Speaking of the past

A blast from the past

Since my last entry pertained to editing standards as they're applied to newspaper comics, I thought it would be fitting to go back a few weeks and further illustrate the point with this 4th of July strip that was done for my syndicate.

This particular cartoon would never make it into newspapers. Flatulence gags are a strict no-no. It would be axed the second the sketch hit the editor's monitor. But as I explained earlier, my current syndicate is a bit more lenient.

As it turns out, this cartoon elicited more positive emails from readers than any cartoon I've done in months. As much as I like positive feedback, this is a bit disappointing to me. After all, I try to cover many subjects with varying styles of humor, ranging from subtle social satire to expressive slapstick to politically charged hyberbole.

But a fart joke is what really gets them. It figures.

Trends in humor and comics

This "Sunday size" comic is appropriate for today's entry...not only because today is Sunday but also because it underscores the widening difference between newspaper comics and those created for other venues.

It used to be that most cartoons adhered to a similar level of 'cleanliness'. There was no cussing, no toilet humor and very little sex. Outside of a few exceptions (like cartoons seen in Playboy magazine and 'shorts' seen in small animation festivals), most everything was edited with the idea that children might see it.

Then came Beevis & Butthead, Ren & Stimpe, South Park and a few other animated cartoons that decided to throw all the editing shackles off...mainly because they were aired on cable channels, venues that did not have to follow the same FCC decency standards as network TV.

It was a new product and it was a big hit with teenage & twenty-something viewers. Cussing and fart jokes became the rage and many of these same viewers, (a demographic group valued by advertisers), became bored with the now comparatively milquetoast comic strips and cartoons they saw. (Add to this the popularity of the Internet for news and entertainment, and you have very few in that demographic reading a newspaper comic anymore.)

If the greatest comic of all time, "Peanuts" were to debut today, it likely would never reach the popularity it attained decades ago. It is simply too clean to appeal to a wide-ranging audience today. Newspaper comics are stagnating, with many features currently published being 50 or 60 years old. (Many of these are reruns from cartoonists who are deceased or comics being produced by hired imitators.)

The syndicates are now afraid to lose readers from older generations, who complain loudly to newspapers when comics like Blondie or Beetle Bailey are dropped for something new and probably more relevant. Can you imagine never seeing Seinfeld because the networks refused to make room for it and continued running I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners? Seems ridiculous, but that's exactly what is happening in newspaper comics.

Compare the humor and subject matter in comic strips from the 50's to the comics of today. (They're the same.) Now compare the editing standards of 50's era TV shows to shows of today. One has moved forward, the other has not.

I don't think that profanity or sex belongs in newspapers and general readership magazine cartoons. But my feeling is that cartoons should be given a little more leeway from newspapers, say along the lines of The Simpsons, (whose content and language would never be allowed under current editing standards), just to be able to compete on a level playing field.

Two of my comic strips have been under contract with syndicates, and I have seen the tug and pull between cartoonist and syndicate editor. It is a narrow path to walk as a humor writer, and while it is certainly negotiable, it is not one that leads to a wide readership any longer.

Cartoonists are now faced with creating "50's era" comics for a diminished newspaper market, (with less readers and less revenue), or going to the web with a feature that doesn't pay one for the actual cartoons...but allows one to sell T-shirts and posters. (My current comic strip is distributed by a smaller hybrid syndicate, where the main clients are direct email subcriptions, cell phone content providers and popular blogs...and though it looks promising, it has been building slowly.)

It will be interesting to see how comic strips evolve over the next few years.

Eclectic or eccentric?

My feeling about the subject of Botox and recapturing one's youthful looks should be fairly obvious in the cartoon, so I'll talk about the art today.

For fun, I thought I'd play with the color on this one. First, I broke out three different brushes: watercolor, airbrush and oil paint. I use all three regularly in my work, but rarely all together in the same cartoon. Only with a Wacom tablet and Photoshop can oil, water & air propelled paints mix.

Second, is the color itself...and that requires some background.

My wife loves to watch the H&G network and specifically, its interior design shows. I've sat through enough of them, (as repayment for her willingness to watch Sportscenter with me), to spot a few trends.

The most amusing to me is the overuse of the word "eclectic". The designers like to strut around on screen and proclaim virtually every finished room or interior as being wonderfully eclectic. To me, this means that they just toss a bunch of colors or unrelated crap together and hope that it might work. Another word for such designs: hodgepodge.

So, in honor of this new style, I created a living room in Burr's house with my version of an eclectic color scheme. --Do you think it works?

Calvinism revisited

One of my favorite comic strips lasted for only ten years, (1985-1995). "Calvin & Hobbes", a comic about a boisterous, imaginative eight year-old boy named Calvin and his stuffed companion, Hobbes. 

Its creator, Bill Watterson decided to retire and his decision is our loss. I got to wondering what Calvin would be up to today...especially if he were to age, as do the characters in strips like "For Better or for Worse" and "Gasoline Alley". I'm sure it wouldn't be pretty but it might well be interesting to watch...

What do you call that exercise?

Want some more gym terms? I know a guy who pulled a hammie doing hack squats. I also know someone who blew out his ACL while doing deadlifts. (An aptly named exercise in that case.) Rotator cuffs, (no starch needed on these, thank you), are a big problem for many athletes.

Fortunately, as a cartoonist, the worst injury I can claim is repetive stress syndrome with my drawing wrist...And even that hasn't occurred since I switched from brushes and india ink to a Wacom digital drawing tablet a few years ago.

Added motivation to keep in shape

I know several people who are walking and biking more than usual these days. (It's hard imagine such an increase in a community like Boulder, Colorado where every street has a bike lane and the average citizen often bikes or walks to stores and restaurants anyway.)

But sure enough, gas prices have changed behavior, even here. People are trading in their Ford "Excavations" and Toyota "Land Bruisers", as I like to call them, for smaller cars. As for smaller cars, the media and Hollywood types have been trumpeting the value of Toyota Priuses, (or is it Prii, like a Latin plural?), and Honda Hybrids.

[BTW, as a quick aside, hybrids are great for the environment and helping to decrease overall oil consumption...but they don't help individuals or families save money. Studies by Car & Driver and Consumer Reports have proven that one would need to drive a hybrid over 100,000 miles before breaking even on the added cost (over a similar size traditional car.) Because of their tiny tires, they also don't handle as well on dry or wet pavement as a regular car.]

The overall change in behavior is a wonderful thing to see. As people drive different vehicles or drive less and exercise more, we are becoming more like Europeans, who are used to high fuel costs...folks who generally weigh less and live longer than we Americans.

Customer service: Help thyself

As we all know, customer service seems to be suffering. Store clerks are quite often rude or just plain ignorant about the products and services they are employed to help customers with.

Something like the situation in the above cartoon happened to me a while back. It was beyond the simple lack of help one often encounters these days; it became a situation where the store employee actually added to my problems.

I took our camcorder in to the local camera dealer, (who is reputable and normally has top-notch service.) However this time, the service department technician was on vacation and the 'new guy' handled my repair. The original battery was not working and a brand new battery didn't work, either. (The camcorder worked when the power cord was plugged in.) I often repair simple electronic items myself, but I thought I'd defer to the experts on this.

I received a call a week later from "Clyde", saying that he had looked and looked, but couldn't find the problem. He even tried putting various amounts of voltage across all the terminals and nothing happened. (This didn't sound good to me, but I figured he must know what he's doing.)

So, I picked up the camcorder, took it home and looked at it myself -- just for the heck of it. Surprisingly, I found a loose terminal, soldered it...and it the camera turned on! But to my disappointment, the speakers and the LCD screen no longer functioned. I discovered that the speaker and LCD connection wires had been melted...most likely by a power spike. (The phrase "various amounts of voltage" came back to me.)

I called Clyde and asked him if he had noticed the speakers and LCD not working...and he said yes, but he also noticed the camcorder was smoking after he ran his "tests"...and that I must have a defective unit. "By the way", he offered, "we have a sale on new camcorders."

AAARRGH.

Fortunately, after replacing the wires (without Clyde's assistance), everything works fine now.

Romance (Beware the Ides of March)

The subject of dating and relationships has always fascinated me. It can require all of one's wit, creativity, patience and intelligence to navigate relationships, (especially over a lifetime with a significant other). It's a subject that we must master to find happiness in life...yet it's the one in which we receive the least amount of training. It's not covered in school -- and call me crazy -- but I think it should be.

As for today's cartoon: I'm a big college basketball fan...and it occurred to me that finding "the one" is not unlike March Madness.