“Hey Drew…hurry up….you’re late this morning.” A muffled but distinctly gruff voice emanated from the blank page on cartoonist Drew Daniels drawing board.
Drew looked around but there wasn’t anyone else in his studio and indeed it was earlier than he usually started to draw his syndicated daily cartoon column of a dachshund that always seemed to be too short too long and in too much trouble!
Drew took a sip of his morning coffee and as he put the very first line down on the white paper with his black inked pen, the line began to move all on its own. Drew was startled! This had NEVER happened before…and how could it? It was IMPOSSIBLE!!! Wasn’t it?
“Listen Mister Smarty Pants artist…I want bigger frames…or at least wider ones…I’m too cramped in these skimpy ones you do!”
“Ah…D…Doodley?”
“Yeah who else…you really have limited talent you know. I always look the same, act the same…do the same stupid stuff…and I’m gettin’ sick of it!”
The line had magically and mysteriously continued to draw itself until the Doodley character was way too large and pushing his two dimensional snout right up off the paper and yelling at Drew even without the customary word “balloon”!
“I…ah…..I don’t have to listen to you….I can rip the page right off of the board and crumple it up and throw it into the trash….or….even BURN IT!!!” said Drew defiantly.
“Ah….not so hasty Drew….I…..was perhaps a bit too coarse in our discussion of my rights as a famous, well….semi-famous cartoon!”
“That’s better. But you must know Doodley that there are strict sizes for frames and length of cartoons set by the papers….so I just can’t draw anything, any size, any way…I want to.”
“Well….I’ve seen double wide frames on even some of the most famous cartoon strips. I look around you know….at the competition as it were….I don’t just sit there dead still on the comics page. I have my pride.”
“Part of your…ah….charm to readers is that you ARE long and short and seem to be tightly fitted in the frame. That’s part of the fun Doodley.”
“Not for me Pal.” Doodley’s outline had gotten smaller as he calmed down and he was almost back to normal size.
“You are just going through a bit of a time when you aren’t happy right now but perhaps I can fix that. Tell you what….let me draw today’s strip with a new idea that I just had and I bet you’ll be fine with it. But you’ve gotta promise me….NO MORE jumping out of the pages….EVER AGAIN.”
“Well….we have been together for a long time ….so I promise….but ONLY if I’m happy about it!” Doodley said, now completely back to normal size.
Drew finished the strip and in the last frame was Doodley smiling bigger than he’d ever smiled….standing right next to his new very feminine cute companion with the yellow bow “Doodles”