Here’s the story behind the Stinky Stevens books.
In 1975 I began a comic strip for the campus newspaper at the University of Nebraska. My first strip was making fun of Campus Crusade evangelist, Josh McDowell. The editor (an atheist) loved it and away we went. The strip ran every day chronicling college life, and it became an instant hit. My main character even won Homecoming King. It was then I realized I had a gift, and that gift turned into a passion for writing and drawing comic strips.
It was also then that I took my first stab at newspaper syndication. The response from one syndicate was, “my strip was good for a campus setting but it needed a broader appeal for daily newspapers.” I made a few more attempts, but I couldn’t get the right doors to open. This agonizing quest to create the perfect comic strip so I could impress a newspaper syndicate, eventually led me to becoming a Christian. When I couldn’t coerce God into doing what I wanted him to do, I finally gave up and let Him do with me what He wanted. The day after I placed my total trust in Christ, I got a full time job as a cartoonist right across the street from my apartment. This led to my current free-lance career: a calling to create cartoons to be a communication vehicle for spreading God’s truths.
So instead of newspaper syndication, God opened a door for me to write and illustrate a full-page episodic comic strip for a weekly Sunday school take-home paper. It was called The Adventures of Jeremiah. During this time I also got to write and illustrate seventy Gospel-oriented cartoon tracts that have, thus far, sold over 50 million copies worldwide.
Those successes were very gratifying, but the itch to write and illustrate a daily newspaper comic strip still burned deep inside of me. I finally hit on an idea I thought would solve the “Christian strip in secular newspapers” dilemma. In 1995 an idea came to me to write a strip where certain cartoon characters know the real truth about their world. That is, they realized there is a loving cartoonist out there who is controlling everything. And, he rarely does what they expect … which sort of mirrors my own life.
One newspaper syndicate thought there might be room for a religious strip if it weren’t alienating, and this strip fit that criterion because the religious aspect was allegorical. The late, great Johnny Hart (his strips were The Wizard of Id and B.C.) overnighted a letter to me letting me know he loved what I did, and he was passing my material on to his syndicate. I took my strip (called Overtones, for spiritual overtones) to Focus on the Family to see if they wanted me to work on something similar for their Adventures in Odyssey radio broadcast. Show developer, Paul McCusker, along with two other executives, said, “We don’t want to talk about Adventures in Odyssey. We want to talk about Overtones.” They loved it and wanted to publish Overtones cartoon books … IF a newspaper syndicate would purchase the strip. They even had a relationship with the syndicate that seemed the most interested. This syndicate took two full years before they eventually declined. It wasn’t that they declined as much as they couldn’t agree on a decision, and they didn’t want to leave me hanging any further. Their no decision became a “NO” decision. Other syndicates followed suit. Of course without the national audience newspaper syndication would bring, Focus on the Family wasn’t able to do anything and they backed off also.
I had come so close.
I then looked for other ways to make this concept work. I entered an international Christian comic contest with a four-page strip I called Stinky Stevens. It was the same concept: Stinky Stevens knows the real truth about his world … there is a caring cartoonist out there who is in charge of everything but rarely does what Stinky expects. It won second place in the People’s Choice Category Among Professionals.
After that, I sent the Overtones and Stinky Stevens strips to one of the largest and most respected Christian book publishing companies in the country. They loved the strips and the concept. They thought it would work well as a children’s book series. We used the name Stinky Stevens. I was thrilled. I had never written children’s books before but I found there were a lot of similarities to writing comic strips.
Midway through development this company went through a major restructuring. People were fired from the top on down and they decided to trim their book line. Because my books were geared toward an uncertain market my book series was axed even though the editors still loved the concept.
I had come so close.
The bottom line now is I have four really cool Stinky Stevens books I’m self publishing for the time being, and I’ll sell them on my website.
There is only one thing I do know. The great cartoonist does have a plan, but he rarely does what the cartoon characters expect … sort of like real life … and very much like Stinky Stevens.