Denver Stars: Patty Leidy

July 6, 10:15 AMDenver Comic Books ExaminerJordan Gonzales

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Comic Strip Syndication is something that many comic creators strive for, but very few achieve. Only the best of the best are even considered for syndication. Out of thousands of submissions syndicates  receive each year, approximately five new comic strips usually  end up being chosen for further development, with one to two new comic strips eventually being chosen for a newspaper or internet launch. One of the comic strips being considered this year is Zero Hour, by relatively new to Colorado (her words) Patty Leidy.

Leidy has worked for a long time to reach the point she is at today. Zero Hour started as a strip she was asked to do for a small paper in Atlanta. She says she really had no idea what she was going to do for the strip until the last minute and went for a "Seinfeldian" approach, finding the humor in commonplace activities and events. Right from the beginning her strip was a hit, and she soon had people requesting to be characters in the comic. As the popularity of Zero Hour grew, Leidy began appearing in various comic book publications and anthologies. Over the years she has created strips that appeared in Roberta Gregory's Naughty Bits, published by Fantagraphics, and Sarah Dyer's Action Girl, published by Slave Labor Graphics.

While enjoying a fair amount of success early on, Leidy made her first tentative steps towards syndication while attending the National Cartoonist Society annual Reuben Awards. It was there that Leidy was first introduced to Amy Lago, then an editor at United Media. Lago requested to see Leidy's work, and of course Leidy sent some of her self published comic books. It was here that Leidy showed that she had patience, a very important quality for anyone looking to get syndicated. Instead of immediately going after syndication when they requested to see more work, Leidy decided to refine her strip, fine tune it until it was as good as it could be. It wasn't until 10 years later, after a serious break from doing comic strip work at all (taking a "breather" Leidy called it), that Leidy sent in more strips to Lago, now an editor with Washington Post Writers Group. The refining had paid off, and the syndicate saw Zero Hour as being good enough to consider for further development for syndication. 

Leidy is still working on fine tuning Zero Hour in various ways, such as making sure panels don't look cluttered in the small size newspapers tend to print strips these days. As far as the content of the strips goes, she has already proven that she knows how to entertain. To follow Leidy's syndication process in her own words, visit her blog: It's the Zero Hour! by Patty Leidy. The process is still ongoing, but even if Zero Hour doesn't end up in newspapers nation wide, Patty Leidy is proud to have reached a level that few comic creators have.