It's April 1. Do you know where your fools are?

April Fool's Day on the comics page is kind of superfluous, but Mark Parisi manages to get off a good gag in Off The Mark. As a gag-a-day strip, he's got a lot of freedom to play around with, but, in this case, the key is to place April Fool's Day in a context where joking is not only inappropriate but hilariously so.

And given that he has no ongoing characters, he faces the challenge of creating context in a single panel, which too often leads to awkward, lame "Henry always ... on April Fool's Day" dialog-driven jokes about standard domestic whatever.

By going to the instantly recognizable context of Death, Parisi can then put his effort into building the humor around the contrast of the soon-to-be-Loved-One not simply being incredulous but being highly amused, while Death is not so much thwarted as turned into a put-upon victim -- if only momentarily.

In that sense, the comic reversal is bolstered by the fact that Death IS an established character and our expectations of him are that he does not approach his job like the nebbish he is here.

Yes, Woody Allen and Monty Python have both played this game, but that's not bad company to be in.

 

It's also a day well-crafted for the ongoing war of wits between Caulfield and Mrs. Olsen in Frazz.

It's not hard for a strip with established characters to set up an April Fool's scenario, but this pairing is particularly well-suited because they do have a relationship in which there's no stretch to make the gag work. Caulfield would do this, yes, and she'd respond that way, yes.

And we're as uncertain as she is: Given their history, Caulfield's not yanking her chain would qualify as an April Fool's prank.

 

April 1 is also a good day for crossovers, and Jim Horwitz does a couple of things in Watson that work: First of all, he brings a couple of pets into his own pet-driven strip, which is better than simply dragging in a couple of characters more or less at random.

The other thing he does is to play on the contrast in styles between his own crowded panels and the more wide-open approach Patrick McDonnell uses, as well as aping -- in addition to the Herriman style art McDonnell employs -- his framing, title and fonts. 

I'm not a huge fan of crossovers and think they should be rare, since the critical element of surprise fades with overuse. But this is a really nice overall homage, wherein seeing Horwitz's own characters done in McDonnell's style is a notable twist in itself.

 

And now for something not different enough:

And speaking of consciously copying other people's styles, Tom Richmond, one of the great caricature/parodists of the form (and president of the National Cartoonists Society) has weighed in on the topic of satire and homage versus exploitation and copyright violation.

Specifically, he discusses merchants who set up at comic conventions to sell knock-offs of other people's work, which conversation puts him in the expert position of having to weave through some pensees about his own profession of drawing other people's characters.

There is a difference between parody and homage and simply ripping off another artist. He lays it out well and it ought to be laid out more often and more publicly.

And, yes, given what Tom describes as a common practice at cons, it is indeed funny that the Big Con is suing one of the little Cons over trademark infringement.

(Richmond didn't say that, I did. Send over your best petrophlebotomist.)

 

Anyway, ripping off cartoonists is a topic close to my own heart, since the comics you see here every day are owned by other people.

Since I'm (A) commenting as a critic, (B) encouraging you to become fans of those people and (C) barely making enough money to pay for the cost of hosting the blog, I'm comfortable that this falls under "fair use," but I did contact some syndicate folks before I launched, not so much for a blessing as to get a head's up on any specific landmines I might wander into.

I do hear people say that they've started following strips and artists they first encountered here, so that's good, but I get a little nervous about cartoonists whose work I admire too much.

That is, there's a line that you cross over when you draw from the same well too often, and I sometimes pass over something I liked simply because I've featured the same artist's work too many times too recently, and I don't want to seem as if I'm running a mirror site for someone else's copyrighted work.

(While I'm on that topic, BTW, cartoonists featured here are welcome to drop me an email and let me know which address they prefer to see linked. A few have, and I honor those requests.)

Here's a link to Tom's overall blog post on the topic, and one to his Q&A follow up, as well as one to the Facebook posting by Scott Shaw that touched it all off.

It's particularly timely not only because San Diego Comic Con is coming up, but also because conventions in general have become Big Business, and the more these extravaganzas turn into plug-fests for movies and TV shows and venues for elaborate semi-pro cosplay, the more the actual cartoonists begin to question the value they get out of being there at all.

Of course, it is a chance to be seen, at least if Nichelle Nichols or the guy dressed as Wolverine happens to stand next to your table for awhile. 

Thing is, though, when some magazine with no art budget asks you to work for "the exposure," they don't have the nerve to be charging you booth rental.

(My advice to fans? If you want to see superheroes, go to Universal Studios. If you want to meet artists, go to the smaller cons. Then again, I'm claustrophobic and YMMV.)

 

Comments

[Bob Abrahams]

Cartoonists find it especially problematic when people post their comics online after removing things like their signature and.or the copyright and/or modifying the cartoon, possibly with different dialog content. Some people seem to work quite hard to make these changes without making it look like they are changes. Others are just trimming down the size. Either way, that's not permitted and the author can insist on correction or take other action.
As you said, you are publishing commentary, you don't really make money on this, and you always include the entire cartoon. That does seem to be Fair Use.

[Mike Peterson]

Somehow, people apparently feel that it's okay to repost if you take off the identifying signature, and I'm not taking the "resizing" argument. There was one of David Horsey's cartoons being passed around by authors, and someone had not simply trimmed his sig but had clone-stamped it out, which is nuts, given how distinctive his style is, with or without his name on it.

But while they're robbing him of recognition, setting up a booth to sell copies of other people's work is a step beyond that.

And if the amateur artist who thinks his version of a superhero is fair use can be forgiven for his ignorance, the people selling him the booth space certainly should know better.

What Tom describes is unacceptable.