“Yesterday I was a dog. Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There’s so little hope for advancement.” So said cartoonist Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts and inspiration for my son, 13-year-old Utah homeschooler Tristan Davis. Tristan is the creator of Jed & Kirby, which appears regularly in the Utah County newspaper Serve Daily. With Jed & Kirby, Tristan combines his love of dogs and cartooning. He’s loved dogs for as long as he can remember, but his interest in cartooning began when he was 10 and he started his collection of Sunday comics. After reading each one, he pressed it flat into a box. The stack has grown considerably since then.
Tristan did more than just read the comics. He studied their style of drawing and their method of eliciting laughs with a three- or four-panel mini story. He created several characters of his own and practiced drawing them. “I especially liked this one character so I kept drawing him and improving him and named him Jed,” said Tristan. “I also love dogs so I wanted him to have a puppy.” His imagination and steady practice led to the creation of his own comic strip Jed & Kirby.
“Jed is a goofy guy,” said Tristan. “He sometimes just wants peace and quiet away from his energetic dog. But most of the time he wants to play with his dog all day long because he thinks he is the cutest puppy on earth, although he hates to use up eight bags of dog food a day.” Kirby the dog is an integral part of the strip. “Kirby loves to play!” said Tristan. “He always wants some company around him. He’s a hungry dog and is always ready to have a big, juicy, tender steak. Although Jed and Kirby sometimes don’t get along, they love each other and have good times together.” Many of the strips have been inspired by Tristan’s own dog, a Jack Russell terrier-Chihuahua mix named Skippy.
Tristan’s goal with his cartooning is to make people laugh. “Everyone deserves to laugh at least once a day,” he says. He is aiming to get his comic strip accepted by several other newspapers and hopes readers will join his growing number of Jed & Kirby fans. You can visit him at tcdcomics.weebly.com.
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