StripGekkie
A real life comic character
Artists are often warned about depicting real people in their work. For comic artists the consensus seems to be: don’t do it, if you want to avoid arguments about privacy or intellectual property. Yet autobiographical comic artists like me can’t help drawing almost everyone in their lives (in fact, some people are offended if you don’t!).
Here’s an example of a real person who ‘s grown into a comic character of mine: my publisher, who is also the publisher of comics magazine StripGlossy, where he is featured in the recurring strip StripGekkie:
With a strong background in marketing and sales and a profound passion for comics, “StripGekkie” Seb van der Kaaden is a bit of an oddball on the rather conservative and sedate Dutch comics scene. His latest stunt was filling an issue of StripGlossy with rejected comics (and articles on the reasons why) and having it printed as “rejected”, uncut copies, which infuriated some readers and delighted many. “Always a surprise!” is the magazine’s motto.
My StripGekkie was literally everywhere in this issue:
…and here’s the reason why:
I need more coffee before I can say smarter things but I do love your comic
Beautifully illustrated and dead right. Cartoonists who are starting out don't know how poor the hit rate is (otherwise they would probably give up). There is a survivor bias to what we see in print and even online which can give you comparison-itis. I wish artists would stop showing only the best parts of their sketchbooks and show the majority of pages where the sketches are just sketches and not perfect!