I love comic strips and I love this gig.'įind it: Look for 'Wallace the Brave' daily starting in today's Comics pages. 'I don't know if it was the plan but I'm pumped it worked out this way because I love it.

'Plans come and go but comic strips have always been something that I've been interested in,' Henry said, adding that he's been drawing since he was a kid. Not that being a professional comics artist was necessarily the plan, he admits. Kids have a lot more freedom because it's a tight-knit community, and not everybody's on their phones all the time, and getting outside is a big part of island life here, so I wanted to capture a little bit of that simplicity without making it like a period piece.' 'The town I live in, it's seasonal and it's very small,' he said. The strip centers around curious young Wallace, his family, his best friend Spud and the new girl in town, Amelia, and their adventures in their coastal community. Set in fictional Snug Harbor, the strip's characters and setting are influenced by Henry's Rhode Island home, 'a small island in Rhode Island, which is kind of weird, like double-island thing,' he said. 'The quaintness and elegant simplicity of it was what I was trying to capture,' he said of 'Cul de Sac.' Henry lists a range of influences for the strip, from Bill Watterson's 'Calvin and Hobbes' and Richard Thompson's 'Cul de Sac' to George Herriman's 'Krazy Kat' and the work of Rhode Island-based artist Don Bousquet. He credits working closely the first year with his editor, Shena Wolf, director of Comics and Acquisitions at Andrews McMeel Universal, for his ability now to find what's working before he submits a strip.Īs far as keeping the ideas fresh day in and day out, he said, 'It's like any other muscle I suppose, the more you do it, the stronger it gets.' I mean it was probably one of the Top 10 moments in my life so far.'

'And it has been very fulfilling and it was awesome to get that call that Andrews McMeel was interested in the comic strip. 'It's tough to get your foot in the door, but once you do, I find it's a lot of fun,' Henry said. Having a 'Wallace the Brave' collection published in 2017 was also a 'far-out experience,' he said.

Wallace the brave characters