NELSON'S NEIGHBORHOOD Daily Comic Strip # 1

This was my first serious attempt at a syndicated comic strip, done many years ago. I'm talking late1980's.

That's before personal computers, kids!

Everything was done old school, hand drawn, hand lettered, zip-a-tone hand applied. If I were to redo it today, all of those things would be done easier, faster and much neater looking with the aid of our little friend, the computer.

This was a family friendly strip designed to run in syndication in your local newspaper. Unfortunately, at the time, there were no syndicates wise enough to take a chance on it, so it ended up gathering dust in my stack of dusty art.  I big on not wasting anything, so this will eventually get re-tooled and updated in some form.

One of the fun things about creating a strip like this is thinking up and designing characters. I went through a couple of different stages of developement, and a little trial and error, until I found character designs that seemed both easy to draw on a daily basis and hopefully visually appealing. The premise for the strip is this: a young married couple with one child, a son, move into a new home in a new neighborhood in order for the husband to begin his new career at a fancy advertising agency. From day one, all is not what they had expected to find. Wackiness ensues. The strip starts out slow and builds, at least that was my intention.

One of my many inspirations as a cartoonist was Walt Kelly's POGO, because he manged to create intricate ongoing storylines while still delivering daily strips that were hilarious. I'm not saying I achieved that, but that was and is my goal in every comic strip I have ever done. As each successive strip airs, it is linked to, though not dependant on, the previous one.