Yet the
tactile quality of a printed page, the sheer look and feel of ink on newsprint,
will never be completely subsumed or forgotten. In a crowded field where there
are virtually no jobs advertised, one entry-level position remains. Every town
and village has at least one sad little tabloid funded by its local merchants.
Every city has dozens of these neighborhood rags that barely deserve to be
called newspapers. I’m not talking about “Alternate Weekly” papers—even there the cartoon venues are already taken. The odds of a newcomer getting a gig
with an A.W. are almost as formidable as getting into an actual newspaper. Yet if
you break in with a humble Neighborhood paper, you’ll have a much better shot
at seeing your work in an Alternate Weekly, your next stepping stone.
The challenge
will be to come up with cartoon ideas that have a broad popular appeal. But
humor is never truly centrist, so you’ll be forced to learn how to become as
edgy as possible without being offensive. That will help you improve your game,
as restraint is every bit as vital a tool as unbridled self-expression in
this hybrid word/image medium. It will be gratifying and sometimes humbling to
get “real time” feedback from people who see your comics in print. Learn from
everybody. It’s also a good discipline to learn how to respect a deadline. No
matter what’s going on in your life, you’ll have to produce your strip. Give it
your best shot! Pretend like you’re working for the New Yorker.
If you’re lucky, you might be granted a
little ad for all your troubles. Most likely some of the merchants will want
you to do spot drawings for their ads, too. Though you might have to fend off
criticisms from friends and family (“WHAT? You’re doing it for FREE?”), rest
secure in the knowledge that you’re building a tangible portfolio, not a merely
virtual one, that will surely lead to better things. It may also be just the
ticket to convince you that you don’t really want to be cartoonist. If that’s
the case, the sooner you know it, the better.
