Rickard often stretches out storylines over a week or two, suggesting that the comic could easily adapt to an animated episodes.

Note to animators: Rickard’s style pays homage to the science fiction pulp novels and comicbooks of the 1950s and 1960s. In some panels, there are hints of Wally Wood, Steve Ditko or Carmine Infantino present. Rickard is very good with poses and expressions. This exceedingly funny strip could be easily animated without changing its graphic style. Every animator I have ever met is already an inveterate comicbook freak, and Brewster Rockit fits most of the stylistic conventions already. Blast off and have fun.

Who might buy: The WB, Fox, TNT

Jim Toomey mixes humor with subtle pro-environmental messages. All Sherman’s Lagoon images © 2004 Jim Toomey. Distributed by Kings Features Syndicate Inc.

Sherman’s Lagoon
Eight years before Steve Hillenburg brought us SpongeBob SquarePants and long before Kenny the Shark, cartoonist Jim Toomey was helming an undersea comic strip filled with amusing characters cavorting in the tropical seas. Toomey mixes humor with subtle pro-environmental messages as we make a daily visit to the domicile of one Sherman Shark. Sherm is a sort of Everyshark married to an upscale, man-eating spouse named Megan; recently they have added baby Herman to the fold. Sherman hangs out with best bud Filmore, a studious sea turtle who is unhappily leading the single life.

Other colorful cast members include Hawthorne, a hermit crab who likes to make a fast buck and whose visible parts protrude from an old beer can. Ernest the fish is a computer hacker (seems that every strip has a techno geek these days). Slacker polar bear Thornton has drifted in on a loose iceberg and is now on permanent vacation. The habitat is occasionally disrupted by human sea captain Quigley who long ago lost a leg to Sherman (hey, sharks gotta eat), but his attempts at revenge make Wile E. Coyote’s schemes look successful.

Sherman’s Lagoon runs in more than 200 newspapers and there are several printed anthologies available. Although Toomey’s background is in mechanical engineering, his strip finds praise from environmentalists and professors of marine biology. The latter sometimes use the strip as a lighthearted adjunct to class work. In other words, this strip is a pre-sold product with a wide range of appeal and a solid fan base. Steve Hillenburg once noted, children love sea life (especially the creatures found in tidal pools), but SpongeBob SquarePants became a major hit with adults as well. Sherman’s Lagoon is a bit more conventional than the first two strips proposed in this column, but it would make a wonderful animated series… and would certainly be better than Jabberjaw.