The Comic Strip That Never Was
So, what's this all about anyway?
Well, basically, "Autumn Lake" is the culmination of a project I've been toying with since about 1984. I've always referred to it as "the comic strip that never was," simply because it was not destined for the funny pages as I'd hoped. Incidentally, that's why the comic is also sort of "newspapery-looking" in its layout, with black & white dailies and a full-color Sunday edition.
"Autumn Lake" is set in a fictional New England town. Why New England? Well, that's where I'm from, and it goes along with the old adage, "Write what you know."
The citizens of Autumn Lake proper live in a small town world without the small town dregs. They enjoy all of the plusses, and few of the minuses (in other words, their town is "idyllic," or a "picture-post card" town). Doors and cars needn't be locked. Neighbors all know each other and look out for each other. It's perfectly safe to go out walking alone in the dead of night, with nothing more to fear than a pesky mosquito or two. The citizenry are educated, literate, domestic; no screaming redneck trailer-trash or gangsta' gang-bangers need apply.
There's something old-timey about the people, the town, the comic. They live in the 21st Century, but do not generally use cell phones or own iPods. They like to garden. They like quiet. They like sunrises and sunsets in equal measure, and they know how to drive in the snow, thank you very much. They seem to stand in quiet defiance of the profiteering corporate mentality that masquerades as "progress."
Points of interest? There's a covered bridge, a lake, a park, cranberry bogs, and a flower shop.
Our heroes? Mark and Dennis, and everyone else. Mark is the nostalgic one, the romantic, the artist, the loser, the foolish, the lonely, the spendthrift, who all the pretty girls shoot down. Dennis is the more intelligent one, the questioning one, the scientist, the mathematician, the inventor, the one who still lives at home with his Mom. Both are TV, comic book, sci-fi, and pizza junkies. Both like foiling the hopes and dreams of the town grouch, Sherm Sherman. Both think the world could be a better place if (Mark), they could just learn to appreciate the past, or (Dennis), someone (preferably himself), could come up with a mankind-saving invention. Both hate vegetables.
A Comic is Born
Originally, I created what would ultimately become "Autumn Lake" back in high school. I met my best friend Dennis at Upward Bound, which was a sort of summer school program where high school kids spent the summer taking college-level courses at a local university.
Among other comics I drew about my fellow "UB-ers," I cooked up a comic called "Dennis N' Me." In fact, I think the idea was suggested to me by other group members, since Dennis and I always hung out together.
The comic, such as it was, pretty much revolved around Dennis and Mark playing practical jokes on other program members, if not each other. The only time the three-panel comic was ever actually published was when it appeared in the monthly newsletter that was mailed out to all the kids in our local chapter of the UB program. Even though it was pretty crudely drawn, folks seemed to get a kick out if the comic, and I enjoyed making it.
When I eventually decided to take a real stab at comics some ten years later, I went through other strips I'd been making to see what I had to work with. "Dennis N' Me" seemed the best of a bad lot, and out of the four or five comics I'd come up with, it was the only strip that jumped out at me and fired my imagination. By then, I had a few other characters I'd been drawing just for fun, so I added them to the mix to round out the cast. I also defined an idyllic hometown for Dennis and Mark to live in, and further refined the characters, who they were, and what they did.
As I worked, I cranked out about a hundred and fifty daily strips and about fifteen Sundays. I picked out some of the "better" ones, sent them off to various syndicates, and held my breath. Naturally, I got polite rejection letters from all of them, and it's pretty easy to see why (my crappy artwork notwithstanding).
On average, the big syndicates each get about 4000 submissions a year. Out of those, they only pick one, or two (maybe three at the most), for launch. Given the expense of launching a new comic strip, you can't really blame the syndicates for being so conservative, but those sort of odds are pretty daunting when you're just starting out. Unfortunately, my work was destined to remain in that sad, lamented 3997 submissions that never seem to catch the editors' collectively jaundiced eye, and that was pretty discouraging.
But it dawned on me a short time ago that out of those 3997 other comics, there surely had to be some wheat being thrown out with the chaff, and maybe that's what had happened to my comic. There are probably all sorts of great ideas for comics being passed over in favor of those with more marketable characters, and in the final analysis, that's what syndicates are really all about… marketing.
Now, any comic strip artist will tell you that when they started out, the thing they had in mind was having their strip on the funny pages right alongside "Peanuts", "Blondie", or "Calvin & Hobbes". Anything else just seems a bit… fake by comparison. But it occurred to me that if I was ever gonna get an audience for my comic, it probably wasn't going to be in a newspaper, so why even bother with them? That's where the Internet came in. I realized that plenty of other folks have their comics published online, so I set about to do the same thing. As for the funny pages, sure, that'd be great, but the 'net has actually become a legit venue for comic strips thanks to the hard work of folks like Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins ("Penny Arcade"), Peter Abrams ("Get Sluggy"), and Bill Holbrook ("Kevin & Kell"). And a big plus is that you can potentially reach a heckava lot more people than you can if your comic is just on the constantly-shrinking funny page of a newspaper!
So I began drawing the comic again, refined the characters a bit more, and planned out the storylines so they made a little more sense. I decided that I needed a name for a website that people could remember, so at long last I dispensed with "Dennis N' Me" and used the name of the characters' hometown, Autumn Lake, instead.
Once I had something worth looking at, I began posting the comics on MySpace and Blogger until I could figure out how to put together a website for "Autumn Lake" to live on. The value of this was getting into the habit of working a regular schedule with the comic, doing so many a week and one on Sunday. This made it easier to plan, and easier to lay out (and it was all free, too!).
And that's pretty much where we are today. Hopefully, "Autumn Lake" will generate at least a little bit of joy for people living in an otherwise gloomy world. And if not? Then perhaps "Autumn Lake" will live up to its subtitle…: "The Comic Strip That Never Was."
Among other comics I drew about my fellow "UB-ers," I cooked up a comic called "Dennis N' Me." In fact, I think the idea was suggested to me by other group members, since Dennis and I always hung out together.
The comic, such as it was, pretty much revolved around Dennis and Mark playing practical jokes on other program members, if not each other. The only time the three-panel comic was ever actually published was when it appeared in the monthly newsletter that was mailed out to all the kids in our local chapter of the UB program. Even though it was pretty crudely drawn, folks seemed to get a kick out if the comic, and I enjoyed making it.
When I eventually decided to take a real stab at comics some ten years later, I went through other strips I'd been making to see what I had to work with. "Dennis N' Me" seemed the best of a bad lot, and out of the four or five comics I'd come up with, it was the only strip that jumped out at me and fired my imagination. By then, I had a few other characters I'd been drawing just for fun, so I added them to the mix to round out the cast. I also defined an idyllic hometown for Dennis and Mark to live in, and further refined the characters, who they were, and what they did.
As I worked, I cranked out about a hundred and fifty daily strips and about fifteen Sundays. I picked out some of the "better" ones, sent them off to various syndicates, and held my breath. Naturally, I got polite rejection letters from all of them, and it's pretty easy to see why (my crappy artwork notwithstanding).
On average, the big syndicates each get about 4000 submissions a year. Out of those, they only pick one, or two (maybe three at the most), for launch. Given the expense of launching a new comic strip, you can't really blame the syndicates for being so conservative, but those sort of odds are pretty daunting when you're just starting out. Unfortunately, my work was destined to remain in that sad, lamented 3997 submissions that never seem to catch the editors' collectively jaundiced eye, and that was pretty discouraging.
But it dawned on me a short time ago that out of those 3997 other comics, there surely had to be some wheat being thrown out with the chaff, and maybe that's what had happened to my comic. There are probably all sorts of great ideas for comics being passed over in favor of those with more marketable characters, and in the final analysis, that's what syndicates are really all about… marketing.
Now, any comic strip artist will tell you that when they started out, the thing they had in mind was having their strip on the funny pages right alongside "Peanuts", "Blondie", or "Calvin & Hobbes". Anything else just seems a bit… fake by comparison. But it occurred to me that if I was ever gonna get an audience for my comic, it probably wasn't going to be in a newspaper, so why even bother with them? That's where the Internet came in. I realized that plenty of other folks have their comics published online, so I set about to do the same thing. As for the funny pages, sure, that'd be great, but the 'net has actually become a legit venue for comic strips thanks to the hard work of folks like Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins ("Penny Arcade"), Peter Abrams ("Get Sluggy"), and Bill Holbrook ("Kevin & Kell"). And a big plus is that you can potentially reach a heckava lot more people than you can if your comic is just on the constantly-shrinking funny page of a newspaper!
So I began drawing the comic again, refined the characters a bit more, and planned out the storylines so they made a little more sense. I decided that I needed a name for a website that people could remember, so at long last I dispensed with "Dennis N' Me" and used the name of the characters' hometown, Autumn Lake, instead.
Once I had something worth looking at, I began posting the comics on MySpace and Blogger until I could figure out how to put together a website for "Autumn Lake" to live on. The value of this was getting into the habit of working a regular schedule with the comic, doing so many a week and one on Sunday. This made it easier to plan, and easier to lay out (and it was all free, too!).
And that's pretty much where we are today. Hopefully, "Autumn Lake" will generate at least a little bit of joy for people living in an otherwise gloomy world. And if not? Then perhaps "Autumn Lake" will live up to its subtitle…: "The Comic Strip That Never Was."
About Me
"I'm going to draw something."
I remember the day. Well, not the actual date and time (it was sunny outside), but I do recall the actual moment.
I was about four years old. I had inherited or been given a student desk (you know, the old kind with the hole in it for an inkwell). I was sitting there, and out of the blue, I said to myself, "I'm going to draw something." Seriously, just like that. It was as if I had made some momentous decision, full of all the conviction and determination of a soldier, or a prizefighter, or a king (or, as much of any of that as a four year old can manage). Why? I have no idea. All I know is that somewhere in my head, a switch had been thrown, and I wanted to draw.
I had some of that beige newsprint paper that kids scribble on. I had crayons (I still love the smell of a box of Crayola crayons!). But what to draw? I looked around, and found something that caught my attention. All kids have things which are theirs, almost as if they had been given a royal grant of land. One such thing for me back then, my own Magna Carta of sorts, was a juice glass. The glass had cartoon drawing on it of Raggety Ann and Raggety Andy in black, white, and red ink, and it was this object I set about to copy. The results? Alas, that I cannot remember (it was a disappointing effort, to be sure). But to me, it was this moment from which I can trace a long love of drawing and, in particular, cartoons.
Not long after, I turned to drawing Snoopy and Woodstock. They were relatively simple to render, and "Peanuts" was riding a crest of popularity back then, so there were lots of Snoopy books ("Happiness Is...") and Snoopy toys about. From "Peanuts," I learned several things, not least of which was how to draw grass, and how to draw eyes. I also picked up a habit which I still have to this day; I sign my artwork after the manner of Charles M. Schultz (the capital "S", followed by the other, smaller letters all scrunched up).
None of these childish attempts at mastering the line art of others were very good, but that was beside the point; I was interested, and that's the main thing. It got me inspired to draw my own comics. Years later I found other inspiration from Bill Watterson ("Calvin & Hobbes"), Charles Geer ("Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars" & "The Mad Scientists' Club"), Jon J. Muth ("Dracula", "Come On, Rain!") and Peter Spier ("The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night", "Peter Speir's Christmas"), but after all these years, it is still the influence of Schultz that peeks out from behind the curtain in my work.
Sometimes, I wonder what I'd be drawing today if, at that magic moment all those years ago, instead of the juice glass I had focused on a technical drawing, or a blueprint, or the hideous floral pattern of my grandma's window draperies! Whatever it would be, I am convinced of one thing; it would not be nearly as much fun.
Mark
I was about four years old. I had inherited or been given a student desk (you know, the old kind with the hole in it for an inkwell). I was sitting there, and out of the blue, I said to myself, "I'm going to draw something." Seriously, just like that. It was as if I had made some momentous decision, full of all the conviction and determination of a soldier, or a prizefighter, or a king (or, as much of any of that as a four year old can manage). Why? I have no idea. All I know is that somewhere in my head, a switch had been thrown, and I wanted to draw.
I had some of that beige newsprint paper that kids scribble on. I had crayons (I still love the smell of a box of Crayola crayons!). But what to draw? I looked around, and found something that caught my attention. All kids have things which are theirs, almost as if they had been given a royal grant of land. One such thing for me back then, my own Magna Carta of sorts, was a juice glass. The glass had cartoon drawing on it of Raggety Ann and Raggety Andy in black, white, and red ink, and it was this object I set about to copy. The results? Alas, that I cannot remember (it was a disappointing effort, to be sure). But to me, it was this moment from which I can trace a long love of drawing and, in particular, cartoons.
Not long after, I turned to drawing Snoopy and Woodstock. They were relatively simple to render, and "Peanuts" was riding a crest of popularity back then, so there were lots of Snoopy books ("Happiness Is...") and Snoopy toys about. From "Peanuts," I learned several things, not least of which was how to draw grass, and how to draw eyes. I also picked up a habit which I still have to this day; I sign my artwork after the manner of Charles M. Schultz (the capital "S", followed by the other, smaller letters all scrunched up).
None of these childish attempts at mastering the line art of others were very good, but that was beside the point; I was interested, and that's the main thing. It got me inspired to draw my own comics. Years later I found other inspiration from Bill Watterson ("Calvin & Hobbes"), Charles Geer ("Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars" & "The Mad Scientists' Club"), Jon J. Muth ("Dracula", "Come On, Rain!") and Peter Spier ("The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night", "Peter Speir's Christmas"), but after all these years, it is still the influence of Schultz that peeks out from behind the curtain in my work.
Sometimes, I wonder what I'd be drawing today if, at that magic moment all those years ago, instead of the juice glass I had focused on a technical drawing, or a blueprint, or the hideous floral pattern of my grandma's window draperies! Whatever it would be, I am convinced of one thing; it would not be nearly as much fun.
Mark
About the Website
Autumnlake.com is designed with a base resolution of 800 x 600, with mainly low-to-medium res GIF images, because I understand the pain that is dial-up. The website is best viewed with the Mozilla Firefox browser (as most things are).
The "Autumn Lake" website is powered by Comikaze, built with SiteSpinner, and hosted by StartLogic.
