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Star-Bulletin readers can enjoy "Zack Hill," one of four new comics every Sunday.

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Catch the laughs

Four comic strips debuting in
Star-Bulletin print editions
introduce fresh characters in
contemporary conundrums, from
Spanglish humor to preteen angst

An opinionated Hispanic cockroach. A smart preteen girl. A hyperactive boy, his single mom and his surrogate "dads." And a single father and his sullen teenage daughter who work in a fast-food restaurant.

This mixed cast of characters are the stars of four comic strips debuting in the Star-Bulletin today. Behind this colorful group is an equally interesting group of creators.

Lalo Alcaraz writes and draws the feisty Spanglish strip "La Cucaracha." "Preteena" is a slice-of-life strip of family-friendly humor courtesy of Allison Barrows. The misadventures of "Zack Hill" is a collaboration between veteran editorial cartoonist John Deering and his writing partner John Newcombe, and "Lucky Cow" is filled with Mark Pett's light-hearted cultural commentary.

The "Lucky Cow" in question is, as Pett describes it, "the world's premier burger franchise ... with more than 20,000 restaurants in the U.S. alone." In Pett's imagination, anyway. Owner Gary is the proud and enthusiastic manager of franchise No. 12,384, with his daughter Clare as one of his employees.

The thing is, Clare would rather be a regular teenage girl chillaxing (LOVE THIS WORD!) with her friends, anywhere except working for her dad at Lucky Cow. In fact, taking a cue from recent news, she put a fake ear in a milkshake once to get out of work. No such luck.

On the other hand, Gary, says Pett, "loves fast food because he thinks it's a great way to serve the community. But perhaps he's a little overindulgent toward his daughter Clare. He never fires her. And he's always trying new ways to get people into his place, including starting a books-and-burger club, inviting a haiku master as a special guest.

"Clare, she can be surly at times toward her dad, but she can be sweet as well, as you can see in (today's) Father's Day strip."

Pett, like the other cartoonists, is happy to find a home in another newspaper, and Pett said he's planning to add some Hawaii references to his strip this week to acknowledge Star-Bulletin readers.

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COURTESY IMAGE

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Former educator still
learning, teaching

PETT LIVES with his wife and two dogs in Indianola, Miss., the birthplace of blues great B.B. King, whose museum groundbreaking took place recently.

Mark Pett: The former educator decided to set his characters in a fast-food restaurant because "a real cross-section of people go there. ... It's quintessentially American."

"Where most of Mississippi is very segregated and stratified economically, this is the one town that's trying to improve that situation. It's one reason we came here about four years ago," Pett said.

Before moving there, Pett, whose wife is a teacher, taught sixth grade in rural Mississippi. His experiences showed up in an earlier comic strip called "Mr. Lowe," about "a naive and idealistic teacher who's overwhelmed by his students."

Though no longer a full-time educator, Pett helped an art teacher and her high school students accomplish a world-class feat two years ago. The students transformed one of his daily "Lucky Cow" strips into the World's Largest Comic Strip, officially certified by the Guinness Book of World Records.

"It ended up being some 45 feet high and 135 feet long. It was a pretty remarkable feat. We had to go up in a hot-air balloon just to see it. It was made up of about 1,500 poster board-size pieces. Some of them were sold on eBay to raise money for the school's art program, while the rest are in storage."

After "Mr. Lowe's" run, Pett briefly took a job at a local McDonald's for research into what he thought would be a great premise for his new comic strip.

"I originally created the characters of Clare and dad Gary, but I needed their interactions to take place somewhere. I've always been fascinated with fast-food restaurants. A real cross-section of people go there, and there are not many places like that in this country, where a multiethnic and diverse community of people mingle. ... It's quintessentially American."

While the strip has basically centered around Clare, Gary, co-worker Leticia ("the voice of reason") and disgruntled assistant manager Elvin, "one of the newer characters that has emerged is Neil, a pimply teenager and lovable innocent who always seems to do the right thing.

"I also see Lucky Cow, the corporation, as another character, it being the major fast-food franchise in this little universe. ... (That way) I can work in some cultural references. I try to do it in an indirect way, because I don't want to be pigeonholed (as a political cartoonist). Instead, I'm inviting people to laugh at themselves and their culture, regardless of whether they live in a red or blue state."

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Complex characters
move in, out of story

SPEAKING OF politics, John Deering's cartoons and paintings are part of former President Bill Clinton's private collection. Deering is the chief editorial cartoonist at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and is also the creator of his own syndicated single-panel comic, "Strange Brew," and co-creator, with writer John Newcombe, of "Zack Hill."

John Deering: "Zack Hill" benefits from two heads instead of just one, the cartoonist says of his teaming up with writer John Newcombe on the strip.

Talking by phone from his Little Rock, Ark., home studio, the quiet Deering said that he and Newcombe (who lives in Los Angeles) have been doing the strip for more than two years.

"Compared to other strips like 'For Better or For Worse' and 'Luann,' where their characters change over time, we're keeping things as they are, suspended in time, for now. ... We have a pretty interesting dynamic going on in our current story line.

"Zack, who's 10, lives with his single mom and the boarders who rent rooms in their house. From there, we have a lot of room to explore subplots and other story lines. One subplot we haven't really done enough with yet involves Zack's mother's boyfriend, Mark, who Zack doesn't approve of. Mark has been an on-and-off character in the strip, and usually winds up as the butt of a joke.

"It's a fun story line, and whenever we do one of those, the strip seems to pick up energy, as different characters make visits to the house every couple of months."

Deering has drawn inspiration for "Zack Hill" from his two sons, now 15 and 12. "They're getting interested in girls now, but still at an age where it's still awkward and a little bit of a mystery. It's kind of a fun age, and their lives can be complicated."

Zack's life is a bit complicated as well. "He lives with his widowed mom. His dad died when he was just a baby. We occasionally make reference to that in the strip, just to refresh our readers. ... John (Newcombe) throws in a different dynamic from time to time, sometimes gag humor with an edge, sometimes more three-dimensional human emotion.

"Another interesting element is that although Zack's real father is dead, in a way he has two or three surrogate fathers in the people that rent rooms. Carl and Vince are political polar opposites with extreme world views; Mr. Belmont, who's in his 80s and lives with his wife; and Mr. Grumbine, who lives in the attic. The thing is, nobody's seen him in two years. He's like that neighbor in 'Home Improvement,' and he adds a fantasy/mystery element in the strip."

Zack's friends include Winona and Henri Lee. "There's that Southern influence, where some people have double names. Henri is Zack's best friend and provides a kind of Greek chorus. He's more practical than Zack and, like boys that age, is a natural competitor. He kinda likes to jab Zack with sarcastic comments with a ring of truth."

Another girl has come into Zack's life recently. "He's beginning to get interested in Tanja. Winona is his tormentor although she's interested in Zack."

Based on Winona Ryder's character in the movie "Beetlejuice," Zack's Winona has a Goth thing going on as well, but Tanja is Newcombe's creation.

"Where Winona is shadows and spiders," Deering said, "Tanja is sunshine and teddy bears. She's a popular girl, if a bit conceited."

Although Deering originated most of the characters and the basic premise of "Zack Hill," Newcombe is Zack's writer and the director of development at Creators Syndicate.

"When I originally approached Creators with the idea of 'Zack Hill,' I had already been with them for five years through their distributing my editorial cartoons and 'Strange Brew,'" Deering said.

"John (Newcombe) worked with me for several months developing and fine-tuning the strip, and his suggestions were so good that I asked him if he would write the strip. He was already making good creative suggestions and had a good intuition about the characters. ... I look at our working relationship as John being the director and my characters are the actors. I flesh them out and bring them to life. I try to bring as much dynamism and animation into the drawing. It gives both of us the opportunity to focus as much energy on our work, more so than if it came from just one creator."

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Strip’s heroes taken from
artist’s home life

ALLISON BARROWS' illustrative style makes her "Preteena" a standout among most newspaper comic strips.

Allison Barrows: She draws on people and places from her own life to create Teena's world.

"I went to art school, then started my career in advertising," she said. "My husband is an illustrator as well. I like to think I'm capable of drawing different styles. I generally like a loose line, nothing cookie-cutter. The look of my strip is really, really inky."

For "Preteena," launched in 2001, Barrows draws her inspiration from a couple of masters.

"There's that wonderful compendium of Charles Schulz's 'Peanuts,' where when you compare his stuff in the '60s to what he did in the '80s, it's night and day. It's also like Bill Watterson's first two years of 'Calvin and Hobbes.' Over the years you get to form a rhythm in your work. It's like a skater or a pianist. 'Preteena' looks much better than it did when it first came out."

In the strip, Teena Keene is a fifth-grader and good student. She and her folks live in the fictional town of Burnell (Burrows' mother's last name). Her parents, Hugh and Tess, have professions that mirror Barrow's life. "I made Hugh a professional illustrator and Tess a children's book writer," she said.

"They're regular middle-class people who happen to be artists. Their friends are artists as well, all family people with mortgages and deadlines, more heavy-duty since they're self-employed, and very committed."

One of Teena's friends is 14-year-old Jeri, who is experiencing the pressures of adolescence.

"Teena's still at that marvelous age where there are no divisions or limits. Everything possible is still just around the corner. Jeri, meanwhile, is at that insidious age where everything is judged -- your look, your weight, what you wear -- and being terrified that anything you do will make you unpopular. Teena recognizes that and sees Jeri as more vulnerable than her.

"I named Jeri after the sister of a friend of mine from junior high. That girl had beautiful long hair; she was slender, seemingly perfect, and was the quintessential eighth-grader. Since I had no older sister, I imagined one like her."

COURTESY IMAGE Fifth grader Teena Keene is the heroine of "Preteena."

Barrows also imagined Teena's best friend, Sabra, nicknamed Stick, as "an amalgam of every weird friend my own daughter had ... and she has no idea that she is weird. When my daughter was in the fifth grade, all of her friends were deeply weird! When I would drive them around, it was strange to hear them say things that they found funny. Or they would make noises that they thought were hilarious."

Another of Teena's friends is Gordo, who is black. "Gordo was originally going to be Teena's crush ... but the syndicate was originally uncomfortable with the interracial thing. So I instead made them childhood buddies who've been brought up together and are now noticing the differences between them, in the way that 'we can't do sleepovers anymore.'

"My daughter is of the generation where they have no hang-up about race. It never occurs to them, the racial differences of their friends. My generation, on the other hand, was the drumbeat of this. But I don't want to make things political. 'Preteena' is about hard work, good friends, a solid family and that not every dad is a dope. My Hugh is good-looking and funky in an interesting way."

Barrows enjoys working from her home in picturesque Connecticut. "My daughter is 14 and son is 11, and they love how their parents are always at home. Even though they sometimes think it's weird that we're always here doing work, they think we have cool jobs."

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COURTESY IMAGE "La Cucaracha" will also appear every Sunday.

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Strip takes ethnic
themes mainstream

A REALITY away from such a placid setting is Long Beach, Calif., home base of Lalo Alcaraz and his pointed Spanglish-flavored strip "La Cucaracha."

Lalo Alcaraz: His strip offers political and social satire from a Latino perspective.

Before his work was syndicated nationally four years ago, Alcaraz was known around Southern California for his Latino-centric editorial cartoon panel for the alternative L.A. Weekly called "LA Cucaracha."

"That's where the character started out," he said. "He was like the emcee of the strip. Compared to what I do now with 'La Cucaracha,' it wasn't about his life."

And Alcaraz thinks the misadventures and observations of the hip Cuco Rocha and his human friend Eddie translates well with readers across the country.

"The background may be L.A.-specific, and all my characters are Mexican and Mexican American, but if you can read English, you can get the jokes. I intentionally make the strip universal in appeal but topical. Latino themes have become more mainstream, with Latinos now the biggest minority group in the States.

"I've heard comments that 'La Cucaracha' is too inside, too Mexican. Well, I think those people are either lying or morons."

Alcaraz enjoys the challenge of doing a daily strip, and offers up political and social satires from his ethnic perspective. He recently got approval from his Universal Press Syndicate editor to create a "Latino Star Wars" story arc, with ideas planted by the final film of the series, "Revenge of the Sith."

As to whether there's more of Alcaraz in either Eddie or the roach, he admits that he's both. "Cuco is political and preachy, while Eddie is more ambivalent. All he wants to do is to have a beer, go home and watch the tube. But recently I've made Eddie more active. He works for a cheap bilingual paper and is a lot smarter than he seems to be. Cuco has become more selfish and self-centered as the strip has developed, more dark."

Rounding out the main cast of characters of "La Cucaracha" are Eddie's younger brother, Neto, and girlfriend, Vero (short for Veronica). "Neto is more into the education stuff, and he's technologically savvy. ... Vero is a little more flighty. I get her stuff by eavesdropping on my wife and her friends. I think she says the funniest stuff because she's insecure. ... I try to ground the strip in real-life stuff."

And like everyone in L.A. who lives in close proximity to the entertainment industry, Alcaraz writes screenplays and hopes that "La Cucaracha" will be an animated TV show one day. "Newspapers are great but I want to branch out," he said.

In the meantime, expect mucho topical humor in Alcaraz's comic strip. It's no surprise that "La Cucaracha" has been controversial with newspaper editors and readers in the past, most famously in April with the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The strip in question showed a teacher asking his class: "What do you think President Bush might have said to console the Native American victims of the Red Lake Reservation school shooting?" Student responses: "I'm really so sorry you're not an Anglo suburban reservation," "You shoulda stuck to arrows," and "Pow? Wow!"

"The editor flagged it and wrote a little warning that if you're sensitive to the shootings that happened there, you may find what I did inappropriate. But I give the paper credit for running the strip anyway.

"In the past I've been dumped very publicly by some big papers who base their response on readers' polls. Some of these people have accused me of having the mentality of a Mexican (Ku Klux Klan). They don't give me the benefit of doubt. I mean, if you don't like my comic strip, don't read it and stick to 'Garfield.' ... People have opinions, and we all don't think the same.

"But it's a new day for newspaper comic strips. The comics page is catching up to the rest of today's entertainment business. Readers aren't running into retirement homes just yet."