I was skimming through my old diaries in search of what I’d had to say about an incident which I remembered occurring in the early ’80s (an incident I’m not going to tell you about, so there), and in the course of that search came across something completely different—a mysterious job opportunity mentioned in an entry from November 16, 1979—

I responded to this ad in the Village Voice yesterday: “WRITER—Gag writer needed to collaborate w/cartoonist for cartoon strip. Call Richard Maneely [phone numbers redacted].” Well, I did, and gave my name and phone number to an answering service. Maneely called back this morning, and it turns out he is the AGENT for a cartoonist who tried to do a strip years ago with a writer. The strip failed to sell, the writer quit, and the cartoonist has been doing work in advertising the past years. He’d like to revive the project with a different writer now. Maneely is mailing me copies of the strip to look at. If I like it I’m supposed to call Maneely back and then we can work out a deal and the artist (whoever it is) and I can start working together.

I’d completely that this had ever happened.

Also forgotten? What happened next.

Why exactly did I never get get involved in this comic strip?

Did I see take one look at the samples and decide the collaboration would never work? Or did I, on the other hand, like the strip and want to move forward, only to get shot down by the artist?

In fact—did the samples ever show up the mail for us to even get that far?

No idea.

I looked carefully through my diaries—in which I’ve written on a near-daily basis since November 2, 1978—and found that I never referenced this project again. Whatever happened to it is a total mystery.

So I’m going to toss out these very thin facts to the comic strip gurus and ask—do you know of a strip growing out of this kind of relationship during that time period? Perhaps some other writer got the chance to script a strip I don’t think I even got a chance to see.

What say you, experts?