Good luck with your run in NC. Hope your recent visit to the JG (and my emails to them) will result in them adding Edison to their line up.

There’s a scene in Private Parts where the radio heads are talking about how long fans of Howard Stern listen to his show v. how long peeps that hate his show listen, and the haters listened almost twice as long!

Now…I’m not saying that you should introduce Butt-Bongo, the Wheel of Sex, or perverse song parodies into Edison Lee, but just keep doing what you’re doing, let the strip develop naturally and let the praise and criticism fall where they fall…

Lee Salem has always said if an animal character doesn’t keep some of the animal’s traits, then there is no sense in having it be an animal at all, that it would be better to be a person. Guess I’m in that same camp.

“It’s just that some authors tick people off more than others. I would say that the points John makes in his strip are bound to tick some people off simply because he made them – that’s never going to change.”

Well, that’s true, but I wasn’t dealing at all with the politics, but just keeping an authentic voice from the character’s point of view. Of course, every writer has something to say, but it has to be done through one’s characters, which always imposes limitations.
That’s why strips are trickier and much harder to write well than gag panels or editorial cartoons…strips must be character driven in order to be really good. Your strip is especially tricky because he’s a genius, and there will naturally be a tendency to think he can say anything.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to offend. You obviously have a strong view of your character and that’s what’s important. It’s a good strip with lots of promise. I wish you much success.

The voice of a strip and how it is written is much more important than the art in the strip. Heck, a great strip can be drawn with stick figures if it has a valid point to make.

A comic strip that includes political commentary has to walk a much finer line, apparently, than an editorial cartoon. Many editorial cartoons that I read regularly are far more blunt than Edison without catching heat for it in this forum. John has always been aware that a daily strip is a much trickier platform from which to make a point, but both he and I enjoy the challenge. He did not get into cartooning just to make a living drawing cute characters. He had things he wanted to say and he is saying them.

I have taken note of the comments made here because it is a forum of professionals and comics fans whose opinions I respect. That said, the strip will continue to develop along the lines that are meaningful to John and myself. Hopefully that will translate into success but one can’t start changing one’s work to try to please everybody. That only leads to a strip with no clear direction of its own.

Even though he’s a genius, he’s still a ten year old boy. The gags that remember he’s a child genius work much better IMO than ones where he sounds like an adult.

Here’s a suggestion. Take it for what it’s worth. If you can replace Edison Lee in your mind’s eye with an adult, and the gag works…if an adult would actual say and do the same thing, IOW…then the gag isn’t great. If it doesn’t work as an adult, then the gag is probably good.

The gag where he’s created a war game works, because a typical adult wouldn’t re-create Stratego. The tree digging (China) one falls flat, because what he is saying is more appropriate to an adult voice and has nothing “kid” in it.

However, they don’t complain about right wing bias in strips because they don’t actually PERCEIVE it.