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I'm going to take a break today and, instead of posting one cartoon I think is particularly funny, offer 10 cartoons of which I think maybe two have some promise.
The Washington Post is in the midst of a contest to choose "America's Next Great Cartoonist" and, the judges having narrowed 500 entries down to 10, is calling on the public to narrow the field further to five. Those cartoonists will then create further samples, from which the public will select one cartoon to win $1,000 and a month of publication by the Post.
Here are the 10 finalists and your chance to vote. And here is another look at their work, together with the remarks of the judges, who include both cartoonists and at least one syndicate exec.
For my part, I didn't see anything that knocked me off my feet, but there are three things (at least) which should be born in mind.
1. These are straight-from-the-artist submissions. I have had the experience of evaluating potential strips for syndication, but those had already been through a substantial development process, during which the artist and the syndicate work to refine the offerings. Given that lack of professional grooming, these are fairly well polished.
2. This isn't very many strips. Rina Piccolo, who has recently introduced a new web strip, complained on her blog of the slow nature of introducing your characters and premise, which is necessary before you launch into what the strip is actually going to be. When a strip is marketed to newspapers, the kit generally includes those "setting it up" strips but also a selection of strips more representative of what the strip is. Presumably, the next phase of the contest will include more of that, but it's very hard to tell how well a strip will do when you're only seeing those first few examples.
3. It's not often that a comic strip can truly break new ground and yet feel like a strip that the public would accept as a comic strip. While an artist shouldn't be handcuffed by a predetermined idea of what a syndicated strip feels like, you also have to recognize that, if a strip strays too far from the existing model, nobody along the line — sales people, editors, readers — will know what to make of it. These 10 finalists feel familiar, but it's not a contest to be strange. That said, I thought a couple overdid the "seen this before" factor, while a couple offered a promise of doing the job well.
I'm not going to say which strip I voted for. I will say that I hope it makes the next round because I want to see if the artist can move beyond the set-up phase and do something interesting with the premise. But I'm glad we're only cutting this group in half, because there's no crystal ball that can predict who can actually move beyond their premise and create something that will sustain interest, and I might be bitterly disappointed in the next set of strips from this particular artist.
So click on the examples, read them over and cast a vote.
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