CSotD: Happy Blogday to Me
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Eight years ago, CSotD launched with a pithy recommendation that you read Phil Dunlap's "Ink Pen," which apparently not enough of you did, since he retired the strip two years later. Although, in the course of moving the blog to a different provider a week later, I got the name of the strip wrong, so maybe everyone wandered off in search of "Ink Post" and it's all my fault.
"Everyone" being about two dozen people, most of whom were probably me.
And, when I say "pithy," I mean it: The entire post read, "Phil Dunlap's Ink Pen is about a booking agency for cartoon characters. You can see it here, and buy a collection here."
I have become significantly more blabby in the ensuing eight years, but there's nothing wrong with a person who has not yet found his voice keeping somewhat quiet, and, at that point, I had no idea what the blog was going to be, other than a kind of antidote to blogs in which wiseasses make fun of strips it is fashionable among hipsters to dislike.
I have since found a voice for the blog and have imposed a 1,000 word limit on myself, which is generous: I think newspaper columnists are encouraged to hold things to 750, and it fits the well-known Pascal quote which actually translates to "I've made this longer because I didn't have the leisure to make it shorter."
It's hard enough to get a post up by 8:30 Eastern Time each morning without having to trim it down any further, and I have posted each day for eight years except for about a ten-day period in 2016 when friend-of-the-blog Brian Fies filled in and kept the streak alive while some surgeons were doing the same for me.
The process is the intellectual equivalent of a morning run: It wakes up my brain and probably provides some conceptual endorphins. I get up at 4 am and go through 78 bookmarks, some of which are individual comics, some of which are multi-comic sites, some of which are tipsheets and blogs. I start writing around 6 and post an edited piece by 8:30, with a drop-dead deadline of 9.
Some days, I have to go back and look again, but most days, I end up pulling out more strips than I can use, and there are often gems that don't make the final cut.
The basic rule is that a comic is "live" until replaced, so that a daily strip must be used on the day it appears, while an editorial cartoon or some web comics may stay alive for a few days.
The other rule is the Prime Directive, which is that we don't mock failure.
Criticism falls between two points, one of which is "Let's see you do it," which is the challenge to come up with 365 strips a year and not drop the ball once in awhile, and while I sometimes hit that final "publish" button with an exhilarating sense of "Nailed it!" there are other times when, well, I don't, and I'm sure cartoonists have the same experience.
The other point is, as Samuel Johnson put it, "You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables."
Still, I am keenly aware that the only thing I can draw is a bath and I choose not to scold the carpenter, though I don't have to purchase a crappy table, either.
"Crappy tables" that do tempt me to scold would include editorial cartoonists who don't research the issues they criticize and about 95% of gags about people staring at their smartphones.
Though I think "staring at your smartphone" has simply replaced "husband reading the paper at breakfast" in the pantheon of cartoon clichés mentioned here Sunday and that, as said there, it isn't a cliché until somebody makes it one.
So anyway, happy blogday to me and thanks for coming along, and I'll post some favorite pre-CSotD cartoons after this big fat announcement.
Big Fat Announcement
I will shortly set up a Patreon in response to a few comments over the years that people would be willing to help support my efforts. I make enough from the Amazon link to pay for the actual costs of the blog, but my freelance work is a bit precarious and I need to think of the future and of supplementing my Social Security.
The problem is that I don't have any real way to reward patrons, since I can't provide advance access to something that isn't done in advance, and I'd run into significant fair use issues if I produced any sort of "best of" anthology.
So I'm going to offer this diner mug, which is hefty enough to keep your coffee warm while you read the blog each morning (those measurements are image size, not mug size) or will keep your pens neatly corralled on your desk.
Or both, but best not at the same time.
Meanwhile
While you wait impatiently for that opportunity, you can help out for free by "liking" my daily announcements on Facebook and Twitter, since the blog rumbles along as a well-established niche but the more the merrier. You don't have to say you like it on days it doesn't delight you, but it would help if you did when it does.
And keep using the Amazon link when you can.
So thanks for being here both in the long term and specifically today when I just rambled on, and so an end to the rambling and a reward in the form of:
A dozen pre-CSotD favorites:
(Pearls Before Swine, 2009)
(Baby Blues, 2007)
(Between Friends, 2006)
(Madam and Eve, 1994)
(Cleats, 2002)
(Cul de Sac, 2007)
(The City, 2009)
(Frazz, 2003)
(Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet 2001)
(Non Sequitur 2008)
(Ann Telnaes, 2006)
(Watch Your Head, 2006)
Thanks again, see you tomorrow …
And keep up the good fight
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