Strip Show

In the mid-'90s I decided there should be a syndicated cartoon strip in my future. The cartoon syndicates felt otherwise.

Looking back now, the flow of rejection slips probably wasn't such a bad thing. It's tough establishing a cartoon strip, or making much money from it, especially as newspapers increasingly struggle for circulation. But that's a comment one makes in hindsight. The fact was, back then, the thought of having a syndicated strip was appealing. That's what real cartoonists did.

To try and make that happen, I drew up six weeks worth of strips starring a mouse named Meadow and a cat named Bob (i.e. Meadow mouse and Bob cat). [edit: I had it backwards. Meadow is the cat and Bob is the mouse.] I laid the daily strips out three to a page, printed out the pages, and bundled them together in a booklet.

One by one, the proposals went out ... then slowly limped back home. Each time, I would read the enclosed rejection letter, regroup for a day or two, then print up another booklet, substituting in the name of my new target, and send it off.

FAST FORWARD: Those strips are now seeing the light of day, some of them anyway. You be the judge as to whether the syndicates made the correct call. If you ask me, I think so. In any event, above is the first installment, somewhat randomly chosen, of Meadow & Bob.