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Comic and Rant for Saturday, February 1, 2003
Sketch Book Day 4 |
As I write this (Thursday January 23, afternoon; additional editing Friday January 24, evening), Keenspace is down, so I have no idea if this will really go up on Tuesday, January 28th [Obviously, it didn’t]. It’s no big deal, really. I just find it amusing that the time I finally start updating regularly again (I hope) is the same time as (I believe) Keenspace’s longest ever server outage (is that the correct term? It’ll do). That’s enough on that subject for now, except to add that, for the time being, I'm going to try updating only twice a week - Tuesdays and Saturdays, in what I foolishly think is not a vain attempt at a schedule I can actually keep. I actually would prefer Thursdays to Saturdays, as Thursday is much more “dead,” webcomics-wise, but that kind of defeats the purpose of trying to reduce time constraints. Both Al Hirschfeld and Bill Mauldin died in the past week. I was an admirer of both cartoonists, and, I hate to admit, was surprised by their deaths largely because I though they were already dead. This reminds me of a story, if you’ll indulge me (if not, go to the next paragraph). Back when I was going to AIP, we went on a class trip to New York City [insert sound bite from commercial here]. We saw the Met (which so overwhelmed me that I took a break to see a movie, some other museum (I think), and the World Trade Center (which I'd seen before and, sadly, may never see again), but what really interested me was a museum (whose name I don’t recall offhand) we stopped at on the way back. They had a Hirschfeld exhibit, and I took great delight in looking at the pictures and, of course, searching for the Ninas. I didn't say it was a very good story... Speaking of Keenspace, a recent topic on the Keenspace ML has been the tendency for web cartoonists to do rants where, in essence, they whine endlessly about how much they think they suck (Piro is the poster child for this phenomenon). Coincidentally, Gabe did a rant on the same topic in a recent Penny Arcade (you’ll have to scroll down a bit). Then again, perhaps it’s not a coincidence. Perhaps both Gabe and the KS ML posters noticed the phenomenon because it’s on the rise (Ruh-oh, Raggy!). At any rate, the Cardboard Tube Samurai made some good points and some decent jokes (and I’m not gonna bother quoting him, since you can just click the smegging link), but he ignored one rather important fact: Unlike himself, Piro, and Scott Kurtz, most web cartoonists make less money off their comics than Kangaroo Jack would have made in a just universe. I’m sure that some wonder why they’re not as lucky as some, and this depression may lead them to the incorrect conclusion that it’s a lack of talent on their part, hence they are overcritical of their work, hence the rants (not me, though, I know my lack of success is due to a major lack of updating - if I’m still making no money off this thing One must also keep in mind that artists of any kind tend to be sensitive about their work (just ask me sometime about how my smeghead of an ex-boss replaced the logo I had designed for the company with a POS he did in Microsoft Word. Better yet, don’t - It may go off on even more tangents than usual). In many ways this is a good thing. Many newspaper cartoonists have grown complacent, apparently deciding that their poop tastes like candy or something, while those critical of their own work continue to grow artistically (Penny Arcade’s recent changes in art style come to mind). Still, one can overdo it, though at least it’s better than bragging about how great and talented you are (though it would be amusing for a crappy webcomic with two readers to do that). Actually, I’m bothered less by Piro’s “I suck” whining than by his opinions on donations (which I was sure he posted in a rant, but have been unable to find), and I have a drawing in the works on that subject. At any rate, I promise to try and never complain about how untalented I am, and instead stick to making excuses about why I never update on time. In other news, I've made some revisions here. No changes in the text or strip, just some HTML tweaking ( |
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