Time Magazine looks at the success of Matt Bors in the comic world.
“I’m a lot more interested in breaking out from this little rectangle,” Bors said in a recent interview. His style demonstrates this well: Bors uses rich colors and strays from the standard white background that has become so ubiquitous in his craft. He sticks to a quirky illustrated style that relies heavily on the depiction of eyes and larger-than-life heads for his subjects – a style more closely related to comic books or made-for-adult cartoon television shows than newsprint. Bors’ cartoons, in short, work well on a computer screen.
My personal take? Matt is incredibly talented and that’s the lion’s share of his success. Add two other ingredients: reader’s acceptance of longer form comments (and the internet that makes it easy to provide) and the fact that as an altie his word count is about 95% less than other alties – which making his work much more approachable.
The longer form style does allow the cartoonist to spell out a more compelling and thoughtful point or argument as opposed to the old school rim shot, one shot gag format. Matt’s work does this well. Congrats Matt on the Time article.