For cartoon-college grads, future is hard to sketch

Moreover, no one had landed a coveted book contract. The student whom classmates singled out as having already achieved a measure of success was Alexis Frederick-Frost, a lithe, ponytailed cyclist from Atlanta who studied studio art in college. He won a prestigious Xeric award earlier this year to self-publish a slim comic book about an Italian bike race. "La Primavera," which sells for $9, is inked in black and shades of blue and has the feel of the French animated film "The Triplets of Belleville."

"I'm trying to generate buzz with this comic, or use it as a calling card," he said.

He has accepted a summer internship with Drawn and Quarterly in Montreal. After that? He's not sure. But like others in the class, he plans to stay close to this town, where the White River flows into the Connecticut River, near the school that has nurtured his talent for the past two years.

Josie Whitmore, a classmate from Freeland, Md., will work a "regular Joe-Schmo job" while trying to launch a freelance illustration career. Meaning, she'll keep her job at the front desk of the Hotel Coolidge, across from the school, and pay a $120 annual fee to use the school's production lab.

At Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, Ms. Whitmore was an East Asian studies major. Opening her laptop, she clicked on a cartoon panel of a man clutching a dripping mop, drawn in brush strokes unmistakably reminiscent of Eastern calligraphy.

Comics pioneer

There's one other school in the country devoted to comic art. The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, N.J., opened in 1976 and offers a three-year program more vocational in focus than CCS's. If there were a way to predict the job prospects of CCS graduates, it might be found in the track record of Kubert alumni.

"While we do teach comic-book techniques, our goal is to try to teach the students how to make a living," says Michael Chen, who helps with job placement at Kubert. He estimates that of approximately 25 students who graduated in 2006, 85 percent found work in the general field of commercial arts.

Kubert grads have gone on to sketch cards for Hallmark and design action figures for Hasbro. Some work at dream jobs with Marvel or DC Comics. But they're in the minority, says Mr. Chen.

As for CCS students, whose aspirations tend to lean more toward literary comics, they seem pragmatic about their prospects (the day jobs), but also optimistic.

After Saturday's ceremony at a nearby park, Frakes, will remain here with her boyfriend, also a second-year student, volunteering at the school and making ends meet with her day job at a ceramics studio in town. She'll build her portfolio, hoping in the next few years it will yield a publishable body of work. "I think I can definitely make a career out of it," she said. "Whether I can make a living, that's another question."

Frakes is known for being wildly prolific; she once wrote and illustrated a 68-page story in two weeks.

Her thesis, a sweetly dark collection of "tragic romances," is based on world folklore. The characters are wide-eyed and Disney-like. In one, a sailor falls in love with a mermaid. He takes her home only to have his mother, who has mistaken her for a large fish, cook her for dinner. It was the first thing Siegel complimented Frakes on when they met. Skipping back six months in her portfolio, he said, "The leap looks like a couple of years."

"CCS is boot camp," Frakes replied. It's a refrain heard here often – a brochure put out by the school refers to itself as "a cartoonists' boot camp." And the approach seems to work.

"We're getting a sense of the first harvest and it's impressive," Siegel says later by phone from his Manhattan offices. "All the editors on the graphic-novel beat, they're aware of the Center for Cartoon Studies and are keeping an eye on it."

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