January 12, 2015
I was traveling when the Charlie Hebdo massacre happened, but now that I'm home I have to say I agree with my fellow tribe member, Tim Kreider, who wrote in the New York Times yesterday, "I'm relieved to live in a place where the worst thing I have to worry about is being called names on the Internet."
Tim also nails it with "The Interview" hacking scandal as well, explaining to the North Koreans: "No, see, in our country, this is stupid art. We weren't even going to see it in theaters until you threatened to bomb them; we would've waited for it on instant streaming. Some part of the international reaction to the Charlie Hebdo massacre was the same kind of condescending incredulity: Wait, this was about cartoons?"
Tim also talks about being paid $20 a week for his cartoons when he worked for the Baltimore City Paper, which is $5 less than I got paid for my Honkytonk Sue comic strip at New Times in Phoenix. Fortunately for me and my growing family at the time, I also was the art director, and that paid me $110 a week, so I can relate to the low man on the totem pole nature of doing cartoons.
The Honkytonk Sue cartoons I drew for New Times were repurposed into four semi-successful, self-publishedl comic books.
That said, personally, for me, no one has topped this quote from the guy who almost single-handedly created underground comix:
"It's just lines on paper, folks."
—R. Crumb