The Origin of Edgar, Pt. II

I had just drawn the strangest thing, a red blood cell named Edgar standing on a beach. I loved the idea immediately and saw in it the realization of a childhood dream: to create a damn funny comic strip. But I possessed the artistic equivalent of two left feet. How was I going to draw this thing?

I needed some help, I knew the person to enlist. So the next day I went to work early and left the drawing on the chair of a coworker, an art director named Gerry. I had known Gerry for a couple of years and we shared the same outlook on life, best characterized as "grim." I knew he'd enjoy Edgar.

I waited for hours for Gerry to call and tell me what I genius I was. The call never came. Was it possible that he didn't liked Edgar at all? It appeared so. But later in the day, I came back to my office after a meeting and found this on my chair, sketched on a piece of cardboard:




Gerry's drawing didn't exactly match my idea of what Edgar should be--the non-cell adversary, for one thing--but I was elated. Gerry had appreciated my idea enough to draw his own version; he even aped my infantile style. (That small gorilla picture near the top left? That was Gerry's mock-up of a banana brand sticker from the Simpsons, Gorilla's Choice.) Gerry was the first person to take one of my ridiculous ideas seriously, and for that I am still grateful.

I ran to his office and we spent the better part of an hour talking about Edgar and laughing at the absurd premise of the strip. We agreed on the general tone and point of view of the strip, that Edgar is a Ziggy-like sad sack who feels put upon and is powerless to correct it, is pessimistic yet wishes for a happier future, and is as self-aware as a drunken frat boy. In short, he was us.

We started writing gags immediately, and once we did the ideas came by the dozens. I was writing constantly. Every conversation I had, every interaction I witnessed, was inspiration for another panel. We traded our best lines during lunch and challenged each other to write the most ludicrous scene imaginable. Within a month we had hundreds of present-tense lines written down. During that time I came up with the name of the strip: Blood Culture.

We pared down the ever-growing list to a few gems and Gerry set out to draw them. In a few weeks he came up with thirty-nine panels, and I thought every one was perfect. Even the ones that didn't exactly work--we were still gaining our footing--were expertly drawn and I loved them. I was excited enough to put together submission packets to the big comic strip syndicates. I believed that Blood Culture was destined to appear in thousands of newspapers worldwide and that within months we'd be trading in our advertising jobs for writing and drawing Blood Culture full-time.

That was not to be. And not just because the syndicates weren't interested. It was also because it would be another four years before the fortieth Blood Culture was drawn, and by then Gerry and I had parted ways and David had come aboard.