Not necessarily. A good editorial cartoon is hard to refute. For instance, I read Jeff Macnelly’s work for years before a couple other cartoonists informed me he was a conservative, and I had no idea (I’m still not convinced, but then, I never met the man). To me, he was simply perceptive.

“Sounds like a mental illness, to me…”

i just want to be the first to take your benign comment out of context. i think it’ll help the discussion a lot.

And, with that polarity of viewpoints, the only way to survive on the web is to cater to the extreme ends in order to gather an audience from one side and appear ‘edgy’. And to do THAT you have to have the ability to ignore evidence that contradicts your world view. Sounds like a mental illness, to me…

now, some could say this is either a good thing or a bad thing.

since i’ve never worked with an editor like that, i can only speak to my experience of publishing on the web. instead of trying to get one “editor” to like my comic and read it (or submissions editor), i have to convince _thousands_ of people that it was a good comic.

there is no buffer between me and my readers. instead of one person saying, “hey, that was good/bad” i get _thousands_ saying that. or nothing at all. (which is worst.)

i think this is one of the things that is unique to webcomics right now and it speaks to the self-publishing aspect. i think the idea of an editor speaks to many syndicated cartoonists of professionalism, whether that be the submissions editor and process for choosing a new comic or the editor who works on the comic daily.

“Here’s a political cartoon for you.

A cemetery, with a tombstone in the foreground that reads “Syndicated comic strips” and below that, the URL for this thread.

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Ironic words, coming from a guy who not long ago, was trying to syndicate his comic (well after establishing his web comic). Three or four years ago, Mr. Kurtz was making disparaging statements about print cartoonists on forums like ToonTalk, but on the side, was simulataneously trying to get syndicated. Then after that failed, he tried to self-syndicate his work to the newspapers. (Which also failed, because his web comic did not sell in the “real world” of newspaper comics.) (Which world is real for cartoonists? How about the one that you covet?)

Mr. Kurtz will no doubt reply to this as he did back then, saying that he turned down offers from syndicates, such as Universal Press. But perhaps a few here will recall seeing the letter that Lee Salem was compelled to write, disputing that claim, (that letter was posted at ToonTalk.)

However Mr. Kurtz wants to explain the details, (or dispute Lee Salem), he was spurned by the syndicates, and also by the newspapers he tried to sell to directly. The point is, the resentment and jealousy he talks about is clearly a two way street. For anyone who has not been observing this ongoing dispute for more than a year or two, this partly explains the passion of the argument going on here.

The bottom line: Cartooning is a very hard profession to break into, and new markets take time to figure out, whether you are a print cartoonist looking at the web or a web cartoonist looking at print…but anyone with talent, intelligence and the willingness to work hard will likely do just fine.

Good thing vice-principal Stromoski was nearby to apply the Heimlich.

I want to get a comic strip in print (when I actually am ready to submit) because to me that’s the pinnacle for would-be cartoonists – why? Because of the elite club it actually is – I want to be in that club. You achieved a difficult and rare thing. Cool.

AND…

I want to have a comic strip on the web (when I finish building the web site)and have lots of people see it and come back and say ‘cool/funny strip’ – why? because if it is decent material, people will come back and say ‘cool/funny strip’ , people in the print world will eventually take notice, maybe make offers for other income/exploitation schemes (whatever the dream situation may be). Who knows, I may sell a tee-shirt or print. Cool.

Either way would be simply great. I prefer both.

However I see where newspapers are headed, and if ‘print’ correlates to newspapers, well, we know what’s going to happen. But I still want to be an elitist print comic strip artist!

But that doesn’t have any correlation to working on a web comic.

The fact is, there’s a TON of Web comics out there. Some are not so good. That’s simply the statistics of the beast.

The fact is, generally speaking, what is in print is considered the filtered best of what was submitted in terms of the overall industry, so inherently is an exclusive group, who [can, maybe usually do] make decent $. Elite– yay!! I want it!

The web venue does not provide for that pre-filtering. So yes, there will be more crap than decent.

The fact is, the web-comics ‘filtering’ that takes placeis real-time: if it’s entertaining, funny, whatever-the connection-to-the-reader-is, they will return. Otherwise they don’t. That’s avery nice thing because it’s a natural process.

(Scott’s #170) “Because nobody on the internet cares about anything beyond how funny, engaging and delightful to look at TODAY’S comic is.”

An obvious fact. Of course there are probably some who think it’s their civic duty to stay informed/seek out political opinion’s etc. Good for them.

But I see the growth of the medium. I plan on being there. If I were in print now, and an EC guy, I would be thinking about how to evolve my product. Maybe the very nature ECs will change to fit the times.

So what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with wanting/doing both print/web? Nothing. If you’re a smart cartoonist, seems to me, you’ll get on with it, dual channel.

As for editorial cartoons, I think it’s pretty obvious they can’t exist without editorial. The internet has made editorial so commonplace and disseminated that there’s no way to tie your cartoon to an editorial and grab the eyeballs necessary to warrant a decent paycheck. What you need to be doing is coming up with inventive news aggregation models that use your comics as key components. Make your comic the primary and the news ancillary.

For instance http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/4/3/ currently makes little sense outside of the hardcore console geek community, but Jerry Holkins will make a corresponding news post later that will explain it. Even though I “get” it (PS3 chat capabilities), I’ll still go back for this post because it flavors the comic, but the comic doesn’t flavor Jerry’s post.