Fatherhood was key to success for cartoonists

This story originally appeared in the June 16, 1996 edition of the Potomac News.

Baby vomit. Temper tantrums. Dirty diapers.

These are just a few ingredients in Jerry Scott’s and Rick Kirkman’s recipe for success. Since 1990, the two Arizona cartoonists have distilled the chaotic world of parenthood into the popular “Baby Blues” comic strip.

Kirkman and Scott first met in the mid-1970s, when they worked at a commercial art firm, drawing ads for the Phoenix, Ariz., Yellow Pages.

“We drew our share of Roto-Rooter men and all that stuff,” Kirkman said in a telephone interview recently.

Kirkman, 42, had been selling cartoons to magazines since college, and encouraged Scott to try his hand at cartooning. The two discussed working on a comic strip together. Their first short-lived strip, “Copps and Robberts,” featuring two police offiers, one fat, one thing, appeared in about 40 papers at its height in the late 1970s.

“We look at it now and think, ‘Boy, that was sad,'” Kirkman said.

Scott and his wife moved to California for several years, returning to Arizona in 1988. IN the interim, he spent 12 years writing and drawing “Nancy,” picking up experience that would be invaluable with his original comic strip.

Kirkman and Scott decided to try again, but their career ambitions took a back seat to Kirkman’s newborn second child.

“Rick and I would try to get together on Thursday afternoons to work on ideas for strips, and we would just spend all our time talking about his new baby,” Scott, 41, said. “Finally, we just looked at each other and said ‘Duh, this might be our first strip right here.'”

The two hashed out a new strip idea, “Baby Blues,” that followed the trials and tribulations of first-time parents Wanda and Darryl MacPherson and the childhood of children Zoe and Hammie.

One of the ironies of the strip — missed by readers — is that Scott, the strip’s writer, was not a father when “Baby Blues” began. It’s something he belieevs worked out for the best.

“It’s funn. With [young] kids like that, and when you’re right in the middle, it’s really not that funny. You have to be able to step back,” he said. “I really think that’s the reason the strip works so well. Young couples can look at the strip and see that they’re really not alone.”

And then, 2 1/2 years ago, he became a first-time father, and his entire outlook changed.

“I was amazed at the heightened level of frustration and helplessness and the intensity of the emotions, too. The love you feel for these babies is so amazing,” he said. “I think I did a passable job for the first four years, but now I see I missed so many opportunities.”

The strip became nationally syndicated in 1990, and now appears in more than 250 papers nationwide, including the Potomac News. Last month, Kirkman and Scott won the National Cartoonists Society’s “Best Newspaper Comic Strip” award.

“Baby Blues” has also spun off a fair amount of merchandise, including eight books and various baby goods.

“It’s something that we’re being very careful with,” Scott said. “I don’t think we’re ever going to be in the business of putting the characters’ faces on any flat surface.”

That, and the moderate level of the success the strip has had so far, has meant the merchandising hasn’t turned the two into overnight millionaires.

“We were talking to a guy at the airport who says ‘[Garfield creator] Jim Davis flies in here sometimes in his jet … it seats 30.’ We’re kind of a long way away from that,” Kikman laughed. “We still fly coach.”

“Overnight sensations 20 years in the making,” Kirkman and Scott both feel that although the strip is about raising small children, they won’t have any problems coming up with material indefinitely.

“So far, the plan is to keep on aging [the characters]. But it’s at such a slow rate, it’s not like we’re going to be running out of childhood soon. The pace that ‘For Better or Worse’ runs, it’s almost real time. And that’s a little too fast for us, because there are things we want to get in there,” Kirkman said.

“Some people have said, ‘Well, you’re going to have to keep having babies,'” he continued. “But the answer I have for that is, once you’re a parent, you’re always a parent. And you tend to think of them as babies, even though they get older, get independent, that they’re taller than you.”

“It’s a very tiny subject area with an almost limitless interior,” Scott said.

The strip, which was a natural outgrowth from Kirkman’s life, has become an integral aspect of both creators’ worlds.

“It’s really something that’s near and dear to us. I can’t imagine that we would feel like this about some other strip ideas that we had,” Kirkman said.

Early ideas for strips included the split personality of a man with two heads and two guys who would do anything for money.

“Those are ideas that are formulas, that you would do just for the commercial aspect of it,” Kirkman said. “In this, we’ve stumbled into something that’s part of our lives.”

They say both the Scott and Kirkman children now serve only as loose inspiration.

“I think the reason for it is that they’ve really grown way past the age of the strip. It’s not like I’m following them around and feeding Jerry information for gags for the script,” said Kirkman, whose children are 12 and 9. “I’m sure if we could directly exploit them, there could be a problem. But there’s not much chance of that.”

Scott still gets a fair amount of ideas from his daughter, Abbey.

“I have this fear,” Scott said, “That she’ll turn three and all of the sudden say ‘pay me.'”