CSotD: The comical side of the dismal science
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The brilliant synchronicity of Candorville: Darrin Bell comes out with this strip just as the Village Voice releases its "comics issue" which I put in quotes because they apparently aren't paying the cartoonists whose work appears in it. Or not all of them. Or something. Anyway, it's an issue.
The saving grace is that, in this article about the economics of cartooning, the Voice didn't edit out the part where their freeloading was discussed. The piece is getting a lot of attention in cartooning circles, most people commenting on Jules Feiffer's recounting that he never made money with his cartoons either, and on the aforementioned payment in "exposure." (The common wisecrack among cartoonists being that people die of exposure.)
I don't go as far back as Feiffer, nor have I approached his heights even with the stuff that doesn't pay, but can vouch for his observation that freelance rates haven't changed and prices have. I quit trying to make a living as a freelance writer in 1987 and, 20 years later, found myself as an editor paying freelancers the same amount that hadn't worked for me back then. Meanwhile, my pay had nearly doubled from what I made as a cub reporter.
I was embarrassed by how little I was permitted to offer, but figured at least an editor who was embarrassed would seek opportunities to sweeten the pot whenever possible and somebody else might not. Yes, in fact, I do know what road is paved with that kind of reasoning.
(It's the same road you tread when the publisher tells you staff writers have to turn in more stories, plus more blog entries and some photo essays, and then sends you memos ordering you to keep overtime down. In other words, if they want to keep their jobs, they have to lie on their timecards. They'll get pie in the sky when they die, and Hell is gonna be one long department head meeting with all of us present.)
So, speaking of Candorville as we were, here's Lemont on the rooftop with his best friend Susan, who outearns him by a massive amount. This is not all that uncommon: The starving artist/writer often has the same education and the same interests as the not-at-all-starving contemporary who has risen to the top of something or other, or who went to law school or who got an MBA or who has otherwise left far behind the world of working for (as Molly Crabapple put it in that VV article) "rent and ramen."
It can be uncomfortable when you can't quite afford to drink the wine your friends only buy to cook with. At least, as a writer, you can often arrange to cover the events you wouldn't be able to attend but that they will all be at. I don't know how cartoonists deal with that issue.
What's worse, in this case, is that Susan, who is not just a good earner but smart and sweet and also very hot, has always been in love with Lemont, who remains blissfully unaware. This brings two levels of tension to the strip: One is that she feels compelled to help him cope with the impossibly flawed relationships that he does pursue, and the other is that readers have to worry that Darrin is going to destroy the strip by letting happen what we all wish would happen except for the fact that it would destroy the strip.
Do it, Lemont.
Don't do it, Darrin.
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