The Patriot Ledger - 6/19/07

MASS. ARTISTS ADD NEW VOICES TO LEDGER’S COMICS PAGE
By ELENI HIMARAS, The Patriot Ledger

One is a blissfully naive, human-infatuated robot. The other is an opinionated, bushy-eybrowed Asian operative, and both are the newest additions to The Patriot Ledger’s comics page.

The protagonists of ‘‘Diesel Sweeties’’ and ‘‘Secret Asian Man’’ are at the forefront of two strips by young Massachusetts artists United Features Syndicate has tapped to breathe new life into a stale newspaper comic scene.

Earlier this month, we launched ‘‘Diesel Sweeties’’ to replace ‘‘Cathy.’’ The strip chronicles the life of Clango, the robot, his caustic human girlfriend and other characters including Indie Rock Pete and an evil Red Robot. These characters are the brainchildren of longtime Web comic Richard Stevens, 30, of Easthampton.

‘‘They just kind of happened on their own. I honestly just started trying to figure out the scenario, they all wound up basically being parts of my different bad personality traits,’’ Stevens said.

He said he created Indie Rock Pete to poke fun at your garden-variety music snobs.

‘‘I figured out about a year in that I was actually making fun of myself,’’ he said.

Next month, the Ledger will scratch ‘‘B.C.’’ from our lineup in favor of ‘‘Secret Asian Man’’ by Tak Toyoshima, the art editor at Boston’s Weekly Dig.

‘‘At this point it pretty much is me,’’ Toyoshima said of ‘‘Secret Asian Man,’’ or SAM. ‘‘In the weeklies he never really had a name and always kind of existed timelessly... now in the daily he’s got a name, a son, a wife, all these character traits, and it’s been really cool fleshing that stuff out.’’

Both artists are entering an extremely new medium and have been slowly adjusting to life on the pages of a daily newspaper. Both the Internet and an alternative weekly paper have offered them almost free reign to draw anything they want and tackle any taboo subject matter.

Toyoshima, 36, of Dorchester, in particular focuses on issues surrounding what he calls ‘‘marginalized groups’’ and has hit some hot buttons in some of his past weekly strips.

‘‘The fan mail is definitely nice,’’ he said of response to his sometimes controversial strip. ‘‘I like the hate mail more - it tells me more. I’ve gotten it across the board from everybody.’’

While the purpose of Toyoshima’s strip is to tackle the sometimes taboo, he doesn’t see toning down the topics for a more conservative daily audience as a compromise, ‘‘it’s just a different format,’’ he said.

But he also said he plans to shake things up a bit once he has a stronger foothold in a daily readership.

‘‘I’ve been picked up in papers on the west coast and coastal cities, but I’ve always wanted to be in some teeny town in Arkansas,’’ he said.

In ‘‘Diesel Sweeties,’’ the Web audience is perfectly happy with more risque scenes between Clango and his girlfriend, Maura. The target audience will also chuckle at jokes that focus on obscure bands and tech humor, but Stevens has found himself opening a variety of topics for the print version.

‘‘They’ve been really particular about separating the print from the Web,’’ he said of his editors. ‘‘I’ve been trying to write the newspaper strips a little more openly.’’

He also said he’s been surprised by the range of people who have responded to his cartoon since it hit national papers.

‘‘Like Texas,’’ he said. ‘‘Texas and California have been my strongest states. You wouldn’t expect it, but they’re loving it.’’

Eleni Himaras may be reached at ehimaras@ledger.com.

Copyright 2007 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted Tuesday, June 19, 2007