Rants & Raves

BETWEEN FRIENDS

Canadian cartooner Sandra Bell-Lundy, who produces Between Friends, a strip featuring several life-long women friends, did a special series of strips to coincide with Mother’s Day — strips about the necessity for women to have mammograms regularly. The three Sunday-style strips are flash-animated and voiced at thingamaboob.ca , a site sponsored by the Canadian Cancer Society. At her blog, Bell-Lundy writes: “When I was approached to help out with this campaign, I was excited for a couple of reasons. One, of course, was because I hought it was a valuable message. Secondly, I thought the fit was perfect. Between Friends is very women-focused, and I felt the targeted audience would relate very well to my characters. And lastly, because it was an opportunity to stretch a bit and do something a bit new and challenging — all within the comfort zone of my ‘area of expertise.’” She admits that she was “a bit nervous about coming up with a little storyline for the mammogram message.” But she needn’t have worried: she pulled it off with her usual aplomb. “As it turned out,” she concludes, “it wasn’t really all that difficult because it wasn’t that much of a stretch from the way I normally work.”

BOTTOM LINE

Several newspapers have lately sought to improve their bottom line by eliminating the expense of syndicate fees, dropping comic strips from their line-ups. Some of those papers — including the Florida Times-Union and the Oregonian — encountered such vociferous objection from readers that they scrapped their plans. Said Comic Riffs’ Michael Cavna, quoted in May’s Editor & Publisher: “Most daily newspapers are struggling to survive. Most syndicated cartoonists are struggling to hold on to clients. In the middle of these perilous crossed train tracks is one, if not two, badly hurting business models.” In objecting to the practice of making ends meet by dropping comics, Cavna offered an analogy: “Comics are your bedroom furniture. You can burn them for a little short-term, shortsighted heat savings — and your structure will still stand. But many people won’t want to live there much longer.”

TED RALL'S NEW BOOK

In his new book, The Year of Living Dangerously, Ted Rall says he returns to the autobiographical graphic novel form, but only as the writer: drawing the book is Pablo J. Callejo. The memoir recounts Rall’s adventures with homelessness when he was a college student in New York City in the 1980s. One hopes this new work will be somewhat less outlandishly tasteless than his nefarious My War with Brian of some years ago.

MUTTS TARGETS PUPPY MILLS

In his Mutts, Patrick McDonnell, who has often touted animal shelters in the strip, now takes after the puppy mill industry. He may have done this before, but if he did, I’ve missed it; it may be a new crusade. In the Sunday strip for June 14, we see a cute but miserable dog, who says: “I’m a breeding dog at a puppy mill. I’ve lived in this small cage my entire life. My feet have never touched God’s earth. I’ve had eleven litters of ‘pet store pedigree puppies.’ I’m matted, filthy and drained. This is no life. I had no human contact or kindness — until Scotlund rescued me,” he concludes, now pictured cuddled in the arms of his new owner, who may be an actual person leading the campaign against puppy mills. It won’t take anything more than this strip to make a convert of me.

THE ST. LOUIS REFUGEE SHIP BLUES

On June 24, the Washington Post published Art Spiegelman’s comic strip editorial depicting editorial cartoonists’ reaction in 1939 to the U.S. government’s refusal to let 900 European Jews fleeing Nazi German disembark from the ship that brought them to America’s shores; the ship was forced to return to Europe, where the passengers presumably walked down the gangplank to meet the fate Hitler had in store for them. June 24 was the 70^th anniversary of the Jews getting off the ship, the St. Louis, back in Europe. Spiegelman's cartoon can be seen full-size here.

The cartoon incorporates several editorial cartoons of the day, some that were innocuous to the point of ignorance, a couple, including one by Herblock, that were a little more vigorous in their criticism of the U.S. government. In closing the page, Spiegelman depicts himself as the Maus and says: “Political cartoons now mostly offer bland (but not always bland) topical ‘laffs’ and editorial cartoonists are dying off even faster than the newspapers that hire them” — a statement that has it both ways: it’s critical of editoonists for being bland but also draws attention to their plight, with which Spiegelman seems sympathetic. Oddly, as he says this, the Maus is holding Barry Blitt’s infamous The New Yorker cover of the Obamas committing a fist bump. Is this Spiegelman’s example of a hard-hitting political cartoon?  — a cartoonish drawing that was so ambiguous in its meaning that it prompted an uproar in all directions?

Snide observers of Spiegelman July 24 effort marveled that the comic strip aroused no comment, almost as if no one had seen it. Does this mean, wondered one blithe spirit, that Spiegelman has lost clout and is no longer The Cartoonist Everyone Pays Attention To? The last panel in the strip is another of Spiegelman’s multi-layered visuals, so laden with meaning that its impact is nearly lost: the Maus is wearing one of those spherical black bombs on his head (like the Muhammad in the Danish cartoon) and saying, “Sigh — it’s really hard to say the right thing.” Is the Maus, then, Muhammad-like, a prophet? Does Spiegelman expect to be assaulted, like the Danes were, for expressing his political opinions? Does he hope to be attacked? Or is this Spiegelman’s symbol of The Cartoonist, an irreverent iconoclastic ink-slinger perpetually hoping to do the “right thing” but always, inevitably, criticized for it? Or does the Maus in the picture signify that pictures are simply too ambiguous to make statements alone without words? Visit the picture, see for yourself, and then decide.

ZAPIRO

 In Jacob Zuma’s South Africa, a documentary on political satire was, for the second time, cancelled. We reported previously that the program had aired on May 25, but that, it seems, was only the scheduled broadcast date; it didn’t actually happen. But the program was posted on the Mail & Guardian’s website on Wednesday, May 27, and had been downloaded 3,500 times in the next 24 hours, according to a report at iol.co.za. "It's almost brought the site down due to the number of hits  we're getting,” said the technical manager for M&G Online, Jason Norwood-Young. The documentary features interviews with the now legendary Zapiro, the pen-name of cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, and Jesse Duarte, spokesman for the African National Congress, Zuma’s party. “Perhaps most significantly, it shows a Zapiro cartoon of ANC president Jacob Zuma — before he became president of South Africa — about to rape a depiction of Lady Justice while she is held down by his political allies. That cartoon unleashed a storm of controversy at the time of its publication, as Zuma was involved in a court bid to have his corruption charges dropped.” Zuma, contending that the cartoon attacks his dignity, is suing Zapiro for libel. The tv channel, South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), state operated, is now widely supposed to be under the thumb of the ANC and Zuma.

GOOGLE

Google recently introduced an insidious program to “publish” artwork online without paying for it by convincing some artists that the “exposure” they’d get on Google would be sufficient recompense. Some artists declined the so-called privilege, earning a soupcon of scorn from a few self-righteous entrepreneurial observers. The Google scheme sounds like a great idea, but I haven’t heard anywhere that this “opportunity,” which is offered by numerous others, has worked for any notable number of the populace. Huffington Post thrives on a similar machination: it “publishes” hundreds of articles, mostly opinion pieces, by an array of writers, some well-known, others not, but doesn’t pay anyone anything. I don’t know that any of the Huffington Post writers have been catapulted into either notoriety or wealth by reason of their “exposure” on Huffington’s blab site; the only writers that are famous were famous before they began contributing. Huffington herself is doubtless the only one who pockets any reasonable income from the site, and that, presumably, is from the advertising run on the site.

Google, however, makes lots of money. So when it announced its ploy to justify using artwork without paying for it, Ted Rall, the current president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, was enraged — as were many of his cohorts — and he fired off a missile to the New York Times, which published it on June 18; to wit (in italics): 

And Now a Word From the Artists: Pay for Our Work

To the Editor: Re "Use Their Work Free? Some Artists Say No to Google" (Business Day, June 15): If every creator of intellectual property had the moxie of the illustrators who refused Google's request to use their artwork for free in exchange for "exposure," today's Internet vampires wouldn't be able to exploit them. It's offensive that a company that reports annual profits in the billions refuses to pay independent artists for their labor. Sadly, the Web revolution has turned "information wants to be free" into a mantra. Whether it's illustrators, cartoonists or musicians, working for free ought to have gone out with slavery. Congress ought to act to make it illegal for a profitable corporation to solicit work without paying for it.

Postscript: Rumor is, by the way, that the Philadelphia papers, Daily News and Enquirer, will begin charging for online content by the end of the year.

A NEW HEROINE AT DISNEY

A new animated princess will debut from the Mouse House this Christmas. Her name is Tiana, she is the lead character in "The Princess and the Frog," set in New Orleans against a Creole backdrop, a novel setting for the classic fairytale. In another novelty, Tiana is a waitress who kisses a frog prince only to become a frog herself. A third novelty, she is African American, the first Disney princess of that ethnicity. Already questions are circulating about “whether Disney is racially sensitive enough to pull this off and whether the film conquers stereotypes or reinforces them,” said reporter Duane Dudek at the Journal Sentinel online site. “Similar questions were raised by Arab Americans over ‘Aladdin,’ and American Indians about ‘Pocohontas.’ And early Disney films like ‘Song of the South’ and ‘Dumbo’ [which included a flock of crows talking in a dialect unmistakably African American] [were accused of reinforcing] the racial stereotypes of the times.” Maybe, perhaps in “Song of the South” and “Dumbo,” which were undeniably products of their day, but I thought Disney’s treatment of Pocohontas was pretty even-handed; I was surprised, albeit pleased, that the Studio would even attempt such a minority character in the present fevered racial climate. In any case, I look forward to seeing a Disneyfied African American princess almost as much as I am eagerly anticipating the frog.

IMMORTALIZED IN STATUES

Naperville, Illinois will soon unveil a 9-foot-tall, one-ton sculpted likeness of Dick Tracy, whose cleaver-chin profile has been gracing the pages of the nation’s newspapers for 77 years. The statue, the 35th piece of artwork erected in Naperville by the non-profit Century Walk Corp., will depict the iconic sleuth in a familiar pose — using his two-way wrist radio to talk to a colleague. Bob Goldsborough at the Chicago Tribune reports that dedication is scheduled for October 4, the 78th anniversary of the debut of the comic strip concocted and sustained by Chester Gould and, after Gould’s death, chiefly by Dick Locher. Locher, who had assisted Gould briefly, 1957-61, has lived in Naperville for the last 40 years, drawing editorial cartoons for the Chicago Tribune since 1972 and winning a Pulitzer in 1983, the year he returned to Dick Tracy full-time.

Locher created an 11-inch model for the sculpture, which, if memory serves, was originally intended to be installed in Woodstock, Illinois, Gould’s hometown, where the Dick Tracy Museum, founded in 1991, operated until last year, when it closed for lack of funding.  Other comic strip characters have been immortalized in statues. Downstate Metropolis has a Superman statue, and Santa Rosa,California, sports a bronze Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe are in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a statue of Andy Gump of the vintage strip, The Gumps, is on display in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.  A limestone Steve Canyon stands at the junction of U.S. Highways 6 and 40 at the edge of Idaho Springs, Colorado, and Popeye looms in at least two cities, creator E.C. Segar’s home town of Chester in Illinois, and Crystal City, Texas, which calls itself “the world capital of spinach.”  And Joe Palooka stands at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the home town of his creator, Ham Fisher.

S. CLAY WILSON

S. Clay Wilson is doing better. He’s not yet at home with his partner, Lorraine Chamberlain — he’s still at a rehab center near Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where he’s been after suffering a head injury — but he’s drawing “like a madman,” she said. “He’s still at the rehab center because he can’t go out by himself without getting lost, and he can’t problem solve.” But he’s drawing: “He’s been doing incredible stuff,” she said. “He’s done seven really incredible black-and-white drawings. The Checkered Demon is in all of them.”

Here is visual evidence of  Wilson’s vitality:

 

An historic photograph of “Mount Rushmore”: Paul Mavrides, Spain Rodriguez, R. Crumb, and S. Clay Wilson having a cup of coffee at Starbucks. When’s the last time they were all together? If ever? Print out this picture and save it for your grandchildren. And read Steve Duin's The Oregonian story on Wilson and this gathering.

BOOK EXPO AMERICA

“Between the collapsing banking industry and all the polar bears swimming around looking for their ice caps” (as Neely Harris so memorably puts it in the July-August issue of Mental Floss), it’s a comfort to know in this oft-derided corner of entrepreneurial America that comics are doing pretty well, thank you. At the annual Book Expo America, which took place in late May or early June (the writers from whose June 1 report for PW Comics Week I derive the ensuing information don’t say when the event they’re reporting on actually transpired; they were too busy, one assumes, assembling other, less obvious, data), “comics publishers big and small seemed to have nothing but praise for this year’s BEA, citing a steady stream of foot traffic, meetings, deals and new opportunities during the show.

And the praise,” continue Calvin Reid and Heidi MacDonald, “wasn't only about business deals and networking; such comics as David Small's Stitches, Bloomsbury USA's Logicomix: an Epic Search For Truth and R. Crumb's Genesis Illustrated, were among the biggest and most talked about books at BEA. ... Maybe it's because comics and related materials seem to do well despite the economy or maybe it's because comics publishers, mainstreamed into the book industry only over the last 7 or 8 years, are still riding a wave of trade and educational recognition by the book world.” Reid and MacDonald talked to every comics/graphic novel publisher they could find, and they all were enthusiastic about the business they were doing with buyers, librarians, teachers, and even independent general bookstores “looking to get involved in the category.”

 DC Comics wasn’t there, but Marvel showed off its new books. Macmillan didn’t exhibit, but many of its imprints were displaying material; Viz Media wasn’t in the hall either, but it was holding meetings in an off-floor room set up by its distributor, Simon & Schuster. “Comics stole the show at the Editors Buzz Panel, a venue reserved for the biggest adult books at the show. A number of publishing professionals approached PWCW to praise Caldecott award-winning illustrator Small's disturbing new graphic memoir Stitches —  at the panel, W.W. Norton executive editor Robert Weil called it a book about a life ‘so terrifying it could have been imagined by Kafka’ — and said it was the most ‘exciting’ book presented during the panel.”

SPILLED BEANS

Someone at Archie Comics spilled the beans to Megan O’Toole at the National Post: it is apparently raven-tressed rich bitch Veronica Lake who will be the allegedly lucky lady to receive Archie Andrews proposal of marriage later this summer (starting in Archie No. 600). Archie is “going for wealth over sweetness,” said O’Toole, alluding to the other member of the eternal Archie triangle, the proverbial pretty girl next door, blonde Betty Cooper.

Most of those writing about this watershed event, including O’Toole, assume that hereafter, the Archie titles will be about a married man. But as we observed earlier, the forthcoming nuptials are likely one of those Elseworld events that never impinge upon the continuing titles. Apart from being a blatant promotional gimmick, this maneuver also satisfies the desire of the writer, Michael Uslan, a lifetime fan of the Archie gang, who, like all of us males, secretly wants to achieve romantic bliss with an exotic beauty like Veronica instead of the girl next door, Betty, however comely she may be. We all wind up with Bettys but we still dream, as does Uslan, of Veronicas.

While the readership of the Archie comic books has probably expanded and, to some extent, grown older as comics fandom itself has grown over the last couple decades, my guess is that the usual reader of the Archie line is still, as before, a teenage girl. And my next guess is that the average teenage female reader would rather Archie marry Betty because, I suppose, the average reader sees herself more as the "girl next door" than as the exotic beauty. So in satisfying his primal urge, Uslan is probably frustrating the Archie comics’ most loyal readership. But that's mere guesswork.

ACTION COMICS

According to the Denver Post’s account, Action Comics No. 1 recently sold for $317,200 in an online auction. The previous owner, who bought it when he was 9 in 1950, paid 35 cents for it. Only 100 copies of this old funnybook are said to exist.

THE DENVER DEBACLE

Here’s some good albeit ironic news: Editor & Publisher notes that United Media Syndicate profits jumped 36% in the fourth quarter last year, the same quarter that Scripps, United Media’s parent, offered Denver’s Rocky Mountain News for sale, closing it in February 2009 because it couldn’t afford to continue losing money in the newspaper division. United Media’s revenue for the last 2008 quarter increased 20% to $30.9 million, compared with $25.7 million in the year-ago period, Scripps said.“Scripps attributed the United Media profit increase to the decision by the ABC television network to air 13 ‘Peanuts’ specials in the quarter. United Media syndicates Peanuts, Dilbert, Marmaduke and about 150 other comics and features.” You’d think — wouldn’t you? — that an advantage to being part of a huge communications enterprise is that the profitable elements in the operation would support the unprofitable parts, seeing them through such hard times as ours. Not at Scripps.

Scripps, which owns 16 newspapers around the country and 10 TV stations, has other plans. In the June issue of 5280, a Denver magazine the numerical name of which reminds us that this is the Mile High City, Maximillian Potter, the magazine’s executive editor, supplies what I’m persuaded is the “real reason” that Denver’s 155-year-old Rocky Mountain News died a few months ago.

Yes, it’s true that the paper was losing better than $1 million a month, roughly $16 million a year. There may not be enough of the aforementioned $30.9 million left after operating costs to float the News outright, but as Potter said, “Scripps is in the best financial shape of any newspaper company in America.” So while accountants wouldn’t like robbing Peter to pay for Paul, Scripps, with United Media’s help, it could have carried the News until better times. If, that is, Scripps hadn’t wanted to kill the paper. Scripps wanted the News to die an ignominious death, unwanted, unsaleable. So it put the paper up for sale and allowed only a month for some interested party to come forward. None did. A month isn’t, really, long enough for any interested party to examine the prospects and then put together an offer.

But Scripps didn’t care: its plan was of another sort altogether. Turns out that if the News could be declared “worthless,” Scripps could pull the plug on it and gain a $70 million tax advantage. If the paper wouldn’t sell, it was, perforce, “worthless.” And Scripps was suddenly, effectively, $70 million to the good — money it could use in its new ventures into cable TV, Home and Garden Television and the Food Network, and its Internet enterprises, which is where Scripps has been investing for several years. It folded four of its newspapers between 2000 and 2008; now, with the News, a fifth has withered away. Writes Potter: “Shutting down newspapers was merely the opportunity cost of doing business.” And the business Scripps is doing these days is only marginally the newspaper business.

The only winner in the Denver debacle was, sadly — no one wants to win this way — the comics section. The Denver Post, while the expired News was still warm, announced that it would add all of the News comics to its own roster, hoping, thereby, to seduce News subscribers to the Post. Too soon to say, yet, if it has worked.

STANLEY WINNER NAMED

Down Under, David Rowe, whose forte is topical comedy — caricatures and political cartoons — won the Stanley, the Australian “cartoonist of the year” trophy from the Australian Cartoonists Association, during the group’s annual get-together last November. The USA’s Jim Borgman, retired editoonist and still the rendering half of Zits, which he produces with Jerry Scott, was a special guest. The pertinent issue of the ACA’s magazine, Inkspot, also remembered the work of the late William Ellis Green (WEG), a cartooning institution in the country who made headlines in 2006 by caricaturing a robber who Green saw trying to pinch the cartoonist’s bicycle; the likeness amazed the local constabulary (“The sketch only took him three or four seconds,” perhaps a slight exaggeration) and led within 30 minutes to the arrest of the culprit.

THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

Steve Greenberg, writing in his blog at blog.cagle.com, expressed a common criticism of newspaper management. Commenting on the firing of Bill Garner at the Washington Times, Greenberg said: “Cutting the best visual people as a strategy to survive in an increasingly visual age is already idiotic, but this situation [at the Washington Times] has a couple additional twists. First, the entire editorial page staff of a dozen people was forced to reapply for their own jobs. This loathsome practice has been used in places such as the Oakland Tribune and the Long Beach Press Telegram as a tool to bust unions, throw out seniority, and humiliate workers by rehiring them, often at drastically reduced salaries. But the real pretzel logic here is in the words of the Times’ associate publisher and general manager Richard Amberg, who stated the Times wanted to use less syndicated material and more of its own content: “We want fresh content, timely content, lively content,” he said. “Things (syndicates) offer appear on the Web before they are syndicated.

“So what does he do?” Greenberg asks sarcastically: “He cuts the cartoonist — some of that fresh content he says he values — meaning they’ll no doubt run syndicated cartoons instead — some of that not-fresh, not-unique content he seems to dislike — in direct contradiction of his supposed goals. Unbelievable. And to lose such an important voice [Garner’s], one that’s been there since 1983, in a paper that’s trying to offer the alternative view to the Washington Post, is sad … and stupid. Publishers across the country have whacked about 20 staff editorial cartoonist positions in the past year. These all provided fresh, unique content to their newspapers, and were pretty much all replaced by the not-unique content of syndicated cartoons. The less unique content a paper has to offer, the less grip they have on existing readers, who may migrate to reading news online — costing subscriptions, which cuts newspaper revenues, which accelerates the downward spiral. And on it goes.”

FOLLOW THE FAD: DANCING WITH THE STARS

Bang! Tango No. 1 has cover art by Howard Chaykin, and that’s its highest recommendation. The book opens on a rainy New York streetscene with Vini running away — from what, we don’t exactly know except that his flight seems to leave a friend in the lurch. When next we meet him, three years later, he’s a dance king who avoids going to New York, where he’ll undoubtedly encounter a vengeful past. You have to be into “Dancing with the Stars” to engage with this book, I think: we’re introduced to Vini’s “new life” as a dancer with three pages of dancing and no verbiage.

Joe Kelly who created the title with penciller Adrian Sibar ladles in plenty of sexual content: Vini sleeps with his dancing partner and, at the end of this issue, balls her on the roof (discretely, in silhouette) after ripping her clothes off in a notably passionate moment. This culminates the issue’s episode, a quarrel between the two over Vincent’s reluctance to go to New York where all the big dance competitions are. Another reason for his rageful rooftop ravishing, though, is the appearance halfway through the issue of Autumn, a woman from his New York past who wants him to help her escape being blackmailed. He finally agrees — provided she disappear and never come into his life again. We don’t know exactly their past relationship; nor what she’s being blackmailed about — hence, the cliffhanger. Sibar’s pencils, inked by Rodney Ramos, are thoroughly competent, his women leggy and busty without being overblown, but the attention given to Vini’s lips is a little fussy for me, as are various of the featherings and noodlings. But the storytelling is just fine, thank you.

PATSY WALKER: HELLCAT

I picked up three of the five Patsy Walker: Hellcat title, mostly because I wanted to see how Patsy Walker could become a superheroine. She does it by prattling wittily throughout every combative encounter. The story is not at all complicated, so vacuous, in fact, that I don’t want to re-visit it. Something about polar bears and giant wolves in the northern clime. Mostly it’s writer Kathryn Immonen’s excuse for Hellcat to cavort around, which she does in the most pleasing visuals in any costume caper comic hereabouts: David Lafuente gives us a heroine in her fighting togs, shapely without being “naked” under the spandex. Lovely. I’d buy the missing numbers in this sequence in a minute if I could find ’em. Another big plus for the title: the first page recaps what has gone before so that those with marginally retentive brains, like me, can find our way into the ensuing adventure without stumbling around in the dark for the first six pages. Batwriters should take note.