''Ollie and Quentin'' is a British

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

created by the British

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...

Piers Baker Piers Hans-Peter Baker is a British cartoonist best known for his comic strip '' Ollie and Quentin'', distributed by King Features Syndicate, about the curious activities of a seagull and a lugworm. Early life and education The eldest of fi ...

in 2002 and later distributed by

King Features Syndicate King Features Syndicate, Inc. is a American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editoria ...

Characters and story

The buddy storyline follows the friendship of

seagull Gulls, or colloquially seagulls, are seabirds of the family Laridae in the suborder Lari. They are most closely related to the terns and skimmers and only distantly related to auks, and even more distantly to waders. Until the 21st century, m ...

Ollie and

lugworm The lugworm or sandworm (''Arenicola marina'') is a large marine worm of the phylum Annelida. Its coiled castings are a familiar sight on a beach at low tide but the animal itself is rarely seen except by those who, from curiosity or to use as f ...

Quentin. King Features offers a detailed description of the setting and characters: :''Ollie and Quentin'' is a buddy strip about the unlikely friendship between a

named Ollie and an accident-prone

named Quentin. They are best friends despite the obvious food chain disparity that suggests Ollie should be interested in Quentin more as a snack than as a friend. They live in a coastal town with Nobby, an affable single guy who serves as both foil and witness to their silly, mischievous high jinks. During their adventurous romps together, Ollie is somewhat oblivious to the dangers that Quentin's small size presents. Despite Ollie's protective brotherly nature, Quentin endures many hysterical, albeit, unfortunate accidents, such as getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner, being blown up as a party balloon and even requiring brief hospitalization after Nobby mistakes him for a piece of chewing gum.DailyINK
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Origin

The strip originated in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

in 2002, with King Features introducing it to international

syndication Syndication may refer to: * Broadcast syndication, where individual stations buy programs outside the network system * Print syndication, where individual newspapers or magazines license news articles, columns, or comic strips * Web syndication, ...

in early 2008. Baker considers the strip "an homage to all the poor lugworms that he used as bait while sea fishing in his youth." On 19 December 2011 Baker announced that the lack of newspaper interest had brought the syndicated strip to an end: :''Ollie and Quentin'' simply isn’t attracting newspaper readers, so King Features and I have reluctantly decided to end that part of our relationship at the end of the year. This is painfully sad but not unexpected. ''Ollie and Quentin'' is a gem of a comic, but that just hasn’t translated into newspaper sales which are so vital to the success of any comic... I have never worked harder or longer, never sacrificed more and have never earned less in my whole cartoon career. That said I wouldn’t have missed the last four years for anything. My ambition in life was to be a newspaper syndicated cartoonist and for four wonderful years I lived that dream. . . I won’t miss hearing that my comic has been dropped from a newspaper or reading my depressing monthly sales reports. I won’t miss comic polls, I won’t miss despairing at the decisions of newspapers (a fight that can never be won), and I won’t miss staying up too late, never reading books, rarely traveling and being poor. The same day, King Features announced that the strip would begin online reruns in January 2012, and the strip relaunch began January 9 as ''Ollie and Quentin Revisited''. The strips were collected in the book ''Ollie and Quentin'', published December 2011.CreateSpace
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References

{{King Features Syndicate Comics British comic strips 2002 comics debuts 2011 comics endings Gag-a-day comics Comic strip duos Comics characters introduced in 2002 British comics characters Fictional seabirds Fictional worms