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Zach's First (Professional) Rejection

Actually, that's not entirely true. Neither of the comics editors I sent these strips to ever, EVER got back to me. I guess I'm an optimist, but I thought that my stuff was better than anything in their magazines, and my total lack of plot or character motivation would blow any editor's mind. (I won't name the two magazines I submitted to, but they rhyme with Bickelodeon and Hisney.) Pick up a kids' magazine the next time you're in a supermarket checkout line, and look at the cartoons in it. You'll be surprised how bizarrely unfulfilling they are. Speaking of bizarrely unfulfilling, here's Ricky & Chaz.

Every Ricky & Chaz episode has them dress up in superhero costumes and right some wrong. Not great opera, but something about the costume-change panel always makes me laugh. Maybe if each adventure lasted a couple of months instead of a single page, I'd have something. Anyway, click on the panel to read the strip, which is inspired by Sunday mornings sitting around the house eating donuts and reading the funnies.

Oceanus, Lord of the Deep? What was I thinking?! He has a fish on his shirt, for God's sake! Basically, he's an Aquaman parody, which might very well be redundant. Cap'n Slicker is wearing a coat and rain hat I used to wear around campus when it rained. Yes, that was me. The dork.

Mr. Mallard is a blatant homage to... myself, actually. Picture a chicken suit instead of a duck suit and Mr. Mallard would be my previous creation, Captain Cardinal. (Yes, I said a chicken suit. A red chicken suit. It actually looked very little like a cardinal. Probably why no one read the strip. "What's this chicken doin' here? I ain't readin' this crap.")