Working the Void is the result of years tinkering with the idea of writing a comic strip. My life-long love of art and drawing lead me to making a living as an animator, but I’ve always had a passion for comic strips, and I’m still fascinated by the creators who come up with a new strip every day for years on end!

A couple years ago, I finally decided to take the plunge and start writing like crazy about a small idea I’d had floating around in my head. I drew a bunch of strips and even inked a couple. I sent off the whole bunch to a good friend who had his own syndicated strip for constructive criticism. Turns out that I had little idea of what I was doing. My writing style was (is?) way too old-fashioned for today’s newspapers.

“Are you going to be funny every day?” my friend asked me.”

Well, no…” I replied, “I’ll do some set-up for the payoff…”

“Wrong answer,” said my friend. “syndicates aren’t looking for an adventure strip or extended story lines. You need to think gag-a-day.”

He was right, and I knew it. I was trying to do something that I thought I’d be good at and fill what I saw as something needed and missing in the comics section when in fact it wasn’t missing, it was just not wanted. I took my notes from that discussion and stood back from my strip for some time, trying to decide what I wanted my strip to be – tried to really discover what it was I wanted to do with writing my strip. I decided two things for sure. One: I really like being an animator, and I don’t want to give that up. Two: I still want to do a comic strip. Therefore I decided that given the facts of One and Two, I’d have to do a comic strip on the side, and the best way to do that is to go world wide web. No big man saying “we don’t do adventure strips.” Well, that’s OK, ’cause I do and here’s where you can read it. I then went on to decide that were I to wait until I had everything figured out and squared away I might be too old to actually write the durn thing. So I might as well just forge ahead, slashing and burning my way through this thing for all to see (and hopefully comment on) so that I not only learn while I go, but share the journey with those that might be interested and maybe even enjoy the trip a little.

I’m off to a predictably rocky start with only two strips out to date (as of 1/4/08) but I’m still trying to get all this tech stuff to conform to my whim as well, and as an artist who has no business coding, this has been a daunting task. Things are shaping up nicely so far, though, so I’m hopeful.

I do hope you’ll stop back soon, and it’d be great if you end up telling your friends to stop by as well. Thanks for visiting, and as always, good luck.

Kelly McNutt

January 4, 2008