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May 24, 2010

Twenty Years of The City!

Twenty years ago, on this very date, THE CITY debuted on the front page of The Cleveland Edition(above).

In 1990, I'd been out of college for five years. I wanted to be a cartoonist and wasn't having a whole lot of luck making that goal a reality. I'd been kicking around the edges of the profession, mostly encountering closed doors and one frustrating rejection after another. I tried political cartoons, syndicated comic strips and one-panel gag strips, but just couldn't catch a break. At first, my work wasn't distinctive enough. As I developed and experimented, my work became TOO unusual.

Above: sketchbook drawing, pre-CITY, 1989

To subsidize my failed efforts at cartooning, I had a well-paying job as an art director for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I hated it and in January, 1989, closed my eyes and made the leap right off the management fast track into the unknown. Without much of a plan at all, I quit my job and spent the next year holed up in my studio drawing funky freeform cartoons. I experimented with style and format, not really sure where I was going or what I would do with what I was producing. Weekly papers were booming then. They were full of ads, provocative content and some of the funniest, wildest cartoons I had ever seen. I remember clearly leafing through my local rag, The Cleveland Edition, at the neighborhood coffee shop, perusing Groening's LIFE IN HELL and Lynda Barry's ERNIE POOK and thinking "I can do this."

What followed was a period of creative output, unlike anything I've experienced before or since. By early 1990, I had a studio wall covered in cartoons. I loved what I was creating, but what to call it? How to sell it? I stared at that wall, looking for a common thread, an easily marketable peg. Well, they're all about living as a twentysomething hipster in a big city. A city. That's it! I'll call it THE CITY!

Above: the first published CITY strip

I xeroxed off a dozen strips and mailed them to editor Bill Gunlocke (this was before emails... or scanners!). Two days later, he called. "Let's start running this in the next issue." I made $75 a strip. To subsidize my fledging cartooning career, I used my newspaper connections to land a part time artist-designer position at the Akron Beacon Journal, 50 miles to the south. Between the two gigs, some sporadic freelance and my wife's steady salary, it was enough to live comfortably on.

The first year of THE CITY was the best year of my life. Newspapers still had the power to sway popular culture and all around town and people were talking about this oddball new comic strip. The Edition played it up big, occasionally even running it on the front page. I became a minor celebrity. After years of obscurity, AT LAST my work was being read and enjoyed.

Above: editor Bill Gunlocke liked this strip so much he ran it on the cover!

After a year working exclusively for The Edition, I sent out a mailer to all the other weekly papers in the country. A dozen snapped it up right away. At it's peak, THE CITY appeared in 75 papers, making it one of the most widely distributed weekly comic features, behind only LIFE IN HELL, TOM TOMORROW and maybe one or two others. Nothing looked like THE CITY. Nothing read like it either. That's what I'm most proud of. Like it or no, it was unique. Most papers, in those days, stripped it across the width of a page. With often 6, sometimes 8, panels in a strip, each one was its own mini-story.

THE CITY started with a very clear vision, a funky cartoon about living as a young hipster in a big city. I mined cartoons at coffee shops and clubs, on the train or prowling around funky inner-city neighborhoods. I never, foolishly, thought ahead to when I wouldn't be a young hipster anymore, which, of course, arrived all too soon. By the end of the 90s, Gen X, which was my inspiration, was hitting middle age. So I broadened my material. The strip became more political, especially after the Republicans stole the 2000 election. After 9-11, it evolved into a full-fledged political strip. I've done some great work since then, but I've never been altogether happy with the change.

Above: This intricately drawn strip is one of my favorites, the best example of the post-punk expressionism that I was shooting for.

It was named the altie press' best cartoon in 2005, won a Green Eyeshade Award from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2004 and nabbed a Robert F. Kennedy Award in 2006. I had a solo art museum show in 1999, at my hometown Akron Art Museum and my alma mater, Ohio State University has a Derf Collection in its Cartoon Museum, the worlds largest, and my photo hangs in the lobby of its Journalism Building, as a member of the School of Journalism's Hall of Fame. I even have a piece of a Pulitzer Prize, for my work on a yearlong investigative project at the Akron paper! In many ways, my career has surpassed my early hopes.

Mistakes? I've made a few. The biggest was hooking my wagon to the weekly press at the exclusion of everything else. In the Nineties, I... almost laughably, considering what's happened since in the industry... considered weeklies the saviors of newspapers. They weren't. Chalk that up to the delusional enthusiasm of a newspaperman. Nor did I dream the weekly press would imitate, and eventually exceed, the blunders of the daily press, specifically chain ownership. I should have spread out into other areas. I didn't produce my first graphic novel until 2001, missing out on the whole Nineties Golden Age of indy comix. I have no explanation for this, other than I simply didn't think of doing a comic book. I should have kept plugging away at developing a daily feature. Guess I was just having too good a time doing weekly strips. And so mainstream exposure has altogether alluded me.

Above: example of my illustration work. 1990.

I also wish I'd created a character-based strip, instead of the freeform CITY. It's a simple fact that readers are more loyal to characters than they're loyal to cartoonists themselves. They relate to characters, adopt them as their own. And a great character has the opportunity to become an icon of the times. Mr. Natural, Homer Simpson, Cheech Wizard, Calvin & Hobbes, Beavis & Butthead. At the very least, they are instantly recognized, like Bill Griffith's brilliant Zippy the Pinhead. And it's SO much easier to write a strip with a good character, than it is to pull gags out of thin air. You simply plug a character into any situation and the thing writes itself. I often suspected this was the case, but didn't really confirm it until I created Otto in PUNK ROCK & TRAILER PARKS. I was astounded how much easier that book was to write.

Some things that hindered my career were beyond my control. Living here in Cleveland, I'm totally isolated from the comix capitol of New York. The Lords of Publishing consider me little more than a rube. I lost whole years to illness, first cancer, then heart surgery. I kept drawing, and I never missed a deadline, but my once impressive output dwindled.

Above: One of the first True Stories. I love the look of these strips. I drifted away from this stylistic peak and have been trying to recapture it ever since.

Twenty years. That's a great run. How long will I keep at it? Probably not long, to be be honest. I took this strip as far as I could and it's on the way down and out, along with the newspapers that run it. What's frustrating is that the strip, at least the writing, is better than ever. That intricate, lavishly inked, drawing style of the first few years was shelved long ago, as comix shrunk ever smaller. These days, I just try to make the thing legible. I save the intricate drawing for my graphic novels.

I don't want this to sound like a eulogy, because, for me, this is a celebration. I've done what I want, how I want, for two decades. Beats working in a cubicle somewhere writing software code! I'll keep drawing cartoons, in some form, in some media, until I keel over dead.

I appreciate all those who read my work. I know there are some of you out there who have been following me since the beginning.

To fans both old and new, thank you.

Above: self portrait, 1990