“To whom it may concern,” began one of many e-mails that came in to the Journal’s comics survey. “I hope the quest to find a replacement strip for Kudzu in the Winston-Salem Journal is over and the obvious winner Pearls Before Swine is a regular feature starting in January.”
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John Hambrock knew from a young age what he wanted to do when he grew up - become a marine biologist. But somehow, cartooning got in the way.
His strip, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, will get a four-week trial run on the Journal’s comics pages starting Monday.
The central character is a 10-year-old boy genius with a knack for inventions, which allows Hambrock to tap into his love of science on a regular basis.
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Cartoonist Tak Toyoshima has been taking a comedic approach to touchy issues since 1999. But his strip, Secret Asian Man, has only recently made the jump from independent papers to newspaper syndication.
Premiering nationally back in May, it is the first nationally syndicated strip to feature an Asian American leading character - the titular “Secret Asian Man,” Sam Takahashi. Though he (like his creator) is of Japanese heritage, Sam is frequently mistaken for Chinese. His wife is white, and they have a 3-year-old son. The cast also includes an ethnically diverse mix of characters, including activist Grace, burly Charlie and well-intentioned-but-goofy Richie.
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Writers often talk about their characters taking over and pushing stories in directions they never expected.
That is what happened to Matt Janz, a cartoonist whose 5-year-old comic strip Out of the Gene Pool recently underwent a transformation.
Some of the original lead characters vanished, replaced by supporting characters who proved to have lives of their own. On July 30, the strip was renamed Single and Looking. It takes a cynical yet (occasionally) optimistic look at the dating scene, from the perspective of two very different singles.
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Most of the time, cartoonist Tony Carrillo said, the responses that he gets to his comic strip F Minus are favorable.
“It’s about 90 percent positive,” he said by phone from his home in Tempe, Ariz. “The other 10 percent, it’s interesting what people will find to get upset about. No matter what topic I touch on, there’s bound to be someone out there to get upset.”
Take, for instance, clowns.
Yes, clowns.
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Stephan Pastis, the cartoonist of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine, knew when he was a child that he wanted to be a cartoonist. But he was too practical for his own good.
"When I was a little kid, I loved to draw, like most cartoonists," he said by phone from Santa Rosa, Calif. "But I knew going through school and everything that it wasn’t a practical choice. The odds of getting syndicated are slimmer than the odds of being an NBA player. So I decided to do something you can make a living at. I became a lawyer."
Read More No CommentsStarting Monday, readers will see some new faces on the comics pages of the Winston-Salem Journal.
We’re beginning a six-month search for a replacement for Kudzu, which comes to an end Saturday following the death of cartoonist Doug Marlette.
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