Nothing beats great stand-up comedy. Sit-down comedy is very close to that, and I think that’s what I do,” says Hales Corners’ Daniel Beyer of his work creating the six-day weekly newspaper comic strip Long Story Short (LSS).
LSS is distributed by the news syndicate Creators, and Beyer believes its humorous framework fits well with the current mindset of many readers. “I think a good one-panel joke works really well as entertainment these days, especially on the Internet where everyone’s attention span is so short,” Regarding his fellow artists in the same niche, Dave Blazek’s “Loose Parts” and “Cartoonist” “Speed Bump” to Dave Coverley he calls them “smart and funny guys.”
Beyer’s love of combining words and images to create humor began in his youth. He recalls I used to get into Mad magazine and Cartoons magazine and read some comic books in the newspapers dick tracy, the far side, Calvin and Hobbies, and Conrad.” I had a couple of books about Heathcliff. I copied Don Martin [Mad] and I remember drawing Heathcliff quite often. But that was until I got into Mr. Boffo by Joe Martin that I wanted to continue this theme in a meaningful way.
Beyer’s geographic proximity to the artist Boffo and the legacy of another cartoonist from his childhood on Lake Geneva made the prospect of making a living in the same field seem within reach. Yes, Joe Martin lives in Lake Geneva Wisconsin. He’s in the east now. And Sidney Smith, who created Gumps and received the first million-dollar comic book contract, lived on Lake Geneva in the 1920s.”
Credit: Daniel Beyer
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Beyer also lived for some time in his hometown, the author of another of his favorite films. And of course, Chester Gould the creator of Dick Tracy lived near Woodstock, Illinois, for almost the entire run of the tape. I think what made it more likely was that there were real people in my backyard who made a living doing this. It really motivates me Beyer recalls.
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