Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t discriminate based on political orientation. One of my disappointments in the ATTITUDE series was that (a) there are next to no decent right-wing altie cartoonists and (b) the few there were don’t seem to answer email.

Some of my favorite cartoonists are right-wingers: Chuck Asay, Scott Stantis, Mike Lester, etc. I’ll definitely want their work in there.

Overall, I’m going to invite ALL editorial cartoonists to send in their hardest-hitting work. Even cartoonists who do a lot of mainstream work do stuff that’s edgy (and doesn’t make Time or USA Today). I want that stuff in there.

I remember when I first looked at BECY back in the ’70s and ’80s, I wasn’t aware of the fact that it so poorly represented the work being done in newspapers. All I knew was, if this was what editorial cartooning was, it wasn’t very good. If there had been another book that contained great cartoons by people like Jules Feiffer, I would have bought that in a heartbeat.

People into political cartoons prefer the ass-kicking ones, not the milquetoast pap that runs in these anthologies.

Thanks, Stephen Beals! This is going to be awesome.

Serious question. I probably wouldn’t buy one that only represented one “edge” and I’m pretty sure you’d get more MSM boost from one that showed both.

In order for this to work, of course, you have to have your own product waiting in the wings and you have to make sure that reader who was charmed by your work knows about it.

So if there were an annual collection, priced low enough to encourage casual readers but with some cost to show commitment by those readers, and if it were well-promoted so that readers didn’t have to be fanatics to find it, and if it displayed web addresses for each cartoonist, and if each of those cartoonists then updated their web sites with fresh material and the chance to buy their wonderful individual collections, it would be worth doing.

Alternatively, you could sit around and wait for all that to happen on its own.

Could do one as an e-book, but I don’t think an e-book would have the impact or reach as many. I think the collection could very well end up in major bookstores given the folks and association that could be behind it.

Worst case, you might have enough for a cartoon-a-day calendar.

Then again, if some publisher picked it up (vs. self-publishing it) and you had to split proceeds umpty-squat ways, might not pan out. How about proceeds going to AAEC first year just to test the water? Perhaps the real barrier is getting someone to organize it as well as sponsor it.

Alas, another seemingly good idea trampled to death before it even got started. ;(