I don’t know if this is a new interview or a posting of more of an interview that Lio creator Mark Tatulli had with Bob Andelman (aka Mr. Media) back in February. Regardless, it’s a good read.
ANDELMAN:And you know, I apologize for even asking you to go behind the scenes and talk about some of these things, because I know, if you talk to a comedian, the last thing a comedian wants to do is dissect a joke, but LIO is still so new to so many people, and we havenâ??t had it for years and years yet, so it helps, I think, to explain a little bit. How do you keep it fresh day after day, and how long have you been doing it now?
TATULLI:Well, letâ??s see. It launched in newspapers last May, that would be May 2006. I originally pitched the strip to my syndicate in May 2005, so since May 2005, I have been basically writing and drawing, so like I said, it didnâ??t hit papers until last May, but the time between when I pitched it and when it actually hit the papers, I had to do a lot of writing and drawing, find out how I actually wanted to draw it and how I wanted the tone to be. So I have been drawing it I would say, honestly, almost two years.
ANDELMAN:It is still exciting to wake up to, or is it becoming work?
TATULLI:Oh no, itâ??s great only because, I would say mostly because there are no rules, and so every day, I can do something different, I can take it to a new place. It is always a surprise to me, and itâ??s an amazing, amazing thing to have a job as a syndicated cartoonist. I couldnâ??t be happier, I will tell you. I donâ??t know what I would do with myself if I werenâ??t doing this.
For some reason, Bob Andelman’s site is reposting parts of old interviews anew. Don’t know why – I haven’t asked him – but this is a ‘reprint’ of the February one.
Alan,
Mr. Media knows comics, movies, TV, magazines, radio, etc., but he’s still struggling a bit to understand the ins and outs of maintaining a healthy feed!
I did a bunch of end-of-the-year maintenance on the Mr. Media feeds and links resulting in the reappearance of the second half of some of my very first interviews from the site’s reappearance a year ago.
I apologize for the confusion. On the other hand, the site was so new then that not a lot of people saw some good content, such as the interview with Mark Tatulli, so maybe it’s good I’m not the world’s greatest technophile!
By the way, Tatulli reappears in a fresher interview on Mr. Media next week (Jan. 18) as a caller to my interview with Stephan Pastis (“Pearls Before Swine,” of course!).
Thanks for your support of Mr. Media and for all the readers you’ve sent our way.
Bob Andelman
Mr. Media
http://www.mrmedia.com
So is Tatulli becoming a Mr Media whore?
Mr. Media is one of the only outlets willing to do interviews with comic strip cartoonists and allow us to promote our business, so, yeah, I’ll do what I gotta do.
You know I was just kidding you right?
Yessssssssss!
Mark,
What happened to “Lil Dickens”? My newspaper, The Dallas Morning News, doesn’t carry it. Was the strip ever launched?
Larry