My Life in the Funny Papers
Everyone Has a Ghost Story. Here Is Mine About Ghost Story Club Comic.
Everyone has ghost stories. My story is about launching a nationwide comic strip for kids, called Ghost Story Club. Just like publishing books, you never know who your audience members are until you hear from them. We sure did. Here is my ghost story.
Flashback to my previous life as editor of international syndication at Tribune Company, Chicago in 1997.
We worked with a gifted and zany team: author and storyteller Allan Zullo in North Carolina and artist and designer artist and designer Dick Kulpa. Dick was a storyteller too. His day job: designing the front page of the Weekly World News. The supermarket tab, owned by the National Enquirer, didn’t let the facts get in the way of a great story. Dick didn’t either.
Launching a comic strip was risky but lucrative as newspapers still boasted of 60 million circulation in the late 1990s. What we learned about Ghost Story Club along the way was surprising.
Watching Coach Ed Orgeron read Cajun Night Before Christmas should be your new Christmas Eve tradition. Watch here.
Well why not let Ed Orgeron help with the Christmas Eve bedtime story and a reading of the Christmas classic “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas?” Well, sort of.
Coach O, true to his Cajun roots, shared a video of himself reading the bayou classic “Cajun Night Before Christmas,” which features not cookies and milk but gumbo by the fireplace, and a team of gators pulling Santa through the bayou. Now, did I understand every word he said? Not at all.
But your kids will get the gist of it, and that’s what’s important.
Editor Mark Mathes, in a caricature by chief artist Joe Escourido at The Ledger, Lakeland Florida, a New York Times Regional Newspaper where Mathes was managing editor or AME 1980-1986.
learning from the comics
What I Learned as a Comics Editor about Dialogue and Action and Characters
What can an author learn from the comics and funny papers? I learned plenty about characters, actions, sequential stories and dialogue in nearly five years as comics editor and editor of international syndication at Tribune in Chicago 1994-99. Comic strips and comic books are character-driven and must build their hero and antagonist in a limited space. In a comic strip, cartoonists have three, maybe four panels over six days. Sunday is an expansive opportunity for characters, action and scene. More tips here.
HOW TO CATCH AN EDITOR'S EYE
Draw him. Cartoonist Griz sent this custom original with his submission to me at Tribune Media Services, Chicago.
Chicago Tribune Columnist, Brenda Starr Creator Mary Schmich Signs -30-
Chicago newspapers had long been known for the columnists who knew and loved the city enough to demand it do better. Perhaps the best-known was Mike Royko, who became a hero of the working class, winning a 1972 Pulitzer Prize for his snarky stabs at bureaucracy and bull. That torch was picked up, in the last 30 years, by Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune. Mary also wrote the classic comic strip Brenda Starr, and that’s when she and I worked together 1994-99 at Tribune. She focused not so much on the politicians, but on the citizens they were supposed to serve, and saw her column as an attempt to build “connective tissue” in shared civic life. That ended last week when she and about 40 of her colleagues, including three other columnists, took a buyout from the once-storied Tribune. The end came just after Alden Golden Capital, a hedge fund reviled by most journalists for its extreme approach to cutting costs and making profits, acquired Tribune Publishing. Last fall, Schmich spoke to Storyboard about her "female approach" to writing commentary. More thoughts and advice can be found in a 2013 interview after Schmich, a 1996 Nieman Fellow, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
Novelist Tracy Clark: 5 Tips for Writing a Good Book Series
Chicago novelist Tracy Clark: Writing is weird. It can suck on a Tuesday and feed your soul on a Friday. Yet, we writers approach the laptop or the legal pad every day, coffee mug in hand, clad in sweatpants, hopeful the writing gods will smile upon us and the words will come. At least, that’s how us pantsers do it. Outliners, well, they’re a different breed. I’m not envious … much.
But you are here because you’ve chosen to do the weird thing and have compounded the challenge by wanting to write not one book, but a series of them. Whaaaat?
Been there. My Cass Raines series is four books deep. I’ve walked through the fire and lived to tell the tale. But back to you. You want to write a series, so let’s do it.
How do you write a good series? How do you keep readers coming back? Good questions. I've got 5 good tips.
Tracy Clark is the author of Runner: A Chicago Mystery (June 29, 2021; Kensington) and three additional novels in the Cassandra Raines series. She is the winner of the 2019 Sue Grafton Memorial Award, an Anthony and Lefty Award finalist, and her books have been shortlisted for the American Library Association's RUSA Reading List, named a CrimeReads Best New PI Book of 2018, a Midwest Connections Pick, and a Library Journal Best Books of the Year selection. A native of Chicago, she works as an editor in the newspaper industry and roots for the Cubs, Sox, Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks equally. She is a board member-at-large of Sisters in Crime, Chicagoland, a member of International Thriller Writers, and a Mystery Writers of America Midwest board member. She is currently a finalist for the Agatha and Shamus Awards for Best Mystery of the Year. You can visit Tracy online at https://tracyclarkbooks.com/
Mark Mathes, SFW president: I worked with Tracy as editor of Tribune’s international syndication business unit, on the 14th floor of Tribune Tower in Chicago. Our editing staff of six managed over 200 different features, including commentary and op-ed columns, 32+ daily or Sunday comics a half-dozen versions of Jumble and more Tribune crosswords, a dozen editorial cartoons and eight Pulitzer winners among them, including Jeff MacNelly, who merited three Pulitzers. He drew Shoe, which appeared in over 900 newspapers, and Pluggers and illustrated many columns by his friend Dave Barry.
Tracy and her colleague editors managed some of the oldest creators, including Rev. Billy Graham, who wrote a popular weekly column starting in 1953, as well as some of the comic classics, Dick Tracy, created by another Pulitzer winner Dick Locher, and Brenda Starr, Reporter, written by our Tribune colleague Mary Schmich.
Creators from columnists to cartoonists to puzzlers invariably delivered close to or past deadline and thousands of newspapers, news services, magazines and a growing number of online publishers grew anxious. We heard every excuse. Tracy kept the train running on time. It’s a Chicago thing.
Tracy’s successful experiences editing and managing big ego cartoonists and columnists have served her well in her own equally successful fiction writing career.
Mark Mathes: What an author can learn from the comics.
On His 30th Anniversary NYT Crossword Puzzle Editor Offers Clues, Answers
Will Shortz celebrated his 30th anniversary as The Times’s Crossword editor this week. He is one of only four Crossword editors since 1942, when the paper began publishing puzzles as a way to offer relief to readers overwhelmed by war news. “It is possible there will now be bleak blackout hours — or if not that then certainly a need for relaxation of some kind or other,” Lester Markel, the paper’s Sunday editor, wrote to Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the publisher, two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. To mark Will’s anniversary, I interviewed him by email for today’s newsletter. I’m grateful to crossword devotees who suggested some of today’s questions, writes David Leonhardt of the New York Times.
David Leonhardt: You made some big changes to the puzzle when you took over in 1993, introducing more wordplay and popular culture, among other things. But what have been the biggest changes to the puzzle during the past 30 years?
Will Shortz: Those are the two biggest changes. But in addition I’ve tried to broaden the range of contributors. When I started, most of the contributors were older (early 50s on average) and overwhelmingly white. Now the average age is probably in the mid- to late 30s, and the people making puzzles are much more diverse.
Mark Mathes: My life in the Crosswords hit high gear starting in 1994 as editor of international syndication at Tribune in Chicago. Commentary here.
Dave Barry’s 2023 Year in Review: Yes, the Situation Is Hopeless.
Dave Barry: It was a year of reckoning, a year in which humanity finally began to understand that it faces an existential threat, a threat unlike any we have ever faced before, a threat that will wreak havoc on our fragile planet if we fail to stop it — and it may already be too late.
We are referring, of course, to pickleball. Nobody knows where it started. Some scientists believe it escaped from a laboratory in China. But whatever its origin, it has been spreading like rancid mayonnaise ever since, to the point where pickleball courts now cover 43 percent of the continental U.S. land mass, subjecting millions of Americans to the inescapable, annoying POP of the plastic ball and the even more annoying sound of Boomers in knee braces relentlessly telling you how much fun it is and demanding that you try it. Anchorage Daily News.
Miami Herald humor columnist Dave Barry built his syndication platform the way authors do: the personal touch. Appearances and talks on the chicken dinner circuit. This led to successful books, international syndication of his weekly newspaper columns and his special series.
Mark's commentary here on working with Dave Barry's humor over the years.
Cartoonist, Author Dana Summers: A Familiar Byline Merits Royal Palm Award
Dana J. Summers is an award-winning editorial cartoonist, author, and a familiar name on the Royal Palm Literary Awards scene. This year, his novel From Hell’s Heart won the Royal Palm Literary Award for Best Unpublished Book of the Year and Gold in the Thriller/Suspense (Unpublished) category. Other RPLA recognitions include his novel Drawn and Buried which was number one in the Thriller/Suspense (Unpublished) category in 2013 and his novel Downhill Fast which was named Best Unpublished Book of the Year in 2018. Florida Writers Association profile and interview here.
Dana is known for suspenseful thrillers and mysteries that readers call “sharp and memorable” and a “darn good murder mystery.” RPLA Showcase asks Dana to share his reactions to winning, his writing journey, advice for other writers, and where we can find his books.
“I’ve been a cartoonist for over forty years, thirty of those years for The Orlando Sentinel paper. I also write and draw The Middletons and Bound & Gagged, two nationally syndicated comics strips and draw four editorial cartoons a week. I also work for Tribune Content Agency in Chicago. Doing all that doesn’t leave me a lot of time to write,” he says.
He says: “Don’t think you can sit down and write a novel without a bit of education. I wasted years thinking I could do this on my own. If you don’t persevere, you’ll never make it. So don’t give up.”
From Mark Mathes: I edited and represented Dana’s work in international syndication as editor of international syndication for Tribune in Chicago, the publisher and broadcaster that owned The Orlando Sentinel. “Dana is the hardest working and easiest going cartoonist and writer I know,” he said. “And that’s why Dana survived and thrived as a creator in the last two decades that are the most challenging in publishing, editorial cartooning and commentary.” More here.
Black & White & Noir All Over. The Story of Vintage Crime Comics
Who could have known that newspaper comic strips and crime stories, including noir, were a match made in heaven, asks Keith Roysdon in CrimeReads.
Newspaper comic strips are an artistic genre that’s largely forgotten now. The strips that remain are for the most part humor strips like “Garfield.” A handful of dramatic strips are still published. But serial dramatic strips were once a staple of the newspaper comics page. Many of them were soap opera-ish strips like “Mary Worth” and “Apartment 3-G.” To say that drama strips were slow moving is an understatement. I wish I could remember who joked that they came back to read “Apartment 3-G” after decades away and the caption read, “Later that afternoon …”
But that deliberate pace – well, maybe not quite that deliberate – was perfect for teasing out a good crime storyline. And crime and noir look awesome in black and white newsprint.
The best-known of the newspaper crime strips is probably “Dick Tracy,” which debuted in October 1931 and is published to this day. Chester Gould created the crimefighting detective, his colorful antagonists and his high-tech tools, including the two-way wrist radio. Gould drew the strip until 1977. That’s an unbelievable span of time: translated into cinematic terms, that’s from the early days of talking movies to “Star Wars.”
And speaking of cinematic: “Dick Tracy” made the leap to the movies. (Not to mention radio and comic books, so we won’t mention those.) Movie serials and features followed the strip, peaking in 1990 with director and star Warren Beatty’s lavish, primary color big-screen treatment that brought to life the cast, including the strip’s outlandish villains like Flattop and Pruneface. Meant to capitalize on the 1989 “Batman” “Dick Tracy” was good but not an instant classic. The bizarre visages of the Tracy villains, the sharp-chinned detective himself and the bold black-and-white – and later color – graphics leapt off the newspaper page. It was the retro-futuristic police tools, like the wrist radio, that helped keep “Dick Tracy” in the public consciousness for so many decades.
SFW president Mark Mathes shares stories about Dick Tracy, Brenda Starr, Terry and the Pirates, Gasoline Alley, Shoe, Mother Goose and Grimm and three dozen comic strips as editor of international syndication at Tribune, Chicago. My life in the funny papers.
Ghost Story Club built on the classic serialized story of the American comic strip that we developed and syndicated at Tribune Company in Chicago. Creator Allan Zullo and cartoonist Dick Kulpa developed a weekly mystery for young comic strip readers in the 1990s. Dick's day job included writing, illustrating and designing at the Weekly World News.
Sarasota Fiction Writers president Mark Mathes recalls working with author Jerry Jenkins. “I asked Jerry Jenkins to write the classic sports comic strip Gil Thorp in 1996, in my previous life as editor of international syndication at Tribune in Chicago. He’d written many books in young adult, sports, Christian and biography, but he’d never written a comic strip. He took it on as a challenge. Since the late 1990s, his writing career has thrived, with over 200 books published in many genres and he’s now established the Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild to coach writers.”
Jerry Jenkins: How to Write Compelling Dialogue
Compelling dialogue that immerses your reader in your story is not easy to write, says best-selling author Jerry Jenkins.
“The good news is that, like any other writing skill, the more you work at it, the better you should get. With nearly 200 books under my belt, two-thirds of which are novels, I’ve learned the ins and outs of dialogue writing. And I want to help you avoid the errors I’ve made so you can write dialogue that captivates readers.
In this short 18-minute video, I break down dialogue writing step by step. I explore:
- 6 steps to writing dialogue like a pro
- How dialogue helps your novel flow
- How to format dialogue
- The cardinal sin of writing dialogue
- And much more.”
Jenkins has seen unprecedented success in both fiction and nonfiction. His insatiable pursuit of great stories has led him to achievement as a biographer to icons such as Hank Aaron, Orel Hershiser, Walter Payton, Meadowlark Lemon, Nolan Ryan, Mike Singletary, B.J. Thomas, and many other men and women. The Hershiser and Ryan books reached the New York Times bestseller list, as did his most recent work, The Matheny Manifesto, with baseball's most successful young manager Mike Matheny.
He's also assisted Dr. Billy Graham with his memoirs, Just As I Am (also a New York Times bestseller), which he considers the privilege of a lifetime.
make it an event
The comic book industry has mobilized to create national and regional events to bring out readers and new fans to comic retailers. This event in was cross-promoted by the Sarasota County Library.
BIG TOP STORIES
Les Standiford. Photo Margi Rentis/Florida International University
The Greatest Show on Earth May Return. An Interview with Big Top Author Standiford
News flash from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's Jay Handleman: The Greatest Show on Earth may return without the animals, according to Parrish-based Feld Entertainment.
Until movies and television, nothing kept Americans more rapt than when the circus came to town. “For over a century, mass popular entertainment in the United States was the circus,” says South Florida historian Les Standiford, “and it became a reflection of the American experience itself.” He spoke to Christian Science Monitor correspondent Randy Dotinga about his book “Battle for the Big Top: P.T. Barnum, James Bailey, John Ringling, and the Death-Defying Saga of the American Circus.”
What did the circus mean to Americans?
As westward expansion began, the circus followed after the pioneers who were opening up the frontier. When people stopped struggling, clearing brush, and trying to get the homestead built, they went to the circus that popped up every summer. The circus was a reminder to people ... that they could transcend their limitations. You’d turn to your neighbor after watching acrobatics or a guy stick his head in a lion’s mouth, and say, “Did that just happen?”
On the simplest level, it was this amazing diversion, the likes of which we don’t have anymore. But in a deeper sense, it was an exercise in possibility.
Bob Mathes, father of Mark Mathes, co-founded the Circus City Festival in Peru, Indiana in 1958.
Bunny Matthews Drew Yat Characters from Real Life New Orleans
Will Bunn “Bunny” Matthews III, a cartoonist and writer whose Vic and Nat’ly cartoons summoned a quintessential bit of New Orleans’ collective character in the form of two brash, 9th Ward bar owners, died in June at Wynhoven Health Care Center in Marrero.
He was 70 and died due to complications from cancer, according to his son Jude.
Starting in the late 1960s, Matthews helped define New Orleans' self-image. His signature characters, Vic and Nat'ly Broussard, were the embodiment of insular old-time New Orleans values. In the 1980s, when the country was becoming increasingly homogenous, health-conscious and fashion aware, Vic and Nat'ly were more or less the opposite. More from the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate.
Magnificent Obsession: On Black Humor and the Necessary Lessons I Learned as a Cartoonist
Cartoonist Charles Johnson writes: When I was 15 years old in the early 1960s, I studied with the cartoonist and writer Lawrence Lariar in his two-year correspondence course. He was prolific (something I admired), the author of more than a hundred books, some of which were murder mysteries he wrote under pseudonyms. He was the cartoon editor of Parade magazine, and the editor of the Best Cartoons of the Year series; at one time he was an idea man at Disney. He was liberal, Jewish, and lived on Long Island, where he delighted in infuriating his neighbors by having black artists over to his house for drawing lessons. I found Lariar when I was reading Writer’s Digest profiles of famous cartoonists—my heroes—and came across an ad for his course.
The only serious disagreement I ever had with my father was when I announced to him that I planned on a career as an artist.
My dad was quiet for a few seconds, and then said, “Chuck, they don’t let black people do that. You need to think of something else.” His words shocked me, and I could not accept them, but they have haunted me all my life, for they were the product of what he had experienced as a black man living through America’s grim era of racial segregation.
If I couldn’t draw or create, I didn’t want to live. I didn’t want to think of something else. I wrote Lariar a letter, explaining what my father had said, and asked him if he agreed. I never expected to receive a reply, but Lariar fired back a letter to me within a week in which he said, “Your father is wrong! You can do whatever you want with your life. All you need is a good teacher.” The article in New York Review Comics.