Pages from Molly and the Bear.
We continue the Molly and the Bear coverage with a special creator interview with the husband-and-wife team of Bob and Vicki Scott. In this interview, we cover quite a lot of ground, from the origins of Molly and the Bear comics to a number of creative insights. Enjoy!
Thank you for joining me. Great to have both of you.
It’s nice to be here! Thank you for chatting with us!
Please share with us what both of you would like to tell folks about your new book.
Bob: Molly and the Bear: Campers Beware is the follow-up to our first book, Molly and the Bear: An Unlikely Pair, which came out a year ago. Both books are fun graphic novels for middle grade readers who like the idea of hanging out with a very large, very real Bear who has real issues. Hmm, I guess I would like to let people know that these are fun books, full of heart and laughs.
Vicki: I’d like to let people know that they may be hard-pressed to find the books in the big stores like Barnes and Noble or Target, but online shopping is not their only option! We peek into as many indie bookstores as possible, and we’ve been delighted to find the indie booksellers stocking out books! It is a real thrill to see the books on the shelf. We’ve also found Molly and the Bear: An Unlikely Pair in public and school libraries!!! (We hope they pick up the new book too!) Of course, the online retailers carry the books, but we love and appreciate the indies and libraries!!!
Would you share about the evolution of Molly and the Bear, from comic strip to book series?
Bob: Molly and the Bear started back when Universal Press Syndicate ran Comics Sherpa, a web platform for budding comic strips. Sherpa was open to anyone, and the fellow creators were so supportive and encouraging. GoComics is the syndicate’s “Invite-Only” web syndication platform and I jumped on Go in 2009. I love the immediacy of posting a strip and getting immediate reaction.
Vicki: However.
Bob: GoComics audiences tend to hit a plateau, and Molly and the Bear had a couple thousand subscribers and the audience was not growing. But I really wanted more people to see my work. Vicki began suggesting adapting the strip into graphic novels.
“An Unlikely Pair”
Tell us about getting into the zone for your readers, the middle grade kids.
Bob: I released 2 compilation books, which my friends dutifully bought. Fortunately, they left the books lying around on their kitchen tables long enough for their kids to get curious. We got reports that the 11 – 12-year-old daughters LOVED the characters.
Vicki: Since doing a graphic novel was my big idea, I had the pleasure of reaching into Bob’s huge pile of strips and pulling out story lines that focused on Molly and Bear. It was the same process I used when I had worked for the Schulz family adapting TV specials and comic strips into the long-form comics for Boom Comics. By knowing the characters super well and weaving strips into the script, the integrity of Bob’s work (and Sparky’s) was maintained. I love Molly and Bear and it is a pleasure to help shape the story into a long graphic novel.
Bob: While we kept the story focused on Molly and Bear, we added Harper, a best friend for Molly. Harper has become a regular in the strip too.
Vicki: By adding a best friend for Molly, and taking her to school, it helped make the story just right for 11 -12-year-olds.
Vicki: (whispering) A small note, the books are for middle grades, which is book-speak for 8 – 12- year-olds. Books for middle school kids is YA. It’s confusing even for us. Bob and I nearly came to blows once over the term “chapter book”. Kidding.
“Campers Beware”
What can you share about your process? Anything is fair game: panels, lettering, coloring, layout, software used, any physical art process?
Bob: My process for the new books and the strip has only a couple of small differences. Both are drawn in blue (or red) pencil on Bristol Board, then inked with a Windsor Newton Sable brush and waterproof India Ink. I love the feel of drawing on the board, the meditative nature of inking, and the satisfaction of holding the end product in my hands.
For both the books and the strips, I scan them and use Photoshop to remove the blue (or red) pencil lines. For the strip, I usually ink the borders; for the books I do the borders in Photoshop. All color is done in Photoshop.
The biggest difference is that I made a font of my lettering to use for the books. This made edits and possible translations easier.
Vicki: Once Bob got the art to the scan stage, I helped as much as I could as he held a full-time job for most of the books’ production. I was tasked with coloring the book. I made a conscious decision to not use shadows or gradations or anything fancy with the color so Bob’s beautiful inkwork remained the star.
Let’s get psychological. What does the Bear symbolize?
Bob: All the characters have large parts of me. I can be fearful, pessimistic, optimistic, brave, cranky. We all have many sides to us, and I think when artists tap into those common threads sincerely, the art is relatable, and people connect to it.
Vicki: Yeah, we all contain multitudes. And Bob blends them into comedy.
What’s it like working as a team?
Vicki: Lawyers were not called at any time. No, seriously, Bob and I have worked together many times. My first job after graduating art school was inking US Acres, which he was co-penciling for Jim Davis. It saved so much time, really. We didn’t have to have that hour long conversation, “How was your day?” because we already knew. We sat next to each other all day. I love Bob’s art, I respect what he does and keep my hands off everything that makes Bob’s art his.
Bob: I like what Vicki brings to the work. She adds a side to the characters that I wouldn’t think of. Example: I drew Harper in an oversize sweater. I thought it was cute, and kind of in fashion right then. Vicki made up the back story that the sweater belongs to Harper’s mom, and since the mom works long hours, Harper misses her. So, Harper snuggles into the sweater every day like a portable Mom-hug. I would never have thought of that, and it added so much to Harper.
Anything you’d like to share about the writing process–about the comedic timing?
Vicki: Writing a comic strip is like the haiku of comedy writing. Bob is a master of it, and it is harder than it looks. I like to blather on and on, so I can take Molly and Bear into full-length stories. I like call-backs, long-running jokes and soap-opera-esque drama.
Bob: If I can make a joke work with a great, funny drawing, that’s what I love. I love the slapstick of cartoons, the wild takes, the animation I can put into the comic strip and the books. I love a pun as much as anyone, and Bear is always fun to write, but he is way more fun to draw.
Vicki: To be clear, Bob writes and draws his strip completely solo. I help with the books, but the strip is all Bob.
Share with us anything you like about your early years.
Bob: I have been making comic strips since I was little. I saw strips in the newspaper every day (newspapers used to be on paper and delivered to your house. Crazy times) and I drew my favorites. Pretty soon I was making my own strips. I have been on a quest for syndication my whole life. Fortunately, I also wanted to be an animator.
Vicki: I don’t remember it very well, but I wasn’t always this tall. My feet were always this big, however.
Bob: Ha! Ha!
What would you tell someone just getting into making comics. Some folks do it as a creative outlet and others are looking to pursue it as part of a creative career. Any advice?
Bob: A lot of people ask me how to make a comic strip. I walk them through finding a size to draw the strip that works for them and turn them loose. That’s it! There is no big list of requirements for strips. It’s why I love strips. I work on animated features and TV series all day and I LOVE that I’m my own boss on the strip. Three panels? Sure! Five panels? Why not? Web-based syndication is very free.
Interestingly, people roll up their sleeves and do about 8 strips. That’s about when everyone sees it is a lot of work. Endless. But I love that too. Every single day, I get to make a new strip. Tell a new joke. Draw something funny that makes me laugh.
It’s not for everyone.
Vicki: When Bob was young, making a living doing a comic strip was a real possibility. He was just a few years behind Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes). But when the papers began failing, comic strips entered a dark period where almost no one could launch a strip that would support them. Now, there are more ways to get comic strips out there, and the future for comic strip artists may be looking better. Strange Planet is a good example of a web-based comic “making it big”.
Any final thoughts are welcome. What is in store for the future?
Bob: We would love to continue the Molly and the Bear graphic novels, but publishing is a business and that means we need Molly and the Bear: An Unlikely Pair and Molly and the Bear: Campers Beware to sell through the roof. I hope we get to do a third: Molly is going to do a school play, Bear will need to stand in for a sick kid, and of course the theater is haunted.
Vicki: Hilarity will ensue.
Molly and the Bear: Campers Beware and Molly and the Bear: An Unlikely Pair are published by Simon & Schuster.
