Frankenstudent started out as something to do during the summer at Michigan State University.  As you can see, Franklin has grown younger over the years.  I can remember that as I was creating the comic, I actually was assuming it was going to get syndicated.  This was due to a combination of thinking the strip was better than it actually was, and not knowing how much competition was really out there, fighting for the few openings that there were.  I did no research other than finding out the addresses of the syndicates, and sat back and wondered which one I should choose from when they called.

My reality check came a few weeks later when the rejections started coming in.  It was King Features that sent me their rules for submission that gave me my first taste of how competitive a field it really is.  I still remember reading the line "King Features...gets more than 6,000 submissions of which three are chosen for syndication"  I was no math major, but I could see my chances were not good.

After getting all of my rejection letters, the depression of reality set in.  I was going to have to finish college, and eventually get a real job.  Unfortunately, I began to think it must have just been a bad idea for a comic, so I began a few more ideas, submitting each, and getting rejected every time.  What I finally began to realize is that if I wanted to create a comic, I needed to do it with no real expectations of gaining any financial benefits from it.  I looked back at my initial rejection letters and realized that although Frankenstudent was very rough, it was the closest I came to getting syndicated, and the strip I enjoyed drawing the most.  Some of the rejection letters from the editors were not form letters, and actually gave me some advice on the strip, something that I now look at as very valuable.  The one piece of advice I received, and the one that eventually made me change the ages of the characters, was that I was told by two different syndicates that strips about college students are hard to sell.  So five years later, the characters grew younger, and hopefully better.  

I have quite a few older Frankenstudent comics, and if there is more interest, I can put more up on this site.

Tony