So far, really good for cartoonist who started in Daily Item

There is an old phrase “see you in the funny pages” that is defined as the recipient being so defeated the only place they are worthy to appear is in a comic strip.If you are Mark Parisi, creator of “Off the Mark” however, life in the funny pages is hardly one of despair, it’s more like pure delight.The North Shore comic (who grew up in Gloucester and lives in Melrose) just celebrated 20 years of life in the funny pages and he summed it up by saying “so far so good.”Parisi said he always knew he wanted to be a cartoonist he just didn’t think it was a realistic career path. A very supportive girlfriend, who later became his wife, thought otherwise.”She pushed me to do it,” he said.Parisi said he got his work into a North Shore weekly in Ipswich first, then a paper on Cape Cod picked him up. Parisi said The Daily Evening Item was one of the first daily newspapers to include his comic.”If it’s in two papers then it’s syndicated,” he said.In 2002, however, Parisi joined United Media, which put him into papers across the country.Paris laughs at how naïve he was starting out, not that it seems to have hurt him.”I knew what syndicates were and how they worked,” he said. “But I didn’t realize the level of competition, of how few make it.”Parisi chalks much of it up to timing and good fortune.”I look back and see a lot of fortunate things,” he added. “Sending things out to greeting card companies and getting accepted when I could have easily gotten turned down.”The most fortunate thing may just be Parisi’s quirky sense of humor.Parisi’s influences are on one hand fairly obvious and on the other more subtle. His single-panel cartoons echo the off kilter humor found in Gary Larson’s “Far Side” and he grew up enamored of “Mad.” But he also counts the gentler Charles Schultz of “Peanuts” fame among his inspirations.Unlike Peanuts though, Parisi said he likes working with one panel.”I think it would be tough to do a continuing panel strip, using a continuing character” he said. “I think some people’s brains are wired that way?not mine.”Ideas for his strips usually start small with a word or a gesture, Parisi said. And they usually contain something fairly common?like hair balls, aging, Elvis, parenting, ‘zilla movies and pretty much anything else you can think of.They are also usually satirical or sarcastic and always look at things from a different perspective. For example; one strip depicts a party attended by various body parts. The brain is at the door waving goodbye and the caption reads “As expected, the mind is the first thing to go”While Parisi’s humor is sometimes cheeky and generally left of center it is never mean. There are subjects such as suicide, domestic violence, racism and tasteless bathroom humor he won’t touch.”There are certain words I can’t use too,” he added.Parisi said while the view of the world through the comics page is often skewed it is woefully behind the times in terms of what cartoonists can get away from.”Some have tried to push the envelope,” he said, “I think about it all the time but I’m even afraid to use the word freakin because someone will be offended.”Web comics on the other hand can get away with much more, Parisi said but he believes traditional comic pages make a writer work harder and in a way smarter.”If you want to say something you have to be tricky, creative, to say it without really saying it,” he said.While he is primarily still a print based comic he is working to create a larger online presence. With his web site www.offthemark.com visitors can use cartoons for their own web pages, order prints, merchandise or just check out the comic of the day.”It helps us diversify,” Parisi said of the site.In the meantime Parisi said he is simply grateful for what his career has wrought.”I keep fearing it will crash down one day,” he said with a laugh. “I just hope I can keep up the façade.”And to anyone out there who thinks they could be a cartoonist, Parisi said go for it, but only if you love it.”D