Reality Amuck™

This one may be a little too 'behind the curtain' for a few folks, so sorry in advance.

As you may recall I decided to take a couple weeks off in order to catch up on a few projects that are way over due and to work on a few secret projects relating to the comic. This is where working ahead and having a buffer would come in handy. Lesson learned.

Another problem is that many of my strips that take a more political bend tend to be time sensitive. A politician says something stupid and the expiration date on making jokes about it is pretty short. For instance if I were to make a joke about something President Bush said or did the joke would likely fall flat for most readers and maybe be funny to a few, but over all it would be a dud. This being the case, any time I take a break I risk missing out on making fun of someone saying or doing something really stupid. When the Virginia Governor declared April to be "Confederate History Month" and then stumbled back and forth over whether or not Slavery was an important issue in the Civil War to Virginians it was open season. When the Virginia Attorney-General spoke at a Pro-Gun Rally, uh, a Second Amendment Rights Demonstration, the field was wide open for mockery. It hurt to miss the opportunity.

This brings up something I struggle with many days. My usual desktop background is a simple image of a slip of paper with "Be Original" typed on it (oddly I swiped the idea and image from somewhere). I use it as a reminder to, guess what, try my best to be original. I am constantly worried that something I've read or heard from another cartoonist will seep into my subconscious and I'll end up accidentally making a similar strip to them. Sometimes similar strips just happen. Some subjects are just so obvious that several cartoonists end up making very similar strips that would make you think someone was copying when in reality they were all original ideas.  I've heard David Kellett of Sheldon Comics refer to this as a "Yahtzee Moment".

That wasn't the case with my Flash picture from last week. I saw a couple friends discussing the lack of Flash on iPhones and iPads and decided to make a little joke with them. When I posted it to them on TwitPic I had no idea it would end up being re-Tweeted several times and end up with almost 14,000 views. Reminder, nothing said on a public forum is private (DUH).

But back to the originality. I have a list of comics that I routinely avoid for weeks or months at a time due to the fact that their subject matter is political enough that I could definitely use an idea from one of their strips by mistake. Two of my favorite strips, Candorville by Darin Bell and Socks & Barney by Steve Conley top the list of strips I avoid for months. I cheat and check out Candorville due to the fact that Darin is a syndicated cartoonist so he has to work with a three or four week lead time, thus his comments on a news story from today won't show up tomorrow.

This past week he has been addressing the "Confederate History Month" issue in a way that makes me drool on my keyboard. The man is a master of satire and if you're not reading Candorville you are doing yourself a disservice. READ IT. I'm almost happy that I took a break when I did. Any jokes that I could have made or comics that I could have drawn would have paled by comparison to his.

But it still bugs me. Several times I see comics get a lot of attention making a joke or a gag that is similar to one that is sitting in my sketch book. Unused due to me not being confident enough to pull the trigger and post it. Trust me, I am working on it. Bold steps need to be made more often.

Sorry to rattle on. It's been a while since we talked and I really miss you. Talk again soon.

-Tovias