August 27th, 2017

OMG: Arctic Circle Has Been in Syndication For Ten Years

by Alex Hallatt

Arctic Circle was picked up by King Features in 2006 and there followed a long period of development (where I sent off strips to my editor, Brendan Burford and he told me everything that was wrong with them). It launched in newspapers on August 27th, 2007. Here is the first week (I didn’t do the colouring back then, so the files I have are black and white):

Some of the strips have a copyright notice for 2005. These ran in some Australian papers that year (thanks to the much-missed James Kemsley, who was an early champion of my work) and got through the King Features editorial process relatively unscathed (apart from a tidy up of the lettering).

As for any comic strip that is written and drawn for ten years, a lot has changed. I like to think my drawing has improved. I know that the characters have developed, both visually and in depth of character.

To show you how those characters have changed, here are a few of my favourites from over the last decade:

Thank you to all the Arctic Circle readers who have helped me realise my dream of being a syndicated cartoonist.