Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Electronic edition | Subscription Questions | Extras

Coming full circle on 'Denver Square'

By Ed Stein, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published May 7, 2008 at 9:16 p.m.
Updated May 9, 2008 at 11:31 a.m.

Text size  
Ed Stein

Ed Stein

Related Links

More News Columns & Blogs

More stories »

A number of readers have expressed concern about the direction I've been taking lately in my Denver Square comic strip. Friends have called to ask me what's going on. Well, they're on to something. The fictional family really is going to move out of town. And, yes, the strip is going to end.

Twelve years ago I came up with a crazy idea. Why not create a daily local comic strip, a feature just for readers of the Rocky Mountain News. Brilliant! It would be the only thing like it in the country. In the giddy frenzy of creation, I didn't stop to ask why nobody else was doing anything like it.

After many false starts and much tinkering, I decided to draw a strip about an average middle-class family living in Denver. I'd comment on anything and everything going on in Colorado. Because I was already doing editorial cartoons, the focus of the strip would not be primarily political.

The first six months of a comic strip are its shakedown cruise. Only when you see it in print can you really know what works. Denver Square began running in the Rocky in January 1997. It took a while to find its footing, but then something genuinely spooky happened. The characters started talking back to me; they took control of the dialogue; they demanded that punch lines I wrote for others be given to them instead; they insisted that certain gags were out of character and refused to participate. Sam, Liz, Nate, Irv and Sarah developed personalities of their own, ones I didn't originally intend for them.

Over the next 11 years, and some 3,000 daily strips, they lived through blizzards, floods, forest fires, CSAPs, the building of T-REX, Columbine, 9/11, two Super Bowl victories, two Stanley Cups, two presidents, two mayors, two governors, Y2K, the home renovation surge and the home foreclosure crisis.

I say lived, because I almost think of them as real people. I know them as well as I know my own family. Which makes it hard to think about killing Denver Square. Yet, I think it's the right time to bring it to an end.

Denver and Colorado have changed dramatically since I began drawing the strip. Our politics are more complicated and more interesting. Our issues seem bigger and more difficult. The strengths of Denver Square are also its weaknesses. In sticking to a policy of not including politicians in the strip, I haven't been able to caricature such fascinating and complex figures as John Hickenlooper, Bill Owens, Bill Ritter, Bruce Benson and others, and there are issues I haven't been able to fully explore.

Other reasons are more personal. When I started drawing Denver Square, my children were in elementary school. They are now college students, and I've lost my insider knowledge of Denver Public Schools. My father-in-law and my father, two models for the irascible Irv, are no longer with us. Many of the strip cartoonists I know tell me that, despite the longevity of Dagwood, Beetle Bailey and Peanuts, 10 years is the functional lifespan of a comic strip. I'm beginning to understand why. The grind of producing a daily strip is starting to tell. I both love and hate the characters. Some days I'm so sick of drawing them, I daydream about doing terrible things to them. Liz joins a polygamist cult. Sam is eaten alive by giant mutant pine beetles. Nate is abducted by cattle-mutilating space aliens. This alone should tell me that it's time to move on.

If you haven't noticed lately, the newspaper business has changed. We are now a multimedia information source with an increasingly dynamic Web presence. I can no longer think of myself as just a newspaper cartoonist. The Internet gives me a chance to write as well as to draw, to blog and to podcast, to add motion and sound, to make videos, to create a comic world I never could have dreamed of making in print, to interact with readers in new and more intimate ways. I have plenty of new ideas for projects to fill the time that drawing the comic strip takes up now.

Some of them might be just as crazy as Denver Square.

Denver Square's last day will be May 21. stein@RockyMountainNews.com

Comments

  • May 8, 2008

    8:18 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Liberal_but_not_Bleeding writes:

    Denver Square will be missed!

  • May 8, 2008

    11:27 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Firedewd writes:

    Not Really

  • May 8, 2008

    11:37 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    SlouchingTowardBoulder writes:

    Good riddance.

    To give you an idea of what this guy finds funny, check out his cartoon from earlier this week where he made light of a terrorist using a dull knife to hack off a head.

    This guy is an unreconstructed 60's relic with reflexive far-left views.

    Thank goodness he won't be polluting the RMN anymore with this odious cartoon.

  • May 8, 2008

    12:13 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Lonestar writes:

    Good riddance. Not placing politicians in the comic strip hardly made it non-political. Denver Square was pretty much just a liberal propaganda piece. Hopefully Ed Stein will go practice his craft on the Huffington Post or the Daily Kos instead of the RMN.

  • May 8, 2008

    2:29 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    lynmac2004 writes:

    Looking good, Ed...
    I, for one, will miss DS - and I don't even live there anymore!

    We are finally getting editorial Stein in the Annapolis Crab-wrapper (excuse me, I mean Capital)...so that's a treat. My friend Deb sends me links whenever there is something particularly delicious in Denver Square, and I sometimes read it online anyway, just so I can KIND of keep up on Colorado. I'll miss that.

    But I'm sure you'll be doing something equally or more creative...

    What I want to know is - did it freak you out when the characters started telling you how to draw the strip?

    (And yes, there probably is a big dose of "unreconstructed 60's relic" in a huge number of us ~ thankfully! Where would be be without irony, humor, and hope?)

    Lynda Nutt McIntyre
    Severna Park, MD

  • May 8, 2008

    5:04 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    nonayerbsns writes:

    "The characters started talking back to me; they took control of the dialogue; they demanded that punch lines I wrote for others be given to them instead"

    YEP, THE TIME TO CHECK OUT HAS LONG PASSED. Good luck and I hope you get the meds you need. (just kidding) I appreciated some of your 'tunes and thought others were just stupid. Have a fun life.

  • May 9, 2008

    2:11 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Scott writes:

    Now if RMN only had the guts to move Stein out of the paper. Good ridance. I completely agree with SlouchingTowardsBoulder, Stein is "an unreconstructed 60's relic". I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to use that phrase. I usually say "Unreconstructed hippie."

    So Stein, did the voices in your head tell you that the characters were talking back to you. Or did you get your hands on some expired drugs?

    Scott

  • May 9, 2008

    4:56 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    zombyboy writes:

    Coming from the right here (politically speaking) and I'm a little sad to see DS go. I won't disagree that the strip obviously leaned to the left and there were times it made me roll my eyes, but it was also regularly funny. Stein is a talented artist, and to the extent that the people were like my political adversaries, they were also like the ones that I enjoyed spending time with--and, let me tell you, some of my best friends I really can't talk politics with.

    Luckily, not everything in life is politics and a guy like me can still find a lot of common ground with people whose political views run so contrary to my own.

    Anyway, good luck. It was an impressive run for any strip, much less one with such a local focus.

  • May 22, 2008

    5:54 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    wvc1 writes:

    Not to take anything away from DS, but when you say, "a feature just for readers of the Rocky Mountain News.... It would be the only thing like it in the country," that's not quite true. Don't forget the late Phil Frank's "Travels with Farley," that ran for many years (far more than 12) as a local strip in the San Francisco Chronicle.