Monday, March 18, 2024
Obscurity of the Day: Adventures of Aaron
Adventures of Aaron, in my opinion one of the most innovative, well-drawn and just downright funny newspaper features of the 1990s was, sadly, ignored by most in the newspaper world.
In 1991, at the tender age of twenty-one Aaron Warner exhibited art and writing chops well beyond his tender years. He was already freelancing to the Kalamazoo Gazette when he created Adventures of Aaron, a zany absurdist take on autobiographical comics. He shopped the feature around to papers in his home state of Michigan, placing it at the Kalamazoo Gazette and a few additional papers. The new comic was well-received and after getting a few years worth of weekly installments under his belt, the series was picked up by Michigan-based comics publisher Chiasmus. Warner's high energy attitude toward his career got him into several more papers, culminating when he snagged the Detroit News as a client. He even found time to write and produce a stage musical version of the strip, create an interactive website, and produce a CD-ROM and other merchandise
With these successes it was time for Warner to approach syndicates, and it wasn't long before the strip was picked up by Tribune Media Services. Tribune had a pretty well-deserved rep for being a bit of a stick-in-the-mud syndicate, but they were trying to upgrade their image a bit in the 90s, and Adventures of Aaron must have seemed perfect for that. Oh, and of course it sure didn't hurt that Warner came to them with an impressive list of clients already on board.
The syndicated Adventures of Aaron debuted on October 20 1995, and to their credit some of the more forward-thinking papers did sign on, though I understand that only about twenty papers total took the plunge. And what ensued was a low-pitched battle between the young set, who doted on it, and the grannies, who were mortally offended. Adventures of Aaron even won the "Most Hated" vote in a poll by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, beating out even Zippy, which normally walks away with that honour.
In the boxing ring teens beat grannies almost every time, but those roles are definitely reversed in the newspaper world. Once those grannies start writing pettish letters to the editor the hammer is poised to strike. Adventures of Aaron managed to stay afloat, due I think in good part to tireless marketing and gladhanding by Warner, until August 3 1997.
Quality may generally lose the wars, but it does occasional win a battle. Adventures of Aaron got a temporary reprieve from the graveyard of cancelled newspaper strips. The Detroit Free Press asked Warner to continue it just for them. Warner accepted and continued producing the strip for another two years, finally deciding to call it quits to pursue other projects with the installment of August 15 1999.
If you're interested in reading more Adventures of Aaron, there have been a number of comic book reprints; all out of print but not terribly hard to source. The only problem with them is that it is hard to figure out what is reprinted in which comics. It would be great (hint, hint) if Warner would take all his almost decade-long run out of mothballs and publish a complete edition.
Labels: Obscurities
