The more original your idea is, the less good advice other
people will be able to give you. When I first started with
the cartoon-on-back-of-bizcard format, people thought I was
nuts.

Why wasn't I trying to do something more easy for markets to
digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?

You don't know if your idea is any good the moment it's
created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for
is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings
is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There's a reason
why feelings scare us. And asking close friends never works 
quite as well as you hope, either. It's not that they deliberately
want to be unhelpful. It's just they don't know your world one
millionth as well as you know your world, no matter how hard they
try, no matter how hard you try to explain. 

Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but
they don't want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic 
with you also changes. They like things the way they are, that's
how they love you - the way you are, not the way you may become.