This is my third attempt to write up my recollections and thoughts after our weekend in Boston, at the National Cartoonist Society’s annual Reuben Awards. The road to attending this event has been needlessly tumultuous and I was worried that past transgressions would tarnish my time among the NCS members. But that was hardly the case. These are wonderful people. They’re dedicated, kind, passionate, and eager to learn.
This year was, as I understand it, the first year that “webcomics” had a spotlight at the Reubens and I was one of five webcomic creators in attendance. In addition to myself, Dave Kellett (Sheldon, Drive), Kris Straub (Starslip, Chainsawsuit), Kate Beaton (Hark A Vagrant), Randall Munroe (XKCD) and Scott Campbell (Great Showdowns) were there. And the number one thing we heard from NCS members all weekend was “We’re so glad to see you here. It’s so important that you’re here.”
That’s the overwhelming sentiment coming from our contemporaries entrenched in the print world. The NCS is in danger of dying. Eventually. With no new print cartoonists coming into the industry, if the NCS does not broaden their scope to include webcomics and the like, there might not be an NCS in ten to fifteen years. And looking around it was pretty easy to see. I’m 40 and I was younger than most of the “young” NCS members. No joke, at one point I was asked “who’s son are you?”
Kris and I have had this discussion countless times. The NCS and the Reubens, they exist outside of our world. Certainly its membership consists of cartoonists who’s work formed the building blocks of what we do. Many of them were direct influences on what I do daily. And there is an honor to being included among their ranks. But outside of that honorific, the question remains what does the NCS have to offer our generation of cartoonist? And more importantly, do we fit in? Because there seems to be a real disconnect between the two groups. My hope was that after spending a weekend in Boston, among its members, I might get a better perspective on that.
It took a while to break the ice, but before long we were all fast friends. Talking, drinking, laughing, arguing and sharing stories. We were all peers before the first evening of cocktails had a chance to wind down. Universal Press Syndicate was kind enough to invite us to their hospitality suite. We even got to attend a short lived after party in Jeff Keane’s presidental suite, complete with cartoonists all seated around a table drinking and drawing.
From what I observed, the members of the NCS are a community bonded in a passion for the art. In the same way that I think the webcomics community is bound by a sense of independence from traditional business models. They are all about the craft and they have a strong passion for the history of the medium. Imagine being a cartoonist and never once being asked “How do you make money at that?” It seems unheard of for someone in my position. But nobody wonders with them. The models are so traditional that they are universally understood. Ours….not so much. Everyone who approached me about the webcomics panel asked why they didn’t talk more about how they make money. “Everyone wants to know how you guys make your money.” During the Reuben Award ceremony, I overheard a couple discussing the panel at our table. “Someone asked them how they build their readership and they said ‘word of mouth’ which means they don’t even know.”
Ostensibly we do the same thing. We’re all cartoonists. But watching the NCS members in attendance at the Webcomics Seminar listening to Randall Munroe talk about how XKCD started, no wonder they don’t understand us. I don’t understand it myself. Randall is someone who accidentally became a cartoonist. During the panel Randall stated that he didn’t even know the doodles he was posting were comics until he started drawing boxes around them and people started identifying them that way.
Honestly, we’re all cartoonists up until the point that one of us falls outside of some established guidelines for measuring that vague metric. And then things kind of fall apart. How can we label Randall a cartoonist if even he doesn’t consider himself one most of the time? Especially since he feels uncomfortable charting his rise to popularity or his business model in front of other cartoonists. He’s an outlier. And I think he represents everything that scares the NCS.
I mean, until recently, the NCS has had very convenient yard sticks by which to measure success. If you get syndicated, published, hired to animate for a big studio it’s a no brainer. Now nothing makes sense. None of the metrics used to label someone a cartoonist applies. Update schedule, sources of income, publisher, format, history, knowledge of the art form? Who’s to say who is and isn’t a cartoonist at this point? If Randall is and Matt Inman is, then who ISN’T a cartoonist? Do you just have to match words with an image? What about screenshot cartoonists? Or pixel art cartoonists? Do you have to have grown up wanting to do it? Do you have to KNOW you’re a cartoonist?
If everyone is allowed in the club, then there is no club.
In the end, I walked away with more questions than I arrived with. But I think i also walked away with a better understanding of why many people in the NCS are simultaneously eager and reluctant to include webcomics and web based cartoonists into their ranks. And why, for them, baby steps are required. The NCS is an honorable, storied organization that has maintained a very high standard of admission since the Truman administration. Now we’re asking them to open their doors to people who meet none of those standards. We’re not syndicated, or published, or working for animation studios or magazines. We’re not even sure how we do what we do most of the time. According to the way they’ve done things, we’re at best “reasonable facsimiles.”
Honestly, I have no answers for them. Other than “I know a professional webcomic when I see it?” Hardly a satisfactory answer. And yes, I would like for the NCS to open it’s doors to webcomics. But try this mental exercise. Come up with a series of criteria by which the NCS can determine professionalism among webcomics that lets in Penny Arcade but keeps out CTRL-ALT-DEL without defaulting to “Well not him because he sucks.” In the end, it’s always going to come down to a bunch of men and women (young or old) making a personal judgement call.
Which is what exclusive clubs are kind of about in the end I guess.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen to the NCS in the next 10-20 years. I know that I want to be a part of it because I am passionate about the history of this art form. This unique combination of words and pictures that I have been drawn too since I was so very young. And there are things I can learn from these people about the craft I care for so deeply. And I would like to see all that history and tradition carry on rather than die and be forgotten.
If I were to be hired by the NCS to consult them on how to ensure this, if I were going to be mercenary about it. I would tell them that they need to set the standard. They have the history. They have the honorific. They need to expand now, and establish themselves among the younger audiences as an authority on the subject. Right or wrong. True or not. If they like what they are and what they represent, that’s what it’s probably going to take. What constitutes a professional webcomic? The NCS says it’s so. They have to do something to restore and maintain that authority if the honorific their group carried in the past hopes to continue into the future.
Right now I think they’re losing what sway they have. And the question remains, will the NCS survive without it?
