Calvin and Hobbes" creator Bill Watterson was no fan of the newspaper comic strip industry.\nIn a speech at Ohio State University in October 1989, Watterson called comics "simpler and dumber than ever."\n"The early cartoonists, with no path before them, produced work of such sophistication, wit and beauty that it increasingly seems to me that cartoon evolution is working backward," Watterson said. "Comic strips are moving toward a primordial goo rather than away from it."\nFourteen years later, it's hard to say things have improved. Watterson and Gary Larson (artist of "The Far Side") are now retired. More strips have seen their creators die only to be replaced by cartoonists-for-hire.\nBut there are scattered signs of hope. Newspapers, losing their hold on young readers, are letting some cartoonists, new and established alike, do edgier, funnier and better material. \nBut these changes may be too late. A whole generation of underground cartoonists is attracting huge audiences online, and they don't want to leave the Internet.\nDennis the Menace was 'a \nmalicious little kid'\nWashington Post columnist Gene Weingarten hosts a weekly online chat for the Post's Web site where he often discusses comic strips. \nWhy take comics seriously? Weingarten has a theory: We care about comics because they remind us of our childhood.\n"Our senses of humor are basically fully formed by the time we're 11 years old," he said in a telephone interview. "Ultimately, every joke can be deconstructed in an adolescent way -- the way people care about their past and the way things were."\nWeingarten is disappointed with many of today's comics.\n"Various strips run out of ideas. Sometimes it happens quite early; sometimes it happens late," he said. "Watterson is God for having made the decision to stop. Charles Schultz ('Peanuts') never did that. Most of these strips never did."\nEven a cartoonist's death can't stop some strips.\n"We've got too many comic strip corpses being propped up and passed for living by new cartoonists who ought to be doing something of their own," Watterson said.\nWhen strips go on after their creators run out of ideas or die, they tend to lose the edge that originally made them great.\nTake Hank Ketcham's "Dennis the Menace."\nThe strip began in 1950, the same year "Peanuts" started. Now, according to Weingarten, it's a case study in what's wrong with newspaper strips.\n"At one time 'Dennis' was great," he said. "Dennis was a real bastard, a malicious little kid. That's how it started out: Hank Ketcham just couldn't believe what a bastard his own kid was ... As the strip became more popular, Dennis became a kind of sweet little boy, just a little bit mischievous."\nKetcham died in 2001, but new strips are still being produced. That didn't affect the strip because Ketcham had a hands-off policy long before he died.\n"Comics suck because American newspaper editors are pantywaists and they are simply unwilling to risk losing any readers -- let alone 40 or 50 senior citizens who they know will cancel their subscription if 'Hagar the Horrible' is gotten rid of," Weingarten said.\nThe result? "The comics' pages are jammed with work product of people who haven't had a fresh idea in 30 years, but are chained to what has become a money machine," he said.
'My strip would not have had a chance five years ago'\nStephan Pastis writes and draws "Pearls Before Swine," a new strip syndicated in about 125 newspapers. \nPastis had a hard time breaking into comics. His story exemplifies the problems with the "old media" path to comics stardom. And even his story shows the power of the Web to make or break the new generation of cartoonists.\nPastis began writing comics in 1996 because, he said, "I'd been a lawyer for three years and I hated it."\nAfter an initial submission, which was rejected, Pastis tried again in mid-1999, using some of the 200 "Pearls" strips he had on hand.\nWithin weeks, he had offers from syndicates. Pastis said he accepted United Features Syndicate's offer because Charles Schulz ("Peanuts") and Scott Adams ("Dilbert") were both with the company.\nAfter signing with a syndicate, Pastis endured a "developmental period" -- a span of one to six months in which he sent in comics and listened to people tell him whether they were funny.\n"The odds of you getting signed even into a development period is 6,000 to 1; of those, half will drop out," Pastis said.\n"Pearls" almost died in development. Pastis was told there was no demographic to support "Pearls'" jaded, cynical, often morbid humor.\nThere was one last shot: The syndicate offered to put "Pearls" on its Web site.\n"Pearls" first appeared online in November 2000 and attracted 2,000 hits a day. Not bad, but not good either. But one of those daily hits was Scott Adams, who linked to "Pearls" on Dilbert.com -- the equivalent of a free TV ad during the Super Bowl. Suddenly "Pearls" had 75,000 hits a day.\nAfter the strip showed it could hold that audience, in January 2002, "Pearls" launched in newspapers. Pastis left his law firm soon after.\n"If it wasn't for the Internet, I never would have gotten into papers," Pastis said.\nPastis credits the increasing willingness of newspapers to take risks for "Pearls'" success. \n"Newspapers are aware now more than ever that they have lost this younger generation," he said. "They have been listening to the letters of 65-year-old grandmothers perhaps too much, and in catering to the older reader they have left this younger generation sort of hanging. My strip would not have had a chance five years ago."
An art form organic to the Web\nBut many cartoonists choose to avoid newspapers completely. \nMike Krahulik (known to fans as "Gabriel") draws the online strip "Penny Arcade" (www.penny-arcade.com), written by Jerry Holkins ("Tycho").\n"I don't know that I would want (syndication) because of editors," Krahulik said, "I'm perfectly happy with 'PA' the way it is. Because of the Internet we're able to target exactly the people we want to reach. It's a very niche comic, but we're able to reach everybody in that niche."\nThat "niche" is huge -- hundreds of thousands of people. "PA" is the best-known of the Internet's many "gaming comics," comic strips devoted to video games and gamer culture.\nThe genre has grown quickly.\n"When we started there were three other Webcomics. When 'PA' came out almost five years ago, it had a pretty good readership just because there was nothing else to read," he said. "Now you make a comic, there could be a thousand other comics like it."\nScott McCloud (www.scottmccloud.com), author of "Understanding Comics" and "Reinventing Comics," points to gaming comics as an example of the Web's power to create new genres besides the old forms of comedy, romance and adventure that long dominated newspaper comic pages.\n"There is no gaming comics genre in comic book stores," McCloud said. "That's a thing that had to find its level in another market entirely; that's just a natural process of evolution."\nWhile many of these comics are essentially just digital versions of traditional comic strips, some of them use techniques only possible because of the Internet, McCloud said. The result is an art form he says is organic to the Web.\nAnd all Webcomics have something no newspaper can provide: archives of every strip, from the earliest to the most recent.\nFor many cartoonists, Webcomics are ready to supplant newspaper strips. Everything is in place. \nExcept one thing.
'We didn't have to go back to our crappy jobs'\n"I haven't seen the Web make any money yet," Pastis said. "As of now, (newspapers) are the only way to make money." \nProbably fewer than 20 Webcomic artists support themselves fully through their art. Krahulik and Holkins of "Penny Arcade" are among them.\nIt took a while for "PA" to build a fan base, Krahulik said. "We kept our (day) jobs for about two years."\nThen the pair signed up with eFront, one of the many dot-com companies of the Internet boom that sprang up to use free content to sell advertising. They left their day jobs just before eFront was revealed to be fraudulent and its founder fled the country.\n"We quit our jobs and then the money stopped coming," Krahulik said. \nKrahulik and Holkins were ready to fold the strip, but a subscription scheme they called "Club PA" saved it.\n"We didn't have to go back to our crappy jobs. We were able to pay our rent and buy food and video games," Krahulik said.\nIn September, Krahulik and Holkins stopped "Club PA" because the strip had enough revenue from other schemes that it wasn't necessary. \n"We can live off of advertising and merchandise," Krahulik said.\nThose are the two traditional ways for Internet companies to make money. But they're imperfect: The advertising market goes through boom-and-bust cycles, and merchandise profit margins can be small.\nBut an alternative is needed if webcomics can become profitable.\nIU computer science professor and publishing industry consultant Gregory Rawlins believes that while publishing in some form will always be around, the publishing industry as we know it is doomed.\n"The forces of history are against (publishers). They're fighting, but they're going to die," Rawlins said. \nThe death of traditional publishing doesn't guarantee wealth for creators, though.\n"You can use the online world to gain fame, to hone your skills, to use tools, to meet friends," he said. "But until it becomes artifactual, we have no way to actually pay you for it."\nIn the long run, Rawlins believes, very few people will make a living from producing content.\n"No one has found a surefire way to monetize online content. Content is still basically free, and it will remain free as long as it stays online," Rawlins said.
The future of comic strips\nIn his 1989 speech, Watterson foreshadowed today's market. "We should keep in mind that newspapers and syndicates are by no means essential to the production of comics," he said.\nWatterson was wrong on a minor point: He thought a magazine featuring comic strips on high-quality paper with artistic freedom would save comic strips. Instead, it was the World Wide Web, not yet invented when Watterson spoke, that changed the industry.\nAnd in the fertile new online environment, it's possible that Watterson's vision of comics becoming a recognized art form will come true.\n-- Contact staff writer Paul Musgrave at rpmusgra@indiana.edu.
