After nearly two years of debilitating cutbacks, the community of alternative-weekly cartoonists suffered another setback when Village Voice Media (VVM) suspended publication of all comic strips.
This is a devastating blow to cartoonists such as Max Cannon, Tom Tomorrow, Jen Sorensen, Derf, Lloyd Dangle and others. They see this as the beginning of the end of their industry, or so they say on their various blogs and message boards.
Derf (creator of “The City“) wrote, “We have reached the apocalyptic final struggle for the future of cartoons.”
Tom Tomorrow (“This Modern World”) has been commenting on what he perceives as a general lack of appreciation for alt-weekly cartoonists: “The only way cartoonists could get even less respect would be if we presented our work in the form of handmade knit doilies thrust upon random strangers on the street.”
And then there’s Max Cannon (“Red Meat”), who wrote the central essay of the debate. It’s an open letter called “The Alternative Comic Apocalypse Has Begun,” which begins with Cannon complaining that he has “slaved for many years” to bring us his comic strips.
Now, I love alt-comics as much as the next guy, but, really, Tom Tomorrow, you don’t get no respect? Let me see if I can’t find a waah-kerchief for you to bawl into. And Max, dude, did you actually say that you “slaved” over your work? Are you for real? You’re not picking cotton under a blazing Mississippi sun, man. You’re not digging ditches in pools of raw sewage. You draw cartoons. If cartoon-drawing is anything like column-writing, you sit at your desk with your wine and your weed–Big Sonic Chill dripping its pollen from your clock radio–and an expensive computer doing all your heavy lifting.
Slaved?
Max Cannon averages $15 for each cartoon sold. Multiply that by the 70 plus newspapers in which Red Meat appears, and you get more than $1,000 per strip.
Wow.
I won’t reveal how much my column earns, except to say that it can’t even buy me a small bindy of coke and an hour with a bottom-dollar street hooker. I have to choose one or the other, so don’t tell me about hard times, Mr. Maximillian McWhinyFace!
Not that I’m complaining. I am grateful for this column and its modest earnings. Because there are a bizillion artists out there, writing, drawing and sculpting in obscurity, never to be paid a dime for their labor of love, or receive fanfare–going out of their effin minds every day craving something that resembles an audience or a paycheck.
“The stark reality,” continued Cannon in his “Apocalypse” post, “is that very soon, there won’t be any of your current favorite alternative comic strips for you to read at all–not even online. Here’s why: none of us make our living from our website…. Our websites are like a free gift to you….”
Well, thank you so much, Max-o. Thank you for this gift that allows us, your humble subjects, to frolic in the electronic treasure trove of your genius.
Pffft.
You keep a website because it makes good business sense. You keep it to maintain a presence on the web. You keep it because, like most artist-writer-sculptor types–you need to be seen. You are the classic example of a narcissist, and the more you hawk the idea that your website is for our benefit, the more it proves what a wildly unchecked egotist you are.
Get this. Some cartoonists have even taken to asking for donations, such as Lloyd Dangle (“Troubletown“), who wrote that his website will now have to be viewer-supported.
“That’s why I’ve added the Donate button,” he explained.
Well, how ’bout that? A mother-fluffin’ donate button!
Dude, Lloyd, don’t you see the folly of your ways? You are asking strangers–who are probably broker than you–to support your little hobby so that you won’t have to go out and get a real job like ditch-digging or cotton-picking. If I were a ditch-digger or a cotton-picker, and I saw your donate button–oh yeah, I’d donate something all right.
In defense of alt-weekly comic-strip writers, most of them understand why the newspapers need to make cuts. They just don’t think it should be them who gets cut.
“… [C]omics always appear in the top five of what readers turn to first….” argued Max Cannon in “Apocalypse.”
“Weeklies should be adding… cartoons, which are both popular and inexpensive,” complained Derf on his blog.
And Jen Sorenson (“Slowpoke”) wrote that if comics disappear, “they’ll just stop picking up the paper.”
These cartoonists are all carriers of a disease that I call Adult Onset Self-Importantitus, which causes the sufferer to have delusions about their value to their employer and to society.
Heed these words, Max, Jen, Tom and everybody else who stumbles upon this paragraph: You are all expendable. No matter how smart, how capable, how integral you think you are, you are not. And the sooner you understand that, the sooner you lose your Go-ahead-and-try-to-make-it-without-me attitude–the sooner you will stop looking like the tantrum-throwing child-mayor of Bitterville.
Perhaps you don’t care what I think. But I tell you what, I will never view those cartoons in quite the same way ever again. The next time I read “This Modern World” or “Red Meat” or whatever, no matter how funny it is, it will only be funny with an asterisk.
Ed Decker
02.18.09
There were some angry responses from the alt-weekly cartoonist community. Most notably, these:
Lloyd Dangle (“Troubletown”)
Jason Yungbluth (“Deep Fried Comics”)
And this brief entry on Tom Tomorrow’s (“This Modern World”) “Douchebag Watch”
Tags: alt-weekly cartoons, alt-weekly comics, cartoon apocalypse, comic apocalypse, jen sorensen, lloyd dangle, max cannon, tom tomorrow
You worthless, talentless douchebag.
You see, the difference between you and the ‘self-pitiers’ is that _they have something to lose_. Because they, unlike you, have the capacity to create work that people care about.
If you’re just jerking yourself off, like you do, though, you might as well play up the starving artist shtick. Because it’s all you’ve got.
Oh, and your poetry is _horrible_. Just embarrasingly bad.
Maybe, but at least I have the balls to put my name on my poetry, and my opinions. Unlike you, pussy.
…… bartenders and folks dealing with the public have the tendency to acquire
” Adult onset self – importantitus ” which we shall now call A.O.S.I
As one of those financially unsuccessful Cartoonist’s you mentioned in your cartoonist article, you may check me out at http://www.nevadaobserver.com , and scroll all the way down to the bottom, and click on “Drifterhotel cartoons by Woodrow, for my on-line stuff or by a Daily Sparks Nevada Tribune , for my print stuff, or ten years in the Comstock Chronicle and the underground ( 1971-1973) paper in L.A. O K comic company, also hit and miss Berkeley Barbs, and other publications that I can’t remember.
All the time driving Ambulances, fork lifts at apple canneries, logging and mining in the Siskiyous, driving a lot of Cabs and tending Bars, in Reno and Virginia City and sign painting every where , all for the none payment, love of my Cartoon art, not to say that it was fair, but as you remind everyone, there are fourteen thousand guitar pickers and cartoonists in Nashville, and San Diego, and Reno and Winnemucca , but I’m still out there and got sum’tin to say..Ta! Da!
(From the CityBeat website)
I know someone gets paid to evict people from their houses, but I didn’t know you could make a living mocking people whose livelihood is threatened. But unless you’ve got a desk and a computer, I guess you’re a sucker.
Losing your income isn’t a tantrum. Cartooning for these folks isn’t a hobby. Installing a donation button on your website isn’t about egotism. You’d know this if you’d turn off the iPod your dad bought and look around. That’s going to be the hardest part about the downturn – prying people’s heads out of their backsides when they seem to enjoy the view so much.
Look around, Edwin – glib pseudo-hip a**kissers aren’t immune. I’ve read the cartoons listed above and would gladly pay for them. The only difference between you and them is you won’t be missed.
“Dude.” “Pffft.” “McWhineyFace.” Christ… you must’ve been the top wit at your high school paper. If I want to read this level of retread idiocy, I’d watch SNL where the performers KNOW they sound like imbeciles (you knew that’s the joke, right? That people don’t really talk or write like this?).
It made me sick to my stomach to read this. I’ve read and respected Tom Tomorrow’s work for years. It’s not some g*dd*mn kiddie comic book side project. Unlike your bilge, it’s WORTH it!
How dare you?
I can’t believe your editors find your work of any worth, and This Modern World gets the boot.
Unbelievable. “Dude.”
“Dude, Maximillian McWhinyFace”? If the cartoonists wrote like that, they’d be grateful for a pittance too.
Whoever you are, you’re overpaid.
Wow, Spy Planet, I guess you just skimmed my column, because it is ever so clear that you didn’t read it. Had you read it you would’ve noticed that I am very aware of the downturn and the fact that it is ALL AROUND US, which is exactly the reason why I was annoyed by Cannon’s whiner piece, because HE is the one who seems to not realize we area all suffering this downturn since he focused more on HIS losses, than the losses of others.
And duh, yes, of course I realize my column could be next. I’m just not going to complain about it – not like that. Because I feel lucky to have ONE paper publish my (let’s call it “attempt”) at art. And I would NEVER used the word “slaved” to describe an artistic endeavor that I got paid for. Not when people are out there busting their asses digging ditches for minimum wage.
As for your sign out, where you wrote, “I can’t believe your editors find your work of any worth, and This Modern World gets the boot. Unbelievable. “Dude.”
Wrong again. (Have you tried a reading comprehension course?) This Modern World did not get the boot. TMW is published in 70+ papers, AFTER the so called cartoon apocalypse. I am in just one. That is not a complaint. Just don’t tell me that poor old old Tom Tomorrow is suffering in a unfair world that targets him while the talentless, terrible Ed Decker continues to thrive.
i finally read the column, Ed, & think it’s funny & accurate. But most importantly it was QUALIFIED (You even wrote that you ENJOY the alt. cartoons). Funny how you have to keep defending it by telling people to actually read what you wrote rather than just defend poor attacked cartoonists as if they were puppies you were kicking.
I think those cartoonists thought they were whining in a private little cartoon speech bubble. FAIL.
As one of those working alt weekly cartoonists myself, I wasn’t surprised by the Village Voice cutbacks. It’s happening everywhere. I’ve taken more vicious cuts in the last two years than every teen nympho ever to appear in a Friday the 13th movie…
Rather than publicly bemoan the fact that my chosen field of endeavor is going the way of the milkman, blacksmiths, and mimeograph machines, I updated my skills with digital training, so that I now create cartoon designs for websites, album covers, event posters, etc. They’re still cartoons, and lots of people still want them – they just pay better.
BTW, when speaking of once-common public institutions vanishing like vomitariums after the fall of Rome, the alt-weekly papers themselves are almost surely just as doomed. Hope everyone at CityBeat is beefing up their own future resumes –
True dat Jay – I think everyone sees the writing on the Facebook wall