Good morning internet—it’s me, Ayo
Most of the time, I log onto this website when I want to get charged up with motivation to doodle on my iPad. The funny thing is that I don’t have my iPad with me at work so I’m just teasing myself until I get home, haha
This morning, I have been googling the artwork of Leonard Starr, who made a long-running soap opera comic strip from the ‘50s through the ‘70s. Title was Mary Perkins, On Stage. There’s some out of print book collections of the strip, so it’s probably better to search online and gaze lovingly at this artwork.
Lately, my friends in the indie comics community have been bemoaning the lack of institutional support for adult-focused comics. Please forgive me for pulling out my old topic but the answer to this lies in newspaper comic strips. In the thirties through the eighties, there were plenty of adult-focused comics. But they were in the papers, not in graphic novels. If it’s all the same to you, perhaps a shift in focus away from the book-shaped comics of the graphic novel format and toward the strip-shaped comics of the newspaper serial format can be a way to bring comics to regular adult readers’ attention.
I know what you’re thinking: people don’t read newspapers anymore!
Yes, of course. I don’t mean to focus on the literal paper papers. But I mean that we should think about getting our comics in front of adults where adults are. Newspapers are often read on websites. Why shouldn’t the comics be right there with the other sections? Other media websites, same question. Back in the Buzzfeed days, there were a couple of regular Buzzfeed comics on-staff and those comics were unsurprisingly among the more well-known comics of that era.
Comics people keep making this mistake of trying to convince people to go out of their way to engage with comics. Not the right instinct! We all need to go out of our way to place comics in front of where people already are reading things.
