Comic Strip Origin Story
What's the Punchline?
My first foray into published comics was this little comic strip for the CU Independent, my college’s newspaper. I had just transferred schools for the hundredth time and I was looking for ways to meet new people. I went to the school club fair out on the quad and saw the booth for the school newspaper. I asked the person at the table, who just happened to be the chief editor, if they had a cartoonist on staff. They didn’t. The last cartoonist had graduated a couple years back. So I was in luck, they needed a new cartoonist! I sent them some of my art and ideas I had for stories, and the rest was history.
Adventures in College
Most of my life experience at the time revolved around being a college student, so for my first strip, I made a little two panel strip about learning something irrelevant to my life, or so it seemed.
I made a few more strips throughout the rest of my time in school. Mostly about classes, dating, and the weird and wonderful people you meet in school. I kept a running list of ideas, and some of my friends would even pitch me ideas. Eventually, I found a writing system that worked for me.
I went from making comic strips in school to making comic strips for the office and finally making comic books for myself.
A New Comic Strip
After working on comic books for several years, I’ve decided to come back to my roots with comic strips! While I love writing epic, coming of age stories (and will continue to do so), it’s tough working on the same story for months or years. With comic strips, I can tell a simple (and hopefully) funny story in a matter of days and move on to the next one.
So without further ado, here is a preview of that comic strip!
Scout of the Box. Scout of the Box is a comic strip featuring two cats, Scout and Alfred (Al) and the wacky happenings of their day to day lives. The tone is a little bit of Garfield, mixed with Calvin and Hobbes.
If you’re only finding out about this comic in this very newsletter, that’s because it’s intentional! I won’t be posting the comic strip on social media outside of previews. My goal is to include a weekly episode of Scout of the Box for each edition of the Kassa Studios’ Newsletter. If you like it and know people who would as well, please tell them to sign up for the newsletter!
-Fasil