I personally applaud Scott for his efforts. I feel artists deserve to keep, and own the rights to their created works. That’s it bottomline!

I have just stumbled on to this cool comic book.  And have only been able to find issues 2,3,5,6, and 8 can someone please tell me where to find the others?  I would like to have the rest if at all possible, please let me know. Thanks

He he, I win.

Happy New Year baldy.

MJ, I can’t speak about “editors” generally but you sure described the editor of our local paper.  I can’t recall the last time he was against a law, a rule, or an ordinance no matter how pointless.    It goes a long way toward explaining why our comics page is so lame.

By “post-paper-information-economy” I actually meant after newspapers themselves go away – which they will, IMHO.  That will happen quickly when two conditions arrive:
1) Cheap, durable newsreaders with nonvolatile, paper-resolution, reflective (not backlit) screens show up in bubble-packs in the office-supply aisle of your grocery store for $19.95, and
2) Local radio stations start delivering digital content to be picked up by said readers. 

I bet our right-brained local paper editor would say “That will never happen!”    I think it will happen in twenty years, maybe ten.  The practice of printing each day’s news on dead trees and delivering to to everyone’s house before sunrise each day has had a good long run, but…

How that will affect comics syndication, I can’t even guess.  Maybe there will be changes in FCC rules allowing newspapers to buy radio stations, and the content will be produced in the same way it is now except for the printing stage, and comics syndication will continue as before.  But that would require a pretty right-brained publisher to force the editors to think beyond the printing press.

…continued.

Odd, that sounds a lot like the syndicated cartoon industry if the complaints proffered so far are to be believed.

Perhaps but the difference is that every syndicated cartoon appearing in a newspaper has been veted by someone and generates income for it’s creator through direct income.

The gazillions of webcartoons are by and large a labour purely of love.

Scott himself offered to edit the strips to conform to family paper editorial standards. Of the two issues, this “problem

Edit: This is why the product being free makes little difference. A paper is not going be spending MORE THAN a few dollars a day on a single strip in any case.

Les, you are the consummate building and burner of straw-men.

Time after mind numbing time you build a case against a point in isolation or construct an entire argument against a foe which exists only in you own fevered mind.

I’m struck by a slightly distubing image of you dancing around the flaming effigy wearing your Santa hat, whooping with glee at your supposed victory.

Sigh.

Let’s begin the beguine.

I have actually said quite a bit about the subject of this thread

I should hope so. I said doing otherwise in the form of trading insults was a poor subsitute for keeping it relevant. I never said you haven’t reeled off reams on the topic at hand.
Strawman #1.

I do feel you’re coming across as very egocentric and I also feel you’ve been a hypocrite. I said as much not because it adds weight to my argument, but in the (apparently futile) hope that pointing it out will get you to stop acting in such a manner.

Which is kind of absurd in light of the fact that you are saying it on a board dedicated to your daily thoughts on subjects of your own choosing under ever watchful gaze of your own photo festooned in a Santa hat. Do you imagine yourself to be a humble man?

So you don’t think snide remarks are personally insulting? You seem to take my snide comments as such. Bit of a double standard, wouldn’t you say?

Strawman #2.
My remark was snide but I never personally insulted you. I made a joke (this you know full well) about IT professionals wearing plaid shirts and pen protectors precisely because they were outdated stereotypes. I did so to illustrate the fact that you were commenting on an industry with which you had no professioanal experience. Just like a cartoonist talking about the IT industry. I’ve actually had a fair amount of experience working in IT support.

Sorry, but I fail to see why giving your work away for free on the web has any more reason to be successful than giving your work away free in the newspaper.

If you don’t then you understand things even less that I imagined. Giving services away for free is the basis for most of the internet’s ability to generate income and share market value. Free services drive customers to sites which in-turn generate advertising revenue.
It’s costs me nothing to click a link to PVP and view the cartoons. The cost of providing me that service is offset by the sales of PVP themed products and advertsing sold by Scott himself. Advertisers care less about the content of the site than they do the numbers of potential customers they’ll likely display their ads to. Scott can do whatever he likes providing it brings people to his site. This online debate is one example.

Newspapers have daily deadlines, legal obligations, stringent content restrictions and editorial standards. An editor simply does not have the time to do any of the following:

“..grab a year at a time and check the whole series out at once. If they should find a particular strip objectionable they can skip it without feeling like they’re wasting money and without having to fill the space with something else because they’ve already got the next strip in the series.”

This is why they use syndicates.
This is why the product being free makes little difference. A paper is not going be spending a few dollars a day on a single strip in any case.

If being honest and qualifying my statement means that I “don’t have the nuts

Hey, if you’ve never struck yourself repeatedly in the head with a ball-peen hammer then why should I be expected to believe you have anything intelligent to say about that activity? Go off and do that for a few weeks then come back and tell us your opinions on it.

I would imagine that, after being hit in the head repeatedly with a ball-peen hammer, you might actually think that it’s a good idea.

Wait a minute…maybe that explains why so many syndicated cartoonists are so supportive of the system of syndication, which treats their creative output as a commodity which is bought and owned by the corporation. I think you may have come up with the perfect analogy.

Thanks, Andy, for taking the time to spell out my point for MJ. You nailed it right on the head. I suppose I should have taken MJ at his word when he said “unless you spell it out for the uninitiated I have nothing but assumptions to go on” and realized that it was a plea for me to spell things out using small words if I wanted him to understand my point.

You can call me egocentric, and egotist, a hypocrite, a bavarian walnut roaster, I don’t give a turkey’s nugget if you do. I just think it’s a poor substitute for actually saying something about the subject of this thread. If you think it adds weight to your arguments then you keep on doing it.

I have actually said quite a bit about the subject of this thread, but it appears you’re either unwilling or unable to recognize it when you see it. I do feel you’re coming across as very egocentric and I also feel you’ve been a hypocrite. I said as much not because it adds weight to my argument, but in the (apparently futile) hope that pointing it out will get you to stop acting in such a manner.

The truth is you got so pissed off with Rodmck calling you names that you grabbed your Tonka truck and told the assembled play-group that they were all stupid anyway and if they weren’t going to play right then you were going home to mummy.

Com’on, MJ. Surely you’re witty enough to come up with a better slam than that? You’re not even trying here.

Which is why we’re here. I never once personally insulted you. The best you could come up with was to accuse me of ignoring what you insisted the discussion was all about and making snide remarks about people wearing pen protectors.

So you don’t think snide remarks are personally insulting? You seem to take my snide comments as such. Bit of a double standard, wouldn’t you say?

The point is, you are talking about a web based model. Not newspapers. Different things.

So what are you saying here? That because it’s a web based model it’s no surprise he’s making money by giving his work away for free? Is there something magical about web based models that ensures free work will earn you money?

Sorry, but I fail to see why giving your work away for free on the web has any more reason to be successful than giving your work away free in the newspaper. If the strip has enough appeal to reach a wide audience that might be inclined to purchase the products Scott does sell then whether or not Scott’s being paid by the papers that are carrying his work is pretty immaterial to whether or not it’ll be a success. The only real hurdle you’ve pointed out is in convincing editors to give the strip a try, which is obviously something Scott doesn’t have to worry about with his web based model.

On the one hand you seem convinced that editors won’t give the time of day to any strip that isn’t syndicated and thusly charging a fee, but on the other hand you seem to be convinced that simply offering the strip for free is somehow going to convince the editors that all cartoonists should work for free even though you think that said editors would never consider a cartoon that was offered to them for free. This fits in nicely with your earlier claims that Scott’s efforts devalue the work of all cartoonists in the eyes of editors with the exception of your own work which is apparently immune from this effect.

You say, “to an outsider like me, this is a brilliant move.

What offer would that be?

Look, obviously you believe that letter is true, which means that there was some sort of offer for Scott’s comic. One can infer from the letter that if Scott not made certain stipulations, the deal would have gone through. And by the way, to answer your question below, the process of negotiation between Scott and the syndicate can be considered “courting.