WELDON: This year, "Wallace The Brave" is nominated for two Eisner Awards, the comics industry's Oscars, basically. And I've just been, you know, studying it and working on it kind of unwavering for the last 15 years. HENRY: I truly love comic strips and the art of it and how you can get a feeling and a joke across in seconds. The world of childhood depicted in the strip is a timeless, outdoorsy one reminiscent of strips like "Calvin & Hobbes" and "Cul De Sac," both of which Henry cites as influences. Wallace's friend Spud is a ball of anxiety and indecision, and his friend Amelia is a tough-as-nails troublemaker. WELDON: The tone of the strip is gentle but not toothless.
And I'd like the parents to get a good read out of it 'cause they're the ones buying the books, after all. You know, I don't want it to be so, like, sappy, kiddy. WILL HENRY: I'm trying to hit that sweet spot where kids enjoy it, but parents will also enjoy it, too. He runs a gourmet wine and cheese shop in Jamestown. It's a lot like Jamestown, R.I., where the strip's creator, 33-year-old Will Henry, churns out 365 strips a year for a growing audience which devours them in newspapers, online or collected in book form. Mostly we see the world of the strip through Wallace's eyes, a sleepy East Coast beach town called Snug Harbor where the streets are lined with ice cream shops and the beaches are dotted with rocky tide pools. There's Dad, a fisherman, Mom, a gardener, their almost feral young son Sterling, who never met a bug he wouldn't eat, and his older brother Wallace, a rambunctious, imaginative kid big on exploring. GLEN WELDON, BYLINE: Think "Peanuts" if Charlie Brown were less of a mope or "Calvin & Hobbes" if Calvin weren't a bit of a psychopath. NPR's Glen Weldon explains how this comic strip is shaking things up at a time when the funny pages are shrinking. It is already appearing in more than a hundred newspapers. The funny pages in the newspaper - they're kind of visual comfort food, the same characters day after day, which is why the success of a new comic strip called "Wallace The Brave" is unusual.
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