OK, I promise this is the last segment on this topic. See how I wrote “The Conclusion” in the subtitle? I wrote that to make sure that I keep my word. It would be really awkward if in a few weeks I wrote “Cartoon VS Meme Pt. 4: The Conclusion Pt. 2.” This is a true trilogy, not a Douglas Adams Trilogy.

As I was writing Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, there was this nagging feeling in the back of my head. I felt as if there was something that I was leaving out, something important. I had complained about memes. I had complained about AI. Then it hit me. I had completely forgotten my favorite subject of complaint: myself!

You see, like so many other aspects of life, everything is all my fault. The memeification of cartoons is my fault. The cheapening of the artform is my fault. The ease with which people feel entitled to use my work, it’s all my fault! Ah, it feels good to get that of my chest. Also it feels bad.

Let me back up: I joined Instagram early 2015. I remember that week well. Leonard Nimoy died. “The Dress” went viral. Also I got engaged. But back to Instagram. Meta had not yet owned it, and I had not yet sold a cartoon to The New Yorker. The app was five years old, but still the hot new thing, at least to me, a person who generally hears about the hot new thing five years later. Regardless, this was a great time for cartoonists to be on it. I wasn’t drawing gag cartoons yet, but I had started posting panels from my self-published Bunnyman comic series, which had fake adverts that worked well enough as single posts.

Anyway, like so many others I got hooked pretty quickly. My page grew, like Audrey II. By the time I started drawing gag cartoons regularly, I was a humble servant of the app, feeding it often, like Audrey II. I can’t say it hasn’t helped me. I've grown a significant audience that I’m grateful for, and my “exposure” (blech) has given me some great opportunities. But along the way I’ve helped cheapen the art form.

You talk to any cartoonist over sixty and they’ll tell you about the good old days, when lots of magazines bought cartoons. You would start by taking your batch to The New Yorker (the best place to sell even back then) and whatever they didn’t buy you would take to National Lampoon, then The Saturday Evening Post, then Playboy and so on. By the end of the day you would have sold your whole batch. You could make a real living. Hell, newspaper comic strip cartoonists got rich. The industry wasn’t nearly that hot by the time Instagram came around, but social media took whatever was left of it and chewed it up, like Audrey II. 

Cartoons are free now. You want to look at a cartoon? Here:

That cost you nothing. Want more? I got a decade’s worth on Instagram. It’s very easy to see them, you can do it from literally anywhere. You know what else is free and everywhere? Another kind of relatable, visual content, that’s humorous and widely-shared? Memes. Is it any wonder that people have conflated the two forms? Can you really blame people for thinking that cartoons belong to everyone? Is it hard to believe none of us make a living from this business anymore?

Don’t get me wrong, free or not cartoons do have value, they are the product of an author and they should not be fodder for AI memeification. But this brings me back to my original point: despite all my grousing, I am not blameless. Sure, big picture, you can blame it all on big tech or capitalism in general, but by posting constantly I still actively participate in my own medium’s downfall. I still do! The whole situation feels like the plot of that movie Little Shop of Horrors, where a guy has to keep feeding blood to a man-eating plant, whose name I can’t remember at the moment.

All three segments of my “Cartoon VS Meme” posts dance around the concept of value, both intrinsic and explicit. The explicit is addressed through monetization, and there are some roads that we cartoonists can take to address that. Lots of my peers have Patreons, which you should support if you can. I have an ongoing series on GoComics, where I get paid per click, so if you’ve got time to spare and want to scroll through my cartoons, check it out. I also sell merch and license cartoons! It’s not the business it used to be, but we cartoonists beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Did you like that line? I just made that up. Don’t google it.

We’ve all got newsletters too, which we can make some money from (don’t worry I have no plans to monetize mine yet). But they’re also great for self-expression, like these long, sad rants about about my dying industry. I didn’t start this newsletter to reclaim my voice, but now that I’ve tried it, I’m having a good time and I don’t want to stop.

Which brings me to the intrinsic value. The newsletters are great, but I’m worried that the very concept of authorship is fading and that there’s little to be done about it. You can’t put the genie back in the lamp, or whatever cliche you want to use, and AI is only going to make it worse. As our art marches closer and closer to the valley of content, I fear that role of the cartoonist may disappear completely, the human behind the work obsolete.

Bleh, I ended on a downer again. Here, have another cartoon:

Look, I could be wrong. I usually am. In many ways the industry is great. There have never been so many cartoonists, so many diverse voices, so many easy ways to share our work. I’m very excited for anyone starting out, as cartooning still remains one of the most joyful experiences. I hope that in ten years some semblance of a living can still be made in this profession, that there will be lots of opportunities for everyone to make money and express themselves. In order for that to happen, we need to remind people that what we make aren’t memes, or content, or any other dehumanizing term that silicon valley is cooking up. What we make is art.

Thanks for reading!

What Else…

You know that daily movie game I made with some buddies? We added an archive so now you can play any game since we launched it! It’s free to play, (but still holds intrinsic value).

That’s all! Have a great week!