One Year Down, One to Go!

FurBabies Completes Its First Full Year of Comics

FurBabies, December 31, 2024

Whew.

The hardest part of drawing a comic strip is writing the story lines and dialogue. After a year and a half, I know how each FurBabies character will react in a given situation. The trick is to find situations. I read a lot of other comics as a ‘creator’ rather than audience member to learn how things are done. The best teacher is the early PEANUTS, which bears little resemblance to the ‘classic’ strip. Schulz’ characters changed literally beyond recognition between 1950 and 1955. He replaced the main characters, except for Charlie Brown and Snoopy. The strip became less based on reality and introduced fantastic elements (Schroeder playing Beethoven on a toy piano, Snoopy thinking out loud.) Schulz created story lines and gags that he sometimes returned to decades later and greatly improved. His one consistency over PEANUTS’ fifty-year run was that the kids always acted like adults.

Younger strips do not have decades to revise and recast their strips. They have to have a hit right ‘out of the gate’.

I never intended to do a comic strip, did not know what I was doing when I started this one, and had no idea if I could continue it for years or even for the first six months. The characters decided otherwise.

FurBabies’ main characters first appeared to an audience of one (me) on December 24, 2022. The first daily strip (Kate Wakes Up) was drawn on January 3, 2023 and appeared on the GoComics site on June 5, 2023. Nearly all of my early strips were renumbered and new ones devised quickly since winter stories would seem a little odd in June.

2023 was mostly spent getting acquainted with the cast. They changed a lot in six months. Reader feedback was a great help; it’s instantaneous online, and potentially terrifying. Online comics are closer to theatre than to motion pictures; you read the room while the room reads you. I was lucky to have readers who made suggestions in the comments; there were few trolls. Stella became much more centered and practical Kate developed great artistic ability and an optimistic attitude but never could (or will) bake edible cookies. Floof was brave and imaginative in dreams but vulnerable in reality. Shawm and Sirius and Mrs. Oldman were unchanged. They have always been this way. Poppy appeared in the June Scavenger Hunt story and remains unchanged. She isn’t likable but she is needed to create conflict.

FurBabies first anniversary strip, June 5, 2024

The Furr Twins appeared on December 24, 2023. I began to think that new characters would be a yearly holiday gift. This did not happen but summer proved fruitful, with Chaos (Poppy’s dog) and two capybaras, Bonnie and Clyde, appearing in May. The Capybara Escape in June was based on actual events and overlapped with Kate’s Circus Camp story which also introduced Lewis H. Dewey.

The intersecting story arcs ended at the end of August. I was proud of the ‘feature length’ story but a little concerned that this might not be easy to do again.

Nothing is easy in the supposedly simple comic strip world, and generally the simpler the strip, the more difficult it is to write for. You can distract the eye with a lot of pencil or stylus mileage, but the writing is what caries the strip.

Lynn Johnston told me to listen to the characters and they would tell me what they wanted to do. I used to call it ‘the character taking over’ the animated performance. Animators usually have the story and dialogue approved by directors before they get a scene. In the comic strip world I am a one-woman studio and nothing is set in stone. I’m just as surprised by some of the story twists as the readers say they are. And I have ‘felt’ the characters changing the lines of my scripts. That is a good sign.

Then December 2024 rolled around. I completed the New Year strip and sat in front of a blank computer screen without a single idea for 2025’s stories. Nothing appeared on Christmas Eve. No new characters appeared. No suggestions of what the characters wanted to do in the new year.

Fortunately inspiration came with some suggestions from readers, a few human-interest news stories, and a (yes) new character who was planned well before Christmas Eve. I also plan to reread my own book on story creation (Prepare to Board) and follow my own lesson plans. D’oh!

Some of the 2024 story lines will repeat with variations. A reader suggested a great variation on the Therapy Dog visits. Kate will go back to camp in the summer. Bonnie and Clyde the capybaras are now recurring characters. Chaos is Sirius’ friend although Poppy and Kate do not get along. I may be able to develop that further.

There will be some surprises for everyone, including me. I’m getting back on the tightrope now and forgetting that I don’t know how to walk on one. At least there’s the certainty of a soft landing if I fall.