Tik & Flea is a newspaper-style strip I’m working on, which I’ll be posting on my Patreon page periodically (please consider signing up—even better, joining a paid tier to help support me doing this stuff!), based on the fab adventures of Tikki and Kila. I recently wrote a behind-the-scenes piece about it for an aborted e-zine I was playing around with; I decided to repost it here…
At work on the second version of the first TIK & FLEA strip!
The thought of doing funnybooks with dogs (and, particularly, dogs I live with) had occurred to me a number of times over the years—back in 1994, when I did a mini-comic about my Hard Luck City concept, I included a one-panel cameo of our family dog of the time, Fred. This was the original Westie Fred, by the way; when another Westie entered our home in 2004, somehow the name Fred persisted, so OG Fred became known posthumously as “Fred Senior”!
In 2010, I was playing around with ideas for a strip starring my long-time characters Jenni & Marie (Club Vamporama, etc), which involved Marie having a little Westie named Fred. I only wrote one strip, though—regrettably, perhaps!
Both Freds are long gone now; junior passed on in 2018. Westie #3 turned out to be Tikki, who was born in 2017—I adopted her just after Fred Jr died. Her original name had been Tic-Tac. So, I came up with Tikki because it was similar enough that she responded to it instantly, but had the advantage of not being Tic-Tac!
When my housemate Steve bought a female Yorkie pup named Kila in July 2022, the tale of Tik & Flea started. You see, the comedy and the tragedy of Tikki and Kila is that, while Kila desperately wants to be bestest pals with Tikki, old Tik mostly just tolerates her with a grumpy kind of resignation! It wasn’t very difficult to spin that into an idea for a comics strip!
Meet Tikki and Kila, the real-life Tik & Flea! Of course, in reality, they get along like a house on fire… the best of pals… or is that “fwends”…
The first Tik & Flea strip was done in colour, with a different lettering style, as reproduced below. I decided the strips would be black & white “going forward” (as the hipsters say) (with thanks to Unca Dez for the feedback on this), so I redid this one for consistency.
Again, please go join the Patreon to see the full strip, and more to come soon!
I like the colors treatment in Tik and Flea
The pair of them are lying next to each other in Tikki’s downstairs bed as I write this (Kila is using Tikki’s tum as a pillow), and I can confirm the likeness, both in appearance and temperament.