There were many flaws with this strip from the start. One problem was that I was not able to let the characters take on a life of their own. I was almost as if “Bill” was a cartoon strip about my life. This style of introspective humor did not work for me. The writing felt forced, and the loose drawing style was an experiment in brush and ink. I like to refer to this time as my “early mess” period. I was clearly in a state of transition.
I wound up sending a submission to every major syndicate, and, predictably, eight weeks later I had a nice fresh new batch of rejection letters to add to my growing collection.
While I consider “Bill” one of my greatest comic failures, I was able to eventually turn the 3 characters into Orville, Don and Edison. It would, however, take me 6 years to accomplish this.
I let go of Bill fairly easily, and began to think about other strip ideas. The thought of using the boy Everett in a strip had crossed my mind. Occasionally, a vague image of him would creep into my imagination. but I could never get a clear picture of who he might turn out to be.
Then, one day in 1999, I was at a neighbor’s house looking through an entire library of books that he was selling, and I found a biography of Thomas Edison. I read it cover to cover in just a week or so. It dawned on me soon after that I could take Everett, change his name to Edison, pour into him my love of science and math, and have a character that I could really have fun with. And that’s exactly what I set out to do.
Next: My first Edison strips, and another important call from Jay Kennedy
This entry was posted
on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 9:57 pm by John Hambrock.
