Thursday, December 17, 2009

From The Smig Archives: Meet Ma Kabre!





Some years ago I pitched a comic strip to the syndicates called MA KABRE. It was loosely inspired by the fact I live in Salem, Ma. "The Witch City" where we have plenty of fortune tellers, aura readers,not to mention a good number of new age shops and magic supply stores. (these days, Pickering Wharf is practically a Witch Mall) I came up with a gypsy-styled character who was more of an modern age huckster and named her "Ma Kabre"(A pun on "Macabre")
Ma needed a sidekick/conscience type character. Origially I figured on a Black cat, but that would have been way too obvious, so I opted for a more unusal, and yet still appropriate animal given the Halloweeness of some of the concept-A black fruit bat named "Austin". Austin was actually based on a puppet I made some time earlier.
The original idea behind the strip was to satrize business and consumerism with a definetly skewred slant.I drew up about a month's worth of strips, made up a presentation packet, and mailed them to the syndicates. Neddles to say, they came back in record time.
I'll be posting the packet here in installments. Right now, here's Part One, what would be considered the first week of the strip.

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