It's hard for a newspaper comic strip to be cool.
If you look at most comics pages, there's a lot of stuff that's been there for decades, often outliving their original cartoonists.
It's hard to be edgy. What's funny and what's appropriate for the comics page of a daily newspaper frequently don't intersect, and more and more cartoonists are fleeing to the freedom of the Web.
But there's hope. Like "F Minus" by Tony Carrillo, a 25-year-old lifelong Arizona resident.
The one-panel strip, which features irreverent and often bizarre humor reminiscent of Gary Larson's defunct "The Far Side," has been syndicated nationally through United Feature Syndicate for more than a year and is now in about 100 newspapers.
"F Minus" started just four years ago, and originated as one of several comic strips in The State Press, Arizona State University's student-run newspaper.
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"It's been really amazing," said Carrillo, who was born and raised in Tempe, of the first year of his strip's national syndication. "Just kind of getting used to what it means — that I'm going to be doing this for a long time every single day, putting out a comic, can be a little daunting."
In late 2004, right before his college graduation, Carrillo and "F Minus" won the "MTVu Strips" contest — a search for the best college comic strip in the country, sponsored by MTVu (the college version of MTV) and judged by comic strip cognoscenti, including "Dilbert" creator Scott Adams. The prize was a developmental deal with United Feature Syndicate, which eventually evolved into national syndication after a positive response.
Carrillo said the hardest part of his job is simply coming up with ideas. In another similarity to "The Far Side," "F Minus" has no recurring characters or ongoing storylines, just a new gag or visual pun every day.
"Sometimes I'll go three or four days when I really don't think I'm coming up with material that I'll actually use," he said. "Then before bed I'll come up with four or five ideas. That can be scary when you've got a deadline coming."
The rigors of the daily grind spill over to his personal life.
"I never feel that I'm not at work. Even when I'm out with friends, hanging out, I'm always thinking 'Could that idea be a comic?' " he said. "I'll always keep a notebook with me, jotting ideas down."
Naturally, Carrillo has less freedom doing "F Minus" in dozens of daily newspapers than at his college paper. On his MySpace page (www.myspace.com/fminus comics), he shares his first "professional" comic strip to be rejected, depicting a man drinking alone in a room with a sign saying "Alcoholics Autonomous." Ultimately, though, he said it's been a smooth transition.
"The thing I try to remember is not to censor myself, and just let the editors do it," he said.
Although newspaper comic pages still have plenty of older strips, Carrillo says he's optimistic about the future of the profession — that even though editors are often hesitant to change the lineup of comics pages, there's younger talent out there producing good work.
"I think editors are starting to open their eyes to comics that might be appealing to younger people," he said. "They're their future customers. If they don't start appealing to a younger generation, they won't have any readers left."
The Internet is a key way to drive new people to reading the comics page, according to Carrillo.
"A lot of cartoonists are using their Web sites or their MySpace pages to spread the word about their comic," he said. "I definitely use the Internet a lot to help spread the word about my comic strip. Maybe that's not something the older cartoonists are interested in. Hopefully that'll help."
Apparently it's helping him. The Star is adding the Sunday edition of "F Minus," and Carrillo is now putting together material for the first "F Minus" collected book, to be out this fall.
