This isn't really news, since we passed the headline on from Mike Lynch three weeks ago, but Playboy has stopped buying cartoons, and here is an article that provides the magazine's point of view.
It's worth the read, but what it comes down to is that, in addition to no longer featuring full nudity, they are no longer featuring full thoughts, opting for shorter articles that don't have to be "jumped" to the back of the magazine. This, in turn, means that they no longer have the kind of adaptable space that requires, or even permits, adding cartoons.
I used the Jack Cole cartoon above as the main illustration for this item because it has the combination of naughtiness and innocence in the best of Playboy's nekkid lady cartoons. Like the New Yorker, that other regular repository of cartoons, there is a hit-or-miss factor, the difference with Playboy being that a lot of its misses bring more than a wince today and should have done so back then.
But, for instance, for all the beautiful flesh being exposed, the joke in this second example is doubly on the guy, as an absent-minded idiot and also as an idiot betraying one astonishing babe for another.
What the above-linked article points out, however, is that Playboy was willing to take a chance on work that was edgy, whether it was titillating or not, such as this Dempsey piece that is really a New Yorker punchline on a cartoon too naughty for the Eustace Tilly crowd.
As Jules Feiffer notes, Playboy gave cartoonists a venue for conversations about relationships that later led to things like "Carnal Knowledge," which was saluted by people who would never have admitted to reading the magazine where its creator had placed a number of thoughtful cartoons on the same topic.
And, of course, Hefner also gave space to cartoonists like Gahan Wilson, who weren't talking about boobies and sex at all, but were simply too weird for a world in which Zap! Comix did not yet exist.
What I find most fascinating about this change is that the decision to aim for the "Laddie Mag" demographic typified by Maxim, in which young starlets don't shed quite all, means changing to please an ADHD audience when there was always a question whether the previous generation read the articles they claimed to buy Playboy for in the first place.
Silly twits: Your competition isn't Maxim. It's those websites that don't have any articles at all.
In any case, I associate the move not with Maxim but with USA Today, which brought that same philosophy to newspapers a generation ago: Short, punchy stories that don't make much intellectual demand upon the readers. Gannett also did away with jumps and insisted on short articles with few details, and punchy graphics that were the forerunners of Facebook memes.
And oh by the way who's buying USA Today at all? Gannett's so desperate to perpetuate the McPaper that it's ordering its real newspapers to tuck pages of USA Today inside rather than use wire copy.
In any case, when you even have to dumb down soft-porn, the implications about our collective intellect are bad news all around.
Or, to force a laugh, "The belles no longer toil for Hugh, but the bells indeed do toll for you."
Stay tuned for today's 'Don't Be Evil Afterschool Special':
It's International Women's Day, which Google is saluting with a graphic that I refuse to consider a cartoon despite the adulation this odd graphic marketing opportunity gets in some cartooning corners.
And since it isn't a cartoon, I don't have to fret over being snarky about it.
Look, I'm glad that artists can make some money, but the Google Doodle is a commercial art product and, while I gather they occasionally buy outside work, the bulk of it is done in-house.
There's nothing wrong with that, and, given that they are employed in doing the Doodle, you could compare them to Disney animators, who are also hired guns.
But Disney animators are hired guns for an entertainment company.
This feels more like an in-house ad agency.
Ça va. Artists have to eat and Mort Walker, after all, recruited Dik Browne after seeing his work on an ad for Mounds candy bars. So it's good exposure, too, and we all love us some good exposure, especially when it comes with a full-time job and benefits.
I freelanced for ad agencies back when I had dreams of being a novelist, and I wrote and produced local TV ads when I was in the full-time business of selling them.
But I recognized that "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead" is one set of words and "Pay to the order of" is another set of words and I never mistook one for the other.
If you go to the Google page and click on the little arrow, you'll see a video in which women and little girls from all around the world declare what they're going to accomplish, which is not a whole lot different than the promotional piece that the NFL runs except for the gender balance of people saying what they're going to do some day.
I'm not against encouraging people to hope and dream, as along as we acknowledge that those are only first baby steps.
I'm just against advertisements that pretend not to be advertisements.
And if you are also not satisfied with feel-good commercial announcements, and even if you are, Cartoon Movement offers an extensive collection of real cartoons that take the day seriously, from cartoonists who sometimes find that getting your work known -- with or without a paycheck -- ain't always that good a thing.
The bottom line has never changed
Artists not only have always had to make choices, but they have also needed to find ways of coping with the world and with themselves, as outlined in today's Quixote Syndrome.
No skipping over the last panel.
Finally, here's an International Woman learning to cope:
I suspect that McPaper's biggest customers are the hotel chains that either slip one under your door or let you pick it up at the front desk.
And have you heard of the recent death of Phantom illustrator Paul Ryan? (See http://comicskingdom.com/phantom/2016-03-08#disqus_thread .) Sad news; he was one of the best, IMHO.
Posted by: Ed Rush | 03/08/2016 at 03:23 PM