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Comic
2374 comics.
Admit it. When you’re out doing something silly on wheels, you’re proud that people are looking at you thinking “I want to be him, if I hadn’t grown up.”
This cartoon is a little weird. I’ve said before that some of the cartoons that I’m running now straddle the line between Made-For-Newspapers and Made-For-Web, but this one is especially so- The last panel is in the style of the old OLD newspaper cartoons. I don’t know if anyone that wants to read cartoons about outdoor sports will know anything about Toonerville Trolley or Brining Up Father, but those WERE the days of Abner Doubleday, right? Anybody know who Abner Doubleday was? Anybody? Beuller? Beuller?
Get it? Cliff’s Notes? Depends on your age, I guess. I had to run this cartoon before the WWW destroys the Cliff’s Notes company, if it hasn’t already. One day, even drawing a book in a cartoon will make it look out of date. Like drawing a typewriter or a landline- it’ll only happen in Noir.
When you draw comic strips in the hope of newspaper syndication, they all have to be the size and shape of the ones in the newspaper. If the syndicates had, in fact, catered to the younger crowd they claimed they wanted as readers, everyone would have had to turn their papers ninety degrees to the left to read today’s cartoon. That would have been fun. Instead, I’ve done it for you here in the present day on the wonderful web. When I run out of these cartoons that were done for the syndicates, I think I’ll draw them in different sized boxes for a change. Would that be okay with everyone?
I like to think about all the kids who work like crazy to hone their skate or bike skills in the hope that they can become sponsored. It’s a little like the OLD cartooning dream- “be really good and they’ll SYNDICATE you.” That was never as true as everyone thought it was, and it’s less true now. I wonder if the bike companies and skateboard companies are having the same trouble as syndicates and newspapers? Prob’ly not. I think the world of Kids&Wheels lends itself to the web paradigm a little better… don’t you?
