Our good friend Max Cannon, the twisted genius behind “Red Meat,” brings us the news that alt-weeklies around the country are cutting comic strips from their pages. This week, Village Voice Media–the folks who own the Phoenix New Times and a bunch of other alt-weeklies around the country–“suspended” publication of all their comics, according to Editor & Publisher.

This is, obviously, lousy news for cartoonists, since they depend on wide circulation of their work to (a) make a living (since they don’t make a lot from each individual paper) and (b) reach an audience. If too many papers drop the strips, then cartoonists will stop drawing them, which would suck.

If you’re in a market where alt-weeklies are dropping comic strips, why don’t you write a quick letter to the editor explaining that you like reading the comics? It’s more effective than faxing a picture of your butt.

Here’s hoping The Suits reverse course.

This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2009.

Getting hassled by The Man Mild-mannered reporter

5 replies on “Stripped: Village Voice Media Drops All Comics in All Papers Nationwide”

  1. We all knew this day would come. How is anyone anywhere going to “make” any money at all when almost everything (and then everything) is digitized? Damn you newspaper bastards for opening Prometeus’ box! Here’s what’s going to happen. The “getting your foot in the door” phase will last right up to the “Nice knowing you, it’s been a pleasure, really…” phase. In between will be a single hard won paycheck that will be immediately applied to a mountain of debt. I can’t think of how anyone is going to be able to make money off of anything. The future is currently impossible. And we don’t need people anymore. You think “they” aren’t in a lab developing fast-acting viruses (and faster acting immunities) right now? Wake up and smell the virus, man!

  2. I’m a longtime alt-weekly fanatic, in fact I credit the Phoenix New Times with keeping me sane during high school (at least on Wednesdays). The first thing I ALWAYS read was Life in Hell, the strip by Matt Groening long before he invented The Simpsons. Then it was time for a little Ernie Pook’s Comeek (which was indie before “indie” was a common descriptive term), or the excellent and often freaky-weird local satire of Bob Boze Bell.

    I was a teen, I liked subversive, funny things, and the comics were the IMMEDIATE link to that vibe. The comics were the gateway drug. Then after I’d read all the comics, I would look at the articles and actually read things. If it weren’t for the comics, though, I probably wouldn’t have gone out of my way to grab an issue of paper to begin with, and my hands on Wednesday would have been a lot cleaner than the newsprint-covered paws I ended up with for every period after lunch hour.

    I know editors have to cut costs wherever they can, but they’re throwing the creepy Max Cannon-drawn baby out with the ink-stained bathwater here.

  3. Oh yeah this sucks but before the mostly print newspaper folks get on their soapboxes, this began when editors discovered they could squeeze out more advert. space by shrinking down the size of comix microscopic.

    And let’s not forget the demise of the editorial cartoon. The yellow kid was beaten, raped and dumped in a shallow grave.

    Still that said, I don’t turn to the alt. papers for comix anymore anyways. Give me Salon, Funny Times and the New Yorker.

    Plus there are a couple of good comix stores in town.

    If you really care about comix, visit one of those local joint.

    Did you note the article added:

    “He notes that the move still leaves him with “eighty-odd papers, as well as Salon and Credo, so it’s not a fatal blow.”

    But what I do love about the Voice story is it comes on the heels of this article they ran last week.

    http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-01-21/books/2008-new-yorker-cartoonist-final-standings/

Comments are closed.