CSotD: Seeking the Pony
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I gotta say, digging through the pile of New Year's cartoons this morning didn't yield a whole lot of ponies.
Good Rule of Thumb: If the idea comes that easily, it probably occurred to everyone else, too.
Whatever. You got credit for showing up on the holiday and the holiday is over.
Now how's about everyone getting back to work?
I did like Benjamin Schwartz's New Year's cartoon at the New Yorker's daily site.
Schwartz was clever to say "Cupertino" and not specify Apple headquarters.
Part of the back-and-forth between artist and reader is allowing the meaning to emerge, and this is a gag that would be ruined by spelling things out.
It's been several years since I've worked on a Mac, but the spinning pinwheel of death was plain to me, and let me offer this half-hearted defense of the thing: While it really doesn't matter whether it's that or the endlessly flipping hourglass, it's good to know your computer is at least attempting to do something.
The latest iterations of Windows just leave it staring blankly back at you so that you're not even sure it heard you, much less that it's trying to do what you asked it to.
This infuriating lack of feedback reminds me of one of my favorite Speed Bumps, which dates from 1999 but continues to crack me up, particularly since Dave Coverly's style is so perfectly fitted to the gag.
The most cunning of my computer's cunning plans to drive me crazy is that, when you finally give up and try to just close out a program and get on with life, it will pause everything and tell you that the program has stopped working and Windows is looking for a solution.
It has stopped working because I clicked the little X in the corner, and I got your solution right here, pal.
Of course, my geek friends will now explain that what I should do is convert everything over to open-source programs that none of my clients have, or want, or want to pay me to make things in.
Find me the open-source solution to "no income" and we'll install that first, and then, when it's up and working, we'll add those others.
Meanwhile
Brewster Rockit is its usual dumb, wonderful self today, and that middle panel is its own pinwheel of (literal) death gag, a marvel of comic timing that, again, would be ruined by anything more explicit or extended.
(Add your own thoughts contrasting Oscar Wilde and Benny Hill. I'm trying to cut back.)
You almost missed it
Rina Piccolo has been guesting for Hilary Price this week at Rhymes with Orange, and ended her stay with this crescendo. Funny gag, great drawing of the kid. She's a particularly strong one-off gag cartoonist, and you should probably go there and then use the buttons to back up and catch the full week.
And while you're there, scroll down ever so slightly and watch Hilary's Moth performance. Totally worth it.
Then go check out Rina's own collection of her own one-off gags.
You're welcome.
End of the line
And so Edge City draws the curtain. Well done, guys.
Here's an article on it that cartoonists have been passing around for the last week or so. Not very encouraging, but more realistic than sorrowful, and, if you care about the form, it's well worth reading.
Piano players in the journalistic whorehouse
As good strips like Edge City struggle, as good journalism struggles, as newspapers flush themselves down the pipes with bad decisions in a time of crisis, Ruben Bolling's Super-Fun-Pak Comix brings up an issue that has bothered me for quite a while.
Do newspaper publishers even see the deceptive, exploitive, vomitous garbage they allow advertisers to place on their websites?
I honestly don't know, but there's something weird about complaining that people don't read the newspaper anymore when it seems evident that you don't, either.
I've sat in meetings where the ad people talk about how much $$$ has come in, and there isn't a lot of talk beyond numbers. And ditto with reports on how many hits and clicks. Good numbers are good. End of discussion.
Content? Good content is whatever generates good traffic.
I was at one paper where everyone around the big table agreed that the reporters should blog, because blogs are very important. And I said, "What should they blog about?" since we weren't the size paper where, for instance, you'd have an environmental writer who could then blog about nature or birds or the weather.
"Anything they like!" came the answer, to which my response was "Are you out of your minds? They're 23 years old!" only I didn't say it aloud.
When there was great joy over the number of hits one reporter was getting on her blog, I did timidly ask if anyone had actually read it, but, since the website was an impenetrable dog's breakfast, I figured the hits were probably coming from the reporter herself anyway, because nobody could have found the blog by happenstance.
Though someone eventually did, and it finally came to management's attention that her two most popular blog posts were about (A) how stupid people have to be to believe in the Bible and (B) how puking, passed-out drunk she got on break in Mexico.
And that was the end of that, but it's a sad explanation for how a publisher could allow the raw sewage Bolling mocks to flow alongside the content of a news organization that is trying to matter.
Of course, there's very little evidence that "trying to matter" is on anyone's agenda. "Trying to make the next quarter" is easier to back up.
So what the hell. Public television has finally boiled itself down to infomercials about health and cooking and healthy cooking, 30 year old British sitcoms and program-long advertising pitches for golden oldie record collections, so why get all high-and-mighty about the role of the newspaper?
As the saying goes, "We've established what you are. Now we're just haggling over the price."
Now a word from our publisher:
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