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“Nothing beats great stand-up comedy. Sit-down comedy comes close, and I guess that’s what I do,” says Hales Corners’ Daniel Beyer of his work creating his six-days weekly newspaper comic feature, “Long Story Short” (LSS).
LSS is distributed by the Creators news syndicate, and Beyer believes his frames of funny are a good match for many readers’ current mindset. “I think a good single panel gag works really well as entertainment in today’s day and age, especially online, where everyone’s attention span is so short,” As for his fellow artists in the same niche, “Loose Parts’” Dave Blazek and “Speed Bump” cartoonist Dave Coverly, he commends them as “smart and funny guys.”
Photo Courtesy of Daniel Beyer
Beyer’s own love of combining words and images to create humor started in his youth. He recalls, “Early on, I got into the art of Mad Magazine and CARtoons Magazine and also read some comic strips in the paper: ‘Dick Tracy,’ ‘The Far Side,’ ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ and ‘Conrad.’ I had a couple ‘Heathcliff’ books. I’d copy [Mad’s] Don Martin and remember drawing Heathcliff quite a bit. But it wasn’t until I got into ‘Mr. Boffo’ by Joe Martin that I wanted to pursue it in a meaningful way.”
Beyer's geographic proximity to Boffo’s artist and the legacy of another cartoonist from his Lake Geneva childhood made the prospect of earning his keep in that same field appear accessible. “Yes, Joe Martin lived in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He’s out east now. And Sydney Smith, who created ‘The Gumps’ and received the first million-dollar contract for a comic strip, lived in Lake Geneva in the 1920s.”
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Beyer also lived for a while in the hometown of the author of another of his favorite strips. “And of course, Chester Gould, creator of ‘Dick Tracy,’ lived just outside of Woodstock, Ill., for almost the entire run of the strip. That made it more of a possibility in my mind because there were real people in my backyard who made an actual living at this. Really motivational for me,” Beyer reminisces.
As for creative evolution, Beyer says, “My cartoons now are vastly different from early on. I overdrew my cartoons back then, crosshatching, filling in every space, drawing every finger and every nose hair. But now, my style is minimalistic. Fast and funny.”
He worked out the aesthetic for “Long Story Short” while working as a stay-at-home dad. Beyer explains that his wife “is a marketing executive for a community bank, but we met in the ad world. When our twins were born, we felt it would be better for our children to have one parent at home. It’s been a great arrangement for our whole family. She’s my number one fan, for sure.”
Beyer is enough of a fan of greater Milwaukee to occasionally reference to it in LSS. My first notice of his local connection was when he included the logo of a late Bayview nightspot, Frank’s Power Plant, in one of his panels. That shout-out of sorts derives from his side gig as a musician. Of that, he says, “I’ve played with my former band, Fighting Man Dummy, at Frank’s. My current band, Anura, has played there quite a bit in the past.”
Alas, none of the print publications running LSS are in Wisconsin, but of the handful elsewhere that do, he says, “Two of my clients are big enough to sustain it for the time being.” He hasn’t been anthologized in book form. However, the times his ’toons go viral and receive big name endorsements lift his morale, if not finances: “Sting reposted a cartoon of mine last December on his Facebook page and Twitter feed. That gives you a boost, but sadly it doesn’t translate in the pocketbook.” Working at something he enjoys, Beyer perseveres.
“I began syndication at a time when newspaper readership was declining,” he says. “So, I knew it was going to be a tough haul. You just have to keep at it to find your audience. And that’s what I’m doing.”
“Long Story Short” may be enjoyed online among the comics section of news aggregation website Arcamax.com, at GoComics.com and its Facebook presence at lsscomic.
For anyone wanting to hear Beyer’s current band can get an earful of Anura at their Bandmix.com page here:
