Apologies.

Several posts back I talked about the submissions policy here at Universal Press. I want to apologize as I think I may have come off as smug, rude, immodest and a bit too handsome.

It's not easy to send in your work. The odds are against you. Rejection is the cover charge. When you send off 24 to 36 samples of your comic, it's like you're sending off 24 to 36 samples of yourself ... so when you get a "no thanks" letter it can feel like we're rejecting you.

We're not. You're an amazing person. Get up right now, take off the hockey mask, walk over to the mirror and repeat after me: "I am nature's greatest miracle!"

There. Don't you feel better already?

Keep in mind that some of the greatest cartoonists of all time have been rejected ... I've heard stories that Calvin was Watterson's fifth or sixth submission. And also keep in mind that syndicates try to take stuff that will sell to newspaper editors ... we're (usually) not making moral judgments on you.

-JG

Comments

[Rick]

I'm glad you apologized. Your handsomeness was crushing me.

By the way, would you like some of your used rejection letters back?

[MT]

That still sounds sort of smug

[John Glynn]

I'm too awesome to be smug.

[Rick]

Not smug. Smarmy.

[MT]

Yes, you're awesome. Not Obama-awesome, but awesome nonetheless.

[John Glynn]

I'm too falsely earnest to be smarmy.

[Rick]

Now your just being coy.

[Rick]

Now you're just being coy.

[MT]

There's a certain child-like glee to your false earnestness that gives you a whimsical cynicism that I find, personally, endearing and annoying.

[John Glynn]

coy? me?

[R Thompson]

Whatever it is you are, I'm still really offended by it.