So I’m surfing last night and reading a bunch of junk about this Kurtz vs. Wiley vs. syndication vs. Kramer vs. Kramer stuff, and ran across this article at Websnark. And, I gotta tell ya, it made some sense to me.
Yeah there’s your requisite name calling and such, but it did make me question the syndication model a bit more.
To be honest, it’s all kind of a moot point for me. I try a new strip or panel once or twice a year and it gets roundly rejected by the syndicates. In the meantime I’m selling cartoons to magazines, book publishers, advertising agencies, greeting card companies, newspapers, corporations and individuals who are kind enough to A) think I’m funny, and B) pay me to use my cartoons.
In all this squabbling it almost feels like syndication or the brave new web are the cartoonist’s only options. Lemme tell ya, it ain’t so.
You can draw cartoons and make a living from the actual art/writing without pimping your creativity. Hundreds of us do it every day, fusing tradition media sales and web savvy. And I suspect we’ll keep right on doing it, no matter who wins.