I want to do a comic strip. Just a little mini-series of a comic strip, mind you, but a comic strip just the same. A cartoon rendition of characters living out their lives, except that while I have a pretty good grasp at what the characters might be like, I still can’t decide on what to call the series. And so I can’t begin working on it yet.

I know that it will be set in New York city, though I’ve never really been there myself. The main character, a millipede, she will be fanatically into shoes, and I dare say she will have quite the shoe collection, enough to make Imelda Marcos jealous beyond belief. “I’ve got over 2000 pairs!” she will boast in her writing… because, of course, this millipede will be a writer who writes for a living.

Then there’s the ladybug, whom everyone calls Red for obvious reasons. She appears every inch a lady, but she’s a little tomboyish and doesn’t actually care for most lady-like things. As we all know, ladybugs aren’t necessarily female, and with that in mind, I’ll make her more wry than most people would expect from a ladybug. And thanks to my fondness for alliteration, I’ll also make her a ladybug lawyer.

The butterfly, on the other hand, is soft and pretty and very ladylike. She is all sweetness and light, and really, the prettiest of the bunch, though a bit flighty and far too pink and delicate in nature. She’ll be the sort who always thinks about what’s proper and right. She will wrinkle her little bug-like nose at anything crude or distasteful. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what she does for a living, though.

The black widow? Totally all legs and dangerously seductive. She seduces all of her dates to her lair, promptly devours them, with absolutely no shame whatsoever, and is always eager for more. She, of course, will have all the witty lines of a sexual nature, and she will always wear that sly, all-knowing look about her, as though she were enjoying some secret joke. Sounds like the perfect sort for PR, no?

And that about sums up the main characters in my comic strip. An odd bunch, I’ll admit, but a more close group of friends you will never find. I wonder if I’ll have enough material there to create more than a handful of panels. I can’t imagine such a series lasting for above a few weeks, not to mention months or years. And still, there is that trouble with the title. But for the title, I could start drawing.

I mean, what do you call such a motley group of characters living in New York? Hm…?

Okay, I think I got it. How about this:

Insects and the City

Good title, eh? I hope no one’s done anything like that yet. It’s the most original idea I’ve ever had.

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