Support Your Local (or Distant) Cartoonist

5 thoughts on “Support Your Local (or Distant) Cartoonist”

1. He’s doubtless too modest to mention it but

   Tauhid Bondia: https://www.patreon.com/7auhid

2. These monthly donation schemes kinda fill me with angst (“what if they stop producing? what if I stop liking what they’re producing?”). I’d rather support in a lump sum, and (ideally) I’d rather make that support through the purchase of a piece of original art — a keepsake of an artist’s work that speaks to me, and is (I imagine) sitting on a giant teetering stack in the artist’s storeroom. What I find is that few creators have a nice simple method for how to buy art from them. Creators seem to feel some weird need to be coy about it. I can’t even recall the last time I was on an artist website and they had a page full of original art listed, with prices specified, and how one goes about paying.

   I suppose these days many are working digitally, so there’s nothing to sell (I’ll not sully this discussion with the idiocy of NFTs), but there’s lots of artists who still work in the physical world, and vanishingly few of them offer their work to fans in a way that doesn’t smack of breaking into a Las Vegas casino vault.

   Heck, the term patron itself, messed with by patreon presumably for copyright reasons, refers to those who support artists by BUYING THEIR OUTPUT.

   Okay, end of rant. Sell us your art!

3. I have a fairly long list of cartoonists I support to the tune of $5 per month. Each is a drop in the bucket, so (to answer one of Allan’s concerns), I don’t really care if they’re intermittently productive. I respect them and like their stuff, and that’s good enough for me.

   Having said that, there are some people on the above list (not gonna name them) who are already so successful I’d expect them to be embarrassed to solicit Patreon support. Of course everyone’s life story and financial situation is a mystery to me, but if (to pick an absurd and deceased example) Charles Schulz were to ask me to kick in, he’d get a big side-eye from me.

   I have a Patreon irk, and that is when a creator I’m supporting announces that they’re funding someone else. I don’t have a rational objection–it’s nice that they’re sharing the pie, it’s a small amount of money, and surely those people deserve their support–but emotionally I think, “Hey, if you can afford to give Jane Doe $5 a month, why do you need mine? If I wanted to pay Jane, I’d do it directly.”

   I’m not always proud of myself.

   1. Yes, I have that quirk too!

      BTW, this list has been updated

4. Meant to add that I differentiate between Patreon and Substack. With Substack, you’re usually getting a cartoon, column, or other content on a regular basis, often daily. I think of that more as self-syndication; you’re buying a subscription. Patreon feels more loosy-goosy. I do subscribe to some Substack content and like that model very much.

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