You must mean the all time largest national debt ever created by an administration somewhere in the area of 3 trillion dollars only to be exceeded by the current republican administration…oh THAT foundation for prosperity.

Oh and the first WTC bombing that resulted in the arrests and convictions of the perpetrators without having to invade a country that had nothing to do with it….

All in all I reckon it ran a year longer than it deserved, which goes to show that it’s harder to get out of these gigs than get into them!

However, should Chris Browne pass and King came to me about writing “Hagar” I would pass.

If I were asked to pick up the torch for a strip that I loved, and that I thought I could continue the original creator’s vision (while adding my own touches), I would do it as a tribute to that creator. But I wouldn’t just sit there pounding out scripts for any feature a syndicate shoved in front of me.

I think that’s the difference between a hack and a continuator.

Would I take over a strip after its creator had died/retired?

Actually I would. If I felt I could make it mine, add to it, improve or keep up the level (if that level was excellent). I would also do my own work at the same time.

Would that make me a hack? No, I don’t think so. A hack is someone who takes on work with no ambition to make it good, to improve it, to maintain that improvement. A journeyman, if you will, or an incompetent, a mere time-server.

Unfortunately there HAVE been many hacks appointed to positions on newspaper strips after their creators have died, and I have often said (and I stick by it) that I can name only one whose efforts have actually surpassed those of his predecessor, the strip’s creator.

At one time in my career I WAS a hack. I drew the Count Duckula strip in the News Of The World, the biggest selling Sunday paper in the UK (and probably the planet) for too long.
I was drawing my own long-running strip at the same time and worked full time as an animator. I didn’t care about the Duckula strip, and it showed. It wasn’t right that I continue with it, considering my attitude, so I gave the job to another cartoonist who better appreciated the exposure. In my opinion he did the job much better than me.

So many hacks stay in their jobs because they have no chance of achieving any kind of notoriety or “success” outside them. I’m sure some are attentive to their task, and it’s just that they’re not any good, but it doesn’t matter whether you’re doing the job reluctantly (and it shows) or you’re keen but ordinary, you are still a hack.

The cartoonist community seems pretty friendly to me (so far), so I’m guessing that you’d really have to rub a lot of folks the wrong way to get such a negative reaction. Yes? No?

What would the audience of a BW documentary be?

And around 30 years from now, the pendulum will have swung the other way, and people we consider liberal today will be seen as moderate or even conservative. Then it will start to swing back again.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003686826

His split from the Mormon Church took a great deal of courage. He has my undying respect for it.
This was when he began to see things the way they really are rather than looking at everything through an ordained conservative prism, which was reflected in his work. His principles, morals and sense of ethics didn’t change. The conservative movement did. Now, like many other real conservatives, he is a strong critic of the extreme right wing that has taken over the Republican party and conservatism.