Six Chix: The Comic Strip

When I was first starting out, and trying to get published as a cartoonist… it seemed that I was never going to get a break. I’d send my work out and get these “positive” rejections. “Try doing this”, or “Maybe you should change that”, so I followed the suggestions, and still no sales. This was the late 70’s,early 80’s.

What to do? I came up with a great idea. I’d teach myself silk screening, print my cartoons on T-shirts and hit the craft show circuit going stright to the public without the middle man (editors etc.).

Learning silk screening was not so easy. This was the old, manual days. I managed to learn to screen the black drawings and then hand-painted bits of color.

I also created (with some help) an eye catching life-size display of my characters that I could stretch the shirts on. I named my new business the Strip T’s Design Company.

The first show I did, I had about 4 dozen shirts, all hand done, which included an edgy tourist shirt line (see above) and some of my women’s humor cartoons.

The designs were a HUGE success! Women of all ages gathered around the booth and LAUGHED! They said they’d never seen humor they could relate to before and I was sold out before the show ended. 
Not long after, my designs began getting attention from the big textile magazine, Impressions, and winning humor awards. My little business! Then, a licensing agent saw them in there and contacted me. I got deals for calendars and cards. So, it was only after all that, that I sold my first cartoon to a major market. Glamour! In ‘95, I got my first syndication deal with Chronicle Features (and King was interested back then, too!) who told me I could do anything I wanted, so I came up with “Fair Game” (Thanks, John for the title!). Syndication being a business, a couple of years later Chronicle sold to Universal, then Universal dropped it, but some clients  continued to buy it from me. Not long after that… Jay Kennedy called to ask if I’d be interested in his new idea, a rotating strip drawn by a team of women cartoonists. He didn’t have to ask twice!
“Six Chix” has been a joy and a pleasure to do with such wonderful, funny women who continue to amaze and surprise me with their talent and perspectives (we get proofs every week so we can all see what we’ve been up to).

So, all in all, I’ve been pretty lucky. Matt Groening once gave me advice  (I sent him some work to critique) (this was before the “Simpsons”) and he said “Don’t give up, give your work away for free if you have to, to get it seen, and you’ll get some sort of career going.” It has been some sort of career!