From what I've read, newspaper comics artists generally try to stay two weeks ahead of schedule, meaning that they're writing and drawing a strip today that will run two weeks from now. I've heard that Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, spends a few solid months writing and illustrating all of his strips for the year. Chris Browne, writer/illustrator of Hagar the Horrible, once stated on his website (iirc) that he's generally riding on "the edge of destruction," perhaps staying only a day or two ahead. And so now I've reached that point, myself.
A friend asked me this week how much time I actually spend working on a comic. My response was "too much." Charles Shultz, from what I've heard, treated cartooning like a full-time job, working on Peanuts at his drawing table for eight hours a day. I've read that Darby Conley set out to make Get Fuzzy both really funny and really well illustrated and once spent upwards of ten hours per day on a single strip. With Cake and Potatoes, though images are repeated in the comic, everything's hand-drawn, hand-inked, scanned, and manipulated in Photoshop. There are four separate files saved for each image, Word documents containing HTML code and weekly scripts, CD backups for everything. The idea is that I could virtually break my laptop in half and still manage to produce a comic for the week. Now reality has set in.
Cake and Potatoes began as a diversion, an outlet for creative energy while I recovered from graduate school, something to do until I could get back to "serious" writing. The strip means a little more than that to me now. Images, image consciousness, image skepticism are all major aspects of our culture and everyday lives; I personally think that it's high time they became an integral part of our literture, as well. Images do more than entertain; they instruct and orient, provide quick and easy context, and create a fun interplay with the written word, challenging assumptions about how one should read a text. They also take a long time to create.
Hence, I'll have to cut back to producing comics every other week. And eventually, Season 2 will have to end in order for me to generate new material for a third season (hopefully). I'll check in during the off weeks for little rants on culture, comics, and criticism (like this post), and maybe even preview some images for the coming week. And as always, feel free to check out the archives anytime to peruse older cartoons.
-Jackson
New cartoon next week!!
