Pooch Cafe creator Paul Gilligan will kickoff a story-line that is slated to run for the next five to six months. The story line, entitled “Poncho: Year One,” will follow Poncho from puppy to young adult. It begins May 31.
“Revisionist histories have been a popular trend in superhero comics for some time. They, as well as ‘alternative’ comics, have been a big influence on my work,” said Paul. “I wanted to use these influences to reinvigorate Pooch Cafe, delve deeper into character and have an ongoing storyline that would still provide daily humor but would also reward dedicated readers.”
While “Poncho: Year One” will be the focus of the Monday through Saturday installments of Pooch Cafe, the Sunday strips will continue to feature the grown-up version of Poncho fans have grown to love.
“Sunday strips are turned in on a different schedule than the dailies, so I decided to keep the adult characters going in the Sunday strips,” said Paul. “It works well this way, because the readers and I can still keep tabs on the “modern Poncho” throughout the Year One run. ”
Paul is especially excited to offer fans a story that fills in a vital piece of Poncho’s missing history.
“Lots of little items from Poncho’s past have been dropped into the strip over the years, in some cases just passing references that aided a joke,” said Paul. “The challenge now will be to incorporate all these things as well as all the events that led up to Poncho being the character he is today. ”
“I’m not 100% sure myself where this will lead. That’s part of the fun. New territories will be blazed. I hope it’ll be an enriching ride for all, and perhaps something a little new for the comics page.”
Paul was recently interviewed by the Comics Coast to Coast podcast in which he discussed the new direction of his strip.
I love Pooch Cafe and this is a very cool idea. Who would’ve thought that a long storyline would become somewhat radical in the comic strip world?
“Paul Gilligan to kickoff year long Pooch Cafe story-line”
“that is slated to run for the next five to six months”
OK, what am I missing?
Canadian months are twice as long as ours. It’ll be five or six months up there, 10 months or a year here.
Yeah, ever since Canada went Metric, people have been confused about “months” and “Kilometres” and stuff…
But at least we now have 56 days in February.
I’m thinkin’ it means that the story will cover a year in Poncho’s life, and it will take six months to tell the story.
That’s two days per strip, or roughly a half day per panel.
Or something like that. Half of one, six dozen of the other…
@Jack You’re not missing much. Bad headline writing on my part. I guess I intended to communicate that this new story-line would run all through the end of this year.
Sorry about the confusion.
Paul Gilligan is one of the nicest guys around…he goes waaaaaaaay out of his way to keep in touch with his fans, and it’s really cool to see a guy that nice have one of the best strips out.
Pooch Cafe is up there with Pearls and Get Fuzzy, love it!
Glad to hear he’s getting to take the big hand in the story writing for the Pooch movie, too.
Good things happen to nice folk!