Take It From the Tinkersons by Bill Bettwy is nearing its tenth anniversary.
The comic strip began April 1, 2013 when King Features began distributing it.
But from submission to syndication wasn’t instant:
It took about 10 years of persistent submissions for a company to finally bite, Bettwy said.
“I don’t even know how many they take on now, but back then, I mean, it was one a year,” Bettwy said. “They would take out of thousands of submissions. So yeah, I lucked out.”
The next step for the Tinkersons was three years of development and then waiting to be in the queue for an official launch, Bettwy said, as King already had a few comics in place that hadn’t launched yet.
“So even when in development, it just felt like there were a couple of times it was just gonna fall through,” Bettwy said. “Because I’ve been so close before with the animation thing.”
The Altoona Mirror, Bill’s home paper, talks to Bill and editor Tea Fougner about the strip.
Fougner described Bettwy’s comic “the perfect modern take on the quintessential family comic strip” and that “watching Bill’s tone and characters develop over the years has been a joy.”
“Bill balances enthusiasm and angst so deftly to capture the voice of the average American family in the early 21st century,” Fougner said.
The strip has created other opportunities for Bill:
His experience with writing the Tinkersons has even landed Bettwy gigs writing for Dennis the Menace, another King Features comic, and Archie Comics.
“I emailed the editor of Archie for 10 years,” Bettwy said. “That’s not a joke — I think they finally replied after I had some street cred.”
While creating comics doesn’t bring in enough money that Bettwy could quit his day job, he said he loves the work so he plans on sticking with it as long as he can.
The Tinkersons is deceptively good. Sometimes the strips have real bite.