reigning cats and dogs since 1999...
Boston Cartoonist, Darby Conley's "Get Fuzzy" Is Poised To Break Out Big
By: By Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent
July 15, 2002, Monday
Darby Conley is having a bad day. An old back injury from his years on the rugby field has flared up. He's running a low-grade fever. It's days like these he feels most like his comic-strip creation Bucky Katt.
"He's the voice in my head I sometimes have to censor," Conley says. "Every time you feel cranky or tired and someone takes your parking space, that's the voice I have to shut down. The easiest lines are the annoying arrogant lines he says."
Bucky appears in Conley's "Get Fuzzy," which leads the Globe's comics pages. He's an egotistical Siamese cat who looks down on and takes advantage of Satchel, a good-hearted, simple-minded pooch. They live with Rob Wilco, a lanky and laconic human who is the trio's straight man.
Conley's personality combines the three. Like Rob, he's got a dry sense of humor and a passion for rugby, although his contract with United Features Syndicate forbids him from playing - or taking part in any activity that might impair his ability to draw the strip. Like Bucky, he can be cranky and self-absorbed. But you get the sense that, underneath it all, he's like Satchel: dedicated, curious, even sweet.
"Get Fuzzy" premiered in September 1999 and is poised to be a breakout success. The strip runs in 300 papers. Conley's first book, "The Dog Is Not a Toy," has sold 100,000 copies in just over a year. His second, "Fuzzy Logic," was published in April and after about seven weeks had sold more than 60,000.
Scott Adams, who draws "Dilbert," which is syndicated to 2,000 papers, says Conley's numbers are hard to beat. "At the two-year mark, I was in 65 papers," Adams says by way of comparison. "Two hundred papers in two years is a world-class level. There's a tipping point at 500. If he hits 500, he'll get 1,000."
Anyone who has dogs and cats will recognize Bucky and Satchel. Bucky, with one long fang, would like to eat "Sesame Street's" Big Bird. Satchel has fewer lines, but he's the heart of the strip. He believes the cabinet where the dog food is stored is the "magic cupboard."
"They're both hyperbolic," Conley says. "The dog is sweet and naive and sort of stupid. The cat is mean and thinks he's smarter but is just as stupid."
Conley, 32, is a big man with a mop of brown hair and dark eyebrows. He lives in Boston with a longtime girlfriend (whom he won't name, because she treasures her anonymity). They don't have any pets - they can't, in their apartment - but he loves animals.
He dedicates "Fuzzy Logic" to Patch, the mutt who appeared on his doorstep when the cartoonist was 6 and stayed.
"He was a mixed breed, with a lot of border collie," Conley says. "I grew up in Tennessee. It was a hunting culture. So there were hardly any cats as pets. The ones that are pets are shell shocked, with all the dogs and hounds and commotion. You'd see the cats cowering on top of the refrigerator."
Conley came to cartooning by way of comedy and fine art, the latter his major at Amherst College. He did strips for his college paper and thought he'd take a shot at the pros.
"For a long time, I did 'Far Side' rip-offs," he says. "When I first scraped together a batch of those and submitted them to the syndicate, the editors said, 'Did you ever think of a strip with characters?' "
At first, he didn't know what to do. "I get bored with people," Conley says. Then he thought of the animals."I was lucky. The first two characters I came up with were Bucky and Satchel. Then I drew two humans, but one was pretty much Rob."
Satchel is the cartoonist's favorite character. "Someone else in the industry summed it up by saying, 'You come for Bucky, but you stay for Satchel,' " Conley says. "If it was only Bucky, it would be too juvenile."
Reader response has been phenomenal. "It's overwhelming," Conley says. He published his e-mail address in the strip for a while, but removed it.
"If I do something pseudo-controversial, I can get 600 or 700 e-mails in a day," he says.
Animal lovers are a passionate group. They support the strip, but if they see something they don't agree with, they let Conley know.
"I had Satchel eating chocolate and got a couple thousand e-mails scolding me," Conley says, sulking a little. "Patch lived on cheese and chocolate and hot dogs." Still, he managed to slip into a later strip the message that chocolate is not good for dogs.
Conley's drawing style jazzes up the funny sheets. Most strips portray characters either straight on or at a three-quarter view, with the head turned slightly to one side. "Get Fuzzy" appears more three-dimensional; the scenes have backgrounds and detail, including occasional throwaway ref er ences to Boston, and the characters show up at all sorts of odd angles.
The artist is matter-of-fact about his achievement. The angles help solve a problem.
"What Charles Schulz thought right off when he saw my strip was that I'd have to make Rob shorter," Conley says. "You can't have two little animals and this 6-foot guy." Conley, who says he learned to read on "Peanuts," didn't take Schulz's advice. "The logistics of getting them all in the strip is amazing," Conley bemoans. "I have to do over-the-shoulder shots or looking up from the floor."
Adams compares "Get Fuzzy" to Bill Watterson's strip "Calvin and Hobbes," a hugely popular comic that ran from 1985 to 1996. Car toon ists consider it a kind of graphic Camelot.
"People read cartoons for different reasons," Adams says. "Some are taken by the visual element. Something poorly drawn won't work for them. Darby captures those readers. Then there's the people who want it to be funny. 'Dilbert' gets readers for the writing; so do 'Doonesbury' and 'Cathy.' Watterson gets both. Darby gets both."
Conley has a 15-year contract with United Features. "A lot of people, like Schulz, do it as long as they can," he says, and he admits he doesn't see himself stopping. Heck, he's only just begun. Even so, as an artist, he finds he wants to stretch.
"You're working in the same size, black and white, every day. You miss color, and larger, different shapes than a bowling alley," he says. "I'd love to do children's books, picture books, even a movie."
That's not an impossible dream. Hollywood producers - he won't name them - have put out feelers. "I could see a movie," he says. "Live action, with computer-generated Bucky and Satchel."
If "Get Fuzzy" does as well as some predict, Hollywood seems inevitable.
"Do the math," says Adams. "Every 10 years, somebody breaks out. Right now there are two on the verge: Darby or 'Pearls Before Swine,' a strip by Stephan Pastis. 'Pearls' is weighted to the writing. If I had to bet, I'd bet on Darby."BACK TO TOP