Thursday interview, or why you should love indie cartoonists: Marek Bennett, part 1.

I remember the day that I met Marek Bennett, in the drafty gymnasium that hosted the 2007 Boston Zine Fair. Marek and his wife Denise were standing up behind the table—everyone else was sitting down, slumped and gloomy—and they had so much enthusiasm when they greeted me that I couldn't help but drop by and check out their wares. I hadn't experienced that sort of enthusiasm for comics before (I hadn't yet met Alec Longstreth or Liz Baillie). Since then I have had the pleasure of seeing Marek at a number of other conventions, of trading comics and seeing his work develop, and of exchanging letters that are actually written on paper.

I love Marek's regular strip, Mimi's Doughnuts, for a lot of reasons: Shayna reminds me a little bit of everyone I know; she's idealistic, but doesn't always have the willpower to stick to it. She struggles with personal issues that shed light on bigger problems; she talks about global and political issues in a way that even kids can understand. She's just so REAL, that sometimes I'm amazed that Mimi's Doughnuts isn't an autobio strip. And Marek tends to tackle big issues with this strip without taking a strong stance or seeming too preachy (something neither kids nor adults appreciate). It's also hilarious. One of my favorite recent moments is when the Doughnut shop loses power and the kids hook up an exercise bike to power the coffee pot:

Notice how Marek the teacher just got his readers to learn a little bit about how much energy is expended through those devices that you use everyday? You probably didn't, because you were too busy laughing. But that's why Marek is so good at what he does. He brings his educator's skills to the comics medium, and teaches us something while entertaining us. (Always a mark of a good comic, in my opinion.)

Marek is a comics wunderkind. Besides drawing a regular strip, he publishes a quarterly mini-comic/zine, self-syndicates the strip to local New Hampshire newspapers, and runs comics workshops for kids and adults alike all through New England (and abroad!). He's also a member of the great comics group Trees and HIlls, which is the type of crew that makes me want to pick up and move to Vermont just to be in their club. Despite having lost his computer (and 2 months of work) to electronic swine flu this week, Marek was gracious enough to answer a whole slew of questions about Mimi's Doughnuts and self-syndication.

Can you tell us a little about Mimi's Doughnuts, and how you got started drawing it?

My wife Denise grew up in a family-run doughnut shop in Claremont, NH. Whenever we'd go visit her mom there in Claremont, Denise would tell me all these stories about the shop, and the customers, and what life was like in that New Hampshire milltown in the 70s and 80s. We kept saying, "Man, this would make a GREAT movie..." and one day I sat down at my drawing desk and just started doodling some characters. I put together all sorts of things, like the glasses Denise used to wear as a kid, some grumpy-dad energy from my own family, hairstyles from this person and animal stories from that person, a little bit of every small "greasy-spoon" diner and family-run business I'd ever been in... and pretty soon it was clear that there were just SO many different angles to take on this doughnut shop environment. I just started following the characters and watching what they did, or letting them just talk and tell stories, just like I tell my students to do in their comics.

You self-syndicate MD in newspapers. How did you get started with that?

Well, that probably comes from my time in college during the last century, when I did a daily sci-fi adventure strip called Quasar Blasters" for the student paper. I just like the idea of a newspaper that brings comics to your home every day or every week. I like the feel of newsprint, and the sense of juxtaposition all those different features and sections add to whatever stories are in the comics.

To start, I drew up maybe 8 or 10 strips to get a feel for my characters, and to show some of the situations and ideas I'd use in the strip. I didn't know what editors would be looking for, so I designed the strip to be adaptible. I basically measured the comic strips that were in the paper, doubled that, and drew them to that size (to shrink down in the paper, of course). I drew a large weekly block of three daily-size tiers, or sometimes with a larger panel I'd draw it so that the weekly strip could run as a two-tier story with a throw-away single tier. That way, I thought, editors could run a weekly triple, or a weekly double, or just three singles three times a week... Of course, every paper that's ever run it just runs it as a big triple once a week.

Oh no, wait... one paper DOES actually pull a single strip and they'll run that single strip alone, so I do need to make sure at least one tier of the triple-tier block can stand alone. It's always interesting to see which tier they run.

Anyhow, I sent those strips to my local independently-run daily newspaper, the Keene Sentinel, and they said they'd run them on a back page with another local comic. I was so psyched! They paid me $12 for each weekly episode. It's been five years and they still run the strip. I've just made sure to make every deadline and invoice on time and be very professional, and they've been very supportive.

Are you losing any newspapers with the current cost-cutting environment?

I think the newspaper business has basically been in this kind of a recessionary economy for maybe the last 10 years or so... I haven't picked up any NEW papers in the past three years, but then, I totally stopped sending out submissions about three years ago. Every editor I talked to was supportive, even enthusiastic, but they all had to look at their bottom line, and that meant NO NEW FEATURES. I'd make my pitch for local comics, and how responsive, fresh indy comics can really help papers compete with the internet, but their hands were tied...

Actually, I remember one newspaper that was SO close to starting the strip, they kept saying, "Next month, next month..." and then putting it off again, and finally they said they had done a study of their readers and their readers were all older, and thus would want something more conservative. That was the moment, for me. I just thought, "Okay, so your readers are older... who's going to replace them if you're not attracting younger readers?" I just suddenly felt like I was in the self-publishing lifeboat, and submitting to newspapers was like frantically, desperately trying to get back on the sinking Titanic. And because it was sinking, they were saying, "No, I don't know if we can add any passengers..." I just didn't feel like fighting to get on that ship anymore.

That was when I stopped submitting to newspapers. I just backed slowly away from that market. AND, that's when I started doing my Mimi's Doughnuts Zine. Because we all need an audience, and a deadline, and I can't stand reading comics on the computer screen!

Gosh, that all sounds so negative. I really do love newspapers, small-town papers and big city papers... I have all these great memories of reading the comics EVERY DAY in the papers my grandparents used to get. But that's just it... for everybody who has newspaper comics memories, usually the memories involve their grandparents. It's from another generation. It might be nice, pleasant, nostalgic... but that doesn't make it the best business model for an independent artist.

Do you feel like syndicating your own strip in essentially local papers allows you to be more closely connected to your readers, both in their communication with you and in what issues you tackle in the strip?

Yeah, definitely. That's why I still do run the strips in papers. I love the idea of drawing a strip and then having all those copies churned out to go out into the community, to breakfast tables and alleyways and lunch counters and waiting rooms and whatnot. It keeps you focused, you have to make sure there's a POINT to what you're drawing. It gives you responsibility.

Also, I love the idea of a hand-drawn image going into that industrial, computer-printed newspaper. It's like this little glimpse of humanity in a cold hard mechanical print environment... And I think people respond to that. You get so close to those characters -- IF they're approachable, if the storytelling's there to draw you in -- and as an artist, you have to find what that closeness means to you and your characters. What's going to make sense to people, and what's going to GET them? It stimulates an exploration that never stops. I started out doing strips about the doughnut shop, but then it expanded to be about the whole family, the town, whatever the kids are getting into, whatever's happening in the world around them.

In my classes, I run into people who read the strip. Sometimes it feels like nobody ever reads it, why draw it, what's the point—then I'll have a student or a parent who says, "Oh, you draw that strip? I read it every week!" It's like discovering two different friends both know each other really well. It's like discovering that reader was there looking over your shoulder reading along on that afternoon several weeks ago, when you drew that recent strip... Knowing those readers are out there really connects you to other people in your community, and it keeps you focused on that point of interaction between your characters and your readers.

Tune in next week when Marek and I will talk about promoting yourself as a cartoonist and teaching comics to kids and adults!

• Marek's home on the web
• Mimi's Doughnuts
• Mimi's Doughnuts on Facebook

And stay tuned later today for a little followup to Tuesday's post about business models for cartoonists and the web.