Brian Lord, creator of Kick Irrational has taken the task in hand, building a solid foundation through planning, marketing and networking to accomplish the goals he set for his comic strip. He generously gave an interview to The Cartoonists, sharing his story of determination and optimism. Come on along as Brian Lord described how his comic has grown from an idea to having over a quarter million readers:
My cartooning career started on our family farm outside of Greentown, Indiana, at age four. My older sister Kelly started a family newspaper where she provided the articles, and I did sports and comics. We even had world-wide circulation! (We had a great uncle who worked for Habitat for Humanity in the Philippines.) At age six I made my own "Star Kid" comic books, and in high school I drew a lot of single panel cartoons.
Kick Irrational came about over Labor Day weekend while I was a senior at DePauw University. The school newspaper turned it down, so Kick just sat on the shelf for four or five years after graduation. I was blessed to marry a wonderful woman who also likes to make her dreams into reality, and she's been my biggest source of encouragement-and material. Krista's a professional singer (www.thedarins.com), and she loves having a character based on her. In fact, she chose Kricket's name, and when something silly happens to us, she'll say "That's a comic right there!"
A lot of people ask me where the name "Kick Irrational" comes from. The other names are much easier to explain. Lewis and Tolk are named after my two favorite authors, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien. Kricket is one of my wife Krista's nick-names, and Josie was suggested by a fan. But Kick was different. I sat down that Labor Day weekend, said to myself, "I'm going to start a comic strip today", and the name of it was Kick Irrational. I never thought of any other names, or questioned if I should change the name. Its just Kick Irrational. I do have a strip coming up where Kick gives his mother's explanation, but I haven't come up with one for me yet.
The strip has been fun to develop. Initially there were just three characters. Kick would have the good influence of Lewis pulling him one way and the bad influence of Tolk pulling him another. I also planned the strip to contain frequent flashbacks to childhood. The reason for that was the strips I loved growing up- primarily "Peanuts" and "Calvin & Hobbes" - were based on kids, so I thought I needed kids. But I soon realized that as much as I liked Charles Schulz and Bill Watterson's work, I wasn't them. I had to develop Kick Irrational as it came out of my head and hands, and hope that was good enough.
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