~This is part 1 in a series. Part 2 starts here
Sometimes I think back to when my husband, Henry, and I were doing our syndicated comic strip, between 2005 - 2014, and to be honest, I'm grateful the daily grind is over. It was A LOT of work. Coming up with ideas for six days' worth of material, plus a Sunday strip that had to be bigger and in color. Maybe we could've handled it better if we hadn't had to do other work on the side for income. The strip didn't make enough for us to live off of, so along with that and our other freelance jobs, it seemed like the mountain of work never ended.
But, still. Getting a comic strip syndicated! This was major! We competed against thousands of other applicants to get a contract with a newspaper syndicate.
It seems weird to be talking about how hard it was to get a comic strip syndicated, now that the tradition of sitting down with your daily paper to read the comics section is largely gone. But not that long ago, the comics section was still a big thing. And cartoonists realllllly wanted to be in it!
The next few series I'll be talking about our whole process, from the seed of the idea of “Claire” to delivery of the final artwork to the newspapers, and everything in between.
And if there's anything particular you want to hear about, let me know!
You can read On a Claire Day online at GoComics.com
“On a Claire Day” still makes me all warm and fuzzy. The characters were charming and funny. I can’t help but wonder if it had come out twenty years earlier when newspapers were still healthy. I think it could have been a huge hit—with merchandising and a TV spin off and all that.