Comments on: What the Duck is renamed; to launch September 8

By: J.G. Moore

J.G. Moore — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:53:03 +0000

What The Frack!

By: Eric Burke

Eric Burke — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:46:30 +0000

How about “Duck’em All”..or “Duck Them”?

“Who Gives A Duck”? Probably to close to the original title…”W.T. Duck” reminds me too much of “W.B. Mason”.

Who but W.B. Mason!

By: Worth Gowell

Worth Gowell — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:30:30 +0000

Or, perhaps, they should have borrowed from the Marx Brothers; and renamed it “Why a Duck?”

By: Pab Sungenis

Pab Sungenis — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:25:47 +0000

Duck them if they can’t take a joke.

By: Garey Mckee

Garey Mckee — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:29:04 +0000

” know there was an old cartoon called Dark Wing Duck, but that was long ago, and not very popular”

As a spin off of Duck Tales, it had it’s moments. (Sorry, off topic.)

I still vote for Cluster Duck as the title W.T. Duck SHOULD have gone with. We use the term all the time here. I wonder if Aaron had to struggle just to keep the title close to the original as W.T. Duck?

By: frank white

frank white — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:35:37 +0000

“Editors themselves would see this wordplay as being funny, but then theyâ€™d envision the phone calls from the humorless, self-righteous crowd (who, of course, isnâ€™t the target readership for such a feature in the first place)”

Why don’t they just ban the self-righteous crowd over there in the U.S and then you can can have real freedom of the press?
Over here in the UK we are often subjected to many swear words within the first five minutes of opening any one of the major tabloids. Quite a few home grown strips get away with it here too.Are we offended? No you could just it’s water off a duck’s back!

By the way , a name suggestion for W.T.Duck
……… ” Duck in Hell”

By: Scott Metzger

Scott Metzger — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:47:45 +0000

â€œI went to see that Russian ballet company.â€
â€œBolshoi.â€
â€œNo, really!â€

–

“I used to live in Alaska.”

“Fairbanks?”

“Yeah, free checking!”

Heyyy hoooo!

I like What the Duck. Best of luck to Aaron!

By: Jason Nocera

Jason Nocera — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:08:30 +0000

Malky – No hostility on my end. I wish the strip long legs. I like the humor. It’s a bit of a Niche strip with photography as an angle, so it will be interesting to me to see how well a niche strip does in a day-to-day environment and for how long.

Garey – in this day and age of comic strips dropping quickly because the time put in is not equal to the income coming out to make it worthwhile for the creator to continue, that is the measurement of success I’m referring to.

My point is – popular web comics make decent money (as many web creators pointed out), couple that with a few steady newspapers for income, this SHOULD be a good test to see that maybe new strips who can understand web marketing and use it to their advantage, won’t need a ton of newspapers to be a success* (*see my definition above to Garey)

By: Mike Peterson

Mike Peterson — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:51:02 +0000

If you’re working in the mass media, you have to learn the art of “plausible deniability” — a perfect example of which is the name “W.T. Duck.” Your hipster fans will get it and think you’re twice as clever for having slipped something past The Man, and meanwhile, it likely will go over the heads of those who would object most loudly. If I say “Smothers Brothers,” there are a lot of people who don’t think about their stand-up act so much as their ability to slip things past Standards and Practices.

“I went to see that Russian ballet company.”
“Bolshoi.”
“No, really!”

Half the joke is in the fact that they said it.

Mind you, the struggle finally ended up with them off the air, but they were doing 60 minutes a week of this stuff. If the only struggle is the name of a strip, just make the joke and get the thing into print. You’d be a damn fool to give up syndication for the sake of an adolescent pun.

By: Eric Burke

Eric Burke — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:46:50 +0000

“Cluster Duck”…damn funny, Gary!

And speaking to Mike’s post Re: cartoonist complacency, what if Aaron just said “No” to the name change? Would the syndicate risk losing a strip that they new was going to be good? Would they risk losing the strip to another syndicate or are we to assume that they knew other syndies would also ask for a name change.

And I agree with Malky, WTD was ready to go from the minute it was linked to at Toon Talk. It’s just a quality toon. It’s like a high school basketball player that can skip college for the NBA. Not all can do it, but for a select few it’s the reality.

Here’s hoping that the Boston Herald picks up WTD!