After a string of rejections from every major syndicate in the world, I decided to aim a little lower and try to get a comic strip in the DePaul University student newspaper. It worked. The end. But wait, there's more!

I figured that I needed to butter the editors up as much as possible, since I had no real experience getting published before.

So for my first trick, I based the character on a typical college student, since I figured that that was a better fit for a college paper than, say, a strip about a guy who, I dunno, notarizes documents for the city's parks department. That's a cool idea too, of course, but I put that in the "maybe" pile in case the student paper rejected me and I need to try the village newsletter route.

For my second trick, I relied, for what I'm proud to say is the only time ever in the history of this strip, on a pun. You see, I went to DePAUL University and the guys name is PAUL and ohmygosh isn't that AWESOME?! The original name of the strip was "Paul's Dorm" (as you can see in the original sketch to the right) and it was gonna be about dorm life specifically. I eventually shortened it to just "Paul," since my opinion of dorm life at DePaul was anything but humorous by my sophomore year.

I submitted six strips to kick things off, and the entertainment editor accepted them. He was a sophomore as well, so it's not like I was some big shot or something for convincing another sophomore to publish my stupid strip, especially after I lied in my query letter about how much I enjoy reading The DePaulia. I don't think I ever enjoyed reading the DePaulia. Even after my strip got in.

School went so well that year that I quit in the middle of the third trimester, literally in the middle of an art history class, after I broke a pencil. It was my only pencil, see, so naturally I was left with no choice but to quit school. I eventually enrolled into Columbia (or heaven, as I know it), and, after flirting with a strip about the college's athletic program (it doesn't have an athletic program, hence the non-stop laughs) I resurrected "Paul" to kick off the second semester. It was a huge smash. Probably. To be continued (maybe).

Everything ©1997-2008 Billy O'Keefe. Every drop of pretty much every thing you see, and every word you read, was created completely from scratch by one boy and three dogs. May not be reproduced for commercial purposes without permission. Don't take my stuff without paying for it, but feel free to pay me without taking my stuff.