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I’m going digital with the newspaper

I’ve decided to dump my Miami Herald subscription, which it pains me to do since I don’t remember ever not receiving a daily newspaper delivery, even from when I was a child. But the newspaper is not arriving! I’m paying for it but it doesn’t come. We had a problem last month, it sort of got fixed, but it’s happening again – no newspaper delivery.

I can’t understand how a major metropolitan newspaper can’t get the newspapers out! Where are those newsie kids when you need them?

Anyway, I’ve decided to let my subscription run out next month and then I will just read the paper digitally. You can read the actual pages on line by subscribing for a nominal fee and it’s got all the things the printed paper has – the news, the comics, the tv listings, sports, etc. And there are even about a dozen pages or more in the back of the daily paper with extra things – sections called “Extra” which has commentary, opinion, science and technology, business and more.

And what I love about it is that you can enlarge it to easily read it.

I’ve been checking out other e-editions of daily newspapers online and there are many around the country that don’t charge to read it, which is interesting. I’ve always loved looking at other newspapers. I like seeing which comics they publish and see what the comics pages look like and also I like to see their tv listings. I don’t know why, I just do.

Now this is not just reading the online edition, this is online, but it’s an e-edition, which is the digital copy of the printed issue, so you flip through the pages like you would when reading the actual printed copy. I do it with the old Brooklyn Eagle, remember, I told you about that?

Newsboy selling the NY Herald

nyherald

1910. Jerald Schaitberger 7 yrs. old, of 416 W. 57th St. N.Y. as he helps to sell papers until 10 P.M. on Columbus Circle. Photo taken 9:30 P.M. on October 8, 1910.
Photo by Paul B. Schumm.

Steal like an artist!

I read these two books by Austin Kleon “Steal Like an Artist” and “Show Your Work!” Austin is a writer and artist who lives in Austin, TX. Yes, Austin lives in Austin. I’m still looking for a town named Tom to move to. I know of a Tomball, Texas. I’ve been called Tombo and Tomo, never Tomball though.

They are both quick reads, one book took about half an hour to read, the other about an hour. “Steal like an Artist” basically says that there are no original ideas – everyone steals from each other. Truth be told, I have a couple of comic strips that I like, mostly the drawing styles, and I try to emulate them while designing and creating my new comic strip. I didn’t look at is as stealing, I see it more like inspiration.

In the book, Austin says, “”First you figure out what’s worth stealing, then you move on to the next thing. That’s about all there is to it.”

But isn’t Lana Del Rey having this issue with Radiohead and the “Creep” song? One of my favorites by Radiohead. Lana is being sued by Radiohead for similarities in Lana’s “Get Free” song.

Anyway, I love the Steal book, it has a lot of useful information for artists and creative people. William Ralph Inge said, “What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.”

I’m not for this plagiarism, I am more about getting ideas and studying those who inspire you.

The second book, “Show Your Work!” is all about that – sharing your work – not just the completed piece, but show how it is created, show your concept along the way. Don’t be stingy, reach out to your fans – interact. There’s a lot in the book about social media and how it influences people and puts people together. Austin is keen on Twitter Meetups, I didn’t know that was thing anymore, but I do remember going to a few in the early days.

Austin says that a good idea is to immerse yourself into someone or that inspires you. If it is an artist, learn about them, learn everything. Then find three people that this person loved and learn about them, and so on and so on. I love this idea.

The book gives quite lot of good info on how to get your work out there and how to interact with people and fans who will move you along your way and up the ladder to success. But the object is not to dwell on money or success, that will come with time if you Show Your Work!

Loving this cartoonist roundtable

I read a really great interview in Hogan’s Alley, where editor Tom Heintjes sat down with some famous cartoonists,who took over the family business from their fathers and grandfathers. Jeff Keane of Family Circus, Mason Mastroianni of B.C. and Brian and Greg Walker who are Mort Walker’s sons, who work primarily on Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois sat around a table and talked.

They bring up the dynasty aspect of cartooning, something that has always bothered me. When a cartoonist dies, should the strip continue? Did it run its course?

Greg Walker says, “We’ve got to do quality work, or papers will drop us like crazy. We did come in with a nice list, but there’s the pressure to maintain it.”

I never really thought of that. It has a leg up being a popular strip with lots of newspaper subscribers but as one of them said in the interview, “When you’re at the top, there is only one way to go.” But on the other hand, newspapers are loath to drop a comic because losing just one subscriber over that is not acceptable, so I do think that some of these older strips just stay there year after year because the newspapers don’t want to make waves by dropping them, even if it’s only a handful of people who read a particular strip.

They all agreed that the older strips mixed with the newer strips make up a complete comics page and there is something for everyone that way. I’ve always agreed with that, I just felt that the older strips should be the original older strips, not an extension by the second, third and sometimes fourth generation of artists. And don’t get me started on those who buy gags. To me a cartoonist writes the strips and draws the strips, sometimes along with someone else, but purchasing gags just makes the cartoonist an artist, not a cartoonist.

Brian Walker says of his dad Mort Walker: “My father has been asked millions of times why he doesn’t retire, and he says, ‘Why should I retire? I’ve got millions of readers who enjoy my strip!’ Why should he retire just because he’s getting old? When he started out, in 1950, he was competing against Pogo, Li’l Abner, Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie. None of those guys quit to make room for him — he scratched and clawed for every one of those 1,800 papers.”

The roundtable interview is here. It’s really good.

The Beaux Arts Festival

I went to Beaux Arts Festival of the Art on Saturday, the yearly show at the University of Miami, now in its 67th year. It’s the first arts festival of our festival season, coming up through the winter will be other yearly events.

We always see people from our town there – showing their art and strolling the festival and we eat everything in site from conch fritters to ice cream bars and everything in between.

Conch fritters.

Women and comics

There’s a new exhibit at the Library of Congress called, “How Women Broke Into the Male-Dominated World of Cartoons and Illustrations.” I would love to see this next time I’m up north.

This is Dale Messick, who created and wrote and drew the Brenda Starr comic strip. I never knew if Dale was a lady or man as I read the strip while growing up. It seems like it was geared toward women, but I think I read all the strips in the New York Daily News when I was a kid.

I love this photo, I always like to see cartoonists in their environment. It’s sort of like seeing behind the scenes of a movie set.

Smithsonian.com has the whole story of the women and cartooning here.

brenda-starr brenda-starr2 brenda-starr3
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I bought Silly Putty

I just bought Silly Putty. Remember this? Remember how it used to pick up newspaper comics? I wanted the original one, shown here, below. But I couldn’t find that. So I got this version, which supposedly is the real thing. I’ll let you know when I feel it and smell it, and try it on the comics.

silly-putty-cartoons

I was ghosted by a mentor

hal-paper I was looking over Facebook friends, deciding whether to dump people and I came across this lady who works at one of the major newspaper syndicates. She and I met by accident through social media and she was going to help push me and my comic strip through the syndicate process as she has with others only I screwed it all up. She has ignored me ever since. And I think she would like Hal (shown here) from my new comic strip “Hal and High Water.”

What happened was I did a bunch of 10 With Tom interviews with cartoonists and I happened to interview one of her favorites. She helped get this particular cartoonist published and syndicated and she seems like she is in love with him, at least it appears that way from her Facebook posts, but she did fawn all over him in an online chat.

Well, she saw the interview and asked to befriend me on Facebook. I wondered, “Who the hell is this person wanting to befriend me?” And then I looked her up and saw she worked at the syndicate. I got all excited. I approved her friendship and that was that.

But as I do too often, I’ll approve a friend, someone I have not seen in years, and we don’t interact. We are just there. So I said to myself, “Let me say hello and introduce myself so as not to just have our ‘friendship’ linger.” I sent her a direct message and for the next hour, we had a conversation back and forth on Facebook Messenger.

She asked about my own cartoons and offered to help! She and I spoke about that bitch who works at the syndicate who I told you about before, the one I confronted at ComicCon, and lo and behold, she hates her and she called her every name in the book, using some filthy language! I was shocked and excited. I had an ally. She told me all sorts of gossip about the syndicate and she told me about all the famous cartoonists she has known and I thought, “This is it, I reached my tipping point.” I truly wanted to meet her.

She then told me to send her my comics, printed out in hard copy form. She said she was going on vacation the next day and she would look at them upon her return. So I agreed.

The next morning, she checks in on Facebook in Islamorada, one of the Florida Keys, which is basically in my neighborhood! What should I do? Invite her and her husband for drinks? Coffee? Lunch? I wasn’t sure how to approach it. I had only “met her” online the night before and anything I did or said would obviously look like me reaching out to use her influence. Should I bother her on her vacation or what? I wanted to, but I respected her privacy.

I decided to not say anything. And all that week she posted her adventures on Facebook, she was in my neighborhood for lunch, she went to a museum, they went fishing, they really did it all and me, I stayed silent. I didn’t even “like” her posts. I just stayed silent.

I guess that was not the thing to do because she has never said a word to me again. I did reach out and ask if she received my comics and I got silence back. I was ghosted by her, a potential mentor. To this day, which is almost a year later, she has not said a word to me on Facebook and we do comment on common posts. We agree with things politically and we enjoy the same comic artists and we have so much in common.

I do see from her posts that she travels often and likes to get together with people. I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t mean to offend her. I truly wanted to meet with her and pick her brain, but I guess I wanted to respect her privacy, too and therein lies the rub, I ruined my chance of what could have been something so great. Now I’m on my own again, pushing my comics and trying to get noticed.

Vintage Times

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This is The New York Times headquarters at Beekman and Nassau Street, New York City, c. 1855.

The Times dropped “Daily” from its masthead in 1857 and also moved to Park Row in order to be closer to City Hall.

Should I dump the Miami Herald?

newpaperboy I’m quite conflicted these days about dropping home delivery of my daily newspaper. It will be the first time in my life that a daily newspaper will not be delivered to my door. I am including my infant and childhood years, as my parents always had a newspaper or two delivered. In later years it was the Miami Herald, the Miami News and the South Dade News-Leader.

The Miami News is no more and the South Dade News-Leader is not a daily publication and not delivered anymore and the Miami Herald is the only hold out, that and the Sun-Sentinel, which is available daily and is the Ft. Lauderdale newspaper. There was a time when Ft. Lauderdale also had the Ft. Lauderdale News and Hollywood, FL had the Hollywood Sun-Tattler. I used to love that name.

I never liked when the Sun-Sentinel and Ft. Lauderdale News shared exact comic pages when they had a joint operating agreement. With the Herald and the Miami News, they always had their own comics pages and so did the News-Leader and Sun-Tattler.

Anyway, as of late, the Miami Herald delivery person has been screwing up. The paper has been arriving late on a daily basis and the last few days it has not arrived at all. I don’t mean just mine, but the whole neighborhood has not received it’s daily newspaper delivery. Now this is very shocking to me because the Herald has appeared on our doorsteps even when the door step was the only thing left after hurricanes and such. No, really, after Hurricane Andrew blew threw, the only thing left was the Miami Herald there, right on time, on the doorstep the next morning!

So now, I am considering ending home delivery. But then I feel that I am giving in to the way things are in the newspapers business and I don’t want to hurt the newspaper by doing this, but if it’s not being delivered and it’s basically 12 pages now, do I really need it? The comics suck, the Herald had not had decent comics since the 1980s and I read the comics now online and also most of the news I read online.

I have to think this one out.