Less happy comic strip news
Not to rain on anyone’s award parade, but the weekend of the Reuben Awards was also the impetus for a relentlessly gloomy look at the future of comic strips in newspapers in the LA Times:
“There’s less you can do in the size of the panel that current newspapers provide,” said Stephan Pastis, creator of “Pearls Before Swine.”
“In the old days, comics were often full pages. Now, they’re squeezed down into tiny little boxes that don’t give much more room than what it takes to do a talking head. It’s sad to see something that was so important to cartooning becoming marginalized.”
The un-funny reality has made the print comics scene a challenge for newcomers, according to the Post’s Michael Cavna, TV/theater editor and the man behind its Comic Riffs blog.
“I think it’s brutally hard to break into print comics right now,” Cavna said. “It’s like ‘Star Wars,’ when you’re trying to shoot to get the Death Star . . . that tiny little room of error — that’s where cartoonists are left in the print world. The window is yet narrower to succeed.”
05/26/09 at 5:28 pm
If only there was a publication platform that was flexible enough to present any kind of canvas that a creator could use…
05/26/09 at 10:14 pm
Maakies, American Elf and Tom the Dancing Bug are Brilliant though. Maybe its just time for something new…
05/29/09 at 12:25 am
[…] I don’t know if this strip news has been overly happy but here is less happy strip news. Maybe you rooted for one of the just announced Reuben winners? […]
05/29/09 at 10:52 am
And who was the first newspaper cartoonist to accept the modern, tiny size?
Charles Schulz.