Cul-De-Sac Leads New Cartoon Wave At Miami Herald



This article on changes with the cartoon offerings at the Miami Herald focuses on Richard Thompson and his Cul-De-Sac strip in a way that I think is very encouraging. Everyone knows that the newspaper strip market is historically tough and has become in the last decade tougher than ever for its shrinking nature. I would suggest that a strip like Cul-De-Sac is particularly vulnerable to how the market has evolved. Its pleasures are in the drawing and in the droll nature of the humor -- it's not a blank-slate launching pad for clever gags. This makes it a tough sell to a market that frequently depends on polls and try-outs to see if strips catch on or not.

Articles like the one in the Herald suggest a different strategy of putting Cul-De-Sac in the paper with a commitment to it for a decent amount of time based on its past reviews and the general enthusiasm it's generated from peers and other papers carrying the material. That's the way everyone used to do it, really. I hope this kind of thing continues, and that Cul-De-Sac gains as many clients as it needs for Thompson to get the maximum enjoyment out of doing it.

Also, basically, I wanted a chance to run what may be the only comic strip episode in history to employ the word "trebuchet."
 
posted 7:00 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives