Cartoon for March 31
If the Founding Fathers could see what a hash we’ve made of their country, they’d wonder why they bothered.
Reminder: you can buy the original on eBay. Auction ends soon!
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Cartoon for March 29
To see the full artwork for this cartoon, you will need to refer to the print editions of newspapers that publish my work–assuming that there are any with the guts to do so. Due to its almost certainly controversial content, my syndicate declined to post it online.
My editors have always been exceptionally understanding. (They’d have to be!) They respect free speech and give me a lot of freedom. Given the content and the risks involved, I understand why they didn’t want to distribute this cartoon. If given the choice, however, I would have sent it out because, well, it’s a great cartoon.
Those who want to see it in its full glory should catch me at one of my upcoming public appearances.
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Ted Rall Artwork on eBay
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while–as in several years. Now I have! I’m offering a piece of my original artwork for sale on eBay: my cartoon for March 31, 2008.
Starting bid is 99 cents (no reserve), so I’m pretty sure someone will end up owning this thing. Here’s what the toon looks like:
Democracy at Work
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Fellow cartoonist Tim Kreider said it first and said it best. I’m paraphrasing here, but he did a cartoon depicting an Aztec ritual human sacrifice. One onlooker remarks to the other, “Yeah, but it’s the best system yet conceived.” Or something like that.
Anyway, this cartoon is fairly self-explanatory. I hope.
The Future is Free
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Fellow CWA cartoonist Jen Sorensen pointed to a Wired article about how prices are trending downward–prices for our labor, anyway. What we buy always gets more expensive.
This ties in to a discussion among cartoonists and other info-floggers over the future of our business. If content isn’t king, information wants to be free and what we do is worthless in the new all online future (ha!), how will we earn a living? At a graphic novel symposium called Splat! held in Manhattan last Saturday, I was on a panel with “Diesel Sweeties” cartoonist Richard Stevens, one of the most successful webcartoonists around. Richard makes his living selling T-shirts and other merchandise, using his free comics as a way to draw readers to his website. He also draws a syndicated version of the strip for daily newspapers. Anyway, he and I disagree about whether others can replicate his success. The way I look at it, most cartoonists can barely come up with new ideas for cartoons. Coming up with T-shirt ideas is a whole other way of thinking, demonstrated by yours truly–I’ve never come up with a really successful T-shirt design, but I make money from cartoons.
The loss-leader model is being touted for musicians as well. No more will they receive real money for their record deals. Instead, they must tour and sell T-shirts. In the future, we’ll all sell T-shirts to subsidize our jobs.
