Stories about the death of newspapers are tired. Yeah, we get it, newspapers are struggling.
This is a drawing of Annie Logue, no relation, a character in a comic novel by Mike Kennedy.
But the story is all about how there won’t be any more investigative journalism or how bloggers are sloppier than Judith Miller when they do their reporting.
No one looks at the real tragedy: the death of the comics. The comic strip is an art form in its own right, but it is also one closely tied to newspapers. As newspapers cut back, they often eliminate the page that introduces the paper to new readers in the first place.
$12 a week per paper? Shared equally with the syndicate? For a cartoon that’s run in 100 papers, that represents an income of $31,200 – which means you can’t quit your day job. Scott Adams, Garry Trudeau, and the estate of Charles Schultz may have a little negotiating power, but not many other cartoonists out there do. If the strip catches on, there are greater profit opportunities in the form of books, calendars, character licensing, and possibly television. If you look at your daily paper, though, how many of the strips are good enough to get you to rush out for the book?
The low syndication rates date from a time when a cartoonist would most likely be on staff. The syndication money was meant to be a bonus, not the primary way that the cartoonist made a living. Comic strip writers would often be employed by a newspaper and also create political cartoons or draw illustrations for stories. Very few were completely independent, at least not when they started. (more…)
In the past month I’ve been rooting through the boxes in my attic, looking at the stuff I’ve squirreled away up there over the years. I came upon a small cache of drawings, paintings, and such, gave them a once-over, and decided maybe it was a good idea to bring them downstairs and get some quality scans together, just to have a decent record of their existence. I doodle from time to time, but my dreams of being in the business of comics are long gone. This is partly due to the quality of what’s out there, specifically the writing. In the past two decades Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Frank Miller have made that once unimaginable leap from the “funny books” to honest-to-God literature, and they didn’t even have to change their addresses. With the often funny but deeply felt 
. Each example not only deserves space on the snootiest of bookshelves, but some deserve to kick a few warhorses off those shelves just for breathing room.