SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Bitstrips may seem like a sudden sensation now that the app maker’s comic vignettes are all over Facebook and other social networks. But the Toronto startup’s success was a drawn-out process.

The concept for a mobile application that lets people turn their lives into comic strips took shape as a high school diversion more than 20 years ago. That’s when Jacob Blackstock drew a profane spoof of Charlie Brown and Lucy Van Pelt from the “Peanuts” comic strip and passed it to Shahan Panth, who sat behind him in 12th-grade English class. Even though a teacher reprimanded them for boorish behavior, a snickering Panth encouraged Blackstock to continue expressing his irreverent take on life through comics.

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