Mar 27th 2009 08:10 am The one with the big nose and funny hair!
Not to be selfish, but the question understandably arises in this quarter, if a newspaper migrates to the Web, or folds altogether, what happens to its comic strips? Obviously, when a newspaper folds altogether the comics within cease local publication as well, and a sliver of revenue for the cartoonist dries up. If, and I say “if,” enough of this happens, well, you can see the problem.
However, what happens to the comic strips when a newspaper goes Web-only? Not so obviously, perhaps, but in effect the same thing. What cash-starved newspaper is going to pay for syndicated comic strips when those strips already are available for free on the Web? Very few would be my guess.
To be honest, I cannot see doing what I do for the Web exclusively. The income simply is not there. Maybe all this talk du jour about the death of newspapers is premature. I hope so.
Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
37 Responses to “The one with the big nose and funny hair!”
J-P Chicago on 27 Mar 2009 at 9:01 am #
A couple of Seattle papers have online comics, the Times & Post (I think both sets are King Features collections). I go there (via bookmarks) to get my daily fix for Crankshaft & Funky.
John in Richmond Texas on 27 Mar 2009 at 9:03 am #
Believe me, this is uppermost in the minds of comic strip fans. I was surprised when comics.com went free. In a larger scheme of things I wonder about web music, and even how we all speed through commercials – how this affects compensation for the creators of our entertainment. On the web, strip fans have to look at Mr. Boffo, Dilbert and (current, not old) One Big Happy separately and I get some from dailyink.com, gocomics.com and of course most on comics.com I would gladly pay for comics.com again. Of course, I have no idea how much an individual artist would get or how many more subscribers you would need. I guess if it came down to it, I would cull out the marginal (to me) strips – the ones I get cuz I might as well, since they’re there. I spend $140.00 a month on Dishnetwork and $45.00 a year for Rush Limbaugh 24/7, so hmm, if I got down to my say ten must have strips I would pay $1.00 a day ?? and maybe hope my favorites strips got turned into tv shows and we all need to buy more cafepress stuff and display our favorites to the world. I have always loved the comics and have great admiration for the people making 365 a year, year after year and do wish more people were appreciative of this great American art form. Thank You
HC Brown on 27 Mar 2009 at 9:13 am #
Our thoughts are with you in the southern states as the storms leave a trail of destruction in your area -and also to those in the Red River valley as the river continues to rise.
That Jeff on 27 Mar 2009 at 10:20 am #
I beg to differ; I know several webcomic artists who have made a successful career based solely on webcomics. You’re just going to have to make a change is all. If you’d like, I know of at least two who give advice on how to set up a successful business; want me to send you their way?
Jeff in MN on 27 Mar 2009 at 11:32 am #
Some of us think your works are worth owning; you could live for a while on the sale of originals. Then the book sales will take off, and you can sail south, sending us the occasional blog update (illustrated, natch).
Lindsey on 27 Mar 2009 at 11:54 am #
There have been many successful comics that are free on the web. Sometimes the creators still have to have another job to support themselves, but occasionally if the comic is good enough they can switch to making them full-time. They mostly do it through merchandising – selling t-shirts, mouse-pads making collections of the already-free comics in book form (one of my favorite webcomics advertises the book by saying, “Why read for free what you can BUY?). It sounds like it wouldn’t work, but if the comic is good enough people will be willing to help donate money and buy items to keep it running. Of course, these comics often appeal to the college-age generation who are used to having everything available on the internet.
If all newspapers went to the web, I’m sure that the majority of comics out there would have to either adapt to the web or die. Many of the older ones who appeal to older generations wouldn’t make it, unless the Comics Curmudgeon people alone could keep up Mary Worth, which is skeptical. I think that Arlo and Janis would have a good chance of surviving on the internet, but it might have to undergo more serious advertising and the like so that people know it exists. I think that Stephen Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine would have no trouble either. Pibgorn already survives on the internet through book collections.
So it’s possible, but it wouldn’t be easy. You would find yourself in competition with a lot of webcomic artists who know how to appeal to more of the internet-users and who produce very high-quality comics artistically. On the other hand, it might even be a perk for those comics artists like Bill Watterson who always complained about the small panel sizes and inability to tell a story in that space – on the internet, you get all the space you want.
Dan McD on 27 Mar 2009 at 1:29 pm #
You wrote:
“To be honest, I cannot see doing what I do for the Web exclusively. The income simply is not there.”
The forecast death of newspapers is a side effect of the audience moving to the web. The audience is still there, and you’re still producing a regular, high quality, entertaining product.
All the ingredients for success are here, you just need to move from newspaper steak and potatoes to internet gumbo. Hire on some clever hackers for the digital heavy lifting, borrow from the business models of the successful web comics (this means tshirts and books, it appears), and keep doing what you’re doing: making people smile.
If it comes to that, anyway. Doesn’t seem like we’re quite there yet.
Peace,
-McD
Bob in Michigan on 27 Mar 2009 at 2:07 pm #
I’m retired from a suburban Detroit newspaper which now publishes 3-4 days a week. I was a regular reader of the Detroit Free Press, which is also about to drop print editions. The Free Press over several years dropped some favorite strips. When my wife and I spent a couple of months in a NYC sublet four years ago, I found I could get all of them, those still in the Freep and those they’d dropped, via e-mail by subscribing to three services at a cost of maybe $20 or so a year. I’ve kept those subscriptions even as I kept the Freep.
When the Free Press was delivered to the door in the morning, I started my day with the comics. Home carrier delivery to our rural area ended last year. I now get the day’s paper in the afternoon mail, so I start my morning with the emailed comics.
And in recent months, comics.com, which carries A&J, went from paid to free. I don’t understand that. I want to pay for the comic strips, enough that the creator gets some revenue.
Mark in Boston on 27 Mar 2009 at 2:09 pm #
We are seeing the emergence of a very strange business model. It used to be that the only comics seen by a large audience were those that were in many big papers and therefore generated income. It was hard to break into the business.
Now any cartoonist can start a web comic. If the comic is good, word will spread and it will become famous, but it won’t bring in much money. The same is true of editorial opinion pieces. The newspaper content business is becoming what the music business has always been: a great business to be in if you can afford to run it at a loss. A crummy business if you need to depend on it for your living.
David in Ann Arbor on 27 Mar 2009 at 2:12 pm #
I got a reply today from AnnArbor.com regarding the email I sent them yesterday. It says: “Great suggestion. Of course we’ll continue to have comics in the print edition that comes out twice a week, but we are looking at offering comics online, too, and there are some good services out there that make it easy to do. Thanks for the input.” So we’ll wait and see how the fate of newspaper comics in Ann Arbor is decided…
Steve from Royal Oak, MI on 27 Mar 2009 at 3:10 pm #
We had a discussion the other day (may have been a week or two, time flies) about the dearth of Saturday morning cartoons. Something that you loved and could not imagine not continuing to exist goes away. But cartoons may have left Saturday morning, but now exist on cable tv. However, it not nearly as fun or special.
Same will be true of comic strips. I read the WSJ and USA Today from time to time and I always feel cheated because there is no comic section. Jimmy, I think that you are safe as I cannot imagine ALL of the newspapers that carry your stripp folding, but for the cartoonists just starting out, I am not sure that you can say the same.
I really cannot imagine a world without comic strips. I really DON’T want to imagine a world without comic strips.
Mike on 27 Mar 2009 at 3:16 pm #
Regarding decling newspapers and thus comic strip income…time to get that 2nd book out (and the 1st one reprinted) followed by all sorts of A & J collections!
Mike on 27 Mar 2009 at 3:19 pm #
decling = declining (my e-mail spell-checks before it sends, let’s work on that here also)
Rich (I'm not from IL) on 27 Mar 2009 at 3:37 pm #
“TWO-TOP”? What’s that?
John in LACA late of PNS on 27 Mar 2009 at 3:48 pm #
I’ll be glad when the Mary Lou stuff is over. Of all the many many reasons I love A&J, Mary Lou comes in dead last.
Rich in Belchertown on 27 Mar 2009 at 4:16 pm #
Jimmy, I hope this talk is premature but I don’t know. I’ll be truthful here and confess that I haven’t subscribed to a daily paper in almost 10 years now. Not only do I get the content for free, but I don’t have a stack of paper to dispose of, nor do I get ink-stains on my fingers. I’ve also noticed that as newspapers’ revenues have gone down, so has their quality, giving me less reason to read even the web version. I know that there’s probably a snowball effect here, with me among others out there with my mittens on, so let me say now that I hope it ain’t so and I’m sorry if it is. I would very much miss A&J, in whatever medium.
Anyway, if this whole cartooning thing doesn’t work out for you, what’s your plan B?
CIDU Bill on 27 Mar 2009 at 4:45 pm #
I wonder whether the new business model, if newspapers are no longer viable, might be books: I mean, I’d buy collections of A&J strips that HAVE already been published in newspapers. A collection of strips I HAVEN’T read yet? I’d be camped out overnight in front of the bookstore.
Okay, of course I mean that metaphorically. I’d actually pre-order the books from Amazon. But you get the idea.
buzz on 27 Mar 2009 at 4:51 pm #
I hate to sound like Mr. Negativity, but “talk of the death of newspapers being premature” is about as opposite from the situation as one could get.
Remember that scene in the original KING KONG when Denham & Co. encounter their first dinosaur, a stegosaurus? They shoot it and it dies, but as they walk past the body they see the spiked tail still thrashing about until finally it, too, lays still.
That’s where newspapers are right now.
Frankly, I think you could do MUCH better on the net than in print. You wouldn’t be limited by content restrictions, panel length, or page size. You would need to develop an ancillary marketing method that would bring in real sales dollars (try Googling “Phil Foglio” and his book “Girl Genius” the article on the ICv2 webpage is especially good).
Please do it! It is something you could launch now in parrallel to the print run of AnJ.
Erick S. on 27 Mar 2009 at 7:22 pm #
Put up a pay-pal subscription button. I’d kick in a few bucks a month to support something I really, really enjoy. I believe in compensating people for their skills and talents. Find a way for me to show my appreciation in a real way. I’ll kick in.
CG from MN on 27 Mar 2009 at 7:32 pm #
I have the same problem – not do they look like me, but ‘I’
think they look like someone else we know.
Just Jay on 27 Mar 2009 at 7:42 pm #
Here in the Upper Lefthand Corner, Seattle recently lost one of its two daily print papers. The other paper in a bid to pick up the readership, added about half a dozen or so of the comics the folded paper carried. Doesn’t work so well if the only paper in town folds.
Cheers,
Jay
CIDU Bill on 27 Mar 2009 at 11:17 pm #
Didn’t the Seattle Post-Intelligencer just go Internet-only? And their comics are still online. I suppose they look at the comics as something to draw people to their website every day, just as traditional newspapers use them to draw readers every day. And, of course, there’s the ad revenue every time somebody reads a comic on their site.
Mystery Shopper on 28 Mar 2009 at 6:24 am #
Please pardon my going completely off any subject, but I have been intending to post this somewhere, anywhere for many years, and I think that this is the perfect location.
Has anyone else noticed that Dennis the Menace has become more politically correct? He has not had his slingshot in his back pocket for a long time.
Too violent, too similar to guns, I guess. It had to go.
The weenification of the country continues.
SusiQ on 28 Mar 2009 at 6:35 am #
I’m hoping our small town paper wakes up and becomes more focused on local news instead of filling space by grabbing articles off of the wire. We can get those stores online but not what’s happening with the people in our community. But, that takes reporters actually attending school events, club meetings, & other local organizations. We used to have a society editor that either went to everything or had gotten to know enough involved people that she was able to keep you up-to-date with everything happening in town. Now it’s only a few small submitted articles that are cut to pieces. The local news section is mostly only the bad news, while there are also many good things happening to people. Newspapers have got to wake up & report the details that are harder to find online.
I don’t blame you for making a point about having an outlet for your craft. It is an angle I’m afraid I hadn’t thought about. Hope your book makes you a fortune.
Old Mr Toad on 28 Mar 2009 at 7:24 am #
I’ve never seen your strip in a print newspaper, and I’ve been a fan of A&J for years. All is not lost.
OMT
Kirk on 28 Mar 2009 at 12:26 pm #
What “Newspapers” need to do (as I see it) is define their mission.
If their mission is to disseminate advertising via paper, then they’re dead in the water because that is clearly not of much value any more.
But if their mission is to find and disseminate information that is interesting, entertaining and important to the general public, then they would be doing something of great value. The medium is changing, but the work is more important than ever.
What they really need is a new business model that allows them to make a profit while doing business on the web. …and a LOT of people have been struggling with that.
People still need and want daily entertainment: comics, puzzles, entertainment “news” etc. I think all of that can and will be preserved in web-based “Newspapers”.
I think it’s particularly important for local news, but that’s probably a topic for another day.
Lost in A**2 on 28 Mar 2009 at 3:09 pm #
A comment on Girl Genius, which I was introduced to with the new year: It started out
on paper, as a comic book. After I caught up, I bought the omnibus edition of the first
three issues. I’ll get the rest as the opportunities occur
That Jeff on 28 Mar 2009 at 7:08 pm #
While the comments regarding Girl Genius are valid, it wasn’t the webcomic I had in mind. Phil and Kaja still have the “cottage industry” feel of a webcomic that eeks them out a living, but one where one of them still has a day job. Dreamland Chronicles is another.
Webcomics where the artist/writer make their sole living off of it requires a certain type of business savvy. (Hope I don’t offend anyone here) Say, PvP or Least I Could Do. Both Kurtz and Sohmer have a certain flair for the business and I’ve noticed a few others are starting to follow in their tracks. Now before I get hammered for mentioning these two, I’m talking about their business side of their comic, not their personal opinions.
Following either of these two’s marketing plan would probably do well for you. You’ve got a fan base, all you need is the know-how, or someone who does.
Burns on 28 Mar 2009 at 7:50 pm #
Two-top is apparently a table for two, but I’ve got to believe that this is a double-entendre, and I don’t know the other meaning. But if its not, maybe I’m just missing something.
Mark in Boston on 28 Mar 2009 at 8:43 pm #
Dennis the Menace became politically correct in its second year. Have you seen the cartoons from the first year? He was a very serious menace. His father Henry had to go to the doctor to get the dart removed that Dennis had hit him in the rear end with. He would run out of the house naked yelling “I’M NOT IN THE MOOD FOR A BATH!” He drove his toy dump truck full of sand on the living-room carpet, asking his mom, “Where do you want this sand dumped, lady?”
Did you ever see the TV show with Jay North? That was all sweetness and light, with Dennis constantly doing good deeds and helping people.
Jeff in Ann Arbor on 28 Mar 2009 at 10:11 pm #
@ CIDU Bill
“I’d actually pre-order the books from Amazon.”
I hope you would consider ordering from your locally owned, independent bookstore, like my favorite, Nicola’s Books http://www.nicolasbooks.com/.
Jeff
AZ NK on 28 Mar 2009 at 11:49 pm #
I believe a “two-top” is a two-person table in a restaurant….
Sili on 29 Mar 2009 at 10:24 am #
I, too, think that you could make it on the web, if you wanted to.
Of course I hope it won’t be necessary. And it might well be harder at your age – no offence intended.
But looking into plan B’s might not be the worst of ideas.
I can only add that A&J is one of the strips I’d pay to read. Currently I only pay for David Willis’ Joyce & Walky. But I buy collections and original art from a coupla strips. T-shirts isn’t my thing, but they seem to generate much revenue for some people, yes – Questionable Content springs to mind.
Jim in SE Mississippi on 29 Mar 2009 at 11:14 am #
Newspapers were closing and merging long before the Internet arrived on the scene, so
I’m curious…does anyone know the percentage of daily newspapers and/or the percentage of readership represented by the newspapers that have ceased publication in the past five or so years? Obviously, if your hometown paper folds, it has an impact on the community (and the paper’s employees), but isn’t the overall impact of that one closing rather minimal, especially in a two-newspaper city? How indicative are the recent individual closings of an approaching tipping-point where lots of print newspapers will go digital or go away? In other words, do the closings signal a trend, or do they simply indicate that a combination of ineffective management and the current (and, we hope, temporary) economic downturn caught up with those newspapers, as it would any business?
Anyone out there need a suggestion for a thesis?
curmudgeonly ex-professor on 29 Mar 2009 at 4:34 pm #
I agree with Tom in LACA, late of PNS.
Mystery Shopper on 29 Mar 2009 at 6:26 pm #
“In fairness, how many little boys today walk around with a slingshot in their back pocket, fashioned from a tree limb and an inner tube?”
I have to agree. As a matter of fact, the slingshot that I had was “store-bought.”
“To give the benefit of doubt, we might chalk it up to modernization of the character. Granted Dennis isn’t the menace he once was, but ‘weenification’ is nothing new. Buster Brown, drawn by Richard Outcault, was partly a reaction to criticism of Outcault’s earlier effort, The Yellow Kid, a character from Hogan’s Alley, considered the first modern American comic strip.”
I think that this was mentioned before, but Outcault hailed from Lancaster, Ohio.
“The popular Yellow Kid, complained some readers, was too earthy and crude.”
Sounds like some of the criticism that was leveled at Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.
buzz on 30 Mar 2009 at 8:58 am #
re Jim in SE Mississippi’s question: The Comics Journal’s blogsite, Journalista, has a Newspaper Armageddon Watch as one of their now regular features. They can be found at www [dot] tcj [dot] com/journalista/