The latest comic from Lindgren Cartoons, The Floor launches and has people rolling right into the gutter! Gutterflycomix, that is!
After five and one-half years of working retail and several requests by his fellow retail associates (who found out he draws cartoons), Eric Lindgren finally gave in to the myriad of requests and suggestions that he create a comic about the world of retail.
“At first I thought, ‘Oh gawds, NO! Retail has already been done! There are just too many ‘retail strips’ out there already,’ says Lindgren, “I put off even considering these suggestions for three years.”
So what changed his mind?
“One of my fellow associates began the discussion (yet again) and I rolled my eyes and shook my head, answering, “There are already retail strips out there!” My associate paused a moment with pursed lips and a raised eye-brow then said,”Yeah, I know. I have seen a few of them. They STINK! At least YOURS would be FUN to read! …and drawn better too!”
A few days later Lindgren found himself doodling a person crouched in a shopping cart that was speeding along to who knows where. On the shopping cart he worked up a title that stated “The FLOOR”. As an after thought, just under the basket he put “Coming Soon”. Lindgren states, “I then got up and went back to work having come to the end of my lunch break. I discovered I had made one small mistake- I had left my drawing on the breakroom table. It wasn’t half an hour before several of my associates had asked me when I was going to do the first strip. I found I had quite successfully trapped myself!”
Eric decided he wanted something that would capture the spirit of spontenaity and quickly settled on doing the comic with a common pencil and very little erasing. “I wanted to capture the joke almost as quickly as it came to me, drawing the comic out as a pencil rough allowed me that option.”
It seems as if readers are agreeable with his presentation, but why did he choose Gutterflycomix.com? “I had originally started posting the strip on Drunk Duck as I already have an account there. I got some nice comments and then suddenly, once again, the Duck disappeared! I quickly made some pages up to put on my ISP’s server using my webpage account with them, but I didn’t wish to clog them up anymore than I had already. (I am sure they could handle it, but I am allowed only a limited amount of space there). I started looking around and came across Gutterfly’s name in a forum post. I typed it into google and there they were.”
After spending an afternoon exploring the sites comics and forums Lindgren decided that the smaller size of the group might lend itself well to his strip being noticed and read. Along with the generally upbeat rapport of the forums the additional premium features also seemed reasonably priced to where even a penny-pincher like him might actually let go of the change and splurge for them.
“I also found the fact that I could put the page up as I wanted it WITHOUT SOMEBODY’S BANNER AD hogging the top space a great relief and a pleasure not to have to work around with my site design. The inclusion of a forum just for ‘The FLOOR’ was some nice icing on the cake as well.”
The gang at Gutterflycomix seem to be receptive to their new page mate and Lindgren looks forward to forging a few friendships amongst the artists and staff there.
The FLOOR is available on Gutterflycomix.com or you can visit there directly by typing “www.gutterflycomix.com/TheFloor” into the address box of your favorite browser.
Lindgren encourages folks to use his comment box and forum to let him know how he is doing. “I hope I can even get some feedback along the lines of stories and happenings from other retail associates out there much like Scott Adams did with Dilbert,” says Lindgren.
Time will tell whether or not “The FLOOR” will have a steady stream of “customer traffic”. Until then, may he continue to enjoy its creation.
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