Cartoonist Mark Heath wrote a really nice blog the other day entitled “Love and Obsession” about the last freelance cartoon he sold and his ensuing obsession with the then unpublished Spot the Frog.
Mark explains how he immersed himself in Spot for several months, although, as with all submissions, the chances of it being picked up by a syndicate were small.
“It was crazy to spend so much time on a strip that contributed nothing to the bills, and would eventually be thrown into the blades of a syndicate’s submission shredder (or so I supposed, based on my previous 12 submissions.) But I couldn’t stop thinking about Spot and Karl and the rest.”
I’ve recently been working on a new strip of my own, but had shelved it as of late. There’s an awful lot of gloom and doom out there among cartoonists (myself included) about the current state of the comics and syndication, and it’s easy to think ‘why should I even bother?!’ But Mark’s post helped me rally, and I’m really excited about this strip again.
OK, it probably hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of actually being picked up, but there’s real joy in just making the attempt too, and it’s nice to be reminded of that.
