Starchy was originally published back in 1998 as a black and white one shot comicbook. We later colored the issue and finished 3 more complete issues in full color, which were going to be the first issues of an ongoing full color series.

We sent all four issues on disc, completely finished, to Diamond Distributors. We also sent them a disc containing a finished promotional page to use for their Diamond Catalog. The typesetting, page layout, and film separation was already done for them. They could have handed the disc to the pre-press department of their catalog, with no more work necessary. Click on the thumbnail if you'd like to see see what it looked like.

Ironically, while many of the people who review all the new comicbook projects liked it, they still refused to carry it.

Why that is ironic is because they probably carry a lot of books they don't like or enjoy, because they believe they are more marketable.

It all comes down to money. And they decided in a heartbeat that even though it was a good read, they didn't know if it would sell in today's market.

Funny, as the publisher risking tens of thousands of dollars of money I didn't even have, to publish a full color ongoing series, I would think the real risk was mine.

Mark then set out to submit DarkSpud, in comic strip form, to all the major newspaper syndicates. Most didn't respond, but one of the big ones did. Universal press syndicate liked the concept and enjoyed the strip, they just thought that Sunday comic readers might not get the comicbook jokes. As Dark Spud tends to poke fun at the whole comicbook industry. It actually pokes fun at all media. So the point, in my opinion, was moot.

But think about that for a minute, DarkSpud was refused, not because it wasn't written or drawn well enough, or because they didn't like the concept, but because they didn't think Sunday Comic Strip readers would understand a strip that made fun of comicbooks.

Say again? Didn't comic books originally start out as Sunday Comic Strips? They have the same roots. So to me, to say that strip readers wouldn't understand comic books, is to insult the intelligence of the comic strip readers. Or to say they only read comic strips because their attention spans are shorter. Keep that in mind the next time you read a comic strip.

Thanks to the internet, and Terrible Lizard, Starchy the Dark Spud is now available to anyone who wants to read it.