By Tim Clodfelter
JOURNAL REPORTER
John Hambrock knew from a young age what he wanted to do when he grew up - become a marine biologist. But somehow, cartooning got in the way.
His strip, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, will get a four-week trial run on the Journal’s comics pages starting Monday.
The central character is a 10-year-old boy genius with a knack for inventions, which allows Hambrock to tap into his love of science on a regular basis.
“I had science on my mind as a kid, and cartooning was totally off my radar,” he said. “I was probably one of the few kids that never thought about being a cartoonist. I was a huge fan of reading the comics, but I never thought about creating them.”
He got good grades in science, but even better grades in art class.
“I had a talent for art, and my teachers always encouraged me that way,” he said. “By the time I got to high school, I figured art was the direction to go.”
He attended college at Indiana University and Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida, studying graphic design. Then he got a job at a graphics firm in Chicago. One of the firm’s accounts was with Keebler cookies. Between drawing the Keebler elves and creating a program for the Chicago public-school system with cartoon dinosaurs teaching nutrition, Hambrock began to think about cartooning.
Hambrock, who is 44, decided in 1991 that he wanted to be a cartoonist and mentioned the idea to his wife Anne. “I caught her off-guard,” he said. “It was ‘How was your day?’ ‘Great, but I want to be a cartoonist!’”
But Anne was also a big fan of comics. “She used to check out prospective boyfriends by showing them Charles Addams (The creator of The Addams Family) cartoons and seeing how they reacted,” he said. “She’s a big comics fan, a big New Yorker fan, while I’m more of a Mad magazine fan.”
She is the colorist for Edison Lee, and also serves as a sounding board for his ideas for strips. “I run stuff by her, and she comes up with ideas too,” he said. “I tell her what I’m planning, and if I get a stare or hear crickets, I know it’s something I shouldn’t pursue.”
He made several attempts to get a strip syndicated throughout the 1990s, and a precocious boy who was a secondary character in one of those strips eventually caught his imagination and became Edison Lee, the central character in the strip that he finally sold to King Features Syndicate. He spent years honing the strip, which finally made its newspaper debut in 2006.
Edison, the star of the strip, has a fascination with science and also politics. He enjoys pointing out the absurdities of modern life, and thinks he has all the answers - though that’s not always the case.
“Around the 2000 election, the strip started to take on a more political tone,” Hambrock said. He considers himself “an equal-opportunity satirist.”
“It’s not an anti-anything, it’s more a chance for Edison to point out what’s happening at the various levels in this country right now.”
The strip’s cast also includes Edison’s well-intentioned parents; his opinionated grandpa Orville; and Joules, his pet rat who helps out in his lab experiments.
The strip just celebrated its one-year anniversary in syndication, and Hambrock said he is not about to run out of ideas.
“It’s gotten much easier,” he said. “It’s interesting. When you’re starting off, and you’re trying to come up with ideas for strips, you think ‘How do people do this 365 days a year?’ The prospect of having to do this as a career, and in most cases on top of an existing career you have to maintain, is a challenge.”
Hambrock runs his own graphics firm, which he balances with his comic strip work. He and his wife live in Kenosha, Wis., with their three children, sons 16 and 13 and a daughter, 8.
He keeps folders of ideas for strips, jotting down jokes on whatever paper he can get hold of - bank statements, gum wrappers, and so on - and then pulling them out as needed when it comes time to create the strip. He never knows when the inspiration for a strip will strike.
“A lot of times it happens in the shower,” he said. “I wish someone would come up with waterproof paper.”
Sounds like a job for boy inventor Edison Lee.
■ Tim Clodfelter can be reached at 727-7371 or at .
I love this comic strip! Every day since it has started running, I find myself laughing out loud.
Dave on 12/04/2007 (10:50 pm)
I thought it was kind of dumb to run this article with no sample of the strip until 3 days later . . .
Julie on 11/26/2007 (9:47 am)