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After The Newspapers, Or, Post Post

Lotta confusion about what Scott Kurtz really means in his open letter; on first readthrough, I wasn’t entirely clear on what he was proposing and why, so I called him to ask. And just to save time, we’ll posit that Kurtz is one of the polarizing figures in webcomics, has pissed off people by word and deed (although in person, I’ve always found him to be amiable, and he’s always offered me every courtesy), and there’s baggage associated with almost everything he says. So underneath the strata of history and emotional color that will inevitably cloud the issue, what was he trying to say?

What he’s really interested in is preserving the experience of spreading out the Sunday comics on the floor. And he’s not sure how to do that, so he wants brainstorm around a table with people who might have ideas. Hey, that was easy.

This isn’t about getting webcomics into the newspaper (although that may be a side effect), and it isn’t about promoting webcomics to a wider audience (ditto), and it isn’t about artistic merit (where the opinions fly fast and thick, and Kurtz may have fatally insulted many who could have helped him). It’s about acknowledging that the comic strip is probably where everybody who’s reading this right now learned to read, and we may have seen the last generation to have that experience.

Partly that’s because the newspapers (as Dave Kellett reminds us — it’s about two dozen comments down the list) are on a downwards spiral, and partly because the creative community of comickers (both here, and in print) haven’t come up with the next the delivery mechanism, one that will have the same ubiquity that newspapers are losing. That’s the bottom line — Kurtz is writing open letters (instead of doing things behind the scenes) and trying to stir up some shit up out of a sense that we should preserve that experience for future generations.

And before you dismiss the need, that delivery mechanism ain’t webcomics — at least, not yet. Ask 1000 random people on the street if they read the comics in the paper today, and even if they didn’t, they at least know what you’re talking about. Everybody knows that The Newspapers carry The Comics. Ask those same 1000 people what webcomics they read today, maybe 40 will know that such a thing exists, and 20 will have an answer for you.

Right now, everything that we in the webcomics community have done to make “our” (speaking in the broadest possible sense) comics more widely known and acknowledged, for the past 10+ years, has resulted in that miniscule slice of the popular consciousness. What was long the most popular and widely-seen form of artistic expression in this country is experiencing rebirth and invigoration on the web, but only for the nichest of audiences.

What Kurtz is proposing isn’t an invasion/takeover that will save the newspaper comic, make the medium vital again, and reverse a decades-long decline in that particular sector of journalism. He’s proposing that we ask the question, What comes next? It’s going to require people on all sides of comics, people who love creating comics, and those who love reading them, and those who just want to make a buck helping the first group stay in contact with the second.

Maybe that means that webcomics do invade the papers on their swan dive towards oblivion, just long enough that a friggin’ lot of people pay attention to the comics page again, so they’ll follow to that next delivery mechanism; maybe not. He doesn’t know, I don’t know, and no one person knows enough about paper stock, advertising, finance, postal rates, hosting, intellectual property, marketing, and each of a dozen other areas of enquiry that all bear on this issue. But a group of people comparing notes on what’s worked for them and (just as importantly) what’s failed for them, might point everybody in new directions.

Collectives are one way to exchange that knowledge, but collectives (as we see them now) consist of like-minded people mostly moving in parallel paths; maybe what’s needed for a good cross-pollination of ideas is a full-bore collision of minds from lots of different disciplines. We’re making progress, no doubt, but evolution is a slow, incremental process, and maybe what we need is that metaphorical meteor crash to jump-start things.

And the result of such a collision (if it ever occurs) may well be We can’t come to consensus, or Y’know, I think what we’re doing now is the best we can do and we all give up and go home — hey, dinosaurs were even cooler than comic strips, and today they only exist as a narrow slice of their once-thunderous diversity, so why should comic strips be any different?

Or such a collision might spawn a whole bunch of other questions that have to be answered before we see where this medium is going. Or it could be that the necessary personalities can’t really exist in the same room in significant numbers, and we get a lot of light and heat and drama and not much substance.

One way to find out.

Love him or hate him, noble effort in service to art or clusmy ego-stroking self-promotion exercise, turning point in the history of webcomics or just shouting on the internet, it doesn’t really matter. Kurtz has started a discussion that I think is worth having. As much as I can, I’ll contribute. Anybody else wants to join in? I got your first beer.

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Someone once wrote where I could read it that where McLuhan went wrong in his forecast of the global village was failing to predict the high degree of self-programming there is now in the home entertainment arena. The electronic communication revolution is in the process of doing to all other media what it’s already accomplished with television, where no single program airing can ever beat the viewer numbers of the M*A*S*H series finale just because of the unimaginable diversity of other options. At this point it’ll take a meteor crash, some unpredictable and perhaps uncontrivable quantum leap, to derail our present course to generating ever-more niche-targeted entertainments. But perhaps it is contrivable, and I wish us the very best of luck.

Thanks for this write-up, Gary. You framed it nicely.

The timing is out a ways, which is a shame, but this might make for a good roundtable talk at San Diego.

I’ve seen many of those little “scene” newspapers around cities. The little ones in boxes here and there that you can pick up and take for free. They’re all independant publishers… much like the next step in Comics could be.

Imagine having a newspaper that is solely dedicated to comic strips. Maybe six to eight mini-newspaper pages (about the size of a tabloid) of comics and comic news. They would be in most major cities, distributed by volunteers and left in places like coffee shops, comic stores, music stores and more.

How would it make money? Advertising. National ads, local ads for each city it’s distributed in (do a “Toronto Edition” and “New York Edition”, etc) and such sould potentially support it (that’s how all free papers do it)

Who prints it? For each target city, you’d need to set up a contract with a local printer or newspaper like the people that do Flyers do. Volunteers from that city go pick up the bundles on whatever distribution day (Maybe a bi-weekly thing) and drop off the comics at their points of distribution. All it would take is the co-ordination of a group of people… easy peasy in today’s global communication environment.

A paper like this could help keep comic strips alive in print, give them a new medium or direction and make them more accessable to readers that might not want or need a newspaper. And, it’d be easy to spread out on the floor Sunday morning.

Just an idea.

At this point itâ€™ll take a meteor crash, some unpredictable and perhaps uncontrivable quantum leap, to derail our present course to generating ever-more niche-targeted entertainments.

What Paul said.

Noble idea… wrong person to have leading it. I seriously cannot believe the total horseshit that comes out of Kurtz’s mouth, and people respond to it, and he just keeps it going. Not only mocking the quality and successes of today’s newspaper comic creators, but even belittling their past efforts at trying other strips like Rick Stromoski’s Mullets.

Scott… this is not the way to make things happen. The only thing you’re accomplishing is making yourself look like an ass all over again.

Maybe R. Stevens would be a better one to head that sort of effort or build a bridge. Especially seeing how he’s a webcomic thats actually accepted in newspapers? Of course, he probably does not want to be the Abe Lincoln of comics or anything like that.

Hey DJ-

Maybe Platinum could do it? They could just pay each newspaper a monthly fee then you could spend the next year telling us how wonderful Rosenberg is.

Simple, yet effective.

Peanuts! Popcorn! Programs!

You can’t tell the fighters apart without a program!

DING DING DING

Nah, it’d be way too easy for them!

Hey, DJ, maybe Platinum could do it.

They could just pay each…

Oh shit. Ben beat me to it.

Yeah, that’s totally your M.O. though.

Sometimes I wish North America had a publication like the Japanese Shonen Jump.

And when I say that, I don’t mean I wish we had a magazine full of Dragonball and Naruto comics. (We do have that.) I mean I wish we had a gigantic weekly publication full of comics printed on shitty paper and sold dirt cheap at newstands everywhere.

The Japanese Shonen Jump is like a newspaper in that it’s disposable… it’s something you pick up to read on the subway and then chuck later. But unlike a newspaper, it doesn’t have news in it. It has nothing but comics. And it has a circulation of roughly 3 million!

How hot would it be to have something like that? I know many people I know only pick up their university newspapers to read the comics section anyhow. Why not give them something that has nothing BUT comics? (And advertisements, I guess.)

DJ, don’t worry about the naysayers. Just call Joey Manley a “turdmonger” again and go back to explaining how Platinum invented fire.

Sam, I’m looking into that.

I would love to see a thick newsprint weekly of all the newest and funniest comic strips sold in grocery stores across the country.

Imagine a kid getting excited because mom came home from the store and brought him the funnies in a big book.

It’s weird for me to read Sam’s comment, because many years ago, before the web was anything but an idea, I thought of the same thing. I used to imagine that right next to each of the ubiquitous USAToday boxes, there could be another one for a comics-and-ads-only newspaper.

There is still an opportunity there, I suspect, for someone of sufficient entrepreneurial spirit.

I like the shonen jump idea.
when I was brat,There wasnt enough comics in the newspaper and comics were expensive short and bad (maximum clonage what they were thinking)

it would be awesome if some cartoonist made that once in a week 250-300 pages monster
I would offer my strip for free if something happens like that someday.

salamandyr, I called Dirk Deppey a turdmonger. And I totally would remind people how Platinum invented fire, but that’s pretty common knowledge by now.

Hey, look… my point (opinion) was pretty clear. Good idea… bad figure head. The level of passive aggressive vitriol spewing around in that thread Xavier linked to, http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2007/01/11/scott-kurtz-calls-on-bill-amend-to-save-the-comics/
pretty much proves my point.

Maybe it’s one of those political type things? Like not every citizen that wants to change the world can go be a respected senator or ambassador… Scott is a terrible ambassador. Unless you take out the “amb” and the “ador”, then he has it hands down.

I really like that idea of teaming up with the free, big city weeklies. If anyone could help us with the cost/distribution info and infrastructure, it would be those little weekly alt papers.

I think we should make Gary do it.

DJ, if people like you would stop interrupting the discussion so you can try to turn everyone against me, we could probably get something done.

Go look at the Daily cartoonist thread again. It was Stromoski who came in spitting venom and derailed everything.

Look at the thread in my blog post.

People are interested in talking about this and they have great ideas. Nobody but a select few feel the need to drag this discussion into some Kurtz-hate-fest.

PARADE MAGAZINE has a circulation of 32,700,000. LIFE MAGAZINE has a circulation of 12,000,000+. AMERICAN PROFILE has a circulation of 6,000,000+.

These are the largest-circulated magazines in the U.S., and all of them are distributed free as newspaper supplements. They make money solely from ad revenue, a LOT of money. PARADE charges $818,200 for a full page ad, for example. (For comparison’s sake, AMERICAN IDOL charges $620,000 for a 30-second spot.)

I believe a weekly, magazine-style newspaper supplement may be the key to unlocking Mr. Kurtz’s proposed future of comics… or at least a part of it.

Not a comics-ONLY newspaper supplement, as that would duplicate something the newspapers already offer (the Sunday comics section). Newspapers aren’t interested in a modern-day SPIRIT SECTION, sadly. What I’m talking about is a PARADE-style magazine aimed at older teens and young adults (newspapers’ most sought-after demo), with comics included as a MAJOR element alongside other content that appeals to the 16-34 demo (i.e. TV, movie, and gaming news and reviews, celebrity interviews, behind-the-scenes features etc).

In 2004, as Keenspot was launching our (failed) free Comics Page, we actively pursued developing this concept. Sadly, we weren’t able to make the numbers work for us as the small company we are (the initial investment alone would’ve been a minimum of $100,000), but the pitch we floated around to a few newspaper groups got MAJOR interest. The manager of one newspaper chain, with a combined circulation in the tens of millions, seemed ready to begin testing it in a few major markets immediately after getting our pitch.

Someone will make this work eventually. Maybe a group of someones. And when it works, it’ll be BIG.

What if you could get the best and most popular of the web, like Scott and PA and Goats, Sinfest, etc. and got everyone to contribute one strip a week, bundle it together and call it The Online Sunday Funnies – or whatever. You know something like that would draw hundreds of thousands, if not millions of readers. You could then go to the syndicated guys you want and say look – we have this huge audience just waiting for you. COme on in, do something different a more daring if you want. You know it would be a hit. You know there’d be advertisers lined up. And after the initial success, I don’t see how it could not be, then you approach newspapers with something like Chris suggested. They’d salivate over the numbers. It’s success, of course, would be heavily dependent on getting the big name webcomics into it. Possible?

I’m going to reiterate what I think has already been said here, and that’s that getting web comics into newspapers won’t do any more good than putting the newspaper comics onto the web did. It doesn’t hurt anything, persay, but it doesn’t break any new ground.

The internet has changed everything, and the biggest change is how we want our media and information. We want it now, we want it easily accessible and we want it for free.

The newspapers are failing because we get our news through .rss feeds and online communities. We know the news before they do. Time magazine is reevaluating their schema because they know that they’re quickly becoming irrelevant.

Tower Records has gone bankrupt because no one buys CDs anymore. Myspace has completely revolutionized the underground music scene and made record labels nearly pointless.

The next to go will be the movie theaters, because just like Tower Records was still charging $18 a cd (when we could get just pay $1 a song on itunes, get it for $10 at best buy, or get it used for $5 on amazon.), the theater is still charging $9 a ticket when we have netflix and a hi-def flat screen in our living room.

The only answer is to rethink everything. Would we have all spread out the comics on the floor if it had an ad between every comic strip? No.

Let me repeat what I said. We want it now, we want it easily accessible and we want it for free.

Our children will have access to an internet we can’t even imagine now. They won’t want anything to do with a printed sheet of comics. Worrying about printing things is taking a big step backwards.

I would highly recommend checking out the book Mind Your X’s and Y’s. It’s brand new and it addresses all of these concerns, and talks about dealing with the ever cynical “Connected Generation.”

The only thing that will save comics is if we all stop being douchebags to each other. How could a page of comics work when everyone would bitch about who they were next to, anyway?

Why can’t I go to comicpage.com and read all of my favorite webcomics on one page each morning? Oh because everyone’s too busy trying to sell me teeshirts or force their blog down my throat. We don’t actually want to work together and would never be satisfied with a 5″ x 10″ spot on a page when we’re used to the infinite nature and marketability of our own websites.

What if there was a comicpage.com and I could go there and tell it what .rss feeds to load onto my site? I read most of my webcomics on livejournal anyway. What if it had parental controls to make it so my kids could read only the comics without swear words? What if — here’s the shocker — no one was making money off of it.

The newspapers don’t make money off of the comics. They pay FOR them. My husband works for the Times Dispatch here in Richmond, and he says that the only time that “Stop The Presses!” is actually put into affect is when there’s something wrong with the obituaries, or something wrong with the comics. Because then people will complain.

So think about all of this. People buy the paper because they like to read the comics. But the papers aren’t going to last. So where will those people go when the papers are irrelevant?

The same place they’re going to get their news already. The internet.

And if Star Trek is right, then someday we won’t even have this silly thing called money, and everyone will have everything that they need provided to them. We will work for the betterment of not just ourselves, but all of mankind. And people that want to make comics will make them for the sheer love of comics and the fun in creating them.

But until the 23rd century hits, we still have to worry about money. Some of us would like to make said money creating comics. That whole wanting things for free can be an obstacle to that. I get the feeling sometimes that we’re headed in the direction where everyone will want everything for free and nobody will be making any money. Because what’s the point of selling ads if no one wants to pay for the stuff being advertised?

I’m really just doing a stream of consciousness thing here. I don’t really have anything constructive to add at this point.

Except to say that I don’t think of myself as a “web cartoonist” or a “print cartoonist”. I like working in both. I am just a cartoonist. It’s the attitude that we have to be one or the other, or that “print is dead” or “the internet is the future, period” that is keeping the syndicated cartoonists and the webcartoonists so separated.

My point and opinion was, again, that it’s a good idea, but it’s the wrong guy leading into those waters. Scott, you’re not very well liked in those waters, and you know it. You’re just not a good ambassador to that crowd is all, you never have been.

Just to be fair, I went back and read where Rick jumped in. He jumped in with your own goddamn quotes, foo, and here was his first post quoting you:

“To quote Scott Kurtz on this forum from just a month ago:

â€œBut if you want to blame a group for mediocrity in comic strips, you need only look at the current membership of the NCS or attend a Reubenâ€™s award ceremony.Newspaper comic strips are total crap. They have been for years. They are nothing but boring, unfunny, recycled, stale non-humor.â€?

â€œIf you ask someone my age or younger if they read any strips in the newspaper, youâ€™ll probably hear them mention either Get Fuzzy or Foxtrot and both of those strips are, at best, the top of the mediocre pile.â€?

Iâ€™m certain that many established syndicated cartoonists will jump at the chance to work with Scott on his proposal. “

I think this “DJ” fellow has the right idea. He’s proven it to us with his quotations and his book smarts. I don’t want someone like Scott “Fat” Kurtz representing webcomics!

If only there was an edgy, hip company with a #1 selling graphic novel about cowboys and aliens that could take up the mantle… if only one had recently migrated into the webcomics arena and changed the internet!

Yes, NSR, I think you are correct that someone needs to be chosen! I think we all know who has the raw talent and “people person” nature to build bridges, rather than start piss-contest fights in the dirt.

Maybe one day his book will be named “#1 selling” too!

I think your point was to turn things away from open discourse about the subject at hand and steer them towards bashing me.

And that seems to have backfired on you.

Nobody but you suggested that I would be in charge of anything. I’m just encouraging discourse.

Man that Cowboys and Aliens thing is really biting them in the ass, isn’t it?

They should have just given them out openly and been lauded for being generous and decent marketers.

Thing is, if something like this were going to work, either as a magazine or in a “free weekly” format (really like that idea), then we’d need one thing in place before we could do any of these wonderful things we want… namely, someone independent to run it. I mean, sheesh, just look at the posts that have cropped up here and elsewhere. Bickering, name-calling, crabbing, carping. It’s like kids on the playground, and I bet they get more done. How the hell are we supposed to do anything about anything unless we get past alla’ this kids’ stuff? If something like this proposed venture (whatever it turns out to be), doesn’t happen, then we’re ALL left doing the boo-hoo samba, and I for one don’t like dancin’ to that tune. There’s a lot of potential in opening avenues to new readers, and it could work… provided we all just learn to get along, or find someone else to run it. Frankly, I don’t see everyone just getting along. Bonus to having an outside party run it would be having someone with real-world business accumen making the tough decisions we ourselves may be reluctant to, ill-prepared to, or unable to.

I’m just sayin’…

You know who’s probably solving this perplexity and inventing the first teleporter right now, as we type?

T-Rex.

…or at least the guy who writes his material. Seriously, if you’re looking for someone who thinks outside the box about all things webcomicky…

When approaching this problem, hearing from comic strip editors is good. Hearing from the next generation is even better.

All too often, we tend to rely on our concept of what children are like. But– however outdated they might be now– comics like Garfield and Archie got into their current position by marketing directly to kids or whole families, not simply by associating with their peers.

I don’t want to denigrate this discussion; it’s worth having. But if you’re going to come up with a solution to reach the next generation, make sure you listen to what the next generation thinks! And by “the next generation” I don’t mean “your little brother” or “your children specifically.”

We tend to underestimate kids, or assume they’re simply younger and more innocent versions of ourselves. But the Internet gives entertainers greater tools than ever before to find out what their audience is really like, and what it really likes.

(I’m kickin’ myself in the butt here as I say this– I write a strip about teenagers that’s at least partly FOR self-aware teenagers, and there’s a lot more I could be doing to find out which parts of the strip ring true and what we should be doing next.)

Finally, with all due respect to several people on this list, I don’t see any reason why webcomics need to stay nerd-centric. This isn’t the direct market or even the bookstore market– there are no powerful barriers to entry here. There are already comics that are doing just fine without a whole lot of attention from the webcomics-community old-guard– the only reason we seem to know about SHOOTING WAR and UNSHELVED and LIFE’S A BLUFF is that they were featured in an MSM article or two, and they all succeed in every way that matters. No, none of those is an especially kid-friendly comic, but they’re not CTRL+ALT+DEL/PENNY ARCADE hybrids, either.

At present, newspaper comic strips are still an attractive goal for the majority of people looking to appeal to children. Dave Kellett is an exception and perhaps a harbinger of attitudes to come, but no more than that. The general demand for a solution to the coming problem Scott identifies is therefore low… for now. I have every confidence that as it rises, individual cartoonists who know children and know them well will rise to meet it.

But keep thinking about this by all means.

Maybe one of them will be you.

Wasn’t there a direct market sampler anthology a year or two ago (I’m blanking on the name)? It had exerpts from various indy comics printed cheaply on newsprint and sold at a pretty low price point.

I’m guessing that since I haven’t seen it in while that it didn’t make it. Attempts to do something similar with comic strips should probably consider said publication as a cautionary tale; figure out what mistakes they made and how to avoid them.

Instead of, uh, attacking scott, or you know talking about Platinum (???) I’ll actually post something semi constructive here, because it’s something i understand and have had WAY more experience with.

My old Gravity comic strip (as shitty as it was) got into 52 newspapers, pretty much ALL on our own. We did end up signing with a small syndicate nearer the end of our run, who it ended up like, seemed like they just wanted our mailing and contact list of secondary market newspapers so they could spam those editors with other features. I ended up quitting that, because frankly I didn’t like the censorship in the industry even on TINY things like an “eye patch” for god’s sake. And the big kicker?? There’s barely any money to speak of, and collecting it is even harder than making it. For them, its easier to go with syndicates who give them bulk deals. One newspaper in Ohio, they pay a cheapass flat fee and can pick and choose from whatever the syndicate offers, so in the secondary market, you’re competing with that and it’s tough to make money from papers…

That’s why Keenspot’s ideas were dead on to me, and I (uncontractually) signed on to head up the effort to dig into that market and open up relationships with editors in the secondary market. In a smaller town, THEY rule what goes into the papers and it’s not as hard to get on their good side if you’re honest about why you’re doing things, and if you’re actually giving them something they can use. Why do THEY need it? That’s the question anyone attempting it needs to mark down. Not why COMICS or CREATORS need it or want it… why do the editors want it? Why do the readers want or need it? Why should they pay for it online???? Those are the basic hurdles that crop up in almost every instance.

It’s not hard… but it IS tedious work. And something someone won’t do for FREE. And like Crosby said, it takes money. Of course they were aiming a bit higher on the food chain I do believe. If there’s anyone who could pull it off though, I think Keenspot could, because behind the scenes, they have all the research and talking DONE. Or at least they’ve looked into a lot more– I understand that self syndication in newspapers isn’t what anyone is proposing here, however, there are strong parallels to the discussion about just how that market works.

Scott, you have the cartooning chops, but you lack the experience and knowledge about that marketplace, so you’ll need to learn how the whole thing works before you just open endedly insult creators in that marketplace or systems put in place that ARE working for them. Years back When you ASKED ME for advice on the phone about getting your comics into papers, I told you it wasn’t hard at all, just tedious. I mentioned the “secondary market” and you didn’t know what that was or understand that then. It’s still there today.

SURE there are disgruntled cartoonists within that system. No one likes having something changed or redrawn that should have been let through (hell, talk to Frank Cho about that)– But there are TONS more people who make a decent living and like their comics. The ones you insult with blanket statements like “another comic about a baby and his dog”, well try to remember that that comic about a baby and his dog, might just be someone’s “baby”, like “PvP” is your thing. Even in their responses to you, they don’t really criticize your work, it’s not the polite or courteous thing to do. Especially when you’re looking to build bridges to that community.

That’s the only reason I said Kurtz wasn’t the guy to be heading it up. Talk about it all you want, conversations are golden– but it will take someone far more professional and courteous to pull off such a noble thing.

DJ,

The people whom I already work with find me professional and courteous enough. My peers find me likable. Image doesn’t seem to have any issues with me beyond my missing my deadlines. I have dozens of business and personal relationships with people.

If you truly examine who has issues with me, if you take a closer look at who insists on perpetuating the idea that I’m some uncontrollable ego-maniac…you discover only a handful of assholes.

Your character assassination is ineffective and misplaced. It’s no secret I’m opinionated and loud-mouthed. It hasn’t stopped anyone from working with me yet.

Not that you know of, for sure.

– and I mean that in not a smart ass way. Do you really think the way you’ve gone about yourself, that any syndicate editor, or cartoonist from that realm of play would actually go into business with you? If that proposal crossed their desk, what do you think they’d say? “Oh, this is the guy who dissed the NCS, The Reubens, the syndicates, belittled many succesful creators whose work appears in papers nationwide. Let’s talk business with this guy!”

Chris Crosby: You’re right. Find some money!

Scott Kurtz: You’re not a jerk! At least not as far as I’m concerned! You just seem to type before you edit!

DJ Coffman: You are not a character on television’s Full House with Bob Saget.

THE END

A “THE TRUTH” PRODUCTION

You know, this type of proposal has already been attempted. A number of comic collectives, including Tranplant Comics, have put out anthologies in print. I’m afraid I haven’t seen any numbers, and that’s really nobody’s business but the collectives’, but there are groups that are willing to try something like this. Why not interview them, and find out how those endevours turned out? If we can get some of that information, it could better serve as a way to figure out how to put something like Scott proposed together. There are groups of cartoonists trying to make it, syndicate free, into the realm of print while maintaining their webcomics as normal.

The bottom line, DJ, is that the syndicates or anyone for that matter, will work with the people whom they feel will benefit them the most.

I’m sure that whatever qualities I’ve displayed towards syndicate members is a mere drop in the bucket compared to what they’ve already dealt with in previous generations of cartoonists.

So yeah. They’ll work with me whether they personally like me or not, if they think my work will make them money.

Grow up.

Scott-
Which is more important to you?

That the conversation happens? Or that you’re part of it?

“Chris Crosby: Youâ€™re right. Find some money!”

OKEY DOKEY!

Well, it looks like the conversation doesn’t even HAPPEN if I’m not a part of it, Jeff.

So what do you think?

First of all. I’m a neutral party. Hopefully, nothing I say will be construed as an insult but hell, this is the inter-web.

Scott:
If you want to make a “groundbreaking” move such as this there are two things you seriously need to do.

One is to put all prejudices aside. All the hatred you have for Platinum, all this “knowledge” of the industry you claim to have. Can it.

You know jack. Your posts on the other website show that you know jack about syndicastion. The market has no place in cartooing? That’s ridiculous. You’re moving into a business area and the market means everything there.

Two:

Take stock of all the comickers out here right now. With comics like Beaver and Steve, Joe and Monkey, Scarygoround et al going unpublished in any major publications as you would call itm I would guess you have bigger fish to fry.

DJ:
All of a sudden you have connections. I’ve called you on the convenience at the time but maybe now you can make those count. Point taken, Scott Kurtz is noone to lead a revolution and after his post here R.Stevens probably is the man to usher in a new era. But even you have to admit. Scott has a point.

===Rant against people ended===

On the of chance all the egos get over themselves there is a chance you could get a supplement in comic magazines like wizard who’d love an idealistic property like “The Spirit Supplement” happening within and at least one of you knows a company who could make it happen.

It wouldn’t be a goldmine, but it’d be a new way to get webcomics out there in print, and maybe, just maybe, that’ll be enough to usher in the new generation.

Scott- the conversation takes place all of the time whether you’re there or not. “What can be done to improve/change the comics industry” and etc is something most creators think about and talk about regularly. People are worried about the super hero domination of the direct market, so they try to get attention to other genres in the hopes of finding new audiences. People want cheaper serialization than selling books by issues, and so Marvel put out a magazine collecting several issues of popular comics when their Ultimate line started, and it was cancelled shortly after, meanwhile Shonen Jump has been a success but only moderately, and has leadd to a second anthology targeted at women(there was another “phonebook” of manga translations which also offered original comics from Americans every week had to back up to a monthly schedule before being cancelled, I can’t remember the name unfortunately, but that they offered original comics in it could have been a big deal and a way for people to get their foot in. Instead, the people they gave the opportunity to initially couldn’t keep up with the schedule and were eventually dropped).

People want to break out of the direct market and comic store niche scene so now there’s an active push to get comics into bookstores. People are concerned about the state of newspaper comics and so there are “hipsters” trying to change the type of comics found in them and appeal to a younger crowd and editors around the country who are backing them. You already know about Keenspot’s attempt to break into newspapers(I had not heard about it until now for anyone keeping track).

People are thinking about this sort of thing and discussing it all of the time. Looking up “Keenspot free comics page” leads to a forum full of people discussing the issues of newspaper syndication and what can change things. There is no shortage of discussion. While it would be neat if your attempt at starting something works out well, the mere notion of simply talking about these kind of things with only the hopes of coming up with a workable idea is not special in any way.

Hey Dan– I totally said Scott had noble intentions, and it’s a good idea. Maybe by openly saying he’s the wrong man to lead such a thing (my opinion) wasn’t constructive, but I added at least a little bit of constructiveness to the conversation. Peace.

DJ. Scott Kurtz isn’t the man to lead a revolution like this. It’s one of the most constructive points you made but may not have been seen as such.

I appreciate his artistic integrity, to avoid changing his style to fit a medium, but if you want to get into print things sometimes have to change. Change is always inevitable.

Noble intentions or not, you have to be willing to go with the flow, and the flow would end up being a change in PvP on the fundamental level at some point. Some of his strips are out there and he’d need to reign them in a little bit.

There is a way to make this happen, it’d just take a lot of hard work and probably you 2 working together.

actualperson316@hotmail.com is my e-mail if anybody wants to discuss my ideas for an upheaval.

I’m confused now. PvP doesn’t need to change, and it won’t change– that’s not what Scott is proposing, and I don’t think he’s proposing getting PvP into papers in the current system if that’s what you suggest.

I think Scott was talking more about opening up the doors a little and building bridges between the two comic strip worlds. He was specifically noting Bill Waterson’s speech, which the jist of that speech was, maybe one day the cartoonists wouldn’t need syndicates, or would do their own thing, and that day is here already.

[...] Gary Tyrrell explains what PvP cartoonist Scott Kurtz meant by that confused open letter he wrote last week. Shorter Scott Kurtz: “Let’s all get together and decide what the next big thing in comics is going to be, so I can we can exploit it.” No word on whether or not he’d like a pony to go along with it. Xaviar Xerxes, meanwhile, thinks Kurtz might get a bit farther in such endeavors if it weren’t so obviously all about Scott Kurtz. (Okay, I’m paraphrasing a bit, there, bit I certainly think Kurtz would get a bit farther in such endeavors if it weren’t so obviously all about Scott Kurtz.) [...]

Well, I’ve been trying to respond, but my comments have been “mysteriously” marked as spam for the last couple of days.

It doesn’t matter anyway. No matter what I say, DJ and Xerxes and Journalista will twist my words into some Machiavellian intent.

The bottom line is that I got my own thing going. I don’t NEED to figure this out. I just really wanted to because I think we’re losing something important.

I don’t think kids these days are getting excited about any form of a “funny pages” and somebody should fix that.

So whoever is leading this, the key is in Watterson’s speech.

Good luck.

I’m still wondering why this never happened back around 1990. It seems like such a good idea in any of the proposed incarnations we’ve been talking about here and elsewhere (syndicate-printed/artist-printed supplement for papers, a magazine, weekly “free” paper). When Watterson gave his speech, it was pre-Internet/pre-popular Internet, so his comments then didn’t really take the ‘net into account. In some way, it seems the Internet took the place of his proposal, minus many of the established professional cartoonists he was aiming it at. I’d love nothing more than a return to the experience of reading the large-format printed Sunday Funnies, because even in the Internet Age, that IS something decent worth saving. Granted, it’s not for everyone. Some people today are so “plugged-in” they wouldn’t or couldn’t appreciate such an endeavor, and that’s fine. But print isn’t dead, and print as a medium will be around long after the newspapers have folded or moved online. So why the heck don’t we try it?

No need to say that. If you actually feel like something should be done want to do it, then get the best group you can together and if you come up with something move ahead with it and then make the announcements after that’s all settled.If it works out then Journalista can say “hurray” except probably you shouldn’t be too concerned with whether they are cheering you on in the first place?

Let’s look at Zoinks as a sample webcomic anthology publication. In one flip through, you can usually find at least one comic about baby eating, roofies or molestation, which is going to put off your average reader who picks it up off the street.
I’m not a big fan of censorship, but if webcomics are really going to get the mainstream audience, they’ve got to grow up and get rid of this “anything goes” attitude. Shock value is a crutch, and is pretty much guaranteed to keep a comic out of mainstream publication.

The suggestion of “an all comic strip newspaper” has been brought up repeatedly over the years.
Uh, people, it has been done before. It was called the invention of the comic book.

Yes, long before they put that world famous caped hero on the cover, tossing a car into a wall, the syndicates decided to make a little extra money off their comic strips by putting collections of them together in magazine form, on the cheap, and selling them in the news stands.

Strange how ideas come full circle.

I think I saw Time namechecked above. Here on their blog site is an entry, at the end of a string of entries which started with a discussion of Achewood. It reprints a comment acquired by the entry previous on the string, in which “a reader named Amy” notes much the same status quo as I described in the top comment here. But then she argues in the other direction than we are: that the fragmentization of the market is to be embraced (which kinda makes sense, since it’s the status quo), and that “personalization is the future.”

[...] And, lastly, News Free Comics. Hmmm. [...]

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