes from Lanier’s essay. Alther them to suit your own creative profession!

Lanier:

How do we make beautiful software? General engineering principles… are good enough to create elegance, but not beauty. Beauty requires an awareness of human affairs outside the computer.

…and:

When software design decisions aren’t made in reference to human concerns, they can only be made in reference to each other, leading to a self-referential bundle of nonsense suspended by a sky hook…

When we treat information systems as no more than conduits between human imaginations, grand vistas open up.

The Mystery Work in Progress continues, at an agonizing pace, behind closed doors. (can you hear the weeping?)

In the mean time, here is another project that’ll be coming up next year. Tom Potter, an educator I knew and respected growing up, is making a documentary adaptation of a book called The Saber-Tooth Curriculum. Tom will direct and produce the documentary, and I will contribute an animated segment from a script he’s written.

Production is set to begin January 2008, so it’s still early in the process. Here is a link to the official site, as well as some very early style sketches:

Last year I made some pictures for a book my friend Scott Emmons wrote. It’s a collection of Greek myths in verse form, called Myth-Demeanors. So far, it’s unpublished, but we’re hoping that’s only temporary. Scott’s about the best writer of light verse we’ve got. He’s also, as it happens, an expert on Greek mythology and culture. So you’ll want to read these excerpts. If you like these, you can find more at Scott’s site, WordChowder.com, along with a bunch of his other excellent writing.

Theseus and the Minotaur
or
Smite ‘em, Cowboy!

In Crete, where brazen goddesses wore all-revealing bodices,
Where wild and raucous rituals made palace rafters ring,
A man of inhumanity that bordered on insanity
Was known as mighty Minos, and he ran the place as king.

Malicious and deplorable, he harbored something horrible:
The Minotaur, a most bull-headed beast, to coin a phrase.
An ill-conceived atrocity of unsurpassed ferocity
Imprisoned in a Labyrinth – in other words, a maze.

It happened in that dismal time, that dreary, dark, abysmal time,
That Athens owed a debt to Crete and felt an awful crunch.
For rates were unbelievable. The payment deemed receivable
Was seven youths and seven maids to be the creature’s lunch!

The pride of Athens’ royalty, renowned for grit and loyalty,
Was Theseus, the dashing prince whose triumphs never ceased.
With courage most heroical and bearing almost stoical,
He volunteered to face the weird and savage Cretan beast.

His king and father Aegeus was moved by this egregious
Display of selfless sacrifice and proudly told him, “Son,
You’ll either be victorious or die in battle glorious,
So let’s devise a signal that will tell me if you’ve won.

“The method’s no dilemma, for your sail can serve as semaphore.
We’ll rig your ship with mournful sheets as black as moonless night.
But if your great abilities at hand-to-hand hostilities
Should best the beast, announce the news by hoisting sails of white.”

With perfect intrepidity (or was it just stupidity?)
The prince then sped to Cretan shores to do his hero thing.
And as his ship was anchoring, his form aroused a hankering
In lovely Ariadne, who was daughter to the king.

The princess, stunned and amorous, could not allow this glamorous
And handsome youth to perish (as he would, without a doubt).
She tossed a spool of thread to him and in a whisper said to him,
“Unwind this as you’re going in, and it will lead you out.”

Then forth into the Labyrinth, the death-inducing Labyrinth,
The hero crept, unspooling thread and never looking back,
Till deep in the interior, in darkness ever eerier,
At last he met the monster, who was dying for a snack.

To test the fighter’s fortitude, the Minotaur then snorted, “Dude,
Your kind is what’s for dinner!” But the hero boldly said,
“No longer will you martyr us. I’ll send you straight to Tartarus!”
With that he drew his trusty sword and struck the creature dead.

Exulting in his victory, he crowed a valedictory,
“I really hate to smite and run, but nonetheless, farewell!”
He grabbed his lifeline greedily and sought the exit speedily,
For deep inside, the Minotaur had now begun to smell.

Then wiping beads of sweat away and making good his getaway,
He reached the isle of Naxos, and the princess came along.
He lost no time in bedding her, but then, instead of wedding her,
He sailed away, forgetting her, which I regard as wrong.

At last, with utmost gratitude he made it to the latitude
And longitude of Athens, having lived to tell his tale.
But soon his joviality was checked by grim reality.
He’d been in such a hurry, he forgot to change the sail!

The king was inconsolable, his weeping uncontrollable
When first he spied the dusky sail approaching from the main.
Forsaking his metropolis, he jumped from the Acropolis,
For grief had left him spiritless and not so very sane.

And so the mighty Theseus, the sometimes flighty Theseus,
Became the king of Athens in a manner bittersweet.
He brought his town to prominence and regional predominance,
Which wouldn’t be the case at all if he’d been killed in Crete!

Echo and Narcissus
or
I Only Have Eyes for Me

Quite often in a fairy tale
A maiden meets a macho male
and soon becomes his missus.
But myths are apt to culminate
In sorrows like the tragic fate
of Echo and Narcissus.

Now Echo was a nymph, they say,
As sweet and mild as creme brulée
and also nearly mute.
She’d parrot back the final word
(Or two or three) of all she heard,
which in its way was cute.

Narcissus was a comely youth,
A pretty boy to tell the truth,
well-built but not too burly.
Surprisingly, this handsome hunk
Was chaste enough to be a monk,
though centuries too early.

One day the youth was hunting deer
When Echo glimpsed him from the rear
and felt the flame of passion.
She thought the words she couldn’t say:
“I’d pluck his bowstring any day!”
or something in that fashion.

She threw herself into his arms,
Bedazzled by his boyish charms
and badly overheated.
“What makes you think I want you?” said
Narcissus, quickly turning red.
“I want you,” she repeated.

Narcissus sneered in sheer disgust
At Echo’s raw, unbridled lust.
“Control yourself!” he sputtered.
“My striking looks, which should delight me,
Just keep coming back to bite me!”
“Bite me!” Echo muttered.

With that she slunk away to hide.
She felt as if she could have died,
which would have been her choice.
Her body shriveled as she pined,
Then disappeared and left behind
her disembodied voice.

Now many girls had been through hell
(And truth to tell, some men as well)
for love of proud Narcissus.
They called upon the gods above,
“May he soon feel the sting of love,
so cruelly does he diss us!”

The gods of vengeance heard their prayer.
Narcissus passed a pond, and there
he saw himself reflected.
“By Zeus!” he said, “I never thought
A bod could be so firm, so taut,
but now I stand corrected!”

He couldn’t pry his eyes away,
And so he lingered all that day
beside the placid pool.
“Don’t torture me, don’t turn aside,
Just kiss me, fool!” he fondly cried.
And Echo whispered, “Fool!”

Attempting then a close embrace,
He tried to kiss that godlike face,
which only brought him woe.
Instead of touching tender lips,
He ended up imbibing sips
of tepid H2O.

He languished in his lovesick mood
And wouldn’t eat a speck of food
or even take a shower.
At last, it’s rather strange to say,
He morphed, and to this very day
Narcissus is a flower.

Before the change, he beat his breast
And wailed, “I’m ruined like the rest
by passion for Yours Truly.
I’ve come to see my pride was wrong.
I can’t believe it took so long!”
“So long!” said Echo coolly.

Prometheus
or
Come On, Baby, Swipe My Fire

Prometheus the Titan
was a rebel through and through.
A wily and resourceful sort,
As all the ancient bards report,
with quite a high I.Q.
His life’s a fascinating story,
Though some may find it rather gory.

He loved the race of mortal men,
though they were coarse and gritty;
And watching them from up on high,
This kind and sympathetic guy
was overcome with pity.
To make their lives a tad less squalid,
He thought he’d do them all a solid.

For mortals had it rough back then.
They couldn’t get a break.
They couldn’t light a cigarette,
Flambé a simple crepe suzette,
or even grill a steak.
To sum it up, their straits were dire,
For Zeus refused to give them fire.

Prometheus went straight to work.
He swiped a spark and stowed it
Inside a hollow fennel stalk,
Then nonchalantly took a walk
and hurried to unload it.
The mortals cheered his daring plot.
They knew the merchandise was hot!

That little spark began a trend
that spread like – well, like fire.
And soon its golden glow was seen
From coast to coast and in between,
which kindled Zeus’s ire.
“Prometheus!” he cried, incensed,
And vowed, “I shall be recompensed!”

He bound him in the Caucasus
or somewhere thereabout.
To amplify his great despair,
He sent a hungry eagle there
to peck his liver out.
That organ, in its tiresome way,
Regenerated every day.

This torment lasted centuries
(or so it seemed, at least),
And no one heard his anguished pleas
Until the hero Heracles,
while trekking in the East,
Brought down the eagle with his bow
And let the tortured Titan go.

So ends this grand and gruesome tale
of crime and retribution,
Of strife and tension unsurpassed,
A war of wills that comes at last
to peaceful resolution.
It moves us to this very day.
I think someone should write a play!

Onward! Making the short! Basic animation for the first scene is pretty much done. That’s no big deal, I suppose. And yet, it is! The first scene is always hard, so it’s a great feeling to have it in the bag. But there are many, many more to go, and most of them are more complex than this one. So don’t get cocky, folks.

In other news, Learn Self Defense has just been released on a new DVD collection called Shorts! Volume 4. It’s a real classy collection with 3 hours of award winning films, including the Oscar nominated short, Maestro. Also, there are 2 ridiculous, superfluous commentary tracks by me, with introductions by my mom. So, uh… go buy it here!

Speaking of the Oscar shorts, we went to see them over the weekend (except the Pixar short, which wasn’t included in the show). I’m not sure about all the nominees… some really great ones were left out, by all accounts. But we did like The Danish Poet, which won the big prize. Isn’t it weird to think of filmmaking as a contest than can be won?

Get back to work, you lazy bastards!