It sometimes feels ridiculous to keep drawing comics with so much that’s going on in the world.

The murder of Dr. Tiller, the fact that zooplankton are down 70% in the last 4 decades, mass starvation on the horizon as the economy collapses, torture and repression… and I sit here drawing comics. The least I could do is add more politics back into “Minimum Security” (which I will do, starting with the ones for the last week of June). I’m also glad I’m coloring “As the World Burns” — it has a message that I will be glad to help bring to a wider audience.

Pages colored so far: 94.
Pages left: 124.
I’ll be halfway done on Thursday.

Pages done in the screenplay: 83.

“The artist of today, if s/he doesn’t want to evade the issues, or become an empty shell, must choose between technology and service in the class war…Either s/he joins the ranks of architects, engineers and admen whom the industrial powers employ…or s/he becomes a depicter and critic who critiques the face of our time, becoming a propagandist and defender of revolutionary ideas…”
– “Art is in Danger” (gender-corrected), 1925, Union of Communist Artists (George Grosz, John Heartfield, Wieland Herzfelde)

* * *

I think a lot, as you can imagine, about the tension between trying to make a living as an artist and trying to remain true to a larger purpose. It’s really hard sometimes, because the two aims are mostly opposed. At times I’ve tried to make my comics more mainstream because I’ve really wanted them to get into daily papers, but my political views usually bleed into them anyway.

I feel uneasy when I do a series about something completely non-political (say, online dating). I start to worry that I’m wasting my time and ignoring the issues that matter. I’ve never fully been able to make the transition from editorial cartoonist to comic strip artist. “Minimum Security” started out as an editorial cartoon and turned out to be a hybrid.

It’s been clear for a while that newspapers are circling the drain. I’ve clung (and still do, in the deep irrational recesses of my heart) to the hope that I could get my comic strip into some of them before they totally collapse, even if only for a brief moment of glory and the satisfaction of having succeeded at something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. I also wanted the opportunity to address a much larger audience with the ideas that I think are important. I wanted to bring certain things to people’s attention as they sit at their breakfast tables.

I was really close not too long ago, in line for United Media to launch my comic into print. Then everyone noticed that the economy was collapsing, and it got pushed back, and pushed back again.

Though not officially launched, “Minimum Security” is running in one daily paper, and it’s been a thrill to see it on the comics page right between “Hi and Lois” and “Hagar the Horrible.” And of course the comic strip has run in other non-daily periodicals as well, and on comics.com.

I’ve learned a lot the last couple of years while working with United. As my editor, the brilliant cartoonist/writer Ted Rall has taught me how to structure jokes and push them to higher levels of funny, how to define characters, how to make a comic look good, how to get across a serious point without being boring, and so much more. It’s ridiculous that they laid off the person who, as Editor of Acquisitions, was cultivating a new generation of newspaper comic strip artists and represented an aspect of a possible viable future for newspapers. It confirms for me that newspapers have given up and still have a long way to fall.

I love drawing “Minimum Security.” I love it most when it makes a point that I think is important and manages to be funny at the same time. Clearly for the foreseeable future, it’s not going to be the big print newspaper sensation I’d dreamed of. But it has a good audience, on my website and on comics.com, an audience that I think appreciates its harder edge and its sense of outrage. I’m going to bring that into it more.

I’ll hang on to my hopes of print syndication until the bitter end. I’ll still try to get it into another paper or two in the meantime as well. I’m not giving up — I’m really damn stubborn. But I’m not going to pull my punches any longer in hopes of commercial success. Not while the world is being killed.

Don’t get me wrong, I still need to make a living and I’m willing to draw things that I don’t fully believe in. I do that, and I’m glad to get paid for it. It’s certainly a more modest livelihood than before I lost my job (at a newspaper) a year and a half ago — I’ve since let go of the need to live alone and have my own garden. I’ve always been good at living with little money anyway. I absolutely love not having a conventional job. I have to be more creative about finding work and take more chances (and work harder than I ever did at a job), but so far it’s going okay. I haven’t yet run out of things to do.

Current count:
“As the World Burns” pages colored: 112 (The half-way point is passed! It’s a slog.)
Screenplay pages done: 91

* * *

Here’s part of a scene. Sandy’s a police officer who’s secretly on the side of the group of women who kill rapists with kitting needles. Clint is a fellow-officer who’s an asshole. They’re driving in separate police cars trying to apprehend Rob, who tried to buy an illegal quantity of knitting needles at a craft store to help the group, and is now on the run.

SANDY
I’m still half a mile from the scene, Chief.

CLINT
I said I’m on it. Go write some parking tickets, Dougher.

Sandy spots Rob, who is walking extreeeeeemly casually down the street, whistling, hiding his hand (with knitting needles) inside his trench coat.

SANDY
Go for it, Officer. You’re obviously handling it better than I could.

CLINT
Damn right.

Clint races his car into the parking lot and screeches to a stop. He pulls his gun and waves it around, causing various customers in the lot to scream and fall on the ground. He runs toward the store’s door.

Sandy drives very slowly next to Rob. Rob pretends not to notice her. He continues to whistle and saunter casually, but looks nervous. As he wipes sweat from his brow, he drops a needle. He looks horrified. Then the rest of them fall onto the sidewalk with a clatter. He looks at Sandy. She looks at him.

SANDY
Better get in the back.

Rob picks up his needles, ineptly, and gets into the back of the squad car. He looks despondent.
Sandy drives. She doesn’t put cuffs on Rob, or lock the door.

SANDY (CONT’D)
I’m going to remove you from the area. It’s pretty hot around here.

ROB
Whew, it sure is. Would you mind turning on the AC?

SANDY
That’s not what I meant, Rob.

ROB
You know who I am?!?

SANDY
I’ve heard about you.

ROB (PLEASED)
You probably heard about my exploits as a Lone Wolf Secret Undercover Agent.

Sandy drives a while, then stops the car in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant and gets out. She leans back inside to talk to Rob.

SANDY
I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll be gone for three minutes. Wait right here. Don’t open this unlocked door and run away to avoid arrest during the three minutes that I’m leaving you here unobserved.

Sandy goes into the restaurant. Rob waits patiently. She returns, and looks disgusted to see him still there.

ROB
That was way longer than three minutes.

Sandy gets into the front seat and starts flipping through paperwork.

SANDY
Oops, I left your door unlocked and I forgot to put cuffs on you! You could probably escape if you run fast. Or even if you jogged at a moderate pace.

Rob holds out his hands for cuffs.
Sandy sighs.

SANDY (CONT’D)
We’ll try this one more time. Hit me. Make it look good. I mean bad.

ROB
Are you crazy? I can’t hit you!

Sandy, frustrated, rests her head on the steering wheel.

DISPATCHER
Unit One, have you spotted the suspect yet? We have confirmed his identity as Rob Newman. He is armed with five knitting needles, and therefore extremely dangerous. He is believed to be the terrorist mastermind behind the Ice Queen Murders. Deadly force is in order. Don’t even pause to beat him up — just shoot him on sight.

Rob looks terrified, makes a little whimpering noise, and meets Sandy’s eyes in the rear view mirror.

SANDY
What the hell do I have to do to help you escape? Run, you idiot!

SCENE BREAK.

Things causing me annoyance:
– a cell phone that randomly freezes
– a draggy mouse that doesn’t respond well
– the noise of lawnmowers in the neighborhood

Things causing bursts of happy feelings:
– the “batch” function in Photoshop
– big thunderstorms yesterday

* * *

Cartoonist Scott Nickel sent me 20 questions to post as an interview on his blog, http://scottnickel.blogspot.com. There are other good interviews with cartoonists there, and more coming soon. I thought it would be a good idea to answer one or a few at a time and post them here too (being the super-efficient multi-tasker that I am).

1. When you were a kid, did you want to be a cartoonist? Did you draw?

My earliest drawing memory is from age three. I drew a stick figure with hands that were little circles with many long lines radiating from them. I proudly showed it to my dad at the breakfast table. He tried his best to be encouraging, but informed me that hands have only five fingers each.

When I was about 10, I fell in love with “Peanuts” and traced them over and over. I read comic books like “Richie Rich” and “Archie,” but it was “Peanuts” that I became obsessed with (an obsession that shaped the dreams and future careers of many of my generation of cartoonists — we were hopelessly brainwashed in our formative years).

I loved learning art in school, from finger-painting in pre-school through anatomy classes in college. In fifth grade my wonderful art teacher Mrs. Lihan taught us how shading works, and I still remember the thrill of learning that secret.

2. What was your first paying cartoon job?

In the late 1980s, when I was still in college, I got a job painting cels for short animated cartoon that was intended to motivate the sales team of Huggies diapers in their competition with Pampers. We got $4 an hour and worked 14-hour days. In 1992 I was offered a part-time job at a weekly paper, and the editor, Stephen Wissink, offered me the opportunity to draw a regular editorial cartoon. I did that for years before it ever occurred to me to try to self-syndicate.

My Twitter account has finally been unsuspended: http://twitter.com/steph_mcmillan. Yay!

I now return to the interview questions for Scott Nickel.

3. Describe the process you went through when you created your comic strip, MINIMUM SECURITY.

When I started the strip in 1999, I didn’t want to just to “be a cartoonist” in the abstract. I’d been an activist/organizer since high school (and the system didn’t crumble, damn it!) After 15 years or so, I finally got tired of handing out leaflets on street corners — I wanted to encourage resistance in a more efficient manner, and one more suited to my personality.

“Minimum Security” started as a political/editorial comic, formatted in the style of my favorite alt-weekly comics: a multi-frame slightly vertical rectangle, once a week, no recurring characters, very wordy.

When the U.S. started the war against Iraq (despite the largest global protests in history), I fell into a period of despair. It seemed that nothing I or anyone could do would make any difference. I started stopped drawing and started gardening. After nine months I got over it, and started again with a single-panel editorial cartoon.

Soon I started toying with the idea of having regular characters and continuous story lines. I figured that they might make the comic more appealing, bring readers back to find out what happened to characters they might grow to care about. I switched to a strip format, and Kranti first appeared in 2004, saying something sarcastic to Uncle Sam about using napalm. She looks a lot different now than she did then!

* * * * *

Coming next:

4. MINIMUM SECURITY is syndicated on United Media’s website. How did you hook up with them?

5. Where do you stand in the print comics vs. web comics debate?

I hardly slept at all last night, and when I did my dreams were horrible. Ugh. OF course this was the day I had an early morning meeting.

I’ll start with the interview questions again tomorrow. Today’s task list:

– Go to the post office (DONE!)
– Take a nap and think of jokes for editorial cartoons while dreaming.
– Exercise.
– Get a new mouse (again) because this (new) one broke when it fell on the floor a few minutes ago.
– Catch up on emails — I’m days behind.
– Draw 3 sample editorial cartoons for a newspaper interested in running my work.
– Color six pages of “As the World Burns.”

If I manage all that, then:

– Draw the next five Minimum Security comics.
– Finish cleaning the huge piles of paper off my desk.
– Set up wifi and new computer for my mom.

Okay. Time to start.

Back to the interview:

4. MINIMUM SECURITY is syndicated on United Media’s website. How did you hook up with them?

Over the years I received many form rejection letters from all the major syndicates. When Ted Rall became Editor of Acquisitions at United, with the mission of bringing a new generation of cartoonists onto the comics pages, he told me “Minimum Security” was on his short list. I was thrilled, of course. It started running on comics.com, and I increased the pace to five days a week. It was in line to be syndicated in print when the economy fell into decline, and newspapers began dropping more features than they were buying.

5. Where do you stand in the print comics vs. web comics debate?

Squarely on both sides. I want my cartoons to be everywhere.

I’m not going to reject methods of making a living from my work — I try it all. I’ve sold artwork on eBay. I have a website with advertising and stuff for sale, and I’m striving to increase the income from that, learning as much as I can from successful webcartoonists. At the same time, print might be dying or it might not, but as long as it’s still around, I want my cartoons to be there. My comics appear in several print publications, including a daily paper. I’m also negotiating right now with another daily paper to run a regular editorial cartoon. I draw original cartoons for magazines, and sell reprints. Presently I’m working on coloring the pages for a French edition of my graphic novel. After that I have another graphic novel in the pipeline, and illustrations for two other books.

I think the “print vs. web” comics debate is ridiculous, frankly. Some people obviously make money in each realm. Most don’t. It’s the work that’s important — why would anyone want to limit where it appears?

6. The web affords a great deal of creative freedom. Would you be interested in doing a traditional newspaper strip?

I’ve been drawing “Minimum Security” in the visual style and form of a traditional strip for more than two years, so absolutely yes. In spite of the condition of newspapers, I still have the goal of getting it onto the comics pages. I’m stubborn.

* * *

Next:

7. What’s the future of comics? The Internet? iTunes? The Kindle?

8. Tell us about your graphic novel, “As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial.”

I’m writing cartoons far in advance now, into August, to have extras done before I start traveling again in a couple of weeks. I’m starting at the convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists in Seattle, and then going to California and other places for several more weeks.

When I get stuck writing, often it helps me to take a nap. Before and after sleeping, that period of drifting is when ideas come. I have to keep paper and pen with me to catch them all.

Coming in July and August: Kranti wanders the city, lost. She gets jacked up by feral unemployed CEOs, then is terrified by an evil place. Finally Bunnista joins her and they come across a zoo. I’m sure you know what they’ll do when they see all the incarcerated animals…

Ted Rall has a new hee-larious animated cartoon! Here’s a still from it. Notice the product placement — a Bunnista t-shirt! Thanks Ted!!

* * *

Back to the interview for Scott Nickel’s blog, which already has a bunch of great interviews with cartoonists and is worth checking out.

7. What’s the future of comics? The Internet? iTunes? The Kindle?

It could be any or all of these (and definitely cell phones), except that we’re in the process of not only an economic collapse, but also a catastrophic ecological collapse — which means human civilization is going down too. In the future, when electronics are nothing more than heaping mounds of toxic junk, the few survivors will draw cartoons on the crumbling walls of abandoned houses.

In the meantime, though, people want to read comics online and on their phones and ipods and everywhere they read everything else. People have a primal need for jokes and stories. Of course, as a cartoonist I would like a mechanism to develop that would make it a paying profession for more than a few people, no matter what the venue. Otherwise, as we see with the decline of journalism, we’ll end up with an endless cycle of young hopefuls who struggle to squeeze a bit of coin from the vague promise of “exposure” (or do it for love after earning money elsewhere), before giving up in frustration and the next wave of young hopefuls takes their place.

There are good and bad things about that cycle, which is already in play. We gain an endless variety of comics blessed with freshness and enthusiasm, but must sift through a lot of crap to find the good ones. The art form has become more accessible and democratic, but we’re losing some of the pros who have spent years honing their craft. Some of the pros had become lazy and deserve to fail; others will be missed.

All of the independent cartoonists I know, whether they focus on the web or on print, talk and strategize endlessly about how to make a living. It takes iron discipline and a lot of slogging hard work. They must develop good business skills and configure multiple revenue streams. On the web, it’s advertising and merchandise (including books). In print, it’s cultivating clients, and doing illustration work or graphic novels on the side. Usually (certainly in my case) it’s a blend of everything, whatever works. In either realm, making a living usually means that we have to spend more of our time marketing and selling than actually creating comics.

A lot of us didn’t realize this when we decided to become cartoonists. In our daydreams, we sit at our desks, left alone in peace to create soaring works of genius while cash magically appears. Sadly, it’s easier to win the lottery than to achieve that glorious condition.

Comics as an art form is in transition, and flowering. There’s so much great work everywhere, and so much stupid crap as well. People will try everything, display comics in a million places. I don’t know what will end up working and what won’t — the evolution of media is rapid and unpredictable. With persistence, luck, and a determination to hone business skills whether we like them or not, those who draw good comics will find their audiences.

* * *

Coming next:

8. Tell us about your graphic novel, As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do
to Stay in Denial.

9. Name five of your favorite cartoonists or comics.

10. How do you develop ideas? Which comes first, words or pictures?