Hi! I'm Danny. I'm 27, I work in the claims department of an insurance company by day, and I draw a comic strip called Cubicle & Cat at my kitchen table by night. It's about a guy named Marvin who works in the claims department of an insurance company and his cat, Ferdinand, who does not work anywhere and has never understood why anyone would. Any resemblance to my own life is entirely on purpose.

I've drawn one strip a week since January — well, twelve finished ones, plus a drawer of ones that didn't make it — and the plan was to put them on this page so the world could see them. Then I priced scanners. So until the Scanner Fund (see bottom) hits its goal, I'm doing what cartoonists did before scanners: describing them. Each strip below is written out panel by panel with the dialogue, exactly as it's lettered. My friend Rachel says this is "like a radio play for comics" and I'm choosing to take that as a compliment.

The strip is four panels, black and white, drawn on Bristol board twice the size it would print. I'll tell you exactly how below, because the how-to-cartoon books I bought as a kid never told me the actual, practical stuff, like what brush.

MARVIN PLOTZ — 34, claims adjuster, Cubicle 14-C. Round head, three hairs, glasses that are two circles, a tie that is always slightly crooked (I draw the crook first). Wants very little out of life and gets somewhat less. Drawn in about nine lines, which is the goal for a character you have to draw four times a week forever.

FERDINAND — a large gray cat of no particular breed and enormous self-regard. He does not talk. He thinks, in thought balloons, and what he thinks is usually worse than anything he could say. Drawn as a loaf with ears. His eyes are two half-closed lines; opening them all the way is the single biggest "special effect" in the strip and I've used it once.

MR. GRUNWALD — Marvin's boss. Seen only from the shoulders down, or as a looming shape in the doorway, or as a memo. Speaks entirely in memos, even out loud.

DENISE — the next cubicle over. Smarter than Marvin, knows it, and is his only friend at work. Has a plant that is doing better than any of the people.

THE COPIER — a recurring villain. It has never once worked.

Panel by panel. Dialogue is in quotes. Ferdinand's thought balloons are marked (thinks). Sound effects are in CAPS because that's how they're lettered.

#12 — "The Eyes" (Sep. 12)

Panel 1: Marvin's apartment, night. Marvin comes in slowly, coat on, briefcase dragging. He looks awful. Marvin: "They cut the whole department. Everybody but Grunwald." Panel 2: Marvin sits on the couch, not taking his coat off. Ferdinand on the floor, watching him. No dialogue. Panel 3: Ferdinand gets up on the couch, next to him. And for the first time in the strip, his eyes are drawn all the way open: two big round circles. He is looking straight at Marvin. No dialogue. No thought balloon. Panel 4: Marvin's hand on the cat. Marvin, small letters: "Yeah. I know." Ferdinand's eyes half closed again. Ferdinand (thinks): "You're in my spot. Stay."

Note on #12: Yes, I did just get laid off, in real life, on September 3. No, I'm not okay yet. Yes, the strip is going to continue and Marvin is going to have to find out what a guy who's only ever been a claims adjuster does next, and so am I. I have a temp job lined up for October. The cat, for the record, is real, is named Ferdinand, and has been exactly this much help.

Everything I wish somebody had told me when I was fourteen and copying the funny pages. This is how I do it; there are a hundred ways.

1. Write it first. The joke is the strip. I keep a little notebook in my shirt pocket at work (the irony is not lost on me) and write down anything Ferdinand or the copier does. A four-panel strip is: setup, setup, turn, punchline. Or setup, turn, turn, punchline. If you can't say the joke in one sentence out loud to a friend, it won't work in four panels.

2. Thumbnails. Tiny, fast sketches of the whole strip, about two inches wide, on scrap paper. Stick figures. Where does everybody stand? Where do the word balloons go? (Balloons go first: the reader's eye goes left to right and top to bottom, and whoever talks first has to be on the left.) I do three or four thumbnails of every strip and pick the one where the joke reads even without the words. If you skip this step you will draw a beautiful panel and then discover the balloon has to go over Marvin's face.

3. Pencils. On 2-ply Bristol board, smooth surface, at twice the printed size: my four panels come out about 13 inches wide by 4 high, on an 11x17 sheet. Drawing big and reducing tightens everything up. Rule the panel borders with a T-square and a triangle first. Then draw with a non-photo blue pencil — a light blue that the copy camera and most scanners don't pick up, so you don't have to erase it later. Loose. This is the last time the drawing gets to be fun; get it right here.

4. Letter before you ink the pictures. I use an Ames lettering guide (a little plastic gizmo that makes evenly spaced guidelines when you slide it along the T-square) and letter with a pen — a Hunt 102 crow quill nib in a holder, dipped in India ink, for me; a lot of people use a felt-tip. ALL CAPS, because caps are more even, and because that's what comics look like. Then draw the balloon around the words, not the words inside the balloon. Sound effects get drawn like pictures, not written.

5. Ink with a brush. This is the one nobody told me. I used technical pens for years and everything looked dead: the same thin line everywhere. A brush gives you a line that gets thick and thin as you press, and that's what makes a drawing look like a cartoon instead of a diagram. I use a Winsor & Newton Series 7 number 2, which is a sable watercolor brush, with Higgins Black Magic India ink. It costs more than you want to spend on a brush and it lasts a year if you wash it in cool water every night and never, ever leave it standing in the ink. Draw the borders with a ruling pen or a technical pen, though; a brush won't do a straight line and neither will you.

6. Mistakes. White paint. Pro White, or any opaque white from the art store, with a small brush. Every strip on this page has white paint on it somewhere. You can ink over it once it's dry. If a whole panel is a disaster, draw it again on another piece of Bristol, cut it out, and paste it over. Nobody will ever know once it's reduced. That's the great secret of comics.

7. Reduce. Take it to the copy shop and shrink it to 50%. All the wobble disappears and it suddenly looks like a real strip. This is the best moment in the whole process and I recommend doing it even if you have no plans to show anyone.

8. Draw your characters until you're sick of them. Before I drew a single strip I filled a sketchbook with Marvin: front, side, back, happy, tired, holding a coffee, falling down. If you can't draw your guy from any angle in under a minute, you will dread the next strip. Simplify until you can. Marvin is nine lines. Ferdinand is a loaf.

9. Keep a schedule. One a week, same night. Mine's Thursday. It's the only reason there are twelve of these and not three.

Above my drawing table there is a corkboard, and on the corkboard are the letters. In June I photocopied strips #1 through #8, wrote a cover letter, put them in three big envelopes with three self-addressed stamped envelopes, and mailed them to three of the big comic strip syndicates, the companies that sell strips to newspapers. Every book says to do this. Every book also says what happens next, and every book was right.

So that's where it stands: three for three, and one handwritten sentence that I'm building the next twelve strips on. Marvin needs to want something. Turns out he wants a job. So do I. We'll figure it out together, one Thursday at a time.

I'll post every rejection I get here. I figure by the time the wall is full I'll either be syndicated or I'll have very nice wallpaper.

Goal: a flatbed scanner, about $99 at the computer store for the one that'll do.
Saved as of September 20: $61, in a coffee can, mostly quarters.
Held up by: being laid off. (See above.) The temp job starts October 4. Then quarters.

I'm not asking for money — please don't send any, I'd feel weird. I just like having a thermometer on the page. When the can hits $99, the strips go up as actual pictures and this whole page becomes a lot shorter to read.