CSotD: Timing and choices
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Kudos to Mark Tatulli for the timing of today's Lio, which reminded me to go ahead and post my 12-year-old reporter's review of "In the Heart of the Sea," which opens today. This is her raw copy, but I'm not making a lot of edits for the weekly publication and I hope Lio can smuggle his pals into a theater because I suspect she's right that it's best seen in 3D.
And I hope she missed something and that Ron Howard didn't let a series of continuity flubs get through, but that's one of those things where you run into the difference between creator intent and audience perception.
You can't just be right, you have to be clear. If they don't get it, that's at least partially on you.
Which is to say, if you want to be "too smart for the house," you have to settle for a niche audience. If you want to play to stadiums, don't get too subtle for the folks in the cheap seats, or, in this case, the kids.
Dare to be dull!
Speaking of being too smart for the house, Alex, as a business-page cartoon, sometimes gets so deeply into currency fluctuations and compliance requirements that it becomes very insider, though, for those who do understand what's going on, it certainly gives the lie to the notion that chartered accountants are hopelessly dull.
Or, rather, it is entirely based on that premise.
One or the other, certainly.
However, a few weeks ago, I noted a development in which Alex's hapless coworker walks in on his boss and his wife, and things have gone on from there and I didn't provide my usual undated link to the strip because clicking on today's would spoiler an increasingly ridiculous and wonderful story line.
But here's a mid-arc hint. You should go start here and read the rest. You don't need an MBA for your investment of time to pay off.
I won't try a pun about the investment "maturing" because maturity has nothing at all to do with Alex's appeal and would, in fact, work against it.
Nothing funny about this business decision, however
Disappointing news from Terry and Patty LaBan at Edge City: They'll be wrapping up the strip at the end of the year and moving on to other projects.
I say "disappointing" rather than "sad" because Terry lays it out very clearly, and it's hard to argue with him. This is a lot more about the overall state of comic strips than it is about their specific decision to keep going or wrap it up.
I'm disappointed that it has come to this, that such a solid, well-done strip has to end because only the strips that can fill stadiums pay off.
There was a time newspapers ran glorious double-truck something-for-everyone pages of strips, but, today, cartoonists who serve a niche have to ask if the time commitment and the work involved can be justified, given the small income a non-blockbuster generates.
This is why people who love the medium get upset over zombie strips and legacy strips and strips that just mechanically phone in the same tired gags and — worst of all — strips that take up valuable print space with reruns.
Granted, it's a business. And, to that extent, there's no reason why comic strips should be any more dynamic than prime time television with its endless variations on "CSI Wherever" and "Law and Order Whatever" and photocopied sitcoms with interchangeable, indistinguishable potty-mouth kids.
It's also kind of philosophically inconsistent to wish some of those golden oldie strips would get out of the way and let new voices emerge if you are simultaneously counting down to December 18 for yet another sequel of a movie we all loved back a few sequels and prequels and more than a few decades ago.
I do think there's room for the strip format, but the shift has to be to the web, where, alas, mid-level excellence remains, at best, in the secondary income range, and the stuff that goes gangbusters there is just as guilty of playing to the mob as pop culture giants in any medium.
That's how the arts work, for cartoonists, for musicians, for painters, for writers.
And it seems a lot more romantic when you're young than it does after you've got a few miles on your karmic tires.
There is a general ray of hope in this, I think: When I dangled the chance to review "Creed" in front of my young writers, none of them bit on it, which may well be because it's a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to more sequels, a Little Billy trail that goes back to when their grandparents were younger than their parents are now.
Why on earth would they care?
Although, as Terry notes, "It’s rare to meet anyone who reads a newspaper anymore, at least anyone under the age of 50," kids love going to movies and they read books voraciously,
And so I would offer this: While a lot of strip cartoonists like Mark Tatulli and Rob Harrell and Stephan Pastis are turning to the increasingly lucrative hybrid kids book market with unrelated work, I would point to the extraordinary popularity of Raina Telgemeier and Cece Bell and suggest that the true-life style fictional themes of strips like "Edge City" and "Stone Soup," transitioned into full-length graphic novels, would work very well in today's world.
But I say that from the perspective of someone who has no mortgage or college-bound kids, and who will start collecting Social Security next month and so has no need to completely reinvent himself as long as I can squeeze out that aforementioned secondary income.
Meanwhile, here's an Edge City collection whose cover I snagged for the above illo.
On a brighter note:
Let's counteract this dismal discussion with a cheerful thought from Jake Rohdy.
Oh dear, that really wasn't very cheery after all.
Okay, then, how about this reflection on mid-life career changes and, yes, chartered accountancy:
Now, get out there and crack that whip! (Give your past the slip!)
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