Mauricio writes...
Story 102 - Why doesn't Monica wear shoes?

Because I didn't have time to draw them.

A direct question, a truthful explanation, and we could leave it at that.

But there would still be some doubts that I think I should try to clear up as a token of esteem and respect for my readers.

Back in the beginning, at the very start of my career as a cartoonist, the characters took shape with great difficulty.

I had not yet mastered rhythm or line. The stories came from brief outlines re-written, re-arranged many times until they contained a beginning, a middle and an ending.

Then came the difficult task of "dressing" the story with drawings, the most complicated part of which was to keep the characters' appearance the same, frame after frame. The pencil was plenty busy but the eraser was even busier. Only after the outlines were defined was it time - equally difficult but tedious -- to go over the characters, backgrounds, letters and dialog balloons with India ink...and finally do the cleanup, again with much erasing.

And here or there a little scrape with the corner of a razor blade to clean up a messy line. The thick paper, made in Germany by Schoeller, held up under many remakes. Thank goodness.

And one more detail to reveal here: I used a pen with India ink for the final art. Unlike my "colleagues," authors of other characters, who were able to finish their marvelous drawings with a brush.

I tried to do it, but the type of drawing my brush produced was not what I wanted. I preferred the firm, strong line of round-tipped pens. The ink flowed with the energy and speed I needed.

Time was a matter of survival under those circumstances.

If my early characters, re-done so many times, enjoyed the luxury of being more detailed, the later ones came into being already simplified, like the drawings in children's schoolbooks. But it was the best I could do. I had no assistants, created the stories and did the artwork by myself, and had to supply three comic strips to the newspaper every day.

Anyone who analyzes the chronology of the "birth" of the characters will see that the first one, Franklin, came with detailed clothes, shoes, socks, black pants and even carefully applied "drops" of India ink to represent his characteristic bangs.

Blu, created at that same time, was also drawn in careful detail, as was Jimmy Five, a secondary character in the "Blu and Franklin" series.

Jimmy even had more hair in the beginning. But time began to fly by faster and faster as more and more stories had to be written. At the same time, the scripts demanded new characters.

It was then that I moved Jimmy Five into a separate series, cut off a lot of his hair and brought in Smudge to keep him company.

And poor Smudge, affected by my lack of time, was "born" without shoes. My hurried production left no time to draw shoes, socks or anything extra.

There wasn't even time to draw toes.

The secondary characters that kept arriving received the same treatment.

It was like that for Monica and then for Maggy.

And I couldn't take the shoes off the characters that already had them. The readers were used to them that way.

Country boy Chuck Billy was created, for a different newspaper, during that period of details. He doesn't wear shoes but at least he has all those big toes.

As time passed, with the success of the characters and the possibility of putting together a fine team of artists to help me, I was able to create characters with richer details.

But... how could I change the figures, lines, drawings of those already-existing characters who had charmed the public even without shoes?

They stayed as they were.

Isn't there an old saying that says: "Happy was the man who had no shirt?"



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