It’s a ‘Dog Eat Doug’ world for Worcester’s Brian Anderson

Books

The nationally syndicated cartoonist is doggedly pursuing a new goal with his “Sophie” graphic novels.

Brian Anderson, center, has brought his “Dog Eat Doug” characters into his new series of graphic novels. Courtesy Photos

One thing that’s obvious when you read Brian Anderson’s very funny comic strip “Dog Eat Doug“: He’s a real dog lover. Like, an “I know what this dog is thinking” kind of dog lover.

And now, the Worcester native is sharing the love via a whole new medium. He’s released two graphic novels through Marble Press based on the “Dog Eat Doug” characters — most notably Sophie, his real-life dog (now passed), who is the main protagonist of “Sophie: Jurassic Bark” and “Sophie: Frankenstein’s Hound.”

With the “Dog Eat Doug” strip on hold as he launches the new endeavor, Sophie is taking center stage as the heroine of Anderson’s graphic novel series. “Following in the footsteps of Snoopy, because ‘Peanuts’ is my favorite — it made sense,” Anderson explains. “She’s the star.”

Now living in North Carolina with his family (which includes, no surprise, a herd of rescued dogs and cats), Anderson talked to us about the history of “Dog Eat Doug,” whether he might return to his series of illustrated novels, “The Conjurers,” and what’s next for Sophie. Oh, and Greater Boston’s most well-kept magical secret.

Boston.com: We have to establish your Massachusetts bona fides before we get going. You’re a native of the fine city of Worcester?

Brian Anderson: Yep. Born in Worcester, Hahnemann Hospital. And then, yeah, pretty much lived my entire life in Massachusetts, and went to school at Holy Cross … I’ve lived everywhere. Waltham, down in Boston, Newton. Been around. [laughs]

So have you had to give up your allegiances to the Boston sports teams, now that you’re in the south?

Brian Anderson: Bruins, always.

What were the top three things that you loved about Worcester?

Brian Anderson: Oh, in my day it was cruising downtown before they kind of banned it. When we were kids in high school they allowed you to — you just would go drive a circle around downtown Worcester. And then they cracked down on it, because there were “scary kids” hanging out. And that’s when things got really bad in Worcester.

And I used to love the Worcester Art Museum. I took some classes there … And then you gotta mention the armory. But my favorite place that I miss — and they just retired — was O’connor’s Restaurant. I grew up going there — we were there the day they opened in West Boylston. So that was our family restaurant. We knew them since I was in middle school.

So “Dog Eat Doug” started as a web comic before it was picked up by Creators Syndicate. Did you go through a bunch of ideas before you landed on that one?

Brian Anderson: I had two other strips I was developing — for one I was working with King Features, and one was based on the strip I did at Holy Cross. But the problem was, I didn’t like either strip. And you know you’re gonna sign a 10-year contract, and I couldn’t see myself doing either one for 10 years.

And we had just gotten Sophie, and one day I was just taking a break, and while I was playing with her, that entire concept was one of those things you hear about, the “light bulb” moment … I had my son a couple of years after I created the strip, so I made up Doug, and then my son was born. Then it became a documentary.

What made you decide to go from the strip format to the graphic novel format?

Brian Anderson: Obviously, when you get into syndication, even back then I knew from the get-go, papers, it’s a rough business. So I’d always had the thing in my head. I was gonna build a franchise. That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to expand.

I just put together this plan. And it was to go into graphic novels and animation. So I drew up the plan and just executed. The plan started [with] creating the graphic novels, and pitching that created the animation pitch, and I started pitching that. I was fortunate — in my contract I own all the rights to the characters. So yeah, so I just kind of basically jumped off the cliff and went out on my own.

Was it challenging to make that shift to the graphic novel format?

Brian Anderson: Yeah, it was. It was easy in the sense that I’ve known these characters for so long, so that part wasn’t hard. The part was the rhythm of coming from a strip. We kind of relaunched it, so I don’t rehash the original. I got to get going a lot quicker. So even if you’ve read the strip forever, it’s all new stuff. But there was a rhythm problem.

But I was fortunate. My editor, Michael Green, is a brilliant editor, and he “got” the strip. He was a fan of the strip, and so he always caught when I was kind of getting lost — he’s like, Sophie wouldn’t do this, Sophie wouldn’t do that. He’d catch all those things, so it never got away from me.

The other thing with coming from a newspaper strip to graphic novels is that newspaper strips have an older audience for the most part. So my young readers were coming from, either they found it online, they found the ebooks, their grandparents showed it to them, or their parents showed it to them. They didn’t even know what a newspaper was.

To jump into graphic novels, you know, my real audience is the kids. But I didn’t want to lose the fact that the strip had an appeal to adults and kids. So that was very important. Because I didn’t want it to be a handoff book where you just hand it off to the kids. Here, go, read this, or try to get them to read. So if the kid reads something they like, and the parents read it, and the parents like it, maybe for different reasons, they have that common point of something they both share. That to me was probably the most important thing with the graphic novels.

You parody a lot of different genres in the books.

Brian Anderson: Yeah — in the strips, it was mostly Easter eggs and I would do some parodies. There was Indiana Jones. There were references to aliens. There were references to my favorite books. But in the graphic novels I could do an entire chapter of Indiana Jones and have this whole adventure. So it wasn’t just maybe a strip here, strip there and then you go back to it — now you can map out an entire story arc.

You also did a series of illustrated novels, “The Conjurers.” Do you see yourself ever returning to that format?

Brian Anderson: As of right now, I don’t … You can’t spread yourself too thin. To do what I wanted to do, to grow it into graphic novels and animation, you just can’t put the time into doing these other projects like that. So it was a little bittersweet. Because, yeah, there’s a lot more books I want to write that might happen later.

“The Conjurers” involves a lot of magic — I’ve heard a rumor that that you have a background in the world of magic yourself.

Brian Anderson: Been a magician since second grade! I grew up going to Hank Lee’s down in Boston, and then the Magic Art Studio in Watertown, Massachusetts. That was the big secret place in Massachusetts, that little shop in Watertown. No one knew about it. Only magicians knew about it, and whoever was in town was going to be in there. If it was Copperfield or David Blaine, or whoever, on a Saturday they were going to be in the Magic Art in Watertown. So “The Conjurers” is my love letter to magic.

Don’t worry, we won’t make you do any close-up magic.

Brian Anderson: Yeah, it’d be terrible right now.

Dave London also contributed to this article. For the full interview with Brian Anderson, listen to the latest episode of “Strip Search: The Comic Strip Podcast,” below: