I created, wrote and drew Cool, Cool World with a single intention:

To make a crapload of money.

Well, that didn't happen.

Okay. So we know why I went into the project in the first place. Now let's talk about how Cool World came to be:

I don't remember.

Having decided to develop a strip, I recall only a single thing: I wanted to do something totally different. Something no one else was doing. And as far as I was concerned that was a daily with a pointedly hip, urbane format.

Now those of you born after 1980 are probably going to say, so what? That's not so original. But you have to remember, less than fifteen years ago, hip-hop, rap and all its permeations had not yet ingrained itself into every single corner of American culture, let alone reached most of the world. The widest reaches were MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, and I don't think anyone wants to brag about that.

Meanwhile, the average daily comic strip hadn't gotten beyond the 70s, let alone the 80s. Strips seemed designed to be timeless, so that the joke works three generations from now. At least that's how they felt to me. And forget about diversity. If there were minorities, there was nothing particularly 'ethnic' about them. A little gray-scaled skin here, some slanted eyes there, give this guy some big lips - boom! - a brother. That was about it. They neither talked nor thought differently than any one else around them.

I wanted to change that. I wanted to see a strip that spoke to me, and everyone like me.

I chose to forego an adventure strip, a la Terry and the Pirates, or something action oriented, say, Dick Tracy-ish. Essentially because that would've been too easy. Stringing a single story for as long as it took. At least for me that would've been the case. Long term projects aren't a problem for me. I've always had a harder time writing short stories than a full-fledged novel. So those options were discarded. I wanted to challenge myself with a daily that required I come up with a new idea every single DAY.

I wanted it pretty much inner city. I knew I wanted a neighborhood populated by distinctive characters with unique speech patterns that talked about things I wasn't seeing in mainstream strips. I wanted them to dress cool and be identifiable by just their speech patterns.

So, Cool, Cool World was born.

There's a hell of a lot more to it than that, I assure you. But it's what I remember.

I put together seven weeks worth of strips and sent them to all the big shot syndicators. From what I can tell, I believe my art came out of one package and, unread, went into another with a rejection. Just that simple.

Today there are strips like Boondocks, doing exactly what I tried lo many moons ago...

I try to convince myself Cool, Cool World was a little ahead of its time. That's probably not the fact, but I can pretend...

Anyway, I have quite a few strips and I'll run one a week until I run out. It's either that or the Chinese water torture, okay?

Hey!, turn off the faucet. That IS NOT funny...