THE STATE OF THE STRIPS : LOTS DRAWN, FEW CHOSEN FOR SYNDICATION

Garry Trudeau . . . Charles Schulz . . . Jim Davis . . . Berke Breathed.

They’ve been lambasted and honored as social commentators, praised as practitioners of an American art form and dismissed as mindless entertainers.

While thousands attempt to break into the field every year, hoping to launch a new icon of popular culture, only a scant few succeed. Those who do may command an estimated audience of more than 80 million and a seven-figure income. Although they don’t enjoy the glamour of movie stars or rock singers, newspaper comic-strip artists are among the most popular entertainers in America today.

“We receive between 2,000 and 3,000 submissions a year,” says Bill Yates, comics editor at King Features Syndicate. “We accept one, maybe two, a year. Some people are attracted to the field by the glamour and possible remuneration. But a lot think they’re humorists who have missed their calling; they want to earn a living by being funny or by drawing. They think they have talent, and some of them do.”

Created to attract readers during the circulation wars waged by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst at the turn of the century, newspaper comics were an immediate hit with the American public. Now, 90 years later, they retain their popularity: Only a newspaper’s front page has a larger readership than the comics.

Krazy Kat, Popeye, Snoopy and Orphan Annie rank among the best-known graphic images in the country. Goon, jeep, heebie - jeebies, horsefeathers and Dagwood sandwich are among the terms comic strips have introduced to the English language.

“You used to have to work your way up before you got to draw a strip,” explains Charles Schulz, creator of “Peanuts.” “In the beginning, you worked at the newspaper as an office boy, and you got to make a drawing every now and then. In my era, we worked our way up selling gag cartoons to various magazines until we developed a good style and some maturity, then we were taken up by a syndicate. Today, we have several rank amateurs in the business, who jumped from college or high school into syndication: They’re like the TV actors who have never really learned their craft.”

Almost all strips in the daily papers are distributed by a handful of major syndicates: King Features, News America, Tribune Media, United Media, Universal Press. A syndicate sells a comic to the newspapers and pays the artist a percentage of the fee. A moderately successful strip may appear in 100 papers and gross $2,000 for the syndicate each week.

The most successful comic strips--”Peanuts,” “Blondie,” “Beetle Bailey,” “Garfield,” “Hagar the Horrible”--appear in more than 1,000 newspapers apiece and earn substantially more. Like top athletes and entertainers, the most popular comic-strip artists have always commanded high salaries.

“The Gumps” was so popular that in 1935--the depth of the Depression--the Chicago Tribune offered artist Sidney Smith $1 million for a three-year contract, with a Rolls-Royce as a bonus.

Today, lucrative merchandising deals have made comic strips an even bigger business. The ubiquitous success of “Peanuts” and “Garfield” has led an increasing number of aspiring cartoonists to seek syndication contracts. Their chances of success are slim. As Yates notes, syndicates accept fewer than 1% of the strips submitted to them.

Occasionally, a cartoonist like Jim Unger (“Herman”) receives a contract on the basis of his first submission. Most artists have their work rejected repeatedly before a syndicate expresses any interest in developing a strip.

“I spent five years sending out submissions to the syndicates, and I accumulated a lot of rejection slips,” says Bill Watterson, whose whimsical “Calvin and Hobbes” began in November and already appears in 160 papers. “Each time I got one, I read the comments to see what I could do to make my work more acceptable.”

Watterson describes Calvin and Hobbes as “bit players who stole the show.” The imaginative little boy and his stuffed tiger began as minor characters in an earlier submission. When a syndicate editor suggested doing a strip around them, Watterson spent almost two years, working nights and weekends, developing the idea, only to have the syndicate reject it. Universal Press subsequently bought it.

“We would rather fail with a strip that’s original than succeed with one that’s a rip-off, although we obviously can’t do that too often,” says Lee Salem, vice president, editorial department at Universal. “Certain things are basic to all successful strips: engaging characters, writing and art that work well together. ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ is an example of a strip that’s fresh, well written and nicely drawn.”

“We look for the new voice, the cartoonist who has a new slant for humor,” agrees Sarah Gillespie, comics editor at United Media. “Strips that are original and funny, with good, clean artwork, are hard to find. If a strip can’t be funny every day, it should at least be charming; if it can’t be charming every day, it should at least be likable.”

But some comic-strip artists charge that the syndicates are less interested in originality than in repeating standard, homogenized formulas:

“I have shown unpublished strips by other artists to editors, including my own; it’s something I feel I should do,” says Berke Breathed, whose “Bloom County” runs in more than 800 papers. “Invariably, they’ve tried to find a clone of my own or some other strip. I was accused of cloning ‘Doonesbury’ years ago, and I think it kept me off more pages than it got me on.”

“Syndicates have approached me from time to time,” says Matt Groening, the creator of “Life in Hell,” which recently moved from the L.A. Reader to the L.A. Weekly. “The first thing syndicates told me was that I’d have to change the name of the strip. Some of them have problems with my one-eared rabbit, Bongo--they think his head looks ‘obscene.’ I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to change the name of my strip and that I was going to see how far I could take it on my own terms. I have an ongoing war with authority, starting with teachers and continuing to this day with editors.”

Groening’s “war” led him to take the unusual step of self-syndication. He and fellow cartoonist Lynda Barry organized Acme Features to distribute their work. Acme also issues calendars and anthologies of their cartoons--and, of course, T-shirts.

“It’s fun drawing a comic strip the way I do,” Groening says with a grin. “There’s absolutely no censorship. . . . And I get more space than virtually any daily comic-strip artist.”

Groening (he says his name rhymes with “complaining”) breaks all the rules the syndicates set: His artwork is crude, his humor angry and pointed, his alienated characters anything but appealing. Yet he’s in 45 papers and Pantheon has just issued the first collection of his work, “Love Is Hell.” “Life in Hell” has a devoted and growing following.

“What we look for is admittedly very subjective,” concludes King Features’ Yates. “I have to figure out if the concept of a strip is saleable, if it can be pitched to the market. I also have to try to guess what the readers will support, which is the wildest guess of all. I don’t know that any more than the movie makers or record producers do. We make educated guesses, sit back and hope to be lucky.”