Don Martin Starts Daily Strip

Former MAD magazine cartoonist Don Martin is now putting his classic screwball humor into a daily newspaper strip, The Nutheads. It's been appearing in some 50 papers scattered across the country since its launch in January.
Martin, who left MAD for the smaller Cracked magazine several years ago over the issue of creator's rights, is refusing to sell the rights to the strip to any of the major syndicates. Instead. The Nutheads bears the notice, "© 1992 D. Martin. Dist. by NORMA." That's not a corporate acronym but Norma Haines, Martin's wife, agent and distributor.
As she explains it, The Nutheads was first shopped around to the major syndicates in 1988-89. At first, she said, none of the syndicates were willing to take on the strip without owning the copyrights and licensing rights. "They offered a quarter million dollars. But they wanted to own the properties." Universal Press Syndicate produced an acceptable offer in 1989, but exercised its option to cancel the deal after six months. The Martins re-launched the strip this past winter as a totally self-contained enterprise.
No major daily strip is self-syndicated (though many alternative weekly strips, such as Charles Burns' Big Baby and Lynda Barry's Ernie Pook's Comeek, are). Haimes is realistic about the success of The Nutheads: "For anyone who isn't a part of a syndicate, you have to have a pretty good strip just to get looked at." Even though Martin is one of the most distinctive and admired cartoonists alive today, it's not been easy to sell the strip. Haimes told the Journal that too many newspaper editors are content with what she calls the "acceptable naughtiness" of strips like Cathy. She tells those editors to "stay young, change comics," and that if they don't take advantage of comics and other features that work best in print, newspapers could become obsolete once phone companies start offering computer information services. "I tell them that they've got to have things that people want that the Baby Bells can't offer."
The Nutheads centers around an extended family, Nutley and Hazel Nuthead, their kids Macadamia and Baby Nutkin, and Hazel's parents Bilious and Retchel Glump. They all live in the same house and work at the Glump's supermarket/general store (which Haimes calls "a surreal comic scene embracing all times, places and possibilities"). The characters provide a framework for Martin's trademark sight gags. As he explains it, "Doing The Nutheads gives me a chance to grow as humorist and cartoonist. It's a challenge to work with a regular cast of characters who act out their lives on a specific stage."
Readers who'd like to see The Nutheads in their town can ask their local paper to write to the Martins at P. O. Box 1330, Miami, FL 33243.