Since I knew I'd need to convince people who didn't know me that Kick Irrational was worth considering, I made sure to keep track of the city and state (and eventually country) of everyone who signed up to get Kick via email. There's a big difference between saying "a lot of people read it" and saying "I have email subscribers in 257 cities, 47 states, and 11 countries." I took a cartooning class from Watkins School of Design to improve the drawing side.
Eventually I thought Kick was good enough to be put in print, so I approached a nice local publication, "Nashville Christian Family Magazine." The publisher liked what I gave him, liked what he saw on the web, and agreed to run it. I wanted Kick to have a broad audience, so I pitched it to "Funrunner" (a local running magazine), and "The Mitensan" (a local Mensa publication.) All of them began running Kick as well, and soon I had a good enough resume to submit Kick to other news, sports, religious, and Mensa publications. Now, just 10 months after it was first published, Kick Irrational can be read by over 250,000 people in 43 publications in 22 states and 2 countries.
I've also been amazed at how incredibly helpful and humble the cartoonists I've met have been. Several members of the Southeast Chapter of the National Cartoonist Society patiently looked through my work to give me tips on anything from drawing 'talk' balloons to chin shadows. Fellow DePauw alum and creator of "Big Top" Rob Harrell has given me a ton of advice and even advised me on the best strips to include in my syndicate submission. Editorial cartoonist Wayne Stayskal was the first to encourage me to send in syndicate submissions.
I even took a class from former AAEC president Sandy Campbell, whose favorite saying seemed to be "let's give a little weight to that line." The response from most professional cartoonists to Kick is that they really like the writing ("which is the hard part," they say) and that the drawing is good but could be better.
The character who has been most affected by cartoonist comments has been Lewis. Sandy Campbell told me all of my characters had the same body type. Lewis suddenly gained weight. Rob Harrell said he always gets a lot of reader feedback when he does strips on diets. Suddenly Lewis has to deal with his cravings for sweet tea and barbecue. From feedback, many more readers can now relate to Lewis.
 |
