I’ve been a fan of comic strips for as long as I can remember. When I was a boy the newspaper was still widely read and delivered daily. The comics section took up two entire pages of real estate during the week in black and white ink and four pages on Sunday in color.
My favorites were Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts (the granddaddy of all modern strips), Andy Capp, and who could forget the brilliance of The Far Side?
Through the years, the characters in these strips became like old friends that millions of people would visit once a day and check in on. Reading them, whether they made you laugh or made you think, somehow made the day seem complete.
I loved to draw as much as I loved to write as a child, maybe even more. Being able to combine the two skills into one activity was like a dream come true. I created a few primitive comic strips as a child. One of those strips called, “Snibbly”, I drew and developed for many years.
The Snibbly strip never went anywhere, well, because I was about ten years old when I started it. Also, looking back on it years later, you could tell it was created by a ten year old. It was practice though. Being the introvert that I was when I was young I couldn’t imagine a better career. I could draw at home, not have to go out into the scary world, and get paid lots of money. It was a triple-win in my ten year old mind.
Fast forward to the mid-nineties. I was in my 20’s and had just moved halfway across the country and landed a corporate job that paid the bills but I just knew it wouldn’t hold my interest for long. Feeling desperate for a creative outlet, I decided to start another strip called As Good As It Gets?
As Good As It Got
I somehow mustered the confidence to pitch the idea to a regional newspaper that had been regularly publishing my poetry. No one was more surprised than I was when they agreed to run it!
I’ll never forget the excitement I felt.
It seemed like my dream of becoming a syndicated cartoonist was getting started. Each month it was a great creative challenge to figure out what the strip would be about and then distill that idea into one single panel, with just a few lines and some words.
The one-panel strip ran in that monthly newspaper that circulated in Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, and Wisconsin for a little over two years (1997-1999).
Unfortunately, As Good As It Gets? was never picked up by any other newspapers and the demands of my day job became too great for me to keep devoting the time to it. The Edge newspaper ran the very last strip in the autumn of 1999.
Every few years I run across some of my old comics and I get the bug again. As we were cleaning out a storage locker I found the six strips I’m sharing here recently and started wondering if there was a place for a comic strip here on Hive.
I mean, do people even read comics anymore?
Here's another question for you...
What did you do in your former life?
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Poetry should move us, it should change us, it should glitch our brains, shift our moods to another frequency. Poetry should evoke feelings of melancholy, whimsy, it should remind us what it feels like to be in love, or cause us to think about something in a completely different way. I view poetry, and all art really, as a temporary and fragile bridge between our world and a more pure and refined one. This is a world we could bring into creation if enough of us believed in it. This book is ephemera, destined to end up forgotten, lingering on some dusty shelf or tucked away in a dark attic. Yet the words, they will live on in memory. I hope these words become a part of you, bubble up into your memory when you least expect them to and make you feel a little more alive.
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Most of us have experienced a moment of perfect peace at least once in our lives. In these moments we lose ourselves and feel connected to everything. I call these mindful moments. Words can’t describe how complete they make us feel.
These moments are usually fragile, evaporating in seconds. What if there was a way to train your mind to experience more of them? It’s deceptively easy and requires nothing more than a subtle shift in mindset. My new book, Mindful Moments, will teach you to be much more content despite the chaos and imperfect circumstances continuing to unfold around you. Upgrade your life experience today for only $15.99 on Amazon.com.
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I have read only a few comics in my life so far. I almost always preferred books.
Physical or spiritual? I believe that I had a spiritual life, and that I chose to come to Earth to test and experience the physical life. Somehow I feel as if I would remember this choice/decision.
Have a nice day. All the best. Greetings and much love from Hungary.
Thank you! I hope you're having a great week.
Hey, you are very talented, Eric! Those comics are really good. You should take it up again, even if it's just as a hobby and maybe something new will come out of it. At home, my father used to buy the newspaper on Sundays and there were some comics in the paper. I remember that he always took out those pages and the entertainment ones. I loved Olafo. In fact, I have a page from that time on my closet door. I remember that before, I also used to draw. I liked to draw some things on the top of each page of the notebook and then I would turn it quickly and that gave him an idea of movement. You never did that? How nostalgic I feel for those years. The eyes were ready to wonder at every turn. A great day and a hug, my friend
I appreciate it, Nancy! I used to read that very same comic but I think it was called Hagar the Horrible in America. I almost forgot about that one but it sounds like it's still running in newspapers today. I never did create the animation drawings on the edges of pages but I remember some kids in school did. I really miss taking the time to read the newspaper, it was kind of a ritual for me while eating breakfast. It seems like a lifetime ago now. I hope you enjoy your week, Nancy!
Hey Eric! Nice work! Like your comics! So... Oh yes! I do love comics, but now I read them on social media... When I was a young girl, we use to have very popular comics magazines for kids in Brazil and I have a lot of affection for them. I also read Calvin and Peanuts too. Today Incidental Comics from Grant Snider is my fav. I think you'll like it since he draws many things related to writing and creativity. PS: I'm my former life I'm a contented strategist working with SEO. But I'm also a writer!
Thanks! Calvin and Hobbes was always one of my favorites. I'll have to look up "Incidental Comics", I've never heard of that one, thanks for the suggestion. Ahh, you're a writer too! How long have you been in the business?
Yes, I'm a writer. Well, in terms of business, I work as a freelancer since 2013, mostly writing content and making SEO. But I publish my first book in 2014, and my second in 2020, and I've been working on a memoir now. Let's have a chat? I would like to know more about your creative process and using Hive for self-publishing. This is my discord if you want to contact me helgalubevi#9444, it would be nice to talk with you!
So you've been in the business for a while. It's not an easy one. I use Amazon for self-publishing but use Hive as a sort of incubator for ideas and for promotion from time-to-time. One of my books (Mindful Moments) began as Hive posts. Each post became a chapter. I used audience suggestions to choose the cover as well. It made for a fun process. I don't hang out much on Discord but would be happy to continue the chat here in comments.
Hi Eric! For sure, writing is not the easiest way to make a living. I love the sound of my keyboards, the sentences flowing over them, and the silence of the early morning. But no, it is not easy. I guess I never gave up because I find this connection that writing builds incredible. I think nothing can be more intimate and stronger than the relationship between a reader and a writer. But modernity has fucked everything up. We no longer have the concentration and time to enjoy a book. I, particularly, feel confused by all this, even though I believe that we need to adapt. With this memoir project, I have been thinking of dividing the chapters and delivering them in the form of letters. Yes, the old fashioned way, with stamp and letter carrier. I think that by changing the format of the book, or its delivery, maybe we can rebuild this space of exchange between the reader and the writer. But I am looking into how to make this feasible. Another idea is to put the chapters here on Hive. Can you recommend an open community for this? It would be nice to get feedback from the readers. I was participating in an online writers' group with meetings at Zoom but they stopped. I would like to have this more interaction with writers since writing is always very lonely... I saw your website and was curious about what motivates you in writing. I hope to hear from you soon. Regards, H.
I worked at it for twenty-three years before making any headway at all. Nothing compares to the sense of satisfaction writing gives if you really love it. You're right, social media did diminish attention spans and AI will complicate things exponentially further. Creatives always find a way forward though. Giving people small doses of your story is an excellent idea, and it works. I did this digitally in 2016 with my novel, Alarm Clock Dawn, on the blockchain. It sparked sales of the physical book on Amazon because some people wanted to read ahead or wanted a memento after the serialization was over. I haven't really delved too much into communities here (except for silver bloggers) but I think that would be the way to go with your idea. The readership would be more targeted that way but I've also found that other writers aren't always quick to buy another author's books or offer a lot of feedback (I suppose because many of them are struggling themselves), so this is something to keep in mind. I've had much better luck targeting avid readers vs. other writers. If you can volunteer to have your stories read and then discussed at book club meetings it's super valuable. I've gotten my best feedback this way and often they're thrilled to meet and have a conversation with the writer. Often they buy your books too. What motivates me in writing? Quite honestly, I get depressed if I don't write, writing gives me joy even if no one ever sees it or if it doesn't make me any money. I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions and best of luck to you!
Great stuff! I remember the times when newspapers had comics. Some were so good I remember cutting them out for safe-keeping! I think Hive could use some if you ever find the time...
(In my former life, I was a journalist, something I'm no longer proud about...)
Thank you, Rebecca! I had no idea you were a journalist, what kind of publications did you write for?
There were so many really good strips back in the 1970's and 80's. Many of them can be found online and sometimes I find myself getting lost in them.
Sunday comics were the best! You even got to read them in color! That was a rare thing! My dad still reads the comics every day on his Kindle. He has a site that he goes to apparently. My sister and I used to get the Archie comics when we were kids, I never really got into actual comic books which is odd when I think back on it. Awesome stuff!
Sunday was so much more special, I think partially because we had the time to really delve into the newspaper. That's awesome that your father still reads the comics. There are a few sites online that have decades of strips catalogued. I never got deep into comic books either but a few of the neighborhood kids did. Thank you!
Yeah, I think he is reading new ones. I honestly don't know though. I might be reaching out to you today in DM. I have a travel question.
Those are fantastic! Yes, there is a place for comic strips on Hive...keep 'em coming! You were way ahead of your time having produced these in 1999.
People would read comics more if there were comics available to read. Since the newspaper is such a dinosaur anymore, the closest I have come to reading comics are the occasional memes I run across here on Hive, which I do love.
Thanks! I'll keep that Hive comic strip idea in my back pocket. I have a few writing projects I'm wrapping up now. After these are finished I might just try my hand at drawing one again.
Physical newspapers are just a shadow of their former selves. They're so thin and mainly just national stories from the Associated Press, there's very little in the way of local news like there used to be. It's funny that you correlated comics with memes because that's pretty much what a meme is. So much info can be conveyed with a single picture and just a few words.
Hey those are great! I remember those days, when I was a child, and I loved the comics. Two pages weekdays, and boy did I love the weekends when longer strips came out, and in color. I'm glad you were able to realize your childhood dream, if only for a few years. How many of us get to do that?
I was a dancer in NYC for a while there. I worked with a fairly well known choreographer, whose pieces premiered in all the cool avant garde places. Then I opened a restaurant, and that all fell to shit.
I appreciate it! I'm very thankful to be able to work on that strip for a few years. It was so much fun and rewarding to know all those sets of eyes were seeing it.
How cool that you were a dancer in NYC! You must've been really good. How long did you do dance in the city? What kind of restaurant did you have?
I danced in NYC for, oh, five or six years in the early 80s. Modern dance theater. This gave me quite a taste for the stage, which still thrills me. I can't dance much anymore, so I got into acting. When I discovered it would be good for my theater "career" to also be able to sing, I started taking voice lessons.
We had a couple restaurants over the years, and a couple take out shops, and we catered. New American Cuisine is what it was being called in the 80's. I worked my ass off. I do not know how I did all I did. Three kids and a slew of hobbies. I need to regain some of that energy!
I can't imagine how exciting that was. I bet NYC in the early 80's was something to behold! The stories you must have. Did you ever meet any famous people?
I'm sure you did work extremely hard. That business requires it like none other. Isn't it amazing when we think back to all that we were able to juggle when we were young? We just did it and didn't ever give it much thought.
My father always said me that cartoonist will have the power to change the world and will able to express lot of things with their small cartoons. Thank you so much for sharing your work with us. I hope we will see some more cartoons related to current situation from you
Your dad sounds like a wise man. I remember how impactful some of the older strips were on society. Some morning news shows would even talk about them sometimes in the 70's and 80's. Thanks!
In my former life I had a budget of roughly $10M/month for scrap. That was before the dot-com bubble burst.
When you are making high-volume, low complexity electronics, it's cheaper for the customer to pay for the scrap than it is for them to debug the problems.
That is a really large budget! What a crazy world it was back in those days. I remember how easy it was to make money in the stock market before that bubble burst. If you bought nearly any semiconductor company's stock early enough you were almost guaranteed 4-5x in returns. I thought that was great until crypto came along.
It was crazy. It was actually because of the dot-com bubble bursting that I was so conservative with Crypto. I'd watched the amazing heights crumble. I knew crypto was going to correct from it's high's, but like everyone else, there was no way to determine where they'd be.
So, rightly or wrongly, I stuck with a 10:1 ratio. If my crypto investment went up by 10X, I'd withdraw all but my initial investment. It worked well, but I obviously didn't hit the heights that some did.
No Regrets though. In my mind, it was free money.
If you were cashing out when coins hit 10x your investment I would venture a guess that you did way better than average. The person who mentored me taught me to do something similar and "free money" is a good way of looking at it.
I've been keeping a close eye on Gensler's and Warren's antics and believe we're in for a rough year ahead. I think the SEC is trying to bully all US-based exchanges into shutting down and then the banks will be poised to take their place as custodians of our crypto. After this, we'll get the regulatory clarity that we've all been hoping for, the big banks will make a windfall from a new revenue stream, and will cooperate fully with whatever the SEC demands of them. I hope I'm wrong.
Crypto's power will only be revealed when our mindsets get away from converting it to fiat to use it. If you and I trade Satoshi's for goods, and never think about converting to fiat, we're golden.
I know that CRA(Canada) and IRS (US) actually love most Crypto's because they are 100% transparent and indelible. They can download the BlockChain at any time and see all the transactions. But those transactions are all anonymous ... until you convert to fiat. Every Exchange that converts to Fiat that's based in US or Canada are registered on FinTrack and are obligated to submit all transactions to CRA/IRS. The only leverage you have is to prove whether it's Capital Gains (you purchased and then sold). or Taxable Income ... When you do the math - there are more hidden fees in the crypto space than there are in regular banks.
Purchasing something with crypto is empowering isn't it? I'll never forget the first time I did it in 2017.
I think you're absolutely right. I think most three letter agencies understand the advantages and opportunities crypto and blockchain offer. I also think there's a war being waged right now about which corporations will get to profit from it. The old legacy banks wield immense political power and are using those connections to try to secure their piece of the pie (or should I say all of the pie). It's going to be an interesting year.
Wow, I was not aware of this side of your skills. It appears like you are versatile, creative people ususally have so many talents.
I would love to find such a niche on Hive.
Yes, I do. I am sure many here in Hive would read them. Because such things even without any specific interest strike your eyes before the text, so it always has an intrinsic appeal to the readers.
Thanks! I just might have to revive my strip. If I start creating comics again I'd probably dream up a new one for Hive. Stay tuned...
Comics, definitely. It's the edge, that sublime message the artist tries to convey. In regards to my former life: lots of diving esp. in Egypt.
Funny you mention "the edge". That's the name of the newspaper my strip ran in! You dived in Egypt?
Yes, I've dived in the Red Sea well over 70 times. Been to Dahab, Sharm El Sheikh, El Gouna, Hurghada ... Great spots for wreck diving (my absolute favorite is the SS Thistlegorm), drift and night diving.
Wow, that's incredible! I would love to see that part of the world someday.
I think comics and stories have now become the soul of digital projects and one of the examples in this regards are games. Splinterlands has lore stories, but I would love to see some Splinterlands comics with some fun spread over.
I've always wanted and hopefully someday I will also do it - to make a game on the Hive blockchain. And with it coming with some comics or stories would simply expand the universe of the game and make it special.
I wish you to get back to drawing and comics and maybe make some NFTs with them. That would be really cool and I am sure you can build up a community around that. Good luck, nevertheless!
That would be great to have a comic based on Splinterlands! It would be the perfect pairing with the game (or any video game). My wheels are definitely turning about what kind of strip I could produce for Hive and NFTs would definitely be a part of it. Thank you! Best of luck with making your game. I hope you succeed with it.
I think I still read the comic section in the newspaper once in a while, it can be really interesting and like they say cartoons are free spirited, they are free to do anything in this world
Many people don't get the newspaper anymore here in America. Most of the local papers are either close to being bankrupt or completely out of business.
You are great Eric. When I was little I loved cartoon movies and read comic books. Have a nice day, Eric.
Thanks Eliana! What cartoons were popular when you grew up? Enjoy your day!
Talented man, talented in everything. You have great comics. I think it's a good idea to post comics on HIVE.
That's kind of you to say. I just might give it a go!
I don't think that people read those comics anymore. As years pass by, people's habits change, mostly due to technology.
I think it would be a harder sell based on a person's age. Younger people might not be as interested.
Thank you for sharing your journey as a cartoonist. It's never too late to pursue our creative dreams.
This is so nice that you have so much talent to share and I appreciate it
It is a matter of choice because I believe there are still people who like it but will definitely reduce due to the changes occuring on a daily basis.
Great 👍