Part 2:
Taking Shelter in Liberty Meadows
MM: What kind of input did the syndicate have on the development of Liberty Meadows?
Post-it notes on my art with little arrows pointing to Brandy’s breasts and butt saying “reduce breasts, reduce butt.” [laughter] So I would go back and white out Brandy’s figure and try to change her from a D cup to B cup.
FRANK: Some, but not too much. The main thing that I changed was turning Frank the Duck, the duck boy, into a human character. Liberty Meadows was an animal sanctuary, and I wanted to make Frank into an animal doctor. The rest of the characters were the same as they were in University2, the college strip. The big change that the syndicate made me do was turning Leslie the Laughing Lima Bean into Leslie the Bullfrog, which was funny as hell. I said, “Why do you want me to change Leslie?” I thought a talking vegetable was so strange that it was funny. But they said it didn’t make sense. They said a talking vegetable doesn’t make sense, but a talking frog does.
MM: That didn’t last terribly long, though. FRANK: As time went by, I gradually made Brandy’s boobs and her butt bigger. I did it under the radar and my editors didn’t really notice it. By year five, Brandy had more curves than the beltway. MM: Were you able to use those strips that you had sent in as the first part of the continuity for the strip? At what point, from the time you signed the contract, did you actually start running in the papers? FRANK: They gave me a year. Actually, I requested a year before they launched, because, again, my dream was to be a comic book artist. Normally the syndicates only give you maybe six months lead time to stockpile your strips before the launch. But I requested a little over a year because I wanted to break into the comic book market and scratch my comic book itch. I tried out for the Dark Horse Tarzan. I was and still am a huge Edgar Rice Burroughs fan. Brandy ™ and Frank Cho. My good friend, Al Gross, wanted to break into comics, too and he had a contact at Dark Horse. So he and I joined together and submitted Burroughs related stuff to Dark Horse. Al got accepted, but Dark Horse turned me down. So I said,
MM: Well, he is on an animal sanctuary, so I guess I can see their point, to an extent. FRANK: I had a setup for Leslie. Brandy was gardening and she had some new fertilizer, and then while she was gardening, one of the vegetables started talking to her. That was my setup for Leslie, but they didn’t like that. They said, “You’ve got to turn it into a talking animal.” I go, “What’s the difference between a talking vegetable and a talking animal?” We fought over that, and I gave in. “You guys know what you’re talking about, so I’ll change it,” so I did. And then they’d keep telling me to tone Brandy down. When I sent them the first five weeks of the strip, they sent most of the strips back with little 21