Spooner Comic Strip Collections On Sale

During the month of July, I'm knocking 50% off the price of all the Spooner books. These three books collect all the dailies and Sunday newspaper strips. The books must be purchased through the CreateSpace store (not Amazon.com), and you must use the discount code.

(Pitch:) That means you won't pay $999.00 (it's true; look here & scroll down), $89.00, or even $35.00! Just one easy payment of... well, half of what it normally would be. And wait! There's more!...

Oh... no, I guess that's it.

Spooner CreateSpace Store

Discount code: Offer has ended

Spooner Sundays: $19.99 $10.00

Spooner Dailies Vol. 1: $7.95 $3.97

Spooner Dailies Vol. 2: $7.95 $3.97

Wild Blue: $9.95 $4.98

The Sideways Comic Strip

And here I always thought I had invented the sideways comic strip.

I just saw over at Bhob's blog via Comics Reporter that Roy Crane did it long ago, and of course, 'way better. I'm a huge fan of Crane's work in Buzz Sawyer and Captain Easy.

Actually, I was never so vain as to think I "invented" the idea; I just haven't seen another one until now. Occasionally I liked to push the envelope a little and see what I could do with that little space of newsprint.

If you know of any other "sideways" comic strips that have been published, let me know.

AMENDMENT:
Stacy, you were right about Rose is Rose. I found this "sideways" strip of Pat Brady's.

Puppet Therapy

Puppet Therapy is one of my favorite weeks of Spooner comics. It was fun drawing Spooner and Roxanne as puppets and having an excuse (for a change) to do lame gags. The idea was inspired by a couple of old puppets that my wife's great-aunt made several years ago.

Comics

Somebody once told me that Mort Walker liked my comic strip.
Somebody else once told me that Sparky Schulz would have liked my comic strip if he had lived to see it.
One time a guy in Texas sent me home-made beef jerky in exchange for signing a newspaper photo copy of my comic strip.
One of my comic strips appears in The Official Nora Roberts Companion.
I'm pretty sure my comic strip set a record by being with a different syndicate each year it was in newspapers.
Somebody once told me it doesn't matter how good you are.
Writing and drawing a comic strip is pretty hard unless you don't care what anybody thinks.
The only thing worse than being a bad cartoonist is being a stupid cartoonist.
My "beans don't have mommas" strip appeared in a PETA newsletter.
One time I drew a whole month's worth of daily strips in a 48-hour period.

Happy Valentine's Day, Charlie Brown

Vintage Spooner Comic Strip Sales Kit

I just ran across something that Spooner fans may be interested in. Someone on ebay is selling a "vintage" Spooner sales kit. It's the folder and strip samples that Los Angeles Times Syndicate used when launching Spooner in late 1999. Collector's item? I dunno. Vintage? Ehhh... Cool? Possibly.

link

Spooner Comic Strip Books Now Available

The Spooner book collections are finally available. I received my proof copies today and they look pretty darn good. These books contain every Spooner comic strip published during its syndicated run in newspapers. The Sunday Comics collection also includes several unpublished and self-published Spooner comics.

You can order them here, through Createspace, Amazon's Print-On-Demand publishing service. The books will also be available on Amazon.com in a few days.

Spooner Comic Strip Collection

The new Spooner anthology is now available through Lulu Publishing. This 238-page, 8.5" X 8.5" paperback collects all the daily comic strips (sans Sundays) from the first to the last.

I decided to publish this mostly for myself, just so I could have all the comics in one easily-accessible place, but thought I might as well make it available to the public. It sells for $14.95 plus shipping.

Spooner was syndicated by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate shortly before it was bought out by the Tribune Co. About a month before 9/11 I moved Spooner to United Media, and I began self-syndicating the strip a few months after that. It features Spooner and Roxanne, a young married couple learning the ropes of marriage. I can't tell you how many letters I received from couples who accused me of having a hidden camera in their house.

The strip ran in a very modest number of international and domestic newspapers from January 3, 2000 (the day of the last daily Peanuts) to June 15, 2002. Spooner was also published in two comic books and one trade paperback (Spooner: Love is Strange) by Astonish Comics.

Spooner: The Complete Collection of Daily Comic Strips

Warhol Spooner

Coloring Daily Comic Strips

Lots of differing opinions among cartoonists about whether daily comic strips should be colored.

The cartoonist gets paid no more for the extra work. If they want any control over how their work looks, they take on the extra work anyway.

Reed-Brennan, the main proponent of colored dailies, used to advertise that color sells more papers... until Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues) called them on it and they had no evidence for the claim. R-B does charge newspapers extra for colorized dailies, though... a hundred dollars a page or so.

But here's a pretty good argument against the practice:

I only allowed one paper to color Spooner, in Ft. Worth, Texas. They only ran strips in color on Wednesdays, so I compromised. I recently saw this on someone's T-bird website. State of the art printing technology!

Spooner - The right answer

A Little Bit of Spooner & Roxanne

These are from one week where I did all the strips in a vertical format. I suppose it was asking a lot to get readers to crane their necks to read one lopsided strip on the page, but it was fun, anyways.

New Spooner

I watched the interview with Sparky Schulz and it brought back some memories. The urge came over me to do a new Spooner comic strip. It's been a long time... almost six years! It was a little nerve-wracking. I pulled out all my old Hunt and Speedball pens that I used to draw the strip with, and even had some India ink still around. Kind of a surreal experience... I used to do this practically every day, and it was a big part of my life. So anyways, here's a brand-new Spooner strip.

Later editorial observation: I should have had Spooner say, "I sure do!" in the second panel instead of "Yeah."

Some Spooner Comic Strips

Drawing Spooner

I haven't drawn these guys in quite a while! Spooner and Roxanne from my old comic strip. Drawn in Sketchbook Pro on the tablet PC. Captured with Snagit.

Today's Spooner Comic Strip

click to enlarge

B.C., Be Spooner

Not the greatest strip I ever did, but one of the most fun. I'm posting it because it's the closest thing to a tribute to Johnny Hart that I have.

Spooner

You know what I used to love was this white gel pen I used to have. Haven't seen any since. I would use it for little bitty corrections, and to create a "screen" effect like in the above strip.

Spooner

Todays' Spooner comic. (click to enlarge)

Spooner Color Guides

I thought it might be interesting to post the color guides that I would send to American Color when I was doing Spooner. I sent instructions and they would do the actual coloring.
They charged a fair rate to do the coloring, but the fees they charge for "handling" Sunday comics files are just plain unethical. Those fees, which go into the thousands, were definitely part of my consideration when deciding whether to retire Spooner.