Totally Lucked Out
A nudder oldie. This is one from my submission to Full Tilt back in April of 2004. Sometimes I wonder how I got accepted… 
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about comics. A few months back I picked up a copy of Will Eisner’s “Comics and Sequential Art”, which is a work of gospel truth for many artists. I’ve finally gotten around to beginning my study of it. When I’m through with that one, I’ll have to work on Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” which has also gone unread in my library for too long. Lots of ideas floating around in the old noggin lately. Another book which I am anticipating eagerly is one I just found out about today, “The Art of Bone” by Jeff Smith. I saw 3 different release dates on different sites, the first of which was June 27th. But Dark Horse shows July, so I really don’t think I can count on seeing it before then. I cannot wait to get my hands on this beautiful book. If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading Bone for yourself, you NEED to check it out. It really is a graphic novel masterpiece. And that’s coming from a guy who only owns the first 2 color paperbacks. Jeff Smith is the kind of artist who really inspires me. His work is cartoon gold with the cleanest lines you’ve ever seen. This hardcover is going to show the pages in progress, the behind the scenes type stuff. I just might be able to glean some secrets from it. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. If not artwork-wise then maybe just a better understanding of how the business works. I guess we’ll see.
Driving home from work today I had a thought. Most cartoonists are bitter over the strips being run in the papers, many of them by dead artists whose work is just getting recycled. Either that or its been taken over by a different artist, in some cases a relative. New strips have a very difficult time breaking into the newspapers and if they manage it, they have an even tougher time building a readership. Why is that? I find it interesting that here lies a major difference between 2 art forms so closely related. Comic books and comic strips. Successful comic strips get run in hundreds or if they’re really lucky, a couple thousand newspapers for year after year after year. Constantly running on the theme that the strip was begun with. Plot would be too strong a word for comic strips. Definitely theme. Comic books on the other hand, are heavier on plot (though sometimes as weak as a bad TV show or film) than comic strips, and many times (maybe even because they are heavier on plot) they eventually come to an end.
Now, there are a couple of different facets here. Yes, Amazing Spider-Man is on issue 541, Uncanny X-Men on 487, Batman on 665 (hmmm, interesting) and I’m not even going to look up Superman. So yeah, in that sense, comic books also go on indefinitely. You could say that. But that’s not my point. My point is this. Comics have limited runs. Take for example, this book that I’m going to pick up this week, “Silver Surfer: Requiem #2“. This is number 2 in a limited run of 4 issues. Comic readers going to the store when issue #1 is on the shelf will be less intimidated by the prospect of buying it since it’s a short run. It’s not a major investment (and by the way, the artwork is incredible, I highly recommend it based on the first issue). There are several such series. The Dark Tower comics, the new Marvel Illustrated books which transform literary classics into short comic book series. Even within the long running titles, X-Men, Spider-Man and such, there are limited runs. One story over 5 or 6 issues and then they move on, sometimes changing out the writer and/or artist.
So what’s my point…
Well, here we have these 2 great American art forms. Comic strips and comic books. Comic strips do not seem to be a financially successful arena, with the exception of the teeny-tiny percentage who appear in 2,000+ newspapers. Comic books, on the other hand seem to be much more lucrative, supporting numerous annual conventions across the country. Is it possible that one difference could be that comic strips seem to go on forever and comic books (at least sometimes) represent a far less significant personal investment to follow? Or maybe comic strips by contrast, stuck in a daily cycle of running the same jokes over and over (such as hating mondays and loving lasagna) with no end in sight, become stale. I think it’s possible that this may be at least a small part of the equation. What if comic strip artists planned out their stories to have a defined beginning, body of events, and ending? Much like we were recently promised fom the people who give us the TV show “Lost”. Sometimes people don’t want a story to go on for years on end. How much would it affect the world of comic strips if the artists were challenged to create a work, give it a primary plot, and then move on to another idea. Another setting with totally new characters. After all, this is what authors do…
Well, anyway, food for thought. I’m not saying I’m definitely right. I’m more just sharing something that struck me today. I know there are other factors to comic strips vs. comic books. Comic books have a stigma. Only geeks and nerds read them (that’s the perception, not what I think) whereas comic strips can be cool and acceptable for the masses. Comic books have become expensive while comic strips can be followed for free online or for extremely cheap in the newspapers…
Anyway. That’s my rant for today. My head’s empty now. Happy Wednesday. Another one that will find this cartoonist at the comic book store. Maybe I should pick up Bone vol. 3…
June 27th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Man, you touched a point there. As a builder of a soon to be “graphic novel” You carry a very valid point. But also keep in mind that I have come across newspapers that have dropped comics for AD space. Such as the LA times have done to a strip I read called “Candorville”. Granted he was able to get back on after heavy demand for his strip. But he is only one in many that have seen a trend where papers will look to Ads over new strips. Instead of letting a reader enjoy just a little bit of joy a paper that is usually filled with hate, crime, and death. OHHHH I could sooo go on as a full blog on this.
But now with the Internet as a breakout for several new and old toons, you will find a new avenue for people to publish their creations. I have come to enjoy places like “Seraph Inn”, “Catena”, and “Crimsom Dark”. I also could never forget here at Nergon.
It’s a whole new world. But also keep in mind that Newspaper are loosing readers by the dozen, due to the fact of 24 hour news cover, and Internet access news sites. Soon, will we still have a paper to even buy?
June 27th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Wow, dropping comics for ad space. I had not heard about this happening to Candorville. I’m glad Darrin Bell was able to get it back in, his strip is excellent and deserves to be in just as many papers as Doonesbury.
That just goes to show how very little comic strips are valued, though. Sure there were readers who complained and the strip was brought back. It’s obvious Candorville is valued very much by those people, but the fact remains that the people making business decisions at the LA Times considered replacing a comic strip with an advertisement and then decided it was a good enough idea to act on. What a slap in the face to comic strips. I’m not sure I’d consider it an insult to Candorville neccessarily, they probably would have done it to any number of other strips if Candorville hadn’t been there. Comic strips are not seen as something valuable anymore. Not valuable enough to pay money for. How many people read Get Fuzzy every day and how many people have a Get Fuzzy book on their bookshelf. I’d bet that the numbers are quite a bit different.
June 27th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
What are you talking about? Comic strips are worthless. They do nothing to bulid up society or to get us thinking about things, improve life, point out the humor or inconsistencies or ….
Sorry … coming back to reality now …
Nergon has a really good point here … but is he willing to follow it?
Actually, I think you already do. You have a great many strips that are connected to each other and after you’ve batted around a topic for a while, you move on to a different topic … just like the comic books.
I enjoy reading your stuff. I’ve got to find you a real job doing this thing!
June 27th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Well thank you kindly, sir.
Actually, the reason I bring all this up is that I’ve begun writing a new project and was considering ending Stranger Things and jumping right into this new thing. I even already bought the domain for it. But I think for now I’ll keep diong Stranger Things. But it may end at some point soon. It doesn’t have much of a future and I always have 3 or 4 other ideas rolling around in my head. I’m thinking why not be the kind of cartoonist who does different projects over time? Nobody else owns my strip, so there’s no reason why I can’t do what I think would be fun and entertaining. But if that is the way I go, I’d like to do a bit more with Stranger Things first. I’d like to feel like I exhausted it.
Nergon just isn’t that original of a character and the strip theme isn’t very original. Alien roommates have been around since My Favorite Martian, Mork and Mindy, Alf…it’s been done. I think I’d like to try a project that actually has something to say.
And I want to do quite a bit more writing before I start working toward showing the public this other project. Just like I’ve been talking about, it wouldn’t be an ongoing comic, it would have a definite storyline with a beginning working toward an end. And I’m sure by that time I’d have 100 other ideas to move on to. AND this new thing wouldn’t just be a comic strip. I’m not totally sure what it will look like in the end, but for now I’m picturing a cartoony comic book type thingy.
And Paxman, I gotta apologize to you. I have no idea why Akismet thinks all of your posts are spam…I can’t figure it out..
June 27th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
maybe you could do one about a kid and his talking stuffed animal. or a rather bland kid and his dog, or a kid who causes troubles with the neighborhood. wait, no, how about one about sarcastic office workers and the moronic situations they deal with, no, no i got it, do a one panel with word plays!
just ask i’ve got more where those come from.
June 29th, 2007 at 1:56 am
There have been several comic strips with continuous plot lines. Look at LuAnn or For Better or Worse. Those almost fall into the soap opera category. No end in sight I must agree, but some of us have grown up with those caracters and are interested in their developement for the future. The only TV show I can think of that the authors had a defined beginning and end would be Babylon 5. There are very nuanced connections between things that happened in season 1 and the final episode. Definite plus when there is continuity between episodes…maybe some drawbacks too. I missed a few episodes of Lost and Heros then had no idea what was going on with the characters so I stopped watching them. Just some of my observations there.
June 29th, 2007 at 6:50 am
Yay Babylon 5! One of the best shows ever. Bring back Babylon and Firefly!!!