[FAQ] Frequently asked questions to rec.arts.comics.strips This FAQ is posted approximately twice a month. (The subject should be the same; if you do not want to retrieve it, kill the subject.) Between postings you can find a reasonably current copy at http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson/comicsFAQ.txt. Thanks to the following people who, amongst others, have had contributions culled to make the FAQ: Amcolor1, J.D. Baldwin, Dave Blazek, Bobcat, Ian Boothby, Charles Brubaker, Ted Dawson, Anthony Dean, D. D. Degg, Don Del Grande, Jym Dyer, Thomas Galloway, Guy Gilchrist, Antonio E. Gonzalez, Brad Guigar, Merlin Haas, Sherwood Harrington, Mykel Hitselberger, Bill Holbrook, Mark Jackson, Dave Kellett, Heather Kendrick, Ted Kerin, Laffin101, M8R-ux3d44, Kevin J. Maroney, Mike Marshall, Brooke McEldowney, Wiley Miller, J. Pierpont Morgan, nancy13g, Boyd Nation, Robin Netherton, Jim O'Malley, George Peatty, Bruce Pelz, Mike Peterson, Wes Rand, ronniecat, Steven Rowe, Satan's Little Sister, ShadZ, Michael Shonk, Thomas Skogestad, Sean Smith, Henry Spencer, Dave Strickler, Rick Stromoski, Nick Theodorakis, Dann Todd, Vaughner (now ReFlex76), Bob Vogel. Apologies to anyone whose name was missed - it's not deliberate! This FAQ may not have answers to everything you need - it is just a collection of *frequently* asked questions and their answers. Corrections and additions are especially welcome; to be sure they are not lost you can email them directly to mjackson@alumni.caltech.edu. The FAQ is divided into several sections (* = new question; + = significant change to answer): This introduction Does anyone remember. . .? Q. Kelly and Duke? Q. Arnold? Q. Conchy? Q. Is there a good print source for this kind of information? Q. Is there a good online source for this kind of information? Mysteries of the strips Q. What's become of Bill Watterson? It's been years since he shut down Calvin and Hobbes. Q. What happened to the Robotman strip and why is something called Monty in its place? For that matter, what happened to the Mildes? Q. Whatever happened to Jon's roommate Lyman in the Garfield strip? Q. But wasn't Odie originally Lyman's dog? Was he just left behind with no explanation? Q. Why are the mailboxes in For Better Or For Worse red and not blue? Q. Where is the comic strip Luann located? Q. What's the most romantic comic strip? Q. What's the oldest comic strip? Q. What are "bunny strips?" Mysteries of the Internet, including this newsgroup Q. Is there somewhere I can read My_Favorite_Strip online? Q. How can I read multiple strips conveniently? Q. I'm looking for a copy of My_Favorite_Strip on the day when SoAndSo did ThisAndThat. Anybody got one? Q. Is Pibgorn archived anywhere online? Is there a print collection? Q. Why do different websites carry different One Big Happy strips on the same day? Q. Do a lot of syndicated cartoonists read this newsgroup? Q. Do a lot of successful web cartoonists read this newsgroup? Q. I saw a big plot development! Should I use a spoiler warning? Q. What form should a spoiler warning take? Q. What is top-posting and bottom-posting and which should I do? Q. What about selling stuff here? Q. Why do people repeat the same post over and over? Q. What's this "DS" or "DS Alert" I sometimes see in threads about Mallard Fillmore? Q. What do the other abbreviations I see here mean? Q. What's an "Arlo page"? Q. What's with "=v=" and "E------r"? Q. What's a parto? Cartooning as a craft Q. What are some tips on equipment and techniques for hand-drawing comics? Q. How do you scan your hand-drawn comics to get the best quality online? Q. What are some tips on equipment, software, and techniques for drawing or editing comics on my computer? Q. Why and how are some daily strips colorized (in print and on the Web)? Cartooning as a business Q. Why is the selection of comics in my daily paper so lame? Why can't they get rid of some of the stale old strips and replace them with ones *I* like? Q. How much does a newspaper pay a syndicate to run a comic strip? Q. How do I submit my comic to a syndicate? Q. How many rejections do syndicated cartoonists get before they get accepted? Q. OK, then how do I get my comic on the web? Q. Have any webcomics actually made it into print syndication? Q. What is the Reuben Award? Q. What's the National Cartoonists Society? Does anyone remember. . .? ========================== Q. Kelly and Duke? A. Kelly, later Kelly and Duke, ran from 1972 until 1980; Jack Moore was the cartoonist. Kelly's dog, Duke, was large, cynical, and spoke with a Southern accent. In one typical story arc Kelly, Duke and a hipster cat (another recurring character) were trapped in the backyard by a vicious neighbor dog. Kelly told Duke to go talk to the other dog, you know - dog-to-dog. Duke's negotiation: "Let me go and you can eat the kid and the cat." No compilations are known, but a book of new material, /What is God's Area Code?/, was published in 1974 as part of the Cartoon Stories For New Children series. ---------- Q. Arnold? A. Arnold was a daily and Sunday strip by Kevin McCormick (later a gag writer for Jim Davis on Garfield) and syndicated by Field Newspapers from 1983 until 1987. The title character was a smart-alecky junior high school student and much of the humor was unusually edgy (not to say mean-spirited) by the standards of the time. A completely different strip of the same name was drawn by Bill Johnson during 1961. And yet another strip by the name appeared in /Simpsons Illustrated/ magazine in the early 1990s, featuring the title character better-known through the TV series Hey Arnold! and drawn by creator Craig Bartlett. ---------- Q. Conchy? A. James Childress' Conchy ran from 1970 to 1977, carried by Publisher's Hall Syndicate and Field Newspapers and also self-syndicated at various times. The strip was set on an island and featured natives and beachcombers; mostly a daily although some Sundays appeared during the Publisher's Hall run. Three collections were published: /Conchy: Man of the Now/; /Conchy on the Half-Shell/; /Conchy: Living In Tomorrow's Past/. ---------- Q. Is there a good print source for this kind of information? A. There are a number of books put out by comics historians. /The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics/, by Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams, is particularly gorgeous, as is /The Comic Book Century: Celebrating 100 Years of an American Art Form/, by Bill Blackbeard and Dale Crain. Maurice Horn's /100 Years of American Newspaper Comics/ is especially handy because it's arranged alphabetically. The recently-published /American Newspaper Comics/ by Allan Holtz, while expensive, is reportedly THE print source on the subject. /Hogan's Alley/ is a periodical devoted to comic strips, old and new. The print edition is still being published, though infrequently; web updates, back issues, and subscription information here: http://cartoonician.com/ /Nemo/ was a similar periodical, no longer published, but back issues are well worth seeking out. /The Comics Journal/ is predominantly about comic books, though it does print articles and news about comic strips. ---------- Q. Is there a good online source for this kind of information? A. Don Markstein's Toonopedia (http://www.toonopedia.com) seems to be up again, although its future is uncertain following Don's. death this year. You might also try http://www.comicsaccess.com/; Dave Strickler, author of /Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists 1924-1995: The Complete Index/, has a listing online of all the comics that have appeared in the /Los Angeles Times/ through 2001, with dates and staff. Paul Leiffer and Hames Ware's The Comic Strip Project, originally found at http://hometown.aol.com/Comicsproj/index.html until the sudden takedown of hometown.aol.com, has resurfaced at http://www.bpib.com/comicsproj/. And don't ignore the possible benefits of a well-crafted web search. ---------- Mysteries of the strips ======================= Q. What's become of Bill Watterson? It's been years since he shut down Calvin and Hobbes. A. According to /Calvin and Hobbes Sunday Pages 1985-1995/ - published to serve as a catalog to a show of the original art - he's been doing some painting and pursuing other interests. In April 2011 Watterson donated a 6"-by-8" oil on board painting of Petey Otterloop from Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac comic to a fundraiser for Parkinson's disease research; see http://wapo.st/e8dM27. (Thompson is in the early stages of the disease.) ---------- Q. What happened to the Robotman strip and why is something called Monty in its place? For that matter, what happened to the Mildes? A. Originally Robotman was a strip concept (and animated show) to sell dolls. The animated show was sickly sweet and also starred Robotwoman. If you find one of the dolls it plays "I wanna be your Robotman," the theme song. The character concept was shopped around to various artists (including Bill Watterson) before Jim Meddick took it up in 1985. Whatever Meddick's strengths as a cartoonist it is clear that he doesn't place a high value on continuity. Initially Robotman was a visitor from outer space who settled in with the Mildes, a pleasant if phlegmatic suburban family - mild-mannered, nerdly-like parents, a socially ostracized and generally repellent teenaged son, and an elementary school-age son with whom Robotman developed his closest bond. Around 1990 "Monty" showed up as a shape-shifting alien who became a roommate of Robotman's; a few strips showed his "parents" as shape-shifters resembling lava lamps. Shortly thereafter the Mildes were dropped without explanation, Monty's extraterrestrial origin was discarded, and the strip concept became "human living with robot of alien origin." Much later the strip ran an X-Files parody which "revealed" that Monty was actually an amnesiac scientist who had built Robotman as part of a failed government robot soldier project. Near the end of the 20th century aliens appeared again in a rather confused sequence involving alien-cat and alien-human crossbreeding and the abduction of Robotman. Eventually Robotman chose extraterrestrial exile with the robot he loved (not, however, the original Robotwoman). In 2001 the strip was renamed Monty, featuring a household consisting of the title character, his male hairless cat Fleshy (formerly the mother of alien-cat hybrids), and the alien (or alien-human hybrid) Dave-7 (formerly Mr. Pi). Dave-7 seems to have faded away, his sidekick role having been filled successively by an escaped laboratory chimpanzee (Chimpy) and the time-travelling Professor Xavier Xemit's "research cyber-clone" EB-7. Since EB-7 bears a striking (but doubtless utterly coincidental) resemblance to Robotman we appear to have come full circle. The gocomics.com site has none of this history, indeed no mention at all of Robotman himself; sadly, now that we've told you the true story we'll have to kill you. (In a mid-2001 interview with /Hogan's Alley/ Meddick said he removed Robotman from the strip at United Media's request. Apparently newspapers that had picked up Robotman thinking it was a kids' strip would complain when a more adult joke came along.) ---------- Q. Whatever happened to Jon's roommate Lyman in the Garfield strip? A. According to the 20th anniversary book, Lyman's purpose was to give Jon someone to talk to, but as Garfield himself took over that role, Lyman became obsolete. The book also had a humorous "Top Ten Explanations for Lyman's Disappearance." ---------- Q. But wasn't Odie originally Lyman's dog? Was he just left behind with no explanation? A. Yes and yes. ---------- Q. Why are the mailboxes in For Better Or For Worse red and not blue? A. Because Lynn Johnston, the cartoonist who writes and draws FBOFW is from Canada and that's where the strip is set (specifically, in the province of Ontario). In Canada, your friendly corner Canada Post mailbox is red instead of the familiar blue U.S. residents are used to. That's also why you'll sometimes notice an 'unusual' flag flying on a building (it's the Maple Leaf instead of the Stars and Stripes), why some holidays are celebrated by the Patterson family on a different day (Thanksgiving falls on the second Monday in October in Canada, not in November), and why some holidays have unfamiliar names (November 11 is "Remembrance Day", not "Veterans Day", and it incorporates both the commemoration of the victims of war and the honouring of living and deceased veterans). And back when Michael and Liz were in high school there were references to Grade 13; this optional 5th year (Ontario Academic Credits - OAC) for the college- bound was unique to that province and was abolished in June 2003. ---------- Q. Where is the comic strip Luann located? A. Near San Diego, but far from Los Angeles. (In 2005 some characters attended a nearby comics convention; the exterior of the venue - the very distinctive San Diego Convention Center - was shown in the July 11 strip. On the other hand in December 2011 two characters traveling to Los Angeles went by plane. Perhaps continental drift was unusually rapid during the interim.) ---------- Q. What's the most romantic comic strip? A. Thimble Theatre (E. C. Segar), a shared interest in which led to the wedding of two RACS regulars in 2012. ---------- Q. What's the oldest comic strip? A. The Katzenjammer Kids started in 1897 and is still in syndication. It was created by Rudolph Dirks at the suggestion of William Randolph Hearst (or perhaps that of Hearst's comics editor, Rudolph Block), and was inspired by memories of Wilhelm Busch's 19th Century classic /Max und Moritz/. ---------- Q. What are "bunny strips?" A. Term coined by Walt Kelly to describe the inoffensive strips (usually featuring fluffy bunnies) he drew as an alternative for newspapers unwilling to run Pogo when it was exploring a political theme. ---------- Mysteries of the Internet, including this newsgroup =================================================== Q. Is there somewhere I can read My_Favorite_Strip online? A. Several major newspaper sites carry current strips, sometimes with a rolling archive. The /Houston Chronicle/ ("The Chron," http://www.chron.com/entertainment/comics-games/) carries over 90 strips, some difficult to find elsewhere. (Three newspaper sites once had syndicate contracts permitting them to offer a custom page feature; neither the /Philadelphia Inquirer/ nor the /San Jose Mercury News/ - later BayArea.com - seemed to have a clue about what to do with this, and both eventually dropped the service. The /Houston Chronicle/ lasted longer, but a new web management system broke the custom feature and it has not been restored.) Most syndicates have strips online; here's a listing: * Creators Syndicate, United Media, and the Washington Post Writers Group shared the Comics.com site until it was folded into gocomics.com (see below) on June 1, 2011. * Some Creators Syndicate material not carried elsewhere can be found at http://www.creators.com/comics.html. * King Features Syndicate's business-oriented site (http://kingfeatures.com/comics/comics-a-z/) provides only samples and general information. The syndicate's "Comics Kingdom" service is *very* comprehensive; one can define a set of favorites and page through them 4-at-a-time. Sites using it include /The Oregonian/ (http://www.oregonlive.com/comics-kingdom/) and the /Los Angeles Times/ (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/funstuff/comics/); you can find others through Google search. Note that hacking the comic image URL to change the date and see far into the past or into the near future no longer works. The KFS Daily Ink premium service has been relaunched under the Comics Kingdom label at http://comicskingdom.com/ with up-to-date content, a 1-year archive, a custom page feature, and "vintage" comics from their library; racs regulars who subscribe to this service ($20/year) generally speak well of it. iPhone and iPad apps are also offered. Some content is now available free to non-subscribers as well. * Tribune Media Services strips can be found on King Features' "Comics Kingdom" pages and at gocomics.com (see below). * Universal Press Syndicate comics appear on the gocomics (previously Ucomics) site (http://www.gocomics.com/); after the UPS takeover of United Media strips from that syndicate, Creators Syndicate, and the Washington Post Writers Group that formerly appeared at comics.com are now found here. (At least some of those strips lost a lot of their archives in the move.) There's no delay, and Sundays are generally included. In order to discourage deep linking and image harvesting some strips cannot be viewed without Flash. Free archives are limited to 7 days, although manual editing of the date in the URL will generally get around this. Subscriptions ($12/year) enable defining custom comics pages and remove the 1-week limitation on the archives and the need for Flash. ---------- Q. How can I read multiple strips conveniently? A. See the preceding item for sites that permit you to build a custom page with only the comics you want. Unless your taste in comics aligns with their syndicates you'll probably need to build more than one. Less official aggregation sites crop up from time to time. The "Darkgate Comic Slurper" has been operating at http://darkgate.net/comic/ for some time. If you know (or can learn) a little HTML and Javascript it's not hard to write a web page that sits on your local computer and, when opened in your browser, loads all the current comics you want (that have filenames you can predict based on the date, that is). Finally, the Firefox browser offers a couple of local one- click (but not single-page) solutions. If you collect all your comic bookmarks into a single bookmark folder (or perhaps a unique folder for each day of the week) you can use the "Open all in tabs" command to retrieve them all at once. And you may find the "Morning Coffee" Firefox extension, with similar functionality, more convenient to use. ---------- Q. I'm looking for a copy of My_Favorite_Strip on the day when SoAndSo did ThisAndThat. Anybody got one? A. There are online search tools for a few strips: * There's a Calvin and Hobbes search engine at http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/, but past experience suggests it may not last long. * The Dilbert Strip Finder website (http://www.bfmartin.ca/finder/) has a complete keyword search facility returning a brief synopsis of the matching strips, the dates published, and where to find them (collection title and page number, and link into the dilbert.com online archive). * Pibgorn: An Unofficial Reference (http://image66amarillo.com/pib/) and 9 Chickweed Lane: An Unofficial Reference (http://image66amarillo.com/9cwl/) provide organized access to the archives of Brooke McEldowney's two strips elsewhere on the web, including the initial Pibgorn arc ("A Fairy Merry Christmas"). * Andrews McMeel Universal handles reprint rights for Universal Press Syndicate comics and editorial cartoons; they have a search facility covering years of about 40 such properties at http://www.amureprints.com. * The Cartoonist Group has a search facility for their properties at http://cartoonistgroup.com/properties/properties.php. * The Phantom Wiki (http://www.schapter.org/wiki/Main_Page) lists all the daily and Sunday arcs, with dates of newspaper publication. For other strips you can check archives of the appropriate syndicate site (see above). Or go ahead and ask; the more obsessive regulars on racs can sometimes direct you right to a specific comic collection. ---------- Q. Is Pibgorn archived anywhere online? Is there a print collection? A. After the strip's run on comics.com ended (at artist Brooke McEldowney's request) comics.com promptly removed the archives. The strip reappeared on gocomics.com shortly thereafter; the archive has been restored but a subscription to their My Comics Page service is needed to see it. It does not include the NEA Christmas strips ("A Fairy Merry Christmas" - but see preceding entry) which introduced the title character and most of the cast. They're collected in the 64-page /Pibgorn - The Girl In the Coffee Cup/, released in late 2006; three other books have been published. ---------- Q. Why do different websites carry different One Big Happy strips on the same day? A. Rick Detorie has negotiated a relatively restrictive arrangement for the web. Basically only his syndicate's site (creators.com) and a couple of others (the Houston Chronicle is one) are permitted to run the strip that appears in newspapers that day. Comics.com runs older strips (titled "One Big Happy Classic"), and *different* older strips run at gocomics.com and elsewhere. ---------- Q. Do a lot of syndicated cartoonists read this newsgroup? A. Some, and some of them even post from time to time. There are also some regulars involved with comics syndication and book publication, and with various aspects of newspaper production. It would be tedious to keep a listing current so we won't attempt one, but if you read for a while or browse the archives you'll see some authoritative responses to questions (particularly polite ones). Please try not to frighten these folks away. ---------- Q. Do a lot of successful web cartoonists read this newsgroup? A. Fewer than one might think, it appears. Discussion of web cartoons is certainly on-topic for racs but most of the big ones have associated web forums that catch much of the traffic (and the attention of the cartoonists themselves, it seems). ---------- Q. I saw a big plot development! Should I use a spoiler warning? A. Spoiler warnings are mandatory - where "mandatory" means people are going to get mad at you if you don't use them - when you are revealing or discussing inside information about a future plot development in some strip. Spoiler warnings are strongly recommended when you are discussing the content of a strip first published on the same day you are posting, particularly if you are posting early in the day (say, before 4 p.m. UTC). Spoiler warnings are not at all required if you are engaging in personal speculation about future plot developments. If you think you've noticed an especially subtle bit of foreshadowing, you might decide to add a warning before sharing your insight, but no one is going to get upset if you don't. ---------- Q. What form should a spoiler warning take? A. The word SPOILER (in all caps) as the first word in your Subject: line will do the job. Readers open posts so marked at their own peril. If you want to go the extra mile, you can write "SPOILER WARNING" again as the first line of your post, followed by a few empty lines to set the content off a bit. ---------- Q. What is top-posting and bottom-posting and which should I do? A. Neither. Bottom-posting is when somebody includes an entire previous posting and then writes their own message below it. The classic example of bottom-posting, as noted in a Dilbert strip, is to follow up a long-winded message quoted in full with, "I Agree" or "ME T00!" Top-posting is when somebody includes an entire previous posting and writes their own message *above* it, so that readers have no idea what it's in reply to. Neither works well on Usenet. The dominant style here is to include only as much of the previous message(s) as necessary to supply context, being careful to attribute such material to the correct poster, and have your own message incorporate the excerpt(s) throughout. (If your reply is directed to a particular person or person's argument it's polite to include an unambiguous attribution line even if you quote nothing.) Even if you prefer another style please consider that *mixing* styles rapidly produces unreadable messages in long threads. ---------- Q. What about selling stuff here? A. The overall FAQ for the rec.arts.comics hierarchy firmly assigns "[a]ny post offering to buy, sell or auction (eBay users take note) anything comics related" exclusively to rac.marketplace; they mean it, and so do we. However single announcements of forthcoming commercial products of interest are unlikely to provoke return fire particularly if brief; include a web pointer for more information. And we *like* to hear about new strips, although repetitive advertising will probably draw more abuse than pageviews. ---------- Q. Why do people repeat the same post over and over? A. The most common problem is Google Groups, which seems to go through periods of misbehavior in which its interface lies to the user about a post having failed. Those posting through Google are advised to wait a bit and then check the group for their message before reposting. ---------- Q. What's this "DS" or "DS Alert" I sometimes see in threads about Mallard Fillmore? A. Bruce Tinsley's Mallard Fillmore gets a lot of criticism on racs, not all of it from our more politically liberal members. In January 2001 "DS Alert" was suggested by Vaughner as a subject flag to indicate that (in the original poster's opinion) the Mallard strip being discussed is particularly ill-considered or just outrageous. "DS" is the same as "BS," the "D" of course standing for "duck." ---------- Q. What do the other abbreviations I see here mean? A. Here are some that you will not generally encounter elsewhere: 9CL or 9CWL = Brooke McEldowney's "9 Chickweed Lane" A&J = Jimmy Johnson's "Arlo and Janis" BC = Johnny Hart's "BC" or Berke Breathed's "Bloom County" or, occasionally, the Canadian province of British Columbia C&H = Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes" Chron = the Houston /Chronicle/ CIDU = "Comics I Don't Understand." Regular poster Bill Bickel maintains a website devoted to the oblique and obscure in the world of comics at http://www.comicsidontunderstand.com. CS = comics synchronicity, the apparently coincidental treatment of the same topic by more than one strip on a given day DTWOF = Alison Bechdel's "Dykes to Watch Out For" FBOFW or FBOW or FOOB = Lynn Johnston's "For Better or for Worse" FW = Tom Batiuk's "Funky Winkerbean" GF = Darby Conley's "Get Fuzzy" IDU = "I don't understand"; usually prefaced by the name of a particular comic (see CIDU) KFS = King Features Syndicate, major distributor of daily comic strips MF = Bruce Tinsley's "Mallard Fillmore" (see also "DS," above) MG&G = Mike Peters' "Mother Goose and Grimm" NSFW = Varning För Snusk! PI = the Seattle /Post-Intelligencer/ RACS, racs, or r.a.c.s = rec.arts.comics.strips ---------- Q. What's an "Arlo page"? A. Jimmy Johnson sometimes draws strips that subtly suggest that Arlo and Janis maintain a healthy physical interest in each other. Some of these suggestions have been subtle enough to land the strip on the "Comics I Don't Understand" site; some of the resulting explanations have been crude enough that the site owner felt it necessary to banish the content to what he called the "Arlo page." Although other strips have landed there the name persists; references here to heading for, or belonging on, the Arlo page indicate that the (usually mainstream) strip in question has unusually, perhaps unintended, racy content. ---------- Q. What's with "=v=" and "E------r"? A. One of our regular posters prefaced each paragraph with a "=v=" dingbat; he claimed to explain the practice on a webpage that no longer appears to exist. Another calls the Cincinnati newspaper the E------r because of its treatment of Judge Parker, which was once done by a Cincinnati resident, and comics in general. In these parts such oddities are generally filed under "mostly harmless." ---------- Q. What's a parto? A. It's an imaginary creature that occasionally appears in RACS discussions of the strip "Get Fuzzy." In late 2001, the strip had a story arc that involved a minor injury to the dog Satchel, a major character. A poster (whose spelling and phrasing were odd at best) appeared on the group who claimed to have inside information on the future of the strip. He claimed that Satchel would die of an anesthetic overdose and be replaced on the strip by a parrot. However, he spelled the bird "parto" or "parrto," and the term still reappears as a sardonic reference to the episode. ---------- Cartooning as a craft ===================== Q. What are some tips on equipment and techniques for hand-drawing comics? A. One syndicated cartoonist's practice: I put tracing vellum over my pencil sketches, and ink with a #0 Rapidograph pen and an Osmoroid cartridge pen. (I use Rapidograph ink, which is very waterproof. It dries in seconds, and once dry it's permanent.) The strips are drawn at 13 inches by 3 and three fourths inches, and I scan them them at 600 dpi and apply the shading with Photoshop. Another: Cartoonists can sometimes talk for hours about pens, ink, nibs, papers and so on, and that can be intimidiating to people who want to get into cartooning but don't have a lifelong artistic background. For the record, I draw in mechanical pencil on 8.5" x 11" white paper I buy at Staples. I ink with Pigma Micron pens that are just a few bucks each, and then I finish everything in a Mac G4. I draw at the dining room table in front of a huge window, or out on the deck when the weather is nice. But before you decide to follow my path, be sure to check out [Bill Holbrook's] art and notice how much better it is than mine. (Heck, check out the monkeys at the zoo; their art is better than mine.) Still, there are syndicated cartoonists who haven't spent their lives in art school. We also had a question in early 2006 that drew (so to speak) quite a few responses. Find the initial message at http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.comics.strips/msg/97a8c7ea991ca165 and then show options -> view thread. ---------- Q. How do you scan your hand-drawn comics to get the best quality online? A. Don't be a dope like I was. I thought scanning should be like photo-copying - cram it in and push the button. The poor reproduction quality of my older cartoons show that that just isn't so. Now I set the contrast on my scanner interface all the way up, set the dpi to 200 and use full color. (Remember that scanning moves a lot of data through memory, and adding memory is usually a cheap upgrade, so this is worth looking into if this step is painfully slow.) I typically draw three panel strips (or variations) in six inch squares, which is very comfortable to me and do all post-processing at full size in bmp format, using paint for color fills and paintshop pro to choose exactly what shade of gray each color filled area should be. And finally, paintshop pro does the reduction and conversion to jpg. I'm betting there's hundreds of other ways to get good results, this is just what I have arrived at. Whether my cartoons are any good or not is subjective, but I'm getting darn good reproduction quality these days. ---------- Q. What are some tips on equipment, software, and techniques for drawing or editing comics on my computer? A. For drawing, several posters recommend the Wacom Graphire tablet. It comes bundled with software (Painter Classic and Photoshop LE) that takes advantage of signals from the tablet about the pressure you place on the pen, the angle you hold it, etc. This goes a long way toward making it more like drawing with a real pen or pencil. Brooke McEldowney has been using one since the mid-1990s and his Pibgorn and 9 Chickweed Lane demonstrate that the results can be impressive - at least if you have gobs of talent and work at it for a decade. This kind of tablet is strictly an input device - you can't watch your hand and the resulting drawing at the same time. Some people find this difficult or impossible to adapt to. Wacom does make a similar tablet with integral display, the Cintiq, which provides more natural feedback - but the $3000 pricetag is somewhat discouraging. For editing, it appears that Adobe's Photoshop is still the gold standard. But the Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program, http://www.gimp.org) is preferred by some, not necessarily entirely because it is free. ---------- Q. Why and how are some daily strips colorized (in print and on the Web)? A. Colorizing for print used to be dominated by an outfit called Reed-Brennan, who also bear responsibility for much of the stretching-and-squishing used to fit the maximum number of comic strip products into a shrinking newspaper page. (*And* they implement the annoying anti-deep-linking measures and unreliable delivery of web cartoons from King Features, of which they are a part.) Colorizing for web and print has become much more common in recent years; new artist contracts at KFS, for example, require the delivery of both B&W and color versions of daily strips. Third-party colorization of dailies sometimes conflicts with the (artist-specified) colors seen on Sundays, and may even be inconsistent day-to-day. Many, perhaps most, cartoonists and racs regulars deplore the post-facto colorizing of work rendered, and intended by the artist to be viewed, in black and white. Conversely some argue that sensitive colorization can enhance even strips not originally drawn for it, and at least a few respected cartoonists agree. Awful examples of continuity and jokes spoiled by inappropriate application of color continue to occur regularly, however, so it appears that "sensitive colorization" is far from universal, if not an actual oxymoron. ---------- Cartooning as a business ======================== Q. Why is the selection of comics in my daily paper so lame? Why can't they get rid of some of the stale old strips and replace them with ones *I* like? A. To the extent a comics page reflects conscious planning rather than neglect, it is generally crafted to help maintain and build newspaper readership. On that basis it should have something for everyone. Editors may consider it important, if they cancel a strip, to replace it within its category, unless they feel they need to make a move to re-balance the page. In other words, if Blondie were to disappear, they wouldn't replace it with Boondocks unless they were actively trying to change a stodgy page and make it more hip. Of course some papers only change strips at gunpoint - like when an existing strip goes out of production. Others actively work to keep a mix going, rotating out strips that they feel aren't pulling the readership they want. Sometimes a new editor or publisher will arrive and find a particularly hated strip in place or a particularly loved strip missing and will move to change the situation. But you have to tread lightly - management HATES loud, angry readers, and you can light up the switchboard by missing a day, even of Trudy or Marmaduke. (Maybe even moreso: Guess who's home and has nothing better to worry about?) Beyond adding the new boss's favorite strip, adding a strip generally involves addressing a portion of your target audience. For example, when papers lost the Far Side because it stopped, a lot of them looked for a wacky, postmodern (whateverthehell that means) strip to replace it - so we suddenly have a lot of wacky panels, because there was a demand. Or you might drop Mary Worth and pick up For Better or For Worse to try to keep that continuous, family sort of feel but rev it up from the 1950s to the 1990s. On the other hand, you might go the opposite, and drop Apartment 3-G because you feel your readership is simply too old - so you'd pick up Luann, Foxtrot, Arlo & Janis, something to change the demographic entirely, or dump Mark Trail in favor of Liberty Meadows. (Okay, no editor would ever make THAT connection.) Sometimes a paper asks for input; if that happens in your area, remember that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Typically, papers run a blank for readers to fill out and return: What are your favorite strips? You don't play, you don't win. Genuine readership surveys happen, but they're expensive and only the big boys can afford to do them very often. Besides, this works: If you don't care enough about a strip to fill out the form, to heck with you. Of course, it tends to favor fanatics, but that can be the stay-at-home retiree who just loves Mary Worth, or the young active types who are willing to campaign for Liberty Meadows or Zippy. ---------- Q. How much does a newspaper pay a syndicate to run a comic strip? A. It depends strongly on the paper's circulation, less so on the popularity of the strip itself, and possibly to some extent on the degree of competition in the newspaper's circulation area. We have reports from under $10 per week in a small-towm market (double it to add Sundays) up to several hundred per week for a big-city daily (including Sundays). ---------- Q. How do I submit my comic to a syndicate? A. The National Cartoonists Society (see below) has a "Be a Cartoonist?" page including information on syndicates and their submission guidelines. Less up-to-date but with, perhaps, more depth and breadth: Lee Nordling's /Your Career In Comics/ has been spoken highly of. ---------- Q. How many rejections do syndicated cartoonists get before they get accepted? A. If you have to ask, you can't afford it. And even if you succeed you may not be able to afford to live. Newspapers are in retrenchment mode, and one well-connected cartoonist hasn't "heard of a single cartoonist, newly syndicated since 2000, who is able to make [his or her] sole living off the strip. Not one. And let me tell you: as a lover of the artform, I desperately WANT that statistic to be wrong." ---------- Q. OK, then how do I get my comic on the web? A. Just put it there. Perhaps you have server space for a personal home page bundled with your Internet service; if not there are some free web hosts out there (although they will insist on having their ads on your page). Of course nobody may notice (things like joining web rings can help here), and on the other hand if lots of people *do* notice and you start to draw lots of traffic you risk exceeding an explicit or implicit bandwidth quota and getting kicked off your server. If you're looking for a more formal service, we know of two. Comic Genesis (www.comicgenesis.com), formerly Keenspace, offers free web hosting for comics and the possibility, at least, of rewarding (with shared ad revenue or even a promotion to their major league, Keenspot) rather than punishing success. gocomics.com (part of Andrews McMeel Universal) has a "Comics Sherpa" service; for around $10/month or $100/year one gets web exposure immediately adjacent to the syndicated product and perhaps some increased probability of being noticed; Brian Anderson's Dog Eat Doug was picked up from there by Creators Syndicate. ---------- Q. Have any webcomics actually made it into print syndication? A. It's not so rare as one might think. We know of these: * Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet (Peter Zale), Tribune Media Services, ran from June 2000 until "going on sabbatical" in December 2005; returned to the web in November 2007. * The Boondocks (Aaron McGruder), Universal Press Syndicate, ran from April 1999 through March 2006; reruns continued for some months thereafter. * Pearls Before Swine (Stephen Pastis), United Feature Syndicate. * The Humble Stumble (Roy Schneider), United Feature Syndicate, ran from 2005 to 2008. * Mudpie (Guy Gilchrist) was with Copley News Service for a couple of years; the Sunday version (Night Lights and Fairy Flights) was then self-syndicated for a while with the assistance of American Color. And Guy's Your Angels Speak started on his website and was distributed by DBR Media before it folded in early 2008. * Dog Eat Doug (Brian Anderson), Creators Syndicate. Promoted from Comics Sherpa (see previous entry). * Spooner (Ted Dawson), carried successively by the LA Times Syndicate, Tribune Media Services, and United Media for slightly over two years, then retired after a brief period of self-syndication; reappeared in comic-book form in March 2004. * Diesel Sweeties (Richard Stevens), less than two years with United Feature Syndicate before reverting to web-only. * Argyle Sweater (Scott Hilburn), Universal Press Syndicate, from April 2008. * What The Duck (Aaron Johnson), renamed W. T. Duck for print, Universal Press Syndicate, from January 2009 to July 2011. * Rip Haywire (Dan Thompson), United Feature Syndicate, from January 2009. * Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog (Jonathan Mahood), which started on Comics Sherpa (see above) before moving to gocomics.com, has had at least a limited print run in /Die Zeit/, Germany's largest weekly, and began syndication with King Features in January 2011. There are other web strips that, through self-syndication, appear in a college or lifestyle paper or two but *those* artists don't appear on the cover of /People/ so we won't list them here either. Special mention to those who have made it into a regular daily or are otherwise notable, however: * Greystone Inn (Brad Guigar) appeared in the /Philadelphia Daily News/, where it continues since the strip morphed into Evil Inc. * Kevin & Kell (Bill Holbrook - who also produces On the Fastrack and Safe Havens, both syndicated by King Features) appears in the /Atlanta Journal-Constitution/. * Bob the Squirrel (Frank Page) appears in the Rome NY /Daily Sentinel/. * Day By Day (Chris Muir) runs in the /Knoxville News-Sentinel/, the /San Diego Union-Tribune/, the San Diego-area /North County Times/, and the /Hemingford [NE] Ledger/. * Last Kiss (John Lustig) runs in the /Seattle Times/. * 44 Union Avenue (Mike Witmer) runs in the /Lancaster [PA] New Era/. * 2:15 (Jessica Shea) appears in /The Georgetown [MA] Record/. * Squid Row (Bridgett Spicer) began appearing in /The Monterey County [CA] Herald/ in January 2010. * Haiku Ewe (Allison Garwood) began appearing in the Sunday /Kansas City Star/ in July 2010. * Lum and Abner (Donnie Pitchford), based on a classic radio program, began appearing in the /Mena Star/, the /Saline Courier/, and the /Amity Standard/ (all in Arkansas) in mid-2011. * Sunshine State (Graham Nolan) began appearing in the San Mateo (CA) /Daily Journal/ in October 2011. * Maximus (Frank Roberson) had a two-month run in the /Sacramento Bee/ in early 2011. * Gray Matters (Jerry Resler and Stuart Carlson) began running in the Arlington IL /Daily Herald/ in April 2014. ---------- Q. What is the Reuben Award? A. A single award for Cartoonist of the Year, given by the National Cartoonists Society at their annual gala dinner. At the same time "various professional divisions are also honored with special plaques for excellence"; these are sometimes mistakenly referred to as "Reubens" but are officially "NCS Division Awards." ---------- Q. What's the National Cartoonists Society? A. A 50+ year-old organization which limits its membership to those earning 50% or more of their income by drawing cartoons. Their website (http://www.reuben.org/) has lots of current information on syndicates and on getting started in cartooning, and many useful links (including those to NCS member web pages). ---------- -- Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson