#834 – Syndicated Dreams…
So now you guys know why there was a sudden change in style for Capes & Babes for a while.
What you guys don’t know is how this all came about…
During November, right when I was getting a ton of commission requests and planning to attend a couple of craft shows for the first time, I knew my December schedule was going to be too hectic to try and maintain a three-day-a-week schedule. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do about that until one day at lunch, I started doodling kid versions of all the Capes & Babes characters – and I started getting excited about what was forming on those blank sheets of papers.
But, I wondered, how do I suddenly make such a drastic style change to the strip and, further more, how do I explain it?
Luckily, my friend, Ed Robinson, stepped in and gave me a brilliant idea.
By this time, I knew that I was going to start running old strips for the month of December but I knew I wanted to do something with these kid versions but didn’t exactly know what. During a Friday afternoon lunch, Ed suggested that they be Roy’s comic strip syndication submission. I thought just that idea alone was great but low and behold, Ed went and topped himself in the next sentence.
“And don’t tell anyone what’s going on – just start the ‘Capes & Babies’ and let people guess…”
UPDATE:
My wife reminded me this morning that I should have also mentioned that one big Capes & Babes fan was able to guess not too long ago exactly what was happening. So another big shout-out to Dave Wilson for putting his cartoon strip Sherlock Holmes cap on and deducing what was happening. Good job, Dave!
Definitely make “Capes & Babies” as a recurring theme.
And no’t forget to mention who it was that figured it out first. It wasn’t me but You should give credit where credit is due.Just sayin’.
Good point… I forget about these things late at night when I’m writing these blog posts! 🙂
Updating the blog now.
*don’t… man, I hate this keyboard…
Oh yeah, I’m doing a Snoopy Dance now, too. 🙂 Thanks Judi, and Thank you, Chris for the shout-out. 🙂
I vote for seeing more of the kid version of Capes and Babes, they’re cute! It would make a nice back-up feature for the books, and maybe some more stories as Roy tries to finally get work as a full-time
cartoonist.
I might like to see them every month, but if that is too frequen what about whenever you have a break in the action to show that you are changing story arcs or to “get things up to speed” in the timeframe like an easy time jump
Oh man… I really like this suggestion as it would really fit in well as a “between arc” kind of thing. Might work well. I’ll have to see. 🙂
I gotta agree with LookingIn. I could take an occasional dose, but neither the art nor the content are what I’m looking for in a comic on a regular basis. If I wanted Roy’s art, I’d subscribe to his feed 🙂
Obviously, Chris, it’s your strip. I encourage you to take it in whatever direction satisfies YOU, not me.
Yeah, I get that. My original thought was to actually run the Baby versions as long as it would take for an actual small syndication submission package – two weeks worth of strips or so (yeah, I know syndications require a lot more strips than that).
My fear though, was that it would cause too much confusion for regular C&B readers (plus, I was running out of gags too – LOL!).
That’s also why I was thinking about just putting them in books as exclusive content – so parents might have something they feel comfortable with when looking through my books at conventions.
That being said, it’s always a good idea for an artistic to flex and expand their drawing muscles a bit… and honestly, I was really getting into drawing mini versions of my characters – so much so, today’s last panel really took me a while to draw as it had been too long since I drew an “adult” version of Roy. 🙂
I should have known that Ed had a hand in the shenanigans.
Loved it! I’d like to see more of the mini Capes & Babes!
Have you considered going to the opposite extreme and drawing them as senior citizens?
That’s a pretty awesome idea, Rainey. I hadn’t thought of that. But I guess Roni would have to be excluded from that since, you know… she’s already over 400 years old. 🙂