It is also not the newspaper's job to motivate comic artists- they are not the ones that work w/ the artists (unless the artist is independtly syndicating him or herself)- rather it is the syndicate editor's job.
It's not newspaper's job to motivate people, however, they are in situation to do a good job in de-mothivating them. If your comic was cut down to 1/2 of it's size, printed smudgy or placed in the spot where it's barely noticed, you'd be unhappy regardless of whose fault that is, right?
That's true, comic artsts aren't top sell in any publishing form. Where newspaper artists have problems I just mentioned, comic book artists have advertisements in innapropriate place, and then, they're all terribly underpaid and all. My outsider impression is that newspaper artists are in worse position, if nothing, then because of very demothivating standatds with which their colleaguse are given syndication deals.I'll admit that the majority of the syndicated artists aren't really treated w/ "the respect they deserve" but really, there are tons of artists who are treated poorly. It's not something that is specific to this industry. Then of course, there are exceptions to the rule- Larson, Amend, Watterson, Breathed, Trudeau, Wiley are the first that come to mind.
Oh, I'm not saying that everyone who reads comics doesn't care, I'm just saying that majority doesn't and that it's a kind of platform ment to attract those to whom comics are just an unnecesarry stop-by.Yes I can. You're generalizing way too much if you say that everyone who reads the comic pages doesn't care about art. Before I started cartooning on my own, I cared about the art I was seeing in the pages. I know plenty of others that do too.
In my newspaper? Nothing, but I try my best to stay informed anyway. As I said, I beg to differ.I have no idea what's printed in your newspaper, but I can say confidently that this is not the case for the majority of comics. Doonsbury, For Better or For Worse, 9 Chickweed Lane, Non Sequitor, Opus, Tarzan, any of the soap comic strips, Mutts, Pigborn are the first few that come to mind.
Depends on which kind of casual audience you're talking about. Casual audience that watches an advertisement on tv (that they wouldn't otherwise watch) because it falls in the middle of their favourite show, or casual audience that buys a ticket and goes to cinema even though they are not film students or fans. Remember, the second ones still decidedly buy a ticket specifically to see a film, not as a sideeffect of, say, seeing news journal. Movies survived their infancy thanks to people who went to see movies, it's only tv that brought casual viewing of films, casual in a way in which reading newspaper comics is casual for someone generally not interested in comics. Even comics, at their beginning, were selling newspapers. People would buy papers just to read "Yellow boy", balance would shift from one side to the other as the cartoonist would move from one newspaper to other. You can't say that that was not a dedication.No, actually, my argument does not tell more in your favor, because your thesis has a core disconnect with the role of the general, casual, audience. It dismisses them and the role they play in entertainment. To put it quite bluntly, if there were no casual audience, or they were driven by some automatic function based on sense memory, as you seem to be suggesting, then comics and movies and other entertainment would never have survived beyond their infancy, and would never have had the opportunity to gain a core fanhood in the first place.
My logic is, if I was interested in something, I'd make that extra step. If newspapers stopped publishing comics, would they go and get their comics elsewhere? Would they miss comics? It is true that majority of every readership is based on casual readers just as it's statistically proven fact that majority of voters come to voting ballots without deciding who they're gonna vote for, and just as you get your vote free as soon as you are 21, the same way you can get newspaper comics free, while purchasing some other content. Sadly, all that's the reason why sometimes, mediocre values are the most popular.However, to judge (and harshly, in my opinion) that if a person only interfaces with comics that are found in papers, and don't endeavor to look beyond that paper for further material, they don't care about comics at all, or are unable to discern levels of quality, is an absurd judgement.
Nope. I am claiming that, despite nostalgic affinity for certain comics, you should be able to judge quality because your comic erudition allows you to. But that's because you have that erudition, from reading comics and putting an effort in evaluating and studying them, something you wouldn't get from nostalgic devotion to some comic you've read as a kid. Such devotion might not (and probably won't) cloud your judgement, but it certainly won't help it much.First of all, how is this in any way different from a fan growing attached to his favorite webcomics or comic books, or certain creators for that matter? Would you also be willing to suggest that because I have a particular affinity for the work of Charles Burns, Sam Kieth, or Moebius, also based upon certain factors of comfort or nostalgia, I wouldn't be able to discern between good art and writing and bad art and writing? Where you find your joys is not evidence of your ability to judge quality.
That's crude simplification and once you chill out and re-think about all this arguement without feeling the need to contradict me, you will realise that it's wrong yourself.Secondly, training does not enable a person to be able to judge between good and bad work. Those capabilities are in-born. Training only enables a person to be able to identify why they've made such a judgement, and use terminology that adequately expresses their reasoning. Lay people can certainly be able to judge good art from bad art or good writing from bad writing, even if they aren't able to express themselves in the terms of the profession. Statements like "I sure like Mutts", and "Gosh, I hate Cathy", are just as qualitative as statements like "Mutts has an air of whimsey, and a playful visual style that harkens back to George Herriman, which is refreshing in today's market", or "Cathy has never progressed beyond childish and unpolished visuals punctuated by self-serving and old-hat jokes based body image and gender role issues, which is very tired."
I believe that psychology's current stance is not a genetical determination, nor "clean slate" theory, but a mix of those two. Therefore, person's characteristics are a product of both in-born qualities and later influence. There are people who instinctually have a good taste and then there are those who don't, and in the end, the majority stands in the line between and needs pucsh-over in any of those directions. But to say that training - or, I wouldn't use the word training not as much as erudition - doesn't improve your taste is simply not true. As you see new things and learn about them, your view of things change with every subject, so does it with art. After all, man is not an isolated island, and what other people think of a certain piece of art will normally affect your opinion, and so will history of this piece of art, artist's influences or opinions of various subjects, etc.
I had a chance to feel this change myself several years ago when I became intensly interested in painting (as the observer, not a painter, of course). Some elements of my taste are, of course, predestined, so that, for instance, I like Klee more than Kandinsky or Mondrian, but, even though I'm no kind of art expert, I can see the difference. Nowadays, looking at the picture, I am more capable of feeling the artist's intention and what he tried to say; I am able to like Klee's work and not like work of some local academy graduate who copies Klee's style. However, this taught me another thing: to respect great artists that I don't like, because I can reckognize the significance in their art, even though it doesn't exactly click with my personal taste.
Gee, how to go on with that kind of discussion? I can keep naming you bad comics, you can keep naming me good comics, and in the end, the final arguement will always be "But you know, not being an American, there are obviously many good comics you haven't heard of".Again, I'm going to have to support Jen's response to this. It's as if you don't read newspaper comics at all. Yes, there are plenty of comics out there that are exactly as you describe. They may even be in a majority, but I could never bring myself to state that outright. The closest I could come is to say that the state is 50/50. The vapid and uninteresting do not constitute the whole of the comics page, not by any means. For every Blondie or Garfield out there, there is a Boondocks or Get Fuzzy to answer them.
Such utopia, and yet, comic artists are still poorly treated, underpaid and harrased by papers and syndicates, and there's even some guy who, I heard, complains that people without basic drawing abilities get work in drawing comics while many talented and skilled people don't. How is that possible?I know you're European, and call me ignorant for asking if you will, but have you spent much time in the U.S.? Have you had an honest "American newspaper comics" experience? I'm not asking to bait you. I'm asking out of curiosity, because I don't know your personal history, and something about the statements you've made tells me that you haven't spent a whole lot of time able to interface with the American system of newspaper comic strips. If you've had that opportunity, you'd know that people treat their comics as more than just another part of the papers here, which people can take or leave. They're an integral and actively saught out section of the newspapers. Comics have been part of newspapers since their birth, and vibrant comic sections have spelled the life and death of many newspapers themselves. You're certainly right in your assessment of the habit and comfort of the newspaper comics page. However, it's more than just that.
Comics are very often the source of grass-roots public campaigning, either to get a certain strip published in a certain market, or to get a certain strip cancelled in a certain market. People boycott papers that omit their favorite strips. Countless editorials have been written in response to subjects addressed by comic strips. Editors of newspapers have been known to proactively "pull" controversial strips, and/or have been forced to print apologies for strips they've printed. People clip comic strips and save them or pin them up in public areas for all to read. There are no less than six comics that my mother has clipped and magnetically pinned to our refridgerator at this very moment. People copy them, and pass them around offices or schools.
The comics' page is a selling point for newspapers. If given the choice between a paper containing a comics' page and one without, people most often buy the ones with. If you find an unattended newspaper in public area, chances are it'll be missing one of two sections; the sports and the comics. Reading the "funnies" is a daily part of American life, and it has more weight to average Americans than your assessment allows. It isn't that comics just happen to be in the newspapers people buy. Rather, it's that people go to newspapers, their historical source, when they want to read the comics.
Yes, that's true. That's the nostalghia I was mentioning, and for the record, I don't mean that in exclusively negative context. Nostalghy is a nice, normal feeling, there are people who still prefere gramophones to newer music reproducing techniques, and I personally am nostalgic for bying comic magazines in kiosks (which was main way of distribution when I was a kid) while today, they're sold mostly in bookstores. But things go on and move to more convenient models, it would be terribly wrong if we tried to keep them in status quo for sentimental reasons.Let's go back to my first response in this big ol' dissertation, and, for the sake of argument, classify the Average American as a fan of sorts. They are a fan of comics as they are found in newspapers. Taking them out of newspapers turns them into a different form of creature. Take them out of the newspaper, and they cease to be the "funnies", just as taking taking a movie out of the theatres causes the movie to cease to be "film". Change the interface, even with a seemingly unimportant shift from news print to comic book format, and the experience changes on a fundamental level which most people are unwilling to follow.
My original statement, you remember, was regarding an artist who asks for a full page for his comic because he wants to return comics to newspapers. By me, if comics leave newspapers, it will be a kind of natural change to the more convenient format (which doesn't have to be big publisher's comic books - it could as well be your territory, indy publishing).
Golden age of newspaper comics happened early when there was little or no alternative to it and if he is hoping to return those times when publishers were fighting for a certain artist - well, good luck but not likely. If reading funnies is a part of American comic reading experience, so is reading Marvel's superhero books, and so will, one day, be reading of graphic novels. To some, on the other hand, reading of early underground 'zines with first works of Crumb and Shelton, was the original American comic experience.
In my opinion, and as answer to all concerns that games will kill film, that games will kill comics, that comics will kill fiction, that tv will kill films... I think that nothing dies unless it's given superior alternative, and it is not my interest to judge whether something (newspapers comics, for instance) has been given such alternative or not. However, from personal viewpoint, there is nothing to look for in newspaper comics for me, because even the good stuff still lingering about will eventually get bublished in collections.
Sorry if I used the term wrong due to my English, I thought that the term means "unexpected hits by authors who previously to it's publishing weren't considered hit-makers".And P.S. I would hardly classify either Maus or Bone as "sleeper hits" in America. Maus won a Pulitzer prize and is held up most as the prime example as "comics as literature". Maus has established Art Speigelman as comics royalty in the U.S., and has made it so everything he touches now is widely distributed. Bone has made Jeff Smith millions of dollars, has been reprinted at least five times in one incarnation or another, and is currently being reprinted and distributed to schools all over America alongside books like Harry Potter by Scholastic Publishing.
