Between my turning in a draft for last week’s Previously and the article’s running, Scott Adam’s fall from grace escalated, with Andrews McMeel Syndication dropping the creator entirely. Subsequently came the announcement that the vacated position formerly occupied by Dilbert at the Washington Post would be filled instead by Heart of the City, the strip created by Mark Tatulli and currently run by none other than WWAC favorite Steenz, author of Archival Quality, cartooning professor at Webster University, and former editor at Oni Press. Since they were tabling at ECCC, I took the chance to catch up with them about it.
Okay, so the first question is going to be the ‘journalist playing dumb’ thing: Why is it such a big deal that you’re taking over this spot?
I think it’s a big deal because of two reasons. Reason number one is that I’m Black, and he hates Black people. [laughs] No, but it’s a nice way to just stick it to him, you know? But it’s also a big deal because we still rarely see a new influx of creators and syndicated comic strips, and I would like to see more of that. Obviously, legacy comics are there for a reason. Everyone’s going to want to keep reading Zits, everyone’s going to keep reading, you know, Jump Start, because those creators are still around and they want to keep making those comics. But I also want to see some new things. You should be able to get a newspaper and find someone new and not just have the old standards.
Yeah, is Heart of the City completely new? There’s been new creators that have been put on like older strips right?
Yes, so Heart of the City was created by Mark Tatulli, he created the series, he even named one of the characters after Dean, his son, his baby. But after 20 years, he was just like, I think it’s time for me to go, so Heart was getting aged up, and he didn’t really have the same middle school experience as a little girl. So I think he was kind of having some trouble like remembering and connecting, and figuring out what the new stories could be. And so when he sold it to Andrews McMeel, they were like “you know, we have this property now, we should just continue it with a new creator and see how that goes.” So they reached out to me and they were like, “take it wherever you want to take it.” And coming from being a Wednesday Warrior, my mindset was “Oh I gotta read a lot of back issues. I want to be able to know all the stories that have been told, the different kinds of changes and growth that these characters have.” And it was interesting because my editor was like, “You don’t have to do that, you know. You can really take this wherever you want it.” So it’s nice to be able to balance the two, picking stuff that was done in the previous 20 years but also making it more modern for a more modern audience.
Yeah. I know that like in the monthly comics world, when you’re writing a licensed property, there’s always a lot of pressure to keep it on model or keep it to a specific formula, and so having that freedom probably is pretty nice.
Yeah, you know I actually have way more freedom than I anticipated! Because there are so many things with structure in comic strips. You only have two inches by six first of all, so getting a story across in a minimal amount of space is a challenge, but a good one. And you know, you also have to remember that people who are reading this comic may not have read the previous comics, so every strip needs to be relatively self-contained. That’s another level, another layer of puzzling I have to do, too. So being able to take the story whereever I want it, I can do any kind of weird, dry, confusing humor as I want, and I’m totally allowed to take it there as long as I stay within those requirements, you know?
I’m also glad to see that newspapers are taking a stand in a way, because I know a lot of people will consider this censorship of his political views, especially when there are political cartoons, but it’s one thing to make a comment on current events, and it’s another to spread hate. So I’m really glad that these papers, Andrews McMeel, they’re like drawing a line in the sand and being like “you can only take this free speech so far before you start seeing consequences of the actions you made.”
And yeah, that’s the nature of free speech in America, too, is that the government will not censor you, but you are open to consequences.
Absolutely! You know, he’s not getting put into any kind of jail, you know.
Moving off of that a bit, is there anything exciting coming up for Heart of the City that you want to talk about?
Yeah! So the second collection, Lost and Found, releases April 4th, so I’ll have copies at C2E2 if you’re going to be there. I’ve also been working with Slap Happy Cartoons on an animation pitch, so we’ve been working with TV writers and thinking about “what are some ways that we can take this story and make it suitable for television? How do we organize the art? How do we introduce these characters?” So it’s been really fun to figure out what an animated series would look like with these kids. So fingers crossed something comes of that, but that’s what we’re working on with Heart.
Fantastic. Thank you so much for speaking with me!
