Friends ask me how my comic “career” is going.
I always tell them these days, that it’s going well. No, I’m not published in newspapers, but honestly I don’t want to be.
Being published in newspapers was always my goal but those days are over. I sometimes wish I was part of the height of the cartooning days, when cartoonists’ works were worshiped. From the turn of the last century until possibly the 1980s, I think that was the time to be part of it all. In the very early days, they were treated like movie stars.
I think the 1940s and 1950s might have been the best time. Now I think it’s all about online publication.
Just as new performers, singers and such, are discovered online and on apps, so are new cartoons and comics. It’s where the readers are, and viewers. Many people watch tv and movies via apps now, they aren’t subjected to the scheduling and whims of tv networks.
It’s where I can be creative, do my own thing, have short deadlines and just not be controlled by a large corporation — gaining the same readership as I would if I was printed, maybe more.
I’ve lived by cartoonist Jason Chatfield’s quote: “Don’t curate your art to what gets likes. Curate it to what you like.” In that way, my readers find me, rather than me searching for readers.
And now he introduced a new one that I am living by: “We need to forget the newspapers. They forgot us a long time ago,” referring to cartoonists and comic strips. Keef Knight, another cartoonist, said it first. But Jason brought it to my attention.
And it’s not just cartoons. I’ve been reading newspapers online from other areas of the country. I subscribe to them and read the e-papers which I like flipping through. I noticed that so many of them don’t seem to be published locally, even though they are local daily newspapers.
One newspaper in upstate New York had as their main above-the-fold headlines stories on Nevada’s wet weather and a story about Olympians from California. Nothing related to upstate New York on the front page, not one story! I unsubscribed from that paper after a few days. It wasn’t what I was looking for. It’s owned by USA Today and it seems that that is the news that they print — what USA Today prints in all the newspapers they own.
Back to Jason Chatfield — he took over an old Australian newspaper comic strip called Ginger Meggs a few years ago. It will be 102 years old this November. It’s gone through quite a few cartoonists since it’s inception in 1921.
Well, the newspapers in Australia that publish the strips has cancelled Ginger and that’s the end of his 102-year-old newspaper publication. It appears as if the newspapers there have abandoned all cartoons. There seems to be a newspaper monopoly ownership in Australia.
Ginger Meggs will continue online at Jason’s website: gingermeggs.com and GoComics will post reruns here: gocomics.com/gingermeggs.
Hence, the quote: “We need to forget the newspapers. They forgot us a long time ago.” But I’ve been way ahead of Jason and Keef on this one for quite a few years now.
I interviewed Jason a few years back for my 10 With Tom series when he was president of the National Cartoonist Society. By the way, he is also a New Yorker magazine cartoonist.
Originally published at tomversation.com on August 25, 2023.
