Tuesday, May 16, 2006

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: The story of why Stick Figure Drama #100 was bumped a week, and the chaos that followed

I've been planning Stick Figure Drama #100 for -- I kid you now -- months now. The strip has been complete for more than six weeks, just waiting for this week's issue of the paper. Everything was on track, or so I thought.

When I handed page six of the paper to our editor this morning, he laughed. He laughed because my cartoon -- which depicted a tombstone with the name "PETEY" on it -- was sitting next to his editorial, announcing the grand opening of "Speedy Petey's Car Wash and Lightning Lube". His editorial was on the topic, because we were running a four-page spread in the paper promoing the opening.

The cartoon, sitting next to that editorial, appeared to give the appearance that the cartoonist was predicting the death of this newly announced endeavour named "Petey".

This was obviously not the case. It was simply an unfortunate circumstance.

I volunteered to yank the potentially offensive cartoon and hold it until next week. Then I realized that the same cartoon had already run in 100 Mile and in Quesnel, so I needed to make sure that whatever I replaced this week's cartoon with in Williams Lake would also have to function as next week's cartoon in Quesnel and 100 Mile (while the tombstone cartoon runs in Williams Lake) to prevent the three communities from getting out of synch.

I also had to do a cartoon that did no use the word "Petey" in order to avoid any further confusion.

I had a few ideas in my head over the course of the day, and finally settled one, which I'll post here later tonight or tomorrow.

At this point, I feel as if I should say something about the best laid plans of mice and men (and, I suppose, badgers), but I truly do abhor cliches, so I'll just leave it alone.