new strip "get fuzzy" puts a cat with an attitude in driver's seat
Byline: Mary Carole McCauley Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
When he was in high school, Darby Conley almost had all the irreverence squashed out of him. In fact, it took him roughly a dozen years to channel his natural, um, exuberance into a socially acceptable outlet.
The result? The dysfunctional "family" of Get Fuzzy, a new comic strip debuting today in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and about 100 papers nationwide. The strip stars Bucky, "a Siamese cat crossed with a chain saw," and his two minions -- a dumb but lovable dog (is there any other kind?) named Satchel, and Rob, who slaves away at an advertising agency to pay for Bucky's $3-a-can Greek tuna -- the only food he'll eat, and then only sometimes.
In a way, Bucky and Satchel have their genesis back in Conley's high school days in Tennessee, when he was a smart-aleck-in-training and penned a satirical strip for the school paper.
"One of my characters looked like one of the female teachers," he said. "And the character in the strip had the same first name as the teacher. It was a coincidence -- a bad coincidence. I didn't even know what the teacher's first name was. But, oh, did she get mad."
Conley, now 29, learned an important survival skill that day: It's safer to poke fun at animals than at human beings, even imaginary human beings.
"To this day, I'm not comfortable drawing people because they might look like people I know," he said in a telephone interview from his Boston home. "And I'm kind of uncomfortable drawing female anatomy."
So while "Get Fuzzy" does have female characters, including Laura, a neighbor who's infatuated with Bucky (who predictably spurns her affections), she's usually outfitted in shapeless sweaters. In fact, the humans in the strip intentionally are a bit vague -- at least compared with the vividness of the animals.
The dynamic between Bucky and Satchel is similar to that in other strips in which cats abuse dogs, and the dogs bounce back for more, tails wagging furiously. Think of Garfield and Odie in "Garfield," or even Muffin and Roscoe in "Pickles."
"When I first started reading Darby's work, I thought, Garfield for Generation X," said Amy Lago, executive comics editor for United Media, the syndicate distributing Get Fuzzy. "If anything, it's edgier. The humor is a little darker."
But Conley tries to differentiate "Get Fuzzy" from other animal strips by keeping anthropomorphism to a minimum.
"Even though they walk and talk, Bucky and Satchel aren't little humans," he said. "I try to make their intentions true to what a real cat's or dog's intentions would be."
For instance, in one strip, Bucky turns up his nose at gourmet tuna -- only to chomp down on Laura's pricey cashmere scarf. Laura, as always, excuses Bucky's bad behavior: "Ohh, poor kitty must be starving," she says. "Well, if you need to eat that . . . "
And Bucky replies: "I'm not hungry."
In other words, Bucky's motivation is destruction for destruction's sake, and the more expensive the item, the better. Is there a kitty owner alive who won't recognize that cattitude?
It would be tempting to hypothesize that Bucky and Satchel are based on a dog and cat with whom Conley has intimate personal acquaintance. In fact, he lives in an apartment where pets are banned.
He said he gets inspiration from memories of Patch, the family dog when he was growing up in Tennessee, and from the two cats who co-exist with his girlfriend's parents.
"I'm a great animal watcher," he said. "I hang out with stray cats and other people's dogs, not to mention the rats in the subway."
Drawing always has been Conley's favorite tool for figuring out the world around him.
He comes from an artistic family. Evenings were spent with his parents and older brother in the living room, each one with a sketch pad. Perhaps Conley's earliest memory is of drawing dinosaurs with a green Magic Marker age 2 or 3, complete with claws and teeth. He still has the original sketches.
From the beginning, when he read books illustrated by Richard Scarry and puzzled out "Peanuts" comics, young Darby dreamed of being a cartoonist.
But it didn't seem like a very practical way to make a living. And there was always the danger that his strips might accidentally give offense. So although he majored in fine arts at Amherst College in Massachusetts and drew strips for the school paper, Conley prepared for a teaching career. Following graduation, he taught second and fourth grades from 1994 to 1996, and then was the art director for The Science Discovery Museum in Acton, Mass., until 1998.
But when Conley's girlfriend was applying to medical schools, he wanted to follow her, and that meant finding a job he could pursue from any city in the United States. "I decided it was time to figure out how to get paid for drawing," he said.
Armed only with a 10-year-old list of addresses for comics syndicates, most out of date, he hit on the idea of an animal strip and began sending out samples of "Get Fuzzy."
"It's probably fortunate that I didn't know the odds I was up against," he said. "After my second submission, I got an encouraging response. After two years, I had a contract offer."
So today's public debut of "Get Fuzzy" makes it official: Darby Conley is finally a professional smart-aleck.
STARTS TODAY
Rambunctious twins and their power-walking grandma join a single guy and his mismatched pets as the newest characters on the comics page.
"Grand Avenue" and "Get Fuzzy" begin today in the Good Morning section and also will appear in every Sunday's comics section. They replace "Cathy" and "Mr. Boffo."
They're both about families, but that's where the similarity ends. In "Grand Avenue," twins Gabby and Michael Macfarlane are being raised by their grandmother. In "Get Fuzzy" a hapless pooch and a persnickety cat are being, well, tolerated by their owner.
"Grand Avenue" debuted nationwide in April. "Get Fuzzy" makes its national debut today.BACK TO TOP