Breaking into the cartoon strip business is a feat of almost Herculean scale. It's enough to make even Hagar tremble. Cartoonists can toil for years, working alone and developing a strip for a syndicate before an audience sees their work. Still, some never make it to newspapers.
Thousands try out, but only a few new strips see print.
But a new generation of strip artists is eliminating the middleman and posting their strips on-line. Artistic freedom, instant reader feedback and wide exposure are just a few of the benefits of publishing on the Web, but many cartoonists see the Internet as the means to jump to more lucrative newspapers and magazines. The syndication process has failed a lot of us. I've submitted many times and been rejected. The six major syndicates receive between 5,000 and 6,000 submissions each year.