As a weekly newspaper columnist for several years and now nearly three-year daily blogger, I have no patience for the "I couldn't think of anything" column, in which Your Humble Correspondent bemoans his lack of inspiration for the requisite 500 words, generally at that point when having a column has stopped being a novelty and has become a job.
Lewis Grizzard famously observed that “Being a newspaper columnist is like being married to a nymphomaniac. It’s great for the first two weeks.”
From what I understand, becoming a syndicated cartoonist is much the same, but I don't think this cartoon is about lacking an idea so much as being unable to get the funny onto the paper, which is a different thing. It's more a matter of translation than of inspiration, though, of course, the deadline, and the breadline, are certainly in there some place.
In which context, the difference between not having an idea and not having an idea you can wrestle into shape is really immaterial.
Adding to this is that high-achievers -- including the type of cartoonists with the drive and persistence to get syndicated -- almost invariably suffer from Imposter Syndrome: Not the fear of what will happen if everyone finds out they have no actual talent, but what will happen when everyone finds out they have no actual talent.
It doesn't help when people write letters to the editor saying that your cartoon sucks, or some Internet wiseass writes a blog entry -- or even builds an entire blog -- around the notion.
The other day, somebody posted a link at Facebook to a vicious takedown of a strip, and what bothered me about it was that the guy was ripping on it as if he mattered. Nothing about "I think" or "I feel." No, he was, like, the Pope of Cartooning, speaking ex cathedra. This strip sucks and I'm an expert.
Now, it may be helpful to consider that, if you really were married to a nymphomaniac, she could go spend about half an hour in a dark room with the Pope of Cartooning and cure whatever makes him act the way he does.
However, in the absence of such a spouse, here's something else that might be helpful:
GoComics tracks the number of people who subscribe to each comic strip on their site, either by email or on a custom page, and the other day somebody posted the current list as a comment over at The Daily Cartoonist.
Here's the Top 50 (Remember, only among their strips.)
Do you see the pattern? Can you see what it is that makes a comic strip popular and successful?
No, me neither. Because there isn't one.
But here's something: As it says in the rail of this blog, I read about 120 strips a day. That's an old number that I'm not inclined to update, though I'm sure I've added more than I've dropped.
I have 95 strips on my GoComics page, not counting a separate page for political cartoons
(Yes, a little obsessive. Not the point.)
I only follow 28 of those 50 most-popular comics. Just a tad over half.
Which means that there are a whole lot of comics that I think are pretty good that aren't on the list of the most popular comics at GoComics. And there are quite a few comics that are on the list of the most popular comics at GoComics that I don't think are even worth bothering with.
And I'm not going to list them, or rip on them, because, you know what? It doesn't freaking matter what I think.
I mean, thanks for coming by to find out anyway.
But when somebody starts going off on whether some cartoon strip is "good" or not, don't take it too seriously. Cartooning doesn't have a Pope.
And, if you are a cartoonist and you just don't know what to say when you're being criticized, let me tell you a little story:
Back in the early 1970s, there was a two-night bluegrass concert at Red Rocks outside of Denver, with the hosts being the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who brought along a rising young comic who was a friend of theirs and part of the Aspen scene named Steve Martin to act as emcee.
I'd seen Steve Martin on Carson once or twice -- Saturday Night Live didn't exist yet -- and he did some material between acts that I'd seen there, about waxing his dog and a thing with an arrow through his head, and he was funny and the crowd liked him.
But, being such a young comic, he didn't have two nights worth of material, so, on the second night, he did some of the same stuff, but it was funny and some of the audience was new and nobody cared, except somebody down front, who apparently was riding him about repeating himself.
And for awhile he brushed it off, and then he made a few funny cracks back, and yet, after each act, as the next band was setting up and he was out there keeping the audience entertained, the guy would start in on him again.
Finally, he said something to the guy that I've never forgotten, and, in fact, whenever I'm in a situation where I've tried to be polite and I've tried to be diplomatic and I've really extended myself to reach out to someone and reason with him, and things don't seem to be working out between us, I think back to what Steve said, and I'll admit I've borrowed his words, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, if you borrowed them, too, because, finally, when nothing else worked and the heckler just wouldn't give him a break, Steve walked to the edge of the stage and he looked down at the guy and, I'll never forget it, he said, "Hey, fuck you, man. Shut up."
And got the biggest applause of the night.
Bravo!
Posted by: Rich Powell | 10/16/2012 at 07:57 AM
You know that if you ever do that thing in the penultimate paragraph again I'll heckle you for it, right?
But I sure liked it this time around.
Posted by: Sherwood Harrington | 10/16/2012 at 10:22 AM
Criticism is a topic near to my heart. Good analysis and criticism is interesting and worthwhile, even if it comes from obscure bloggers who read 120+ strips per day (ahem). The all-purpose wounded response to critics, "You couldn't do any better," carries no weight with me. If a critic had to paint better than Rembrandt to have an opinion on Rembrandt (or be in the military to opine on military policy or be a woman to opine on women's issues, but those are peeves for another day), hardly anyone could criticize anything.
I'm not disagreeing with you--in fact I agree 97%--just looking at different facets. Martin's comeback to the heckler is funny, but sometimes someone telling you you suck is accurate and valuable feedback that does you a service.
I read the same blog post you did, thought it was a fair if inelegant analysis (especially damning to me were the examples of the cartoonist reusing the same gags within a few months), and never would have written anything like it myself. First, I've been on the receiving end, which, like a hanging in a fortnight, concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Second, I once lipped off on Usenet about a comic strip I thought was laughably lame and promptly got a note from the cartoonist himself warmly thanking me for my interest. That taught me a few things simultaneously: you never know who's reading; my opinion of the strip wasn't particularly strong or well thought out; when I really studied the strip, it was actually quite a good example of the type of feature it was intended to be; I was embarrassed; and the cartoonist was a very classy guy for pretending I hadn't insulted him. We've had a nice relationship since.
I also know my judgment is suspect, or at least not always a good barometer. There are critical darlings in the comics field whose work I don't grok or actively dislike. There are comics in the paper that, were I King of the Syndicates, would've never seen print, including some of the most successful. One story I don't mind telling because it's entirely on me is that I was at the New York ComicCon the day Jeff Kinney handed my editor his proposal for "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." I was the second person to read it, and I didn't get it. My editor did. And he was right and I was wrong and that's why Jeff's sold 70 million books and I haven't.
In the end, my policy is one of the most ancient and reliable: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. It's easy to sit on the sidelines picking and sniping; in my Book O' Life anyone who takes the risk of creating anything, even badly, is worth a hundred of them (ref. Teddy Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena").
Posted by: Brian Fies | 10/16/2012 at 11:45 AM