Heart of the City Cartoonist Steenz Interviewed
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Smash Pages Q&A: Steenz
The cartoonist who took over ‘Heart of the City’ this year discusses the comic strip process, her focus on the characters, her other projects and more.
Smash Pages covers Steenz‘s career with the focus on her new gig as Heart of the City cartoonist.
On getting the job:
We started an audition process. I looked at the comic and made two weeks worth of strips – two weeks of dailies and two Sunday comics. I did that for a while, getting used to the storytelling aspect of having an overarching story and then having each day be its own individual story as well. They all had to connect and be standalone to a point. Figuring out that process was hard but after four different rounds I could tell that Shena was rooting for me to get the job. I eventually got it, and now I’m doing it full time.
Her take on the characters:
Most of the time when you’re doing stories about little kids, most of the humor comes from they don’t understand how the world works and that’s what’s funny. With stories about middle schoolers or even fourth graders, they’re trying to figure out who they are as people. They’re focused on building relationships and their personality because they have more people to interact with than just their parents or their immediate neighbors. I saw this was an opportunity to show the growth of Heart and the growth of her world.
On the comic strip format and daily versus Sunday:
The Sundays are hard because not every newspaper gets daily strips. Some of them only get Sundays and you don’t want to give them something in the middle of a story, so it has to be even more standalone than the daily strips but still follow along slightly with the dailies. Sundays can be a little more difficult.
Steenz and the interviewer get detailed about the daily and Sunday formats and the different objectives in creating the two. Also much more with her thoughts about the Heart of the City characters. And her other projects.
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