It was the spring of 2000. Now that I had the idea of creating a strip around my newest young character, Edison, I started enthusiastically writing material. I simply called it “Edison.” The stuff I was coming up with was fresh and new to me. Edison, like my own son Alex, was a young, smart kid who liked to create new and wild things, physically and in his imagination. People would often ask if Edison was Alex. Alex was my inspiration for Edison, and while he and Alex share similar sensibilities, Edison was ultimately the product of my own imagination.
The first strips were primarily from a child’s point of view. They were playful, harmless little vignettes of a kid’s life. The main characters in these early strips were Edison, his mother (who I never bothered to name), his brother Harley, and his father. For whatever reason, (and I honestly don’t know why I did this) I chose to only show the father from the waist down. The father was a minor character, although he did talk occasionally, with word balloons popping down from out of the top of the panel.
I worked up about a month’s worth of samples and sent them off to all the major syndicates. After the usual 6-8 weeks, the returned submissions began showing up in my mailbox. Lee Salem with Universal sent a letter encouraging me to send him new samples in 9 months or so. Another syndicate editor actually went our of the way to write a scathing criticism of the strip, pointing out all of its flaws and offering insight into why it would be difficult to market. Eventually all of my submissions came back except the one I had sent to King Features. One afternoon, I came home to find a voice mail from Jay Kennedy wanting to discuss Edison. I remember enthusiastically calling him back, hoping that this was perhaps the big moment for me… that King was going to offer me a contract, we’d discuss a few formalities, and then Edison would be on his way into newspapers. Actually, I knew he was most likely calling to offer suggestions on the strip, which is exactly what he did. He felt that the strip was too kid centered, and suggested I put Edison in a more adult environment, perhaps working at Bell Laboratories. The thought of thrusting Edison into an adult environment was at first difficult to wrap my head around, but I set out to follow Jay’s suggestions.
Over the next 8 months, with my goal to make Edison a more marketable strip, I reworked the look of the characters. I started out coming up with a new look for Mom and creating a Dad.
I used the mom above on the right in several strips, and when I showed them to Anne, she initially had a look of shock. For a long, quiet moment she stood speechless. Her eventual comments were along the lines of “you can’t be serious!!” Looking back now, I can understand how she felt at that moment.
I eventually worked up a more glamorous looking mom and a dad that was more than just a pair of legs. I also completely reworked Edison. I don’t know why I did this. None of the editors had ever suggested that my drawing was lacking. In fact, it was the art that they most often praised. For some reason, though, Edison did not look right to me, so I gave him a makeover. Harley remained virtually unchanged.
I then set out to work up some new material. Loosely following Jay’s suggestion, I gave Edison a job in the adult world working in his father’s electronics store.
New characters included his school teacher, Mrs. Mavis Fulcrum, his school rival Carl, and Mayor Ottoman. I started putting Edison in the classroom, something I hadn’t done up to that point, and haven’t done since. The family also discovered The Jolly Burger.
I remember spending agonizing hours fine tuning the drawings, working them to the point of exhaustion. I wanted my submissions to be as finely polished as possible.
At this point, I had decided to take a gamble and pour all of my time and resources into the effort. It was November of 2000, and I spent 2 months working exclusively on the strip. This meant basically shutting down my business during that time. It also meant virtually no income. Something in me said that I had to take this leap of faith.
I worked up about 30 samples, bundled them up in a slickly produced sales kit, and once again sent them off to all of the syndicates.
They would eventually wind up coming back, this time all of them with form letters. King Features had even sent me a form letter, although Jay, in his usual gracious way, had taken the time to write a brief note in the margins, encouraging me to continue.
Looking back, I can see how forced these strips were. They just weren’t true to who I was, and it obviously showed in the work.
My gamble had failed, creatively and financially, and now I had major bills to pay. Despite all this, I set out more determined than ever to make the strip work.
Next post: A new and improved Edison 2-1/2 years in the making.
