On Monday, the comic strip might be set in an elementary school.
On Tuesday, it will likely be on a farm.
On Wednesday, the setting might be a street corner, where readers will see a woman in 10-inch platform shoes getting a ticket from a cop. "I'm sorry, Miss," the cop says. "But this is for your own good. Failure to wear a helmet could result in serious injury."
On Thursday, readers will be somewhere else entirely, transported by the imagination of yet another cartoonist.
With the "Six Chix" comic strip, every day — Monday through Saturday — brings a different artist. (On Sundays, they rotate.)
The only thing the cartoonists have in common is that they are all women, all modern women, and the characters in their strips are as vital as their creators. According to Jay Kennedy, the editor-in-chief of King Features comic syndicate, these are comics about women (or female animals) who "direct their own lives, who don't sit by the phone waiting for their boyfriends to call."
Kennedy is the one who came up with the idea for six artists in one strip. He launched "Six Chix" a year ago.
The comic has done well around the country, having been picked up by more than 100 newspapers so far.
Kennedy told the Deseret News how he came up with the idea one day while he was flipping through the file folders of his brain. "We get about 6,000 submissions every year, and we take out three new cartoons a year. So it's pretty competitive."
But Kennedy is not about to tell 5,997 cartoonists a year to get lost. He says he keeps a mental file of people he wants to encourage. He tries to keep in touch with them all.
Recently, he noticed something about his mental file. It was rife with women. He called one of them, Kathy LeMieux, and told her he was thinking of putting six female cartoonists together. She asked, "What would you call the strip, 'Six Chicks?' "
Kennedy laughed. He started to picture how the name would look if it were spelled with two X's.
But he did have one hesitation — what would the other cartoonists think of the word "chicks"? He says when he was young, his sister and her friends called themselves "chicks," and what they meant by it was "hip." It turned out that the cartoonists share his sister's opinion of the word.
None of the "chick" cartoonists had met each other until last year, when they all showed up for a national cartoonists' convention in New York.
Ann Telnaes describes meeting the other five: She says the first thing they noticed was something they'd never have deduced by reading each other's work — they are all short.
"None of us is over 5 foot 3," said Telnaes, who still seems to find the coincidence quite droll.
The women enjoyed each other's company. Perhaps not surprisingly, they laughed a lot.
Political cartoonist Telnaes was especially fond of barnyard cartoonist Margaret Shulock. "Margaret is even shorter than I am," Telnaes said.
The six cartoonists occasionally send each other e-mails, and they look forward to getting together again at next year's cartoon convention. In the meantime, they are careful not to become each other's best friends. Says Telnaes, "I'm afraid we would start coming up with the same ideas."
The fact that they all have different ideas keeps the strip fresh, which works out well for King Features. The concept also works well for the cartoonists, says Kennedy. Drawing one cartoon a week is easier than drawing six or seven cartoons a week, he notes. You have more time to think about your ideas. Also, you don't have to use a regular character, which is freeing.
There is one downside. Your paycheck is split six ways. Kennedy admits that cartoonists who hope to support themselves won't get there with one strip a week. He figures the vast majority of cartoonists have to have another job.
When you call Ann Telnaes, you ask about her second career. You take a guess. "Do you waitress?"
"No," she says, and her voice sounds slightly amused, as if the subject of a second job is as amusing as her height — amusing in the way so much of life seems to be when you are a cartoonist.
"No," she says, "I'm married."
E-MAIL: susan@desnews.com