Right kind of humour for comic strip

It was on a sleepless night at a cottage in Stanley Bridge five years ago that a light went off in Brian Boychuk's head.
He imagined an image of the devil speaking with a fire marshal in Hades, explaining why he took the batteries out of his smoke detector.
"I had to take the battery out," Boychuk imagined the Devil would say.
"The darn thing kept going off."
He wrote down the idea - along with 20 others - in his daughter's colouring book that night.
It was from those ideas that the beginning of the syndicated comic strip Chuckle Bros was born.
The Guardian was the first newspaper to start running Chuckle Bros.
Boychuk, who was vacationing on the Island last week with his family, said in an interview that he has always enjoyed reading comics and thought he had the right kind of humour.
"I've always been a funny guy. I've always been known for my quick, razor-sharp humour . . . and my modesty, of course."
When he got back home to Ottawa, he phoned his brother Ron, who was on board immediately.
For a few months, they came up with a stockpile of ideas but there was only one problem.
"We said, 'This is crazy, we can't draw'."
So the brothers searched long and hard, eventually finding their cartoonist in Ronnie Martin.
After taking a look at his work, Boychuk knew they had found the right man, although Boychuk said he found his characters were "too pretty" at first.
"I said, 'Ron, I want people with beer guts . . . and fat faces'," he said.
He said their comic panel isn't about the same people and can carry a different theme each day.
"It's not character-based, it's situation-based."
He said while there are many subtle elements to the cartoon, they are meant to draw a quick reaction from the reader.
"The picture tells you practically everything."
While perfecting the style of the comic was one thing, it was quite another to get that comic in papers and the rejection letters didn't hold back their criticisms.
"They (are meant to) weed out the weak and the less confident," he said.
It was also hard to get started, as their success would mean bumping another cartoon from a paper's staple of comics, something that can cause a stir with readers.
"A lot of editors don't want to put up with the e-mails and the flak."
The group now has a place in more than 50 papers in Canada and the United States and has been admitted to the National Cartoonist Society, which Boychuk terms the Hollywood of comic strips.
While they still have a long way to go, they have been getting some encouragement from their peers.
"We're a new kid on the block, but several people have said, 'We've heard of you guys', and that's something."
While they haven't been able to quit their day jobs just yet, they have come a long way from the days of constant rejection letters.
"We're just happy to be doing cartooning."
He said he always admired the work of other cartoonists.
"I always thought these guys are heroes to be in the newspaper."