Tim Jones has spent most of his life chasing a spot on the comics page. On Saturday, October 17, he'll be the one holding court in a Rhode Island taproom.
Jones, the Smithfield cartoonist behind the strip "Sour Grapes," is hosting a casual meet-and-greet at New England Brewing. There's no ticket, no panel, no formal program — just a syndicated cartoonist sitting in a brewery for an hour, available to anyone who wanders in. It's the kind of low-key appearance that suits a strip built on small, wry observations rather than spectacle.
Sour Grapes centers on Aesop, a dog who is, in the strip's own words, a "miserable-flying" creature living in a strange and troubled world alongside his odd adopted family and his pet cloud, Ominous. It's a premise that reads like a gentle absurdist gag but has proven durable: Jones created the strip in 2014, and it first found its way into print in two Rhode Island newspapers. From there it spread, paper by paper, until it was running in dozens of outlets across the country.
The path to that point was long. Jones traces his love of comics to Sunday mornings as a kid, when he'd pull the comics section out of the newspaper after church, sit down with a box of Dunkin' Donuts, and copy Garfield panels by hand. He ran an earlier strip called Every Blue Moon from 1997 to around 2001, then a manufacturing-themed strip called Job Shop, before Sour Grapes took hold.
For years, Jones self-syndicated the strip — meaning he did the selling himself, pitching newspapers one at a time rather than relying on a big syndicate to place it. The work paid off gradually. By the time he announced the strip's arrival on GoComics, he was already carrying more than sixty newspapers.
That GoComics milestone is the biggest development in the strip's history. GoComics is run by Andrews McMeel, the largest syndicate in the world — and one that had turned Jones down twice before. "You get discouraged and you start second-guessing yourself," he told the Rhode Island Wave. But he kept submitting, and this time it clicked. He signed a contract in March, and Sour Grapes launched on GoComics on June 1. The platform now publishes the strip three times a week: classic strips on Mondays and Wednesdays, and a brand-new strip every Friday. It sits on the same site as Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, and Garfield — the very strip a young Jones once copied from the Sunday paper.
The GoComics deal didn't end the self-syndication. Jones continues to place Sour Grapes in newspapers directly, a hybrid approach that keeps the strip in print while reaching the much larger online audience GoComics provides.
Jones is also a comedian, a freelance illustrator, and an author, and he teaches cartooning and speaks at schools and libraries around the region. He's a member of the National Cartoonist Society and the Mid-South Cartoonist Association. He grew up in Attleboro, Massachusetts, and lives in Smithfield with his wife and two daughters.
Closer to home, the strip has taken on a life beyond newsprint. Yacht Club Soda, the Rhode Island bottler that has been family-owned and operated since opening in 1915, released a Sour Grapes flavor featuring Aesop on the label. The soda — a grape-and-lemon craft drink sold in 12-packs — is part of a licensing partnership between Jones and the company, which markets itself as "the official soda of Rhode Island." It's an unusual pairing: a comic strip character turned into a beverage, in a state small enough that the cartoonist and the bottler can plausibly share the same local audience.
That overlap is part of what makes an appearance like Saturday's work. A syndicated cartoonist with a national platform is, in most markets, a distant figure — someone you read but never meet. In Rhode Island, Jones is a neighbor, a Smithfield dad who teaches cartooning at local schools and turns up at comic cons and book signings. The brewery setting lowers the barrier further. There's no admission, no line for a signature, no obligation to buy a book. Fans can come say hello, ask about Aesop or Ominous, and leave whenever they like.
For Jones, who spent years being told no by the biggest syndicate in the business, the chance to simply stand in a room with readers is its own kind of arrival. The strip that started in two Rhode Island papers is now read across the country — and on Saturday, its creator will be right there in the taproom, easy to find.