I hate the daily comic in Express. It’s horrible and completely unfunny. We finally got a complaint about it in the Letters to the Editor, which allowed me to bring it up to Dan (my boss). My boss wrote me an email saying that if I could find another comic that could be done daily (Sunday through Thursday) that was better than that one (it wouldn’t take much at this point), he would give it a whirl. It cannot be an already syndicated comic that the Post runs, or the City paper, etc.
This is what my boss wrote…
“M:
I'm serious about being open to other options…if you or any of your friends know of a better one, I'm all ears. Trouble is, it can't be Red Meat or Derf or Tom the Dancing Bug or other good strips that are only weekly.
In an ideal world, we'd be able to find someone who's on the verge and give them a forum.
Ask around.
D.”
I know there are online comics that do daily comics, and some underground comics, too. Does anyone know of anyone that they think is really fucking good and pretty funny but hasn’t gotten “out there” yet? I’ll be seriously (and desperately) researching this stuff but leads could cut out some of the needless legwork. I was thinking about online underground cartoonists who do not have the resources to have their stuff in (daily) print.
What I want to do in the very near future:
The last part of his email, the “on the verge” part, made me start thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could find someone who hasn’t ‘made it” and give them a chance at having their own syndicated comic in a daily newspaper. I know a lot of artists and cartoonists post to this site, and if you know of anyone, yourself included, who might be interested in this, please please please contact me. I haven’t run this idea by my boss yet, but I also would like to see the type of responses and interest I get from this first. And Killoggs seems like a really good place to start. I’m not even sure the Post will go for it, but they seem so desperate to get to the “younger generation” that I think maybe they would be more open to this than they would be for the actual Washington Post. I think my boss would be interested.
I was also thinking of maybe switching the artists up a little bit, like have small pool of them—showcasing their work for a certain amount of time. Because we only have one comic strip, variety may be key. Plus, it would give new and different perspectives, and allow both men and women to take part in this. It would also allow for more experimentation. I would pitch myself but my stuff doesn’t deal with funny, daily strips only 3-4 panels long.
Send this post along to any friends you think would be interested. I think it would be pretty cool to have 125,000 copies of my art published everyday. If anyone needs more details (which is likely), email me.
marcia [email] said at 8:15 PM 09-16-2003: Man, this stuff IS pretty good...the only problem could be the swearing in it. i don't think we're allowed to swear. I will put him down on the list though. If you can think of any more, send them along.
I've had this same idea for a while, but I've never done anything with it (mainly based on how slow the submissions were with the killoggs daily comic). It's just really hard to get people to submit anything.
But it would be ideal to get together a collective of good comic artists and just become an editor of what strips you receive. It would become like running a News of the Weird or a Savage Love type column where all you would have to do is pick what you thought would be the best thing to run that week (and in weeks that were slow or completely lame you'd fill in with your own stuff.)
It's a good idea. It's just a hard one to pull off I think. I think it could work though if you promised payment for each strip, and advertised for submissions a lot. That has its downsides too though. The Baltimore Citypaper put out a contest last year calling for submissions for a new strip, and they were really disappointed with the results from what I understand.
You're right though. The comic in the Express is really lame.
Earlier tonight I got an email asking if I wanted to start doing an online comic on the Citypaper website. They told me that it could be animated some weeks if I wanted it to be too. I think I might do it.
I also had to call Kaz tonight and ask him to resend this week's comic. That was really weird. He kinda sounds like SpongeBob on his voice mail.
marcia [email] said at 11:06 AM 09-17-2003: yeah, i've had similar ideas, as well, but have never really gotten my shit together to do them. I've seen a million collaborative books by cartoonists, some good, some really shitty. I like Meat Haus a lot, and a few others, but getting people to submit, you're right, is difficult.--but not impossible.
It would be cool to showcase people's work for a month at time, or maybe every two weeks. I would just have find enough people, each with work ready and available, to put up. It would be neat. Otherwise, we could just syndicate an already somewhat out there artists (probably one online), but it would be cooler to have new talent that could be changed every few weeks or month.
I saw the Baltimore thing last year. It was a little disappointing to see the submissions. (or was it the year before?) But there's a lot of shit out there, and good consistent, daily comics are hard to come by.
Anyone that would be chosen will be paid, of course. I will have to ask my boss about how they pay the Express comic guy.
I think you doing an online comic for the Washington City Paper website would be fucking cool. Why wouldn't they let you do it for the paper?
zack [email] said at 4:33 AM 09-17-2003: Achewood is one of the best daily comics in my opinion, even if it's totally illustrator-style. There is sometimes cursing though...
Woody said at 12:28 PM 09-17-2003: PLIF. This ran at the University of Waterloo when I was there. I met Pat Spacek a few times, interesting fellow. You could probably find ~100 in the archives that are not too offensive. Don't know where he is now, but it sounds like he's working some other projects.
jenny [email] said at 2:02 PM 09-17-2003: Pinkey
The Pinkey Suthers Show is a weekly online comic. Like PLIF, Dylan Graham's site has tons of archives featuring good non-cursing episodes... check it.
Bob [ url ] said at 3:51 PM 09-18-2003: Chris Baldwin does his Bruno more or less daily. Given the frequently adult content (today's dream is a perfect example), I doubt it'd be appropriate for the Post. However, he's also working on another strip, called Little Dee, that might work better. Check out the archives for that.
Jeff H. [ url ] said at 12:16 PM 10-20-2003: Hello, Marcia and everyone else. My name is Jeff Hingle. My comic strip is called Ramen Noodles. The website address is www.ramen-noodles.com. It's still not completely finished, but I have about 50 strips scanned into it. Have a look!
