Newspaper comics take many forms, from domestic comedies, to funny animals, to workplace drama. But one workplace seldom seen in the funny pages is the retail store environment. From 2006 to 2020, Norm Feuti wrote and drew Retail, a syndicated strip surprisingly low on wacky antics, preferring to deal with the mundane farce of retail employees stuck between intractable corporate policy and arbitrarily unreasonable customers. Feuti spoke with me about this and the other comics of his career.
-William Schwartz
WILLIAM SCHWARTZ: So I think it's probably reasonable to assume that the main impetus for Retail was direct experience, which is to say that you worked in retail yourself for quite some time. How did you get from there to being able to successfully pitch Retail as a comic to King Features?
NORM FEUTI: Yes, I worked in various retail jobs for about 15 years before becoming a syndicated cartoonist. In 2001, my wife and I had our first child and decided not to do daycare. My wife had a 9-5 job with good insurance at the time, so it made sense for me to stay home with the baby and continue working retail part-time at night. I always dreamt of being a newspaper cartoonist, and my wife suggested I take the opportunity to try to make that happen. She even prepared a binder with all the syndicate's submission guidelines for me. (She's a very organized person!) A comic strip based in a retail setting made sense to me, because I had lived it for so many years. It was actually my first pitch. It didn't succeed, but got the attention of Jay Kennedy, The editor-in-chief at King Features at the time. He was intrigued by the premise, and wrote me some notes and suggestions for a more focused submission. For reasons I can't fathom, I decided to go in a different direction, pitching several different ideas over a five-year period. One of them got Jay Kennedy's attention again. He passed on it, but encouraged me to go back to the retail idea I had abandoned. I took his advice, and in 2005, I successfully sold Retail to King Features.
I'd like to discuss the various characters of Retail. Some of them fit into simpler boxes than others. Marla, for example, is a long-suffering assistant manager. Did you conceive her as the main perspective character, despite her relative authority in the store hierarchy?
I chose Marla as the main character because she matched my personal experience the most. I found myself in the assistant manager position in most of the stores I worked in. It seemed like the perfect perspective for the main protagonist. As the assistant manager, you have to deal with upper management, but also the customers and the employees beneath you. Her global perspective of the retail environment gave me a lot of avenues to explore.
Despite Marla's inherent sympathy, the other managers in the strip tend to function as straight villains. Were they also based on real-life experiences?
None of the other managers are based on anyone I worked with specifically, but they each are sort of an example of every manager I ever butted heads with. Stuart is a "drink the Kool-Aid" type of manager, which I always found the most frustrating and hard to get along with. You can't reason with someone who is basically in a corporate cult. Gus from the Gas We Got convenience store represented a manager who is morally ambiguous, but also insulated from consequences because it's a job that nobody wants.
I should mention that I worked for some very lovely people during my time in retail too. They weren't all horrible. The terrible ones stick in your mind more though.
Then on the opposite end of the spectrum there's Cooper and Val, the former a cynical slacker and the second a more aloof voice of reason. Neither of them are as snarky or always right as might be expected, given that they seem awfully close to self-inserts. Was there self-reflection involved in writing these characters?
All of the main protagonists in Retail (Marla, Cooper and Val) sort of represented different aspects of myself and my worldview. I think Cooper's antics were often my way of making fun of the self-destructive impulses of my youth. He's so consumed by how unfair everything is that he often sabotages any chances he might have of bettering his life. Where Cooper is my impetuous youth, Val represents my last years in retail where I had an exit strategy. It's a lot easier not to sweat your retail job when you know it's not forever. During the five-year period when I was pitching comic strips to the syndicates I worked part-time at Michael's Arts & Crafts. I just ran the register and put out stock. No keys, or responsibility. It was great.
As far as the retail experience itself goes, nothing has really changed. Did you ever get any complaints from readers suggesting you were out of touch? Or has your feedback more just been, "Yep, I went through that too?"
To this day, I still get people who compliment the accuracy of the strip. I've only gotten maybe a couple of emails over the years where people disagreed with the viewpoint of a particular comic, but never to say it was out of touch.
My question about Lunker isn't quite so heavy as the rest of these. Are we supposed to be reading him in a dumb guy voice, or in a foreign, possibly Russian accent? Either way, there's certainly hints that he's a lot smarter than his general appearance would imply.
It's supposed to be a dumb guy/caveman sort of voice, but clearly Lunker is a savant of some kind. I created Lunker for pure fun, and he stuck around. Readers often mentioned him as one of their favorite characters.
Now, you didn't only write Retail. For a couple of years you wrote Gil, a more sort of generic premise about a cheerful, chubby child of divorced parents, before eventually going Sunday-only. What was the genesis of this project, and why do you think it didn't have quite the syndicated success that Retail ultimately did?
Gil started as a webcomic in 2008. The original website no longer exists. I didn't have the time to focus on it as a web project, so I ultimately gave it up. But readers responded well enough to it that I put together a pitch in 2012, and then King Features took a chance with it. Gil only sold to a handful of newspapers. Sales never materialized, so we pulled the plug after two years. However, one of the papers that did carry it (the Providence Journal) got hundreds of letters when Gil ended. Their readers really loved the comic, so the editor reached out to me and offered to pay me to do Sunday Gil comics just for them. That arrangement lasted until the end of 2022. New management decided not to continue with the comic as a cost-cutting measure. Still, it was a good run.
As for why it didn't sell as well? Some of it was the decline of the newspaper industry in general, but mostly newspaper editors thought a comic centering around an overweight child of divorced parents was too depressing. Readers of the Providence Journal disagreed.
Why did you stop Retail, and eventually Gil as well? Do you ever think about returning to comics? Or is your current work as a children's book author that much more fulfilling?
In 2020, my contract was just about up with Retail and I decided not to renew it. I was having success with my children's books, and had just signed a contract with HarperCollins for a four-book deal. It seemed like the right time to let it go. After 14 years, I think I mined the rich tapestry of retail life pretty well. It was time for a change. Besides, the newspaper industry continues its decline, and it seemed like a prudent decision to switch gears.
I do find writing and illustrating children's books very fulfilling. I enjoy the more thoughtful pace as well. Producing a daily comic is a grind. Fourteen years with no vacations. That aspect of the job I certainly don't miss.
When you phrase it that way, it kind of sounds like drawing a newspaper comic was itself sort of like retail. Are there any other direct comparisons you'd like to make between the two professions?
Not really. Doing what I do for a living is a real privilege. The constant deadlines were draining, creatively, and ultimately it's why I chose to move on to something new. But I can't fairly compare it to the drudgery of retail work.
Despite your own success in this field, as well as your new one, as I'm sure you're aware, newspaper comics as a field are contacting, alongside the newspapers themselves. Do you have any advice for still-active newspaper cartoonists, as in the ones young enough they'll likely be thinking about a career change before too long? If you have any favorite newspaper strips of your own, old or new, that you'd like to give a shout-out to, now would be the time to do it.
I have nothing but respect for anyone who can make a living in newspaper comics, and I wouldn't be presume to have some sage advice to offer. But for anyone who's thinking about making a change, just remember your skill set has value beyond newspaper strips. It's not the end of the road.
As for favorite newspaper strips? I'll skip the usual greats from yesteryear that everyone names and mention a few of my current favorites. Off the Mark, Rip Haywire, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, Pooch Café, Phoebe and her Unicorn and Wallace the Brave... just to name a few.
Is there anything more you'd like to add?
Only that I'm currently working on a middle grade graphic novel with HarperAlley. Should be out in 2025.
