A recent Bob Rich comic for Hedgeye.

I was enthralled by this article in the Stamford Advocate called, “Cartoonist sketches new life as Stamford financial firm’s artist.” And that’s because I had the same idea for years. I tried to implement it, but it went nowhere.

Bob Rich, the Stamford cartoonist who worked as a newspaper cartoonist for years and lost his last job at the Connecticut Post, Bridgeport’s daily newspaper. Hedgeye, the CEO of the financial firm, created the position of staff cartoonist and that job became a reality for Bob. Here is where is published on their website daily.

My idea works like this – a cartoonist has his/her work published on business websites, rather than newspapers and that is the new paradigm for cartooning in the 21st century. By business, I don’t just mean only financial, I mean money-making websites and companies; companies that can afford to pay the cartoonist.

For instance take Macy’s, the department store. What if they ran a comic daily or two or three daily? Wouldn’t people go to the site to see the comic and then hopefully stick around to shop? What if a bank had a banking related comic and ESPN for instance, had a sports comic and so on.

I had approached Bravo, the tv network a few years back only after a producer from one of their shows contacted me. He loved my work because I had done a few reality tv comics and one happened to be one of the shows he produced,  he got in touch with me and had all these plans. I sent them samples and went crazy trying to make this work and in the interim between Thanksgiving and New Years, his show was cancelled and I never heard from him again. I suppose when the show was over, so was our connection. He has other shows on tv on other networks, so I don’t know why he just ghosted me, but he did.

I never did hear personally from Bravo or any of the people I contacted a directly, not even, “no thank you.” So I’ve been sour on them ever since and really haven’t watched their network much because of it.

Wouldn’t it be great if websites and companies all over the world ran comics, even one? They could support a cartoonist, have their work on their website daily and that will bring readers and hopefully customers and clients.

Brilliant!