CSotD: Experience the ‘meh’
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Last night, 60 Minutes did either a profile on Bob Mankoff or a piece on how the New Yorker selects cartoons, the two being close enough that it may be a distinction without a difference.
If you missed it, go here. It's an interesting 13 minutes, and I was going to embed it, but, while it offers the option, neither the embed code or the URL for the video appear to work.
It's a metaphor. I feel rejected.
I'd heard the stories, but, while it didn't give away any insider secrets, it was a good peek behind the scenes at a process which seems at once brutal and chummy, and it also explains why creative people often choose to live in the city.
In long-distance freelancing, you send something in, with or without having secured some kind of permission or acknowledgement that it's happening, and then you sit around until you get an impersonal note back saying "nope."
If you get an invitation to do something, or when you've established a relationship where you can send off an email or pick up the phone first, the response is more personal, even if it's still "nope."
But every week, cartoonists actually physically show up at the New Yorker in person with a handful of cartoons and sit down with Mankoff, who goes through them quickly in what seems like the classic baseball card collector mode: "got it, need it, got it, got it, need it, got it."
Safer talks to the cartoonists about rejection, which they all agree sucks, yes.
One of the things I enjoyed when I quit being a freelance writer and got on staff at a newspaper was that, while I had had to apply to and interview at several papers before I was finally hired at one, I could quit applying for jobs then for about 13 years.
Freelancing is like looking for a job every day. You get better at it, but it's sales, and baseball isn't the only gig where succeeding one time in three can put you in the Hall of Fame.
Baseball is easier, in fact. There aren't a lot of .333 hitters among freelancers.
The "nervous band of anxious cartoonists" who gather at Mankoff's office, however, has got to be a bit deceptive: Morley Safer doesn't say so and I've actually never heard anyone say so, but I can't believe it's not invitational, because the number of people who would like to have a cartoon in the New Yorker … yeah, no, it can't be all of them.
Which brings us to JustTheFirstFrame.com, where you get a chance to play Bob Mankoff.
Just The First Frame gives you a screenful of just what it says: The first frame of a raft of webcomics, and it seems pretty infinite: You can keep scrolling down for more.
It's not the only place where you can sample webcomics: Comics Sherpa over at GoComics is a repository of amateur and semi-pro work, while Keenspot sorta kinda features an assortment, though looking at it now, it seems to have a majority of comics that aren't being done anymore.
You can also go to Fleen, which is, itself, insider news and commentary, but which has a substantial blog roll in the right gutter.
And most individual webcomics have blog rolls, too, the advantage there being that, if you like that particular comic, there's a good chance you'll like what the cartoonist likes, too.
(Disclaimer: I don't list individual comics on my blog roll because I'm already uncomfortable with the idea of playing favorites. It may be a fig leaf, but it's my fig leaf and I'm keeping it.)
But in each of those cases, you have to click on a title. Just The First Frame lets you do some windowshopping in a visual medium, which makes a whole lot of sense.
There are times when I become curious about the slushpile at a book publisher or on Bob Mankoff's desk, and then there are times when I thank god I don't have to wade through it. I've seen enough to know that, while most submissions are "meh" and only a very, very few are "wow," enough are "GAH!" that I really don't want to know the exact balance.
Just The First Frame seems to occupy an interesting niche between making the decisions for you and simply tossing it all up there with a pitchfork, so there's a fair amount of "meh" but he seems to have filtered out the "GAH!"
If nothing else, the cartoons featured are live, updated, happening features, which falls into that Woody Allen thing about how showing up is 80 or 90 percent of success.
But there's still that 10 or 20 percent of not just showing up but showing up with something good.
There's plenty of adolescent fumbling in these, and a whole lot of transparent stealing of other artist's styles, but there are also some that are pretty good.
You'll have your own response, and that's the point. As it is here, the goal there is to show you something that makes you say, "Wow. I'm gonna bookmark this one!"
Henry Kuo, proprietor of Just the First Frame, explains himself and his methodology well, and he is a man after my own heart and is struggling with more or less the same fairness issues I struggle with.
I'm a little appalled that he is actually hand-cropping and reducing each image each day, but, then, he's not writing a full-length commentary every morning, so I guess we're probably even on that.
Go play "got it, got it, need it, got it." It's a fun game when you're not on the receiving end.
Your moment of Zen starts at 20:00
(You can jump to 20:00 by clicking on the line at the bottom of the frame)
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