Fleas on Flick was my first dive into comic strip storytelling and my first webcomic. It was all drawn on paper by hand at first and scanned into the computer. The character was born on a scrap of paper while I was working in a box office, and it gave me the idea of using him as a comic strip character. 

While the characters were lovable and enjoyed a modest online following, the work of consistently writing and drawing a strip for a niche market already cornered by several other strips (Get Fuzzy, Garfield, Mutts, etc.) was grueling. Eventually, I became burnt out on my friends Flick, Francis, and Dee-dee, but unlike real pets, I never really have to say goodbye to these guys.

Tennis Ball was Flick's best friend and one of the more unique characters in the strip. His voice basically represented the anxieties of Flick, but also the truths he'd rather not acknowledge about himself from time to time.

The cornerstone of Francis' character was that his gifted intelligence made him terrible at being just a regular cat. It caused him difficulty on a regular basis, and all that frustration usually ended up being taken out on poor Flick in the form of cruel pranks.

Dee-dee quickly became one of my favorite characters to write in this strip. I am not exactly sure what made the character charming for me other than because, unlike the other characters, he/she (I could never decide which) was not fed by an owner or trapped in a fence. Therefore, Dee-dee had a no nonsense reaction to everything. If someone did not like it, he/she could just fly away after all.

Ants were regular visitors to Flick's food bowl outside. (Something my poor outdoor dog had to deal with when I was growing up.) This comic got an editor's pick on the site I was publishing on which made me pretty happy.

One of my favorite inspirations from Calvin and Hobbes was using poetry with comics. Here are a couple of my attempts to do the same with Flick.

I no longer have the entire series online to share, but I may compile them in a book someday the way I did with the much easier to write and draw, Oranges Are Funny.