Sweetpea Progress Report

Ten years ago, when my grandchildren were at those precious ages of three through seven, I had this brilliant idea of creating a comic strip centered around their lives. Great idea; bad timing.

Back then, there were four or five major syndicators who distributed comic strips to newspapers and magazines worldwide. My, how things have changed in a relatively short ten years! First of all, the kids have grown up and lost their childish beauty and charm. They’ve become older, maturing (perhaps) beyond their years, and growing into responsible young adults.

All I have left of that earlier period are a lot of pictures and the memories of their cute antics, questions, and wonderment at the world. But, I hope, those memories are enough to recreate that Camelot period before formal education, peer influences, and a growing awareness of the sometimes-confusing world around them took away their childish charm. The challenge arises in finding a new means of world-wide distribution because the old way of disseminating comic strips no longer exists.

Nowadays, there are only two or three syndicators for a limited number of newspapers around the globe. Newspapers themselves are slowly dying out or morphing into other forms of information and entertainment. For the most part, comic strips have transitioned to the internet and web distribution. It’s a now whole new ballgame out there now.

Comic strip distribution on the internet has become the new frontier.

My first tentative toe-steps into the world of illustrations had to do with a skinny hippo and his fear of being different. ‘Waleed, the Skinny Hippo’ was written about ten years ago but languished because of the lack of an illustrator. Fast-forward to last winter and my editor and I found our answer half way around the world.

Through a serendipitous series of events my editor and I found a plethora of freelance artists and illustrators on line. After thoroughly reviewing more than ninety-four, we chose an illustrator named Shamina from Bangladesh to create my skinny hippo called Waleed.

After that successful experience, Vida and I turned out eye toward someone who could recreate cartoon versions of my grandchildren. Once we found a comic strip artist named Santijury, we were off to the races.

The first comic strip turned out great. It was a bit silly but it did a good job of capturing Sweetpea and her gang in a manner I thought representative of future comic strips. Then we created a sampler of three more comic strips to really test the waters and elicit feedback on the viability of the project.

Click here to view a 3-strip sampler and give feedback on the new Sweetpea & The Gang!

After putting our respective heads together, Sharon and I and my editor agreed that the series, if it were to proceed, would be edgy but tempered with sensitivity and not afraid to cover a host of relevant, timely issues.

I was fortunate to get some great feedback from several writing associates whose judgement I respected. The fact that they were Moms themselves only added to their credibility.

So what are the next steps?

First, we have to thorough examine the feedback on the sampler; likes, dislikes, themes apparent, themes not to apparent, common thoughts and interests, objections, concerns, etc. The whole gamut of responses that I’ll need to best judge if this is a viable idea or not. Based on that feedback, do we want to proceed building an inventory of 30 to 50 comic strips?

We must also do extensive research into the present-day opportunities for placement on the web, world-wide distribution.

Then there is the whole question of monetizing this project. At a certain point, I’ve got to decide if I’ve paid a lot of money for an inventory of cute comic strips based on my grandchildren or I have a viable business plan that can make some money.

The common consensus among the players in the field is that the most realistic business model is to offer free-to-consumer, ad-subsidized content, which then trades on audience loyalty by selling books, T-shirts, merchandise, and original art.

The whole question boils down to; is this the route I want to go? Is this what I want to create and then do into the foreseeable future? Or was this just a cute idea, not really viable over the long term and an expenditure of money well spent to create a series of comic strips of my grandchildren.

I guess time will tell.