Student cartoonist publishes accessible strip on Web

Sarah DeFilippe Assistant Features Editor

With his shaggy brown hair and vintage blue and green checked smoking jacket, Ryan Peterson ’08 is hard to miss. He’s the kind of guy who draws you into his own world by using his quick wit and frequent bursts of impersonations to get his point across: life is funny.

Along with being a full-time student at Vassar, Peterson (going by the pseudonym R.L. Peterson) is the creator, writer, and designer of his own webcomic strip, called “Go For It!” In the strip, Peterson welcomes you into the world of high school, complete with all its typical (and not so typical) trials and tribulations, seen through the eyes of a group of stereotypical yet refreshing characters. Each character, ranging from “Lina, the Activist” to Jean, “complete genius or total lunatic” has his or her own distinct brand and set of gotta-love-em quirks, which serve to put unique spins on otherwise normal situations of high school drama. Happily, Peterson’s ideas are wonderfully accessible due to a healthy dose of 1980s pop culture, making all us 80s babies wonder what was really up with our favorite TV shows like “Care Bears” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Peterson, who hails from San Diego, started the comic strip in 2001, and has been working on it ever since. As of now, Go For It has a massive following and is gaining more Internet popularity. Keenspace, the site which displays his comic strip, receives between 3,000 to 4,000 hits a day.

Peterson’s initial ideas for his comic strip included comic clichés, like random talking animals and androgyny, but his newer comics hold more content about pop culture, entertainment, and high school life. “My ideas come randomly, and I get a lot of them through conversations with other people. I find what is funny in a subject and twist it to make it universal. The trick to being funny is not just timing, but appeal. It has to make sense to a person.’”

The artistic process starts out with drawing in blue pencil, which Peterson later scans. He uses Adobe Photoshop to add color, reassemble his characters into panels, and perfect the design. Adhering to his personal sense of commitment and consistency, Peterson creates a new comic every Monday and Friday.

One of Peterson’s best comics is one whose subject matter hits home for a lot of students. It addresses the myth of a large admissions package automatically equaling acceptance, entitled “Admissions: An Autobiographical Tale”. The first picture shows the main character, “Alex”, holding onto a huge letter from Harvard, displaying for us a wide toothy grin—“Hurray! I got a big envelope from Harvard!” Unfortunately, much to to his chagrin, he opens up his letter, and finds a huge letter with a huge “NO” written in red ink. This kind of parody on the college admissions process supports Peterson’s belief that “reading horrifying awful material can have a certain humor about it.”

When asked about the significance the of title of the strip, Peterson said, “Well, it’s like, should I make fun of this? Go for it! It’s more like, express your opinion, go for it. And if you can do it tactfully and make it intelligent, then I’m all the more for it”. Peterson says “Go For It” will have more advertising and PR (which includes t-shirts), after he builds up a comprehensive archive.

Peterson offers some advice for artists: “Don’t take it too seriously, take pride in your work, and do your best.” Spoken like a true Vassar student.

Check out Peterson’s website, http://goforit.keenspace.com.