Recession Hits The Comics

It looks like prairie dog is ahead of its time, again.

Apparently Village Voice Media--the corporation that owns alt weeklies including the Village Voice, Minneapolis' City Paper, Seattle Weekly and many others--has cut way back on comic strips, suspending their publication across the newspaper chain. The Association of Alternative News Weeklies Web site reports syndicated weekly cartoonists Tom Tomorrow (This Modern World) and Matt Bors (Idiot Box) are losing subscribers.

Tom Tomorrow (real name Dan Perkins) says on his blog: "Village Voice Media is hurting in this economy like everyone else, and their corporate response is to “suspend” cartoons and (I think) all other syndicated material across the chain, said suspension to last at least through the rest of the first quarter, and quite possibly beyond."

Of course prairie dog doesn't run any comic strips and never has since I've worked here (although we used to run a one-panel political cartoon by Jack Lefcourt, until he retired it), so once again we're in front of the curve. Arrgh.

Ironically, comics supporters have argued for years that strips are one of the most popular features of newspapers but despite this assertion the daily comic has been in constant decline for, well, most of my life. Remember Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes? Yeah, that's because you're old (I'm old too). You don't see work like that anymore. In fact you don't get much of anything in the dailies, unless it's recycled strips about families or talking pets.

There are a lot of stories behind newspaper comics' decline, but one basic truth: it's a crummy, often unappreciated gig. Over the years comics been allotted less space, they've been subject to censorship (see Doonsbury, The Boondocks) and their creators have been burned out by deadlines and hassles (in Watterson's case, battles with his syndicate over the licensing of his characters, which he was opposed to on principal). The economics almost always stink for cartoonists, the work is time-consuming and labour intensive and it takes years to develop the skills. And the pay is bad.

Basically, nobody in their right mind would ever go into the field--which means there's always a dearth of new cartoonists (not that there isn't first-rate talent out there. There just should be more.)

Anyway, it's a damn shame Voice Media is dumping This Modern World. It's a good strip. Canada needs a comic like it.