Drawn And Quartered, Part 1

You might not know this about me, but there was a time back in the day that I was almost a syndicated cartoonist. That is to say, that my comic strip would've appeared in newspapers across the country. While I have found some success working as a newspaper columnist and contributing cartoonist, syndication has always been the brass ring that I could never quite get my hands on.

Back in the early '90's (remember, kids?), I had been working on an original comic strip that was about a young guy trying to figure things out. He lived with his mother, a woman who was oblivious to the fact that her advice often emotionally levelled her son, due to it's insulting nature. When he wasn't in school, the kid also had a series of dead-end jobs with horrible co-workers and bosses.

My work caught the attention of a comics editor at one of the big syndicates. He was quick to tell me how special I was to be getting his attention. He went on to say that there were only three major syndicates, though, at the time, there were at least a half dozen. He also told me that I was one person picked out of nearly 30,000 yearly submissions to recieve a development contract.

What's a development contract? Well, basically, it's comparable to the minor leagues in baseball. They throw just enough money at you to pay off a credit card or to buy a rusted out '83 Toyota Tercel. They also make you sign a contract which basically ties up your strip for one calendar year. If, after working with you on developing your strip for that year, they feel that you're ready to be syndicated nationally, they launch your strip. If that happens, kids, you could potentially be looking at a six-figure income within a couple short years. With each new newspaper that carries your strip, your paycheck gets a corresponding bump up by %50 of whatever the syndicate is making. Add on to that whatever might come in from merchandizing, and you can see how the income adds up quick.

So, I signed my contracts and prepared to give it my all, knowing this was probably my one real shot. I made every change my editor suggested, no matter how ludicrous.
Early on, I realized that no matter how hard I argued for my content not to be tampered with, my editor had some obscure reference or example to illustrate just how wrong I was in my opinion. I vowed to just keep my head down as the shrapnel whistled by my head. My eventual payday would more than make up for all the strife.

At the end of my development deal, after dodging my phonecalls for months, my editor finally fessed up and admitted that I was being released from my obligations. The strip hadn't matured enough, he said, and the market just wasn't right for launching a strip about Generation X's own Charlie Brown. Six months later, they launched a strip called "Zits," which is eerily similar to the strip I was doing. It turns out this whack-job of an editor would decide what kind of strip might sell. Then, he'd string a couple of guys like me along, pretending that he was cultivating our art. All the while, though, he was bastardizing the content to fit some stupid idea that he had in his own head. In the end, I hated what my strip had become. He had wrung all of the sarcasm out of my humor, drastically changed my characters and then brushed me off like a drop of coffee that had dripped on his stain-guarded Haggar slacks.

I wish I could have that year of my life back to do over. I'd cash that jackass's check and then send him a bunch of smudged ballpoint pen drawings on the back of Ho-Ho wrappers.