PARRY SOUND – It’s what many strive for and few attain.
No one knows this better than local cartoonist/artist Jonathan Mahood.
After what he says seemed both like an eternity and the blink of an eye, his Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog cartoon has become a world-wide syndicated comic strip – a dream come true.
Born and raised in Parry Sound, Mahood estimates he’s been drawing since he could hold a crayon – it’s simply something he’s always done.
“I started drawing cartoons around Grade 6, but I think it was in high school that I really starting putting together stories and developing characters,” Mahood said. “I think the first comic strip I did was about a snake called Siegfried, trying to cross the road. Then in high school I started doing comics about my friends in some imaginary characters.”
During the height of Care Bears, Mahood came up with his own spin on the sweet, cuddly bears – Swear Bear, as well as a leather jacket-wearing cucumber named Snide Clyde.
“(The characters) would go to parties and after school jobs and things would always get out of hand,” he said.
Mahood’s comics first ran in the North Star’s Panther and were his first “real” experience at being published.
“(The North Star) did a story on the Panther Press students and ran a couple of my comics – I believe it was Love Trek – a mash-up of Star Trek and The Love Boat that took place in the Parry Sound High School cafeteria – it was a big thrill,” he said.
Following graduation from York University, where he studied sculpture, Mahood said he began getting more and more serious about trying to sell his comics to a newspaper syndicate. He began sending out submission packages in the fall of 1992 and joked it was a good thing he didn’t realize how long the process was really going to take.
In July 2006, Mahood launched his first comic online called Hoover: The Rechargeable Dog.
“I decided to give it six months to see how it would do, and more importantly, how I would do drawing a new comic every day. By October things were still going really well and I was getting a feel for the characters. In December it caught the eye of GoComics – Universal Press Syndicate’s online division – and was launched on their main site alongside such great comics as Calvin and Hobbes and For Better or For Worse.”
It was during this time that Mahood received legal advice to change the name Hoover, and he came up with the name Bleeker instead; Mahood’s grandfather’s middle name, which, in the end, he says, suits the character better.
So where did the idea of a classic theme of a boy and his dog, with a 21st Century twist come from?
“I realized I had two pretty constant companions in my life – my dog and my iPod. I think I thought – jokingly – it would be great to combine them somehow,” he said. “Also, at the time, there were stories in the news about parents using cell phones to track their kids. I thought it would be funny to tap into that world of consumer electronics and have an electronic dog that doubled as a pet and as a monitoring device.”
Mahood has been drawing the boy and his electronic dog every day for the last four and a half years.
“I was first contacted by King Features Syndicate about distributing Bleeker in 2008, but then the economy tanked and everything was put on hold. It wasn’t until this summer that they came knocking again and we began prepping the comic for syndication to newspapers. It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride, but I think every business was in the same boat.
“In the end I think everything worked out for the best,” he said. “Newspaper syndication has always been a goal for me. I grew up reading the comics in the daily newspaper and always wanted to be part of that. Bleeker has been published in Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper for two-and-a-half-years now and it is always fun to see it up there on the page.”
As one of the oldest and largest newspaper syndicates around, King Features Syndicates distributes comics, editorial cartoons, newspaper columns, puzzles and games to about 5,000 newspapers worldwide.
“They manage and sell Bleeker to newspapers and publishers and handle all the distribution and billing. That leaves me with the creative part, which is good, because I’m not a salesman,” he said. “As for my deadlines, the comics get printed every day, 365 days a year – no holidays. The daily comics have to be submitted four weeks ahead of when they will be printed and the Sunday comics are sent nine weeks ahead. So I’m working on comics for next spring right now. If I want a week’s holiday I have to do an extra week of comics to make up the time. Good thing I already live in cottage country.”
The best part about this roller coaster experience has been getting to meet tons of new people and getting paid to pursue his passion, Mahood said.
“In this digital age, with so many newspapers struggling, the millionaire cartoonist doesn’t really exist anymore,” he said. “However, it’s great fun and hopefully enough papers will publish Bleeker that I can leave my starving artist days behind me – as much fun as they have been…”
Mahood says he wishes the internet were around when he first started, because it’s so easy to start a comic and have millions see it and that’s his advice to any starving artist, young or old – use the Internet.
“Bleeker developed into the comic it is today because I could easily get it out into the world and get feedback. My advice is to put your comic on the Internet, post updates regularly, have fun and see how it does. You’ll know pretty quickly if it’s working or not. I wanted to make a newspaper comic, but if your goal is to make a web comic, then play with the size and shape. There are virtually no limitations online and a ton of great web comics to check out and learn from,” he said. “As for making a living, it’s not impossible, just very hard.”
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You can see Jonathan Mahood’s Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog comic strip every week in the North Star starting in January.
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