About Dave

David Jones has dreamed of being a syndicated cartoonist since he was 10 years old. Even as newspapers are shutting down across the country and cartoonists are seeing their income shrink, Dave’s desire continues to grow.

“I am not wanting to do this to be rich,” admits Dave. “I just want to be comfortable enough to focus all my talents and time to creating a daily strip based on this complex concept I call Just Say Cheese. The story is set around two little boys who meet and discover they are both suffering from the loss of a parent. They bond quickly and we watch them grow up in a little town called Okrapolis. The town and the people who live there suffer through rough times living in a small town, but the wacky characters make for some crazy shenanigans in the wake of it all. It may sound a bit serious, but this is anything but serious.

The strip was created by David Jones WAY back in the 10th grade. “I created this little guy with hair hanging down over his eye,” recalls Dave. ”A friend of mine remarked that the kid I just drew was “fugly” looking. I asked Jan what she meant and she said that he was “fugly”… you know @#%&’ing Ugly! So I smiled and named him Fug Lee Gore. Three years later I changed his last name to Cheese and Fug Cheese was official. I also changed Billy Davids name at that same time and Billy Hamm.”

Dave work on his strip off and on for the next twenty years. During this time, David worked in the toy industry first designing packaging and later developing and creating product as well as the packaging. “The toy industry is a lot of fun,” boasts Dave. “I am always doing something different nearly every day. I am working on a new design for a product sculpt, or I am trying to figure out how to get the tooling cost down by tweaking a design, or I am creating a logo, or I am designing an entire line of packaging for a new brand, or I am working up promotional material for the Toy Company”.

When asked where Dave sees himself in five years, Dave just smiles. “In five years, I will be miserable! My two sons are my life and they will both be in High School. My oldest will be a senior. I’ll be losing my two best friends about that time!” jokes Dave. “Seriously, in five years, I hope to be syndicated in enough papers so that I am able to do my comic strip full-time. I would also love to have released at least two albums by the Okra Pods who star in my comic strip. The Okra Pods are a fictional band I created who produce albums full of parody songs. I have a ton of songs written and ready to record! I even have 66 albums with cover art created and displayed on the Just Say Cheese Facebook page. My plan is to make enough money to survive by doing my strip… but to make a ton of money and get rich by doing the music.”