If you haven’t made it a weekly read, I encourage you to bookmark and visit the Gil “Road to Syndication” blog maintained by King Features editor Brendan Burford and Gil (and Retail) creator Norm Feuti. This week they’re talking about how to take a rough character (Gil’s father) that worked well on the web and place him in the G-rated environment of syndicated comics.
After I made the decision to give GIL a second crack at newspaper syndication, I had to figure out how to handle Gil’s dad within this new paradigm. I poured over the old web strips that Gil’s dad appeared in. and asked myself a question that I usually rely on instinct to guide me through. What am I trying to say with this character?
The answer: I’m trying to convey a sense of what it’s like when the only male role model you have growing is a broken one.