In 1996 I was trying to decide between working on a strip about a bunch of moon-headed aliens or a blonde who could use computers. I'd like to say I arbitrarily chose Helen, but the truth is she was an extension of some strips I'd done before and therefore much easier for me to tackle. I didn't necessarily think she was as "saleable" as the aliens idea, but she was easier to do and so...
This was probably a good thing as I had to do the strip for nearly 3 and-a-half years to get noticed.
Actually that's not true. I got noticed pretty quickly. Both Mike Fry ("Committed," "Over the Hedge") and Bill Mitchell (editor of Universal's Uexpress site) liked the cartoon early on - and not too much later Amy Lago tried to get United to go for it. In all cases the upper-echelons in the form of United's editorial staff and Lee Salem said no. For the longest time I thought I was rather destined to suffer with this woman Helen.
This was very difficult as I was finding it harder and harder to maintain a middle-class lifestyle while still doing the strip. My career path had pretty much crested as I wasn't spending the extra time necessary to move ahead. I was in fact ready to cancel Helen numerous times. But as I said before, she was just so easy to do.
I guess when you come down to it there's a reason for that. But one thing that wasn't easy was the site itself. I know something of the Web, but I'm no savant, and doing the site was a simple affair for me. Getting it up was a great accomplishment back in 1996. Keeping it up and updated was always a hassle. It gave me a good amount of satisfaction to have the strips up, but it was a lot of work that I dind't like to do.
I've had two good internet hookups. One was with Chris Baldwin, who does Bruno. The other was Ben Henick, the Web author from Portland (by way of Missouri, by way of Portland). I do not much trust things taken of the internet (ironically or sesibly enough) but my feelings about Chris and Ben turned out to be well founded. Ben's talent I thought was visionary. He saw the Web as the Web, not as print on the Web. That was what I was looking for and I asked him to come on board and redo the Helen site. Actually to "do" it, as what I had done was nothing more than a simple vehicle to get the strip read. I had put no vision into it. I had to spend enough on the strip anyway.
Cut to two years later (has it been two years?). The site is again changing. Peter Zale Paradezign is splitting off from Helen to form its own site. And Helen and the other cartooning will become.... Well, that's a surprise. We'll keep you informed of that later.
For now though you can see the site in its bi-polar glory (that's my fault, not Ben's. I insisted it be about both Helen and Peter Zale Paradezign... and like any good designer he wanted his design to be about one thing. Check out the Thoughts page and see what I've ruminated on over the years, or check out all the cartoon strip "Comments" that Ben insisted I add to all the Helens. He was right. It was a great idea. Eventually you'll see more of those and more of Spencer Green, the old collegiate strip I did at the University of Chicago. You'll see Helen first on www.comicspage.com, the Tribune Media comics site. On this site you'll eventually see a lot more supplementary stuff, articles, interviews and much more playstuff having to do with Helen and Helen's world. Stay tuned. I think you're gonna dig it.
The site maintainer has a story of his own to
tell.
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