CSotD: Teachable momentum
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Saw this yesterday morning when I took the dog for a walk in the park and there's a bad pun in there about setting the mood for the day, but I'll let you make it.
Here's the next picture I took, which is of Mark Parisi signing copies of Marty Pants #1 for some fans at a kid con in Nashua.
I also got to touch base with Norm Feuti and Dan Thompson, who were sharing a booth and selling their respective kids' books, the King of Kazoo and L'il Rip Haywire respectively.
I note "kids' books" because Norm could have brought copies of Pretending You Care and Dan could have brought a Rip Haywire collection, but they told me the organizers had emphasized keeping things very kid-friendly, and it was a little rugrat convention with nobody much over 12 there except parents.
I think the older Rip books would have been okay, but "Pretending You Care" is too much depressing information for little kids who may have to spend some time working at the mall before they figure out what they want to do with their lives.
While illustrated with "Retail" strips, it's actually a guide to working in retail which is honest enough to be really, really depressing. Also funny in places, but it does confirm my theory that there's a lot of fury behind really funny stuff like Norm's strip.
And, unbeknownst to the innocent kiddies, there was a copy in the building because Charles Brubaker, who was also exhibiting there with his Ask A Cat book and Fuzzy Princess comics, had brought his copy of Pretending You Care for Norm to sign.
This was genuinely an "at last we meet" moment, because Brubaker and I were on rec.arts.comic.strips back when he was still a high school kid, which puts it back sometime in the last century.
We were talking about Norm's (grownup) book, and the fact that he had put more than a decade into the retail business before he launched his strip, and I suggested that it's easier to make that uncertain plunge into cartooning when you know how much you hate other work, to which Brubaker noted that Stephan Pastis had been eager to get out of lawyering, and he had certainly hated the low-level warehousing job he'd had after college.
So there you have it, folks: If you want to be a cartoonist, the first step is to find a job you really, really hate, in order to impress upon yourself that starving is not the worst of things.
I suspect Thompson and Feuti did not bring that up in the panel session they did later on how to get published, but a lot of people won't jump off the high-diving board unless the ladder is blocked or on fire.
On the other hand, Don Matthias was also there and he's a middle school teacher, his Peanizles cartoon has never been syndicated and he's got a kids book coming out, so I guess you don't actually have to give up eating regularly in order to break through.
Still, I remember when having 100 papers meant you could quit your day job, and not only is that a harder mark to hit than it used to be, but rates are not such that, at that point, you can go full time. (This fits in with my opinion that anybody who can be discouraged from banging their head on a wall should be.)
Don's book is not out yet but he showed me a few pages on his phone, which reminds me that Steve Sack announced on Facebook that he's got a collection of his editorial cartoons coming out at some indefinite future date, which is good to know.
The kid-con was a pleasant gathering, perhaps more about "stuff" and fan art and teeny-tiny cosplayers than about actual cartooning, but I think that's pretty much how grown-up cons run these days and, besides, the first step is to get them into the tent.
Fun stuff on a fun day, and I suspect the organizers made a little coin. More folks should do this kind of thing!
Current Events
Here's a case at the Nib that illustrates a danger in long-form cartoons: Mattie Parrigon has done an extensive explainer about the economic catastrophe in Kansas, in which a dogmatic trickle-down budget has wreaked utter havoc, only to have her piece overtaken by the legislature overriding Governor Brownback's veto of their corrective budget.
A one-panel can be trashed or re-written.
It's hard to fix something this extensive — the editor's intro updating things is futile — and it's doubly frustrating, since it's such a good rundown of where they were at, before things changed.
You'd hate to spike something so well done, but that option had to be on the table. A rewrite of the final panel might have helped, but it wouldn't have cured the problem, while it's such a good final panel that you'd hate to ask/beg/order her to mess with it.
This makes my teeth ache, both as an editor and as a writer.
I know the risks. I filed a kids' feature explaining unrest in Cote d'Ivoire only to have the copy desk call me to say I'd better start rewriting because government troops had just opened fire on the demonstrators, and I had a humor piece in a monthly magazine based entirely on Ted Kennedy's reluctance to commit to running for president, then had to hold my breath hoping he wouldn't suddenly make a decision while it was still on the racks.
In the first case, I barely squeezed under the deadline. In the second, I simply lucked out.
Parrigon did neither, and the Kansas City Star did an excellent takedown that, while it doesn't negate anything she says, shows the advantages of working on a shorter deadline in a more mobile medium.
Ah well.
Shake it off and pitch to the next batter.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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