What I Love About Cartoonists

Cartooning is a tough business. It's competitive - there are not very many spots available on comics pages in newspapers. And, with the trouble the publishing industry is in, that number is shrinking steadily. The odds of getting syndicated are about 5000 to 2 against every year and the failure rate for strips that do get launched is over 40% or some other outrageous number.

So you'd think that, with things as tight as they are, cartoonists as a group would not be very collegial.

But that doesn't seem to be the case. Every cartoonist John and I have met has been welcoming and supportive. A great group of people.

But don't just take my word for it - here are two examples of generosity that hit papers recently. The first is Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson giving a shout our to our good friend (and most excellent cartoonist) Norm Feuti who does Retail, and the second is Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis giving props to the aforementioned cartoonist extraordinaire Richard Thompson.

And both Richard and Stephan also write terrific blogs that you can find here and here.

And, on a side note - I mentioned before about cartoonists visiting the troops with the USO - you can read about some of the mayhem and madness of that visit on both Pastis and Tom Richmond's blogs.