The future of comic strips

An interesting column by webcomic artist Scott Kurtz on the economics of newspaper comic strips. I did not realize there was such a high fee for comics!

I find myself agreeing that the comics page has gotten stale. I remember loving Garfield when younger, and now it's very ho-hum. And I strongly disagree with the idea of running classic Peanuts strip, no matter how much of a classic that strip is. That's a space on the comics page that could be given to a new artist!

Scott Kurtz might be onto something. If he gets, say, 5 webcomics together, and can convince a newspaper to drop 5 underperforming comics in favor of 5 free comics, and they survive, that could herald a paradigm shift in the newspaper industry!

I read a lot of webcomics, and recognize that many are too narrow-interest to succeed in a newspaper. A lot of webcomics are focused on computers or video games, for some way too hard to figure out reason. :-) But here's one that would be perfect for a newspaper: Count Your Sheep. Cute, clever, very family friendly. And for you newspaper editors who worship at the altar of diversity: it's drawn by a minority artist!

I see so many good comic strips being produced, so I get upset that Mark Tonra has a syndication deal....