Local cartoonist puts feelings into the perfect words

In May 1982, Knoxville welcomed the world to its door. And when the last of the eleven million visitors filtered out through the turnstiles on October 31st, the World's Fair was counted as a resounding success.

But Maryville native Susan Cope was anything but.

On that Halloween Day, the 32 year old mother was frightened. Life had gotten complicated. She'd lost everything at the Fair on an failed line of greeting cards.

She said, "I would sleep in the day and I would get up in the night. I didn't answer the phone. I didn't answer the door. I didn't want to see people. I was so desperate. I just could not come back to myself. I was totally out of touch with myself out of touch with my feelings.

An avid journal-keeper, Susan turned to her notebooks for the encouraging words that would pull her out of her funk. And feelings began to jump out at her from the pages.

Susan took pen in hand and decided to try to come up with a symbol that would represent those feelings. "I began to think what is most often used to represent a feeling: a heart," she said.

She drew a heart, turned it upside down and gave it eyes and feet. She drew them sitting in chairs, laying down with the tops of their heads touching, walking. And she gave them a name--she called them "Pibbles."

But it was an idea from her 12 year old son that brought her Pibbles to life.

She said, "My son said, Mom, you know what you need to do they need to be able to talk to each other? And he drew two of the characters side by side facing each other. And then he put the antennas on them; he drew jagged little lines and a heart."

All of a sudden, Susan had a way to do what she wanted to do in the first place--communicate feelings. The depression she was in floated away. It was gone."

Somebody mentioned to Susan that it would be a good cartoon. Just a one panel cartoon. She showed her Pibbles to the editor of her hometown paper, the Daily Times, and he jumped on it.

Within two years, Pibbles were appearing in five newspapers and were seen by 300,000 readers. They showed up on refrigerators,lockers, in love letters, and lunch boxes. Susan received letters by the hundreds.

And some of those letters requested something more than newspaper. They wanted huggable Pibbles. With the help of a local seastress, Susan created plush Pibble dolls. The dolls sold out in a half hour.

By 1990, when Susan drew her last Pibble, she had created over 1,600 panels. She said, "Probably my favorite panel that I ever did stated: My philosophy is based on a complex study of how simple life is.

"That's what happens when you start sharing your feeling. You get rid of complications and keep things simple," she said.

And recently, almost two decades since she put her Pibbles away, Susan found herself thinking once more about her cute creation. And, much as she herself had done in the ensuing years, Pibbles had undergone a transformation starting at the top. Rather than it being rounded off, she brought it to a point so it would flop over. And they got a new name; Pibbles became Heartlings.

And though the technology has changed from newspapers to the internet, the feelings that Pibbles, or Heartlings, express remains the same.

She said, "What I'm excited about now is going from where I was and watching how technology is going to help me blast off into the world wide web and communicate with so many people. It's a very exciting prospect."