It has recently been pointed out to me that I have inadvertently insulted Frog Applause cartoonist Teresa Burritt with a throwaway line while discussing the possible upcoming syndication of Dark Side of the Horse.
I’ll let Teresa tell it (in the comments section here):
A couple things:
I never said the strip was bad. The list of strips on that page are almost all syndicated to newspapers. Certainly Teresa’s unconventional creativity would be a hard sell to editors. Not that it wouldn’t be bad to break up the traditional button-down comics page with a little bit of unusual.
And I could see it running in the alternative newspapers.
Also – when the feature started it had a uniform size, now not so much. No matter where the feature is placed in a paper the layout man would have to adjust the space daily.
Then it is back to that Andrews McMeel syndicate page.There are currently three strips that strike me as out of place there.
There is the recently added (earlier this year) How To Cat title, which AMS has admitted is not a comic strip that is on the market for print syndication.
In the Sticks showed up, in development, about ten years ago and was announced as a new strip for print syndication. As far as I know it never was syndicated. It ran (on GoComics) for a few years and has been in perpetual reruns ever since.
And then there’s Teresa’s Frog Applause. It showed up on the AMS (then Universal Uclick) print syndication page about three years ago, without any explanation or promotion. Again, as far as I know, it is not a feature offered to salesmen to offer to newspapers. (Please correct me if I am wrong, certainly not an unheard of condition.)
So, in wondering if Dark Side of the Horse will be syndicated I mentioned How to Cat and Frog Applause as examples of not-syndicated strips on that syndication page. I certainly didn’t mean to disrespect Teresa’s creation. Yeah, I could have phrased it more tactfully.
Anyway, more explanation than apology.
