Secondly, I really like what you’re doing with Gill. Here’s a kid experiencing a less than idyllic childhood with a mom who’s trying to keep it all together and a dad who couldn’t care less.

I truly think this will resonate with a lot of readers, which unfortunately, is probably the reason the syndicates aren’t picking it up.

Look at the families in the comics now and in the recent past…I honestly can’t think of one family that is dysfunctional or divorced. FBorFW – still intact, Hi and Lois (the same), Calvin and Hobbes (ditto), Foxtrot (ditto), Zits.

Divorce is a touchy subject and by adding a ‘dead-beat dad’ to the equation you’re addressing a part of reality that I think the mainstream newspaper editor would rather sweep under the rug which is a shame because readers are truly going to miss out on a gem of a strip.

If syndication is something you want to go after my suggestion is to take the alcohol and cigarettes away from the strip…. the heart of the strip is about a child, alcohol and cigarettes shouldn’t be mixed in. It’s one thing in an adults-only based strip but when kids are involved it’s not a good mix.

There’s a lot of heart and soul in “Gill”! I wish you all the best with it, I know I’ll be reading it!

Yeah…and make him younger then Gill! :D

If you’re going to go real, and have nothing enchanting like a talking animal or toys that come to life, Give Gill a friend in the trailer park that his mother doesn’t want him hanging out with, who has a criminal record and a friend covered in tats and piercings, that smokes a ton of weed.
Perhaps they want Gill to sell it, but Gill being an innocent, doesn’t know what it is that he is selling, and he gets arrested for it.

Explore the trailer park. Have there be some really seedy characters vs good characters that Gill Runs into.
This already got rejected by two syndicates, so it’s not just me saying it’s lacking in something. It’ll have a life as a web comic, but if you’re going to do something, you might as well go all the way. I’m more of a story guy, and these kinds of things are hard to chop up into individual gags, I know…

I would imagine that the writing in Gill would fall into place after a while. It’s difficult to judge the writing in samples (unless it’s just so stellar it just stands out from the get go). The best writing is character driven, and if Gill were picked up and continued I believe the characters would naturally hit their stride and the writing would shift from simple set ups to more complex character driven writing. Through exposure to Norm’s other great work I’m sure this would be the case.

Maybe more Gill and less parents, especially in the beginning? I think the best strips are with Gill alone and with the girl, whose design I love! She looks like an anorexic Minnie Mouse! I like the dad, but for a dead beat dad he seems to be around too much…maybe play up the dead beat aspect more?

The strip on the swing was good…until Gill’s response was as mean as the taunting kids. I like Gill’s “Charlie Brown quality”. Maybe instead Gill thinks “…but the world would probably just crush me with a bear hug”…along those lines…

I’d love to see this strip grow online and maybe stay online. You already have a strip in papers that has fans in print and online, where your web prescence continues to grow. Why not build on that?

So many other webcomics of equal and lesser quality are making $$ online, why can’t Gill? I’m often surprised when I read that certain webcomics are making money when I see the product. Not every strip can be a PvP or Sheldon in terms of quality, but seriously…

Don’t dumb down the humor. There’s enough of that already. Keep up the good work…

Gill is an idea I’ve been kicking around for some time. Overall, I have to admit that I have always suspected the subject matter would make it a tough sell for syndication.

Since getting all this feedback I have seriously started to wonder what I would do if an editor did want to pick it up. Would I be willing to dumb it down? It couldn’t be censored much (if at all) before it ceased to be interesting. I don’t think so anyway. It’s a real catch 22.

Since there were multiple comments on it, I did want to mention that Gill’s design is intentional in that visually I wanted to make him sort of the anti-comic strip kid … if that makes sense. I didn’t want him to be a generic cute kid with a baseball cap. I understand that it isn’t working for some of you, but just so you know where I was going with it.

Anyway, thank you all so much for the comments. Between here and my blog I’ve gotten a lot of food for thought. I’ll be sure to let everyone know what happens with Gill in the near future.

“That’s what this strip needs, a character more appealing than Dudley/Gill who is at odds with him in some way”

WRONG. I agree there’s no problem with having a secondary character to challenge the protagonist but with Gill you’ve got a kid on his path of discovery. He wants to understand things. He’s asking Shandra questions and trying to get the information from his Dad sorted out through his Mom. He knows the things that are important to him [Star Wars vs Dance] and we see that he can get his feelings hurt.
The fact that you’re at the center of his world with him and seeing him sort through it all… has incredible depth and dimension. What more interest and appeal do you need than that?

Could the formula of these initial 24 work forever? It might, but that guarantees it will be as stagnant as lasagna loving cats. I love the potential of this strip.

Norm has now won over a fan that is now going to start looking more closely at his other projects.

Best of luck, Norm!