Rejected strip ideas
In an interview Bill Holbrook, the creator of Kevin and Kell, one of the oldest still existing webcomics, gave the following answer to the question “What would you say to a young person out to follow in your footsteps?”:
When I was 23, Charles Schulz gave me the following advice: Sit down and draw fifty strips. Of those, maybe five will be funny. Build on those and throw out the rest. Do fifty more. Now perhaps ten will be usable. Repeat this process again and again.
Other cartoonists have said similar things which surprises me because I follow a completely different approach. I prefer to work on a particular idea until it’s good enough for publication. My ratio of rejected strip ideas, which are then moved to a document called Sandra and Woo Trash.odt, is rather one third instead of nine tenths. I’m often working a long time on details like the exact phrasing of the punchline, but I stick to the general idea. I guess there isn’t just one way of doing it and working together with an artist forces you to pay great attention to detail from the start.
– Novil
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And, that fine detailing shows off very well. Granted, there’s often a piece that is confusing here and there. But, that helps generate questions and answers/guesses. In the end, it works out for the best.
In short, good job.
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I’ve heard that a lot of novelists often have different approaches to writing so this isn’t too surprising, particularly with you working with an artist.
Actually, that strikes me as sounding like the process I heard about from Dennis Eichhorn in regards to writing comic books.
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Is K&K only *one* of the oldest, and not *the* oldest still existing? I know that the first webcomic started in 1993 and has been retired, and K&K started in 1995.
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which one was that then, Tom? (I’m interested to find out!)
i know of things like sabrina (predating the web, much like the foglios?) and sluggy… what else?
According to the List of webcomics at Wikipedia, there are a handful of older webcomics which are still updating. But Kevin and Kell is the one with the biggest archive for sure.
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By coincidence, two characters from Charles Schulz’s famous Peanuts comic strip went to the Moon 40 years ago last week during the Apollo 10 mission.