Obscurity of the Day: Downstown

 Newspapers and syndicates could hardly believe the incredible success of Doonesbury, a badly drawn college strip that blossomed to become the voice of a generation in the 1970s. That sort of success inevitably leads to me-tooism, and one of the prime ways that syndicates sought to duplicate Doonesbury's success was by watching college newspapers and humour magazines for signs of the next Garry Trudeau. Many fine cartoonists were indeed found in those breeding grounds, but many were plucked too soon and thrust into the spotlight, unripe and unready for the pressure of the task. Others might have had the chops for national syndication but hadn't really settled on the idea that they wanted to make newspaper cartooning their careers. I think the latter's the case with Tim Downs. He obviously loved cartooning, but ultimately decided he had other fish to fry. 

The Downstown saga begins in 1975 when Tim Downs was attending Indiana University. He created  Downstown for the Indiana Daily Student newspaper, and it was soon syndicated to other college papers as well. The strip starred a group of college kids and focused not just on school life but also on their stumbling pursuits of relationships.

The strip did well, eventually running in a reported thirty college papers and was even picked up by a small mainstream paper, the Valparaiso Vidette-Messenger. They ran the daily strip from July 31 1978 to May 5 1979, when Downs pulled it in order to focus on getting syndicated nationwide. Downs had good reason to expect his road to syndication would be an easy one. Not only did the strip appear in a significant number of college papers, but three reprint books of the strip had been published by Indiana University and had sold well. What's not for a syndicate to like?

A few things, in fact. Syndicates were not all that enthusiastic about the quality of the art and Downs needed to better define his characters and rework his college-based environment. Downs did get a development contract with Universal Press Syndicate (the distributor of Doonesbury) and he addressed all these issues. Here's a sample of the art in the strip's college years:

which is a world away from the look of the syndicated strip. As can be seen at the top of the post, the syndicated strip looks much more polished, and the characters -- for better or worse -- have been turned into Muppet-like folks. The college backdrop has been changed; the characters are now twenty-something roommates out of school and trying to embark on careers. The focus of the gags is still on relationships, but the characters now actually get into them, rather than mostly wishing for them. If there was any doubt over the intended audience, Universal sold the strip as one that "captures the humor and lifestyle of a new generation." They even included in their sales package a list of complimentary quotes, mentioning the twenty-some age of each speaker. One quote is from a 44-year old, who says "I don't get it," an obvious badge of young hipness that editors were supposed to appreciate. :"Another Doonesbury, eh? Sign me up!"

It didn't quite work out that way. Downstown debuted in some high-profile papers on March 24 1980, but the strip didn't inspire anything like the devotion that Doonesbury did with young readers. And while it is ridiculous to call Downstown a failure because it didn't live up to being a Doonesbury phenomenon, I get the feeling that newspaper editors were set up to fully expect that, and when it failed to materialize, out went Downstown. 

My impression is that there were enough major papers continuing to take the strip to (barely) support it, but after almost six years of mainstream syndication Downs saw the writing on the wall. From a high of a reported fifty papers he was down to just fifteen at the beginning of 1986. His Christianity also got in the way; he was deeply involved in Campus Crusade for Christ and felt that his time was better put to use in advancing his religious ideals than writing and drawing a secular comic strip. Boredom with Downstown may have also played a role. As the strip ended Downs stated, "I finally had to ask myself if it was the kind of strip I wanted to be drawing ten years from now, and realized that it wasn't." Downstown ended on February 1 1986. 

A reprint book of the strip appeared three years later, in 1989. Titled The Laylo Papers, it pairs Downstown strips with relationship and religious advice from Downs.