By Dave Bodamer
College Topics Staff Writer

From 1990-93, Geoff Johnson’s "Life’s Work" was a comic strip that ran in The Cavalier Daily. Today, Johnson’s life’s work is a comic strip called "PC & Pixel" that is syndicated to more than 50 newspapers worldwide by the Washington Post Writers Group. But his journey from point A to point B was not as direct as one might assume when presented with those facts.

"My situation is highly unusual," said Johnson. "I’m not a good model to follow." He recalls how his days as a cartoonist seemed to come to an end after he graduated from the University in 1993. He showed "Life’s Work" to a cartoon editor at the Washington Post Writers Group, but "there’s not a lot of interest for a college cartoon going mainstream," he says. He moved back near his childhood home in Alexandria, Va., and started working at The Washington Post, first as a copy aide and then working his way up through various editorial positions, including a stint as a cartoon editor at the Washington Post Writers Group.

Working at the Writers Group provided him with a unique perspective on what editors look for when choosing cartoons. It also introduced him to Thach Bui, a Toronto-based cartoonist who had created two strips distributed by the Post’s wire service. After a few years of developing "PC & Pixel," Bui began searching for a corroborator – someone to help write the stories and generate ideas. Johnson leapt at the opportunity, and Bui chose him. Johnson’s name first appeared on the strip in January of this year.

After a few months of working at the Writers Group while writing the cartoon on the side, Johnson decided to devote his full energy toward the strip at the end of January. "That was a big leap. I loved my job editing, but I needed to put more of my creative energy behind the strip to make it work," Johnson says. "It wasn’t clicking, and I could have been putting more into it.

"It’s strange to not go to the office every day. I miss the routine a little bit," Johnson says. "What I do now is not like ‘work.’ I’m doing my hobby. It’s a load of fun."

As he sips a tall cup of Starbucks coffee and sets his U.Va. cap on the table, Johnson jumps into a description of his strip’s main character, PC, for which he obviously has a lot of enthusiasm.

PC is a middle-aged free-lance information technology specialist who was downsized out of his previous job. His wife left him to join the circus, and his new girlfriend, Maxine, is not techno-savvy. This leads to some interesting conversations between the two. PC’s cat Pixel is quite adept with a laptop.

Working on "PC & Pixel" has been different than "Life’s Work." The character in the collegiate strip was basically a manifestation of Johnson, and the material was drawn heavily from his own experiences at the University. But on this strip, the characters existed before Johnson got there, which meant that he really had to "get to know them" before he could write. And while Johnson still pulls ideas from his daily experiences, the strip is not nearly as autobiographical. "‘Life’s Work’ was me. The only similarity with that strip is that PC is very fumbly, insecure and neurotic. The main character in ‘Life’s Work’ was like that."

Johnson says the strip’s appeal probably stems from the fact that it’s not just about PC sitting in front of his computer. Johnson pokes fun at more ubiquitous technology like ATMs, credit cards and television. The strip also has an "Ask Pixel" feature in which readers’ cats send in questions. Johnson said response to that feature is building.

One of the more interesting things about working on the strip is the fact that Johnson and Bui hardly "speak" to each other, talking on the phone only once or twice a month. And face-to-face meetings are even more infrequent. Instead, their entire collaboration takes place through e-mail and fax exchanges. Johnson floats story ideas to Bui, who then offers comments, often presenting ways in which to tell the story with visuals rather than words. Bui will then illustrate the strip and fax a draft to Johnson, who then offers his own critique. When done, the strip will receive another round of edits from the staff at the Writers Group before it is eventually distributed to subscribing papers.

Despite being syndicated to more than 50 papers, including the Denver Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Toronto Star, Johnson hopes the readership grows. Johnson said that the truly popular strips appear in more than 500 papers and often number in the thousands. But the strip has been picked up in some seemingly unlikely places including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Luxembourg. "I think we’re real big in Bahrain, actually," he said with a smile. It can also be found on the web at www.artattak.com.

Although he is not involved heavily in the sale of the strip, Johnson makes a point of visiting newspaper offices whenever he stops in a new town. However, it is hard to get a paper to pick up a strip. "Changes do not happen overnight. Newspaper editors shy away from change on their comics pages. A strip that you don’t think is getting read may generate tons of response when you remove it," Johnson said. "On the positive end, once you’re in it’s hard to get kicked off." Still, it’s not a stable job. "You depend on the undependable," he said.

One part of syndication he didn’t count on was writing the strip two months before it appears in the paper. He bounces ideas off Bui, his wife and his editors at the Writers Group. After Bui works out the art, the strips are submitted nearly a month before they run. "It’s very anti-‘Caroline in the City,’" Johnson said, referring to the television sitcom about a syndicated cartoonist. "I’m never running to the editor to get something in the next day’s strip." And whenever someone tells him they liked today’s strip, he has to go back to his records and see what he wrote two months ago before he knows to what they are referring. At the CD, Johnson remembers getting to the offices at 7:58 to just beat the 8:00 deadline.

"Working at the CD was a great experience," Johnson said. "It was nice to submit something and know that somebody was going to accept it. It was a good way to work through jitters and the nerve-wracking experience it can be to have so many people seeing your work." Johnson honed his wit through other means as well, including a humor column he wrote for the CD that ended up garnering him the paper’s Best Writer award in 1993.

His experiences with editors today are different. "I’m wordier than I should be, and I’m learning as I go along," Johnson said. And knowing what its like to be on the other side of the cartoonist/editor relationship, he truly values the comments he receives. "I have a huge trust of my editors. They aren’t afraid to tell me when something doesn’t work quite right," he said. "I had a great experience in working there and knowing what it’s like to edit something." But still, Johnson is hard-pressed to come up with advice for aspiring cartoonists.

"We used to get 20 to 30 submissions a day at the Writers Group, and maybe we’d add one strip a year. The chances of hitting it big are so remote. It’s more a matter of being at the right place at the right time than anything else," he said. "It’s got to be something nobody has ever seen before, and the art has to be great. But, to some extent, it has nothing to do with talent if you’re writing the strip at the wrong time."

Outside his work on the strip, Johnson has been married for three years to Alexandra, a woman he dated while attending the University. Readers of "Life’s Work" may remember Alexandra as a character who appeared in the strip from time to time. Johnson (unbeknownst to his editors at the CD) even submitted several strips featuring Alexandra to the newspaper at Randolph Macon Woman’s College, where she went to school. He jokes that this experience readied him for the future rigors of syndication.

Alexandra pops in on our interview to see how it’s going just as Johnson is talking about her. The two spend a lot of time with their families and friends. He also spends a lot of time hanging out with his nephew, who sometimes serves as the genesis for events that happen within the strip.

But Johnson seems somewhat taken aback when queried about free time. That’s a concept he identifies more with someone trying to get away from work. "This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and now I’ve taken the leap to do it," he said. "It just doesn’t feel like work most of the time."