End Of An Era, Or The Writing's On The Wall

On March 26, 2017, my hometown newspaper, The Evansville Courier & Press, was printed here in Evansville for the last time. 

Don't worry, Courier subscribers (all fifty of you)! The Courier's not going away just yet! From this point on it'll now be printed in Louisville, Kentucky, which is about a hundred and twenty miles away from Evansville. Yes, that's right, from now on our newspaper will be printed in a city two hours away by car, three if you count the time zone change.

Obviously this is being done as a cost-saving measure, to save the company fifty or sixty cents a week, and to please the all-important shareholders.

I'm sure nothing will ever possibly go wrong with this new printing plan. There'll never be any inclement weather or twenty car pileups that'll shut down the highway between Louisville and Evansville. The newspaper will arrive right on time day in and day out!

I actually worked for the Courier from 2001 (right after 9/11, in fact!) until I was unceremoniously laid off in 2008. It was a terrible period of my life, filled with crushing deadlines and horrible working conditions, in which each day was literally a little bit worse than the one before.

Allow me to share the story of the day I realized I needed to get out of the newspaper business. On January 2, 2006, there was a coal mine explosion at the Sago Mine in Sago, West Virginia (where else?). The blast trapped thirteen miners deep underground as rescue workers scrambled to save them. 

Over the course of two days, the mining company drilled a small shaft down to the mine to try and detect signs of life. Sometime around 11 pm on the second day, mining officials announced they'd heard sounds coming from the shaft. The miners were still alive!

Unfortunately a few hours later (around 3 pm), they discovered they were in error, and twelve of the thirteen miners were actually dead. Tragic.

I went in to work the next day and was horrified to see that our front page read, "THEY'RE ALIVE!!!" in gigantic fifty point text. We actually sent that headline out to thousands of homes around town, despite the fact that it wasn't true, and was proven false minutes after it was printed. 

That's the day I knew I was working for the equivalent of a horse and buggy factory, and needed to start looking for a new job. It's impossible for newspapers to respond to late-breaking news the way other mediums, such as TV and the internet can. And there never will be.

This printing change doesn't quite signal the death of The Courier & Press, but it can't be far off. Its loved ones are definitely sitting in the funeral home office, leafing through coffin catalogues (how's that for a metaphor!).

Why Do They Call Them Comics: Beetle Bailey

If today's shocking and disturbing Beetle Bailey comic can be believed, Sarge only has one tooth in his head! Holy Crap!

Sarge has always been drawn with one squared-off incisor jutting up from his lower jaw, but I just thought that was comic strip shorthand for a snaggle tooth. A way to make him look mean and dangerous, like a bulldog. It never once occurred to me that he's supposed to be toothless.

Don't our nation's soldiers receive free medical and dental care? A quick google search reveals that no, they do not. Soldiers and their families are entitled to a group military health care plan that provides medical and dental care at little or no cost.

Apparently the little cost was too much for Sarge to swing on his non-commissioned officer salary, and he was forced to watch as the teeth dropped from his mouth like autumn leaves. Appalling! We really should take better care of our military.

If we look back a few weeks, we see that Sarge does apparently practice some rudimentarily preventative dental maintenance, as he desperately tries to save his last remaining tooth. Too little, too late.

Of course all this "one tooth" business is flagrantly contradicted by this strip, in which Sarge is seen grimacing with what appears to be a full set of choppers. How to explain this apparent conundrum? Does he have teeth or not? Perhaps in times of extreme rage, he can temporarily summon a mouthful of gnashing teeth, much the way Bruce Banner transforms into the Hulk?

The Incredible Shrinking News

 

Take a look at yesterday's Family Circus comic. Notice anything unusual about it? Besides the fact that for once in its life it's actually kind of funny?

No, it's not Daddy's look of horrified realization at the fact that his own son considers him hopelessly square. Nor is it Little Billy's patented Alex P. Keaton brand sweater set.

It's the newspaper Daddy's reading. Look at it! Just look at the size of that thing! It's easily three times the width of Daddy's head!

I don't know how it is elsewhere in our great Republic, but here in Evansville our newspaper hasn't looked like that for a long time. Ours is positively diminutive. Fun-sized, even. 

It all started back around 2006 or so. Back then we had a normal-sized paper, around 18" x 24" or so. As readership and ad revenue began decreasing, management decided to save money on printing costs by steadily whittling down the size of the newspaper.   

By the time I left my job at the paper... er, I mean shortly after management eliminated the entire graphic design staff, the dimensions of the newspaper were down to a ridiculous looking Hobbit-sized 10.5" x 22". No, that's not a typo-- it's barely 10" wide. Not a whole lot bigger than a comic book!

Note that the price didn't decrease along with the size. Instead it went from the fifty cents it cost when I worked there to the whopping one dollar it costs now. Less for more!

So what's up with that impressively wide anachronistic Family Circus newspaper? At first I thought maybe this was a recycled strip from the 1970s, but a quick look at the signature shows that it's from Jeff Keane, the current writer and artist. So it was drawn recently. 

I can only think of three reasons why Daddy's newspaper is so wide. A: Mommy found a yellowed, vintage newspaper lining a drawer and set it next to the trash and Daddy's so addled with worry about his job that he picked it up and started reading it, not noticing it was thirty years old. B: The newspapers in Pleasanton or Blandville or wherever the hell Family Circus takes place still have a robust readership and haven't yet been forced to shrink, or C: Despite the fact that Jeff Keane has his own daily comic strip, he hasn't seen an actual newspaper for going on ten years now.

Journalistic Integrity

A few years ago I worked as a graphic designer at the local newspaper. Well, that is until management decided that even though 90% of their revenue came from advertisements, they didn't actually want to pay designers to create the ads and my entire department was kicked to the curb. But I bitterly digress.

Anyway, when I worked there, the newspaper had an iron clad rule: The Front Page Must Never Contain Advertisements. This rule was drilled into our heads on a daily basis. It wasn't just our newspaper that lived by this credo; everyone from the New York Times all the way down to the Mellonville Post Dispatch followed it as well. The Rule was apparently handed down 500 years ago by Abner T. Journalism or whoever invented the newspaper, and there were to be no exceptions. The Front Page was considered "sacred ground," never to be sullied by the appearance of a crass advert. In the history of newspapers there'd never been an ad on Page One and there never would be.

And so it was. In all the time I worked at the newspaper, they never ran ads on the front page. They could have though-- many local businesses begged and pleaded the editor for a coveted spot somewhere on Page One.

Then a couple of years later the newspaper found a loophole to the Front Page Rule. They started printing small ads on Post-It Notes and sticking them to the front page. When I questioned management about this seeming sacrilege, they said the Post-It Note ads were simply stuck to the front page, they weren't actually printed on it, so they hadn't violated the Rule. Seemed like cheating to me, but hey, whatever lets them sleep at night. 

Even though I haven't worked there for several years now, I assumed the Front Page Rule was still in full effect. Imagine my surprise when I happened across a copy of today's newspaper and saw this:

Say, that looks suspiciously like an... advertisement stretched across the bottom two inches of Page One! But... but that can't be! What about the Front Page Rule? What about the iron clad law? What about the sacred ground? What about Journalistic Integrity?

I guess all that stuff flew right out the window once the shareholders got ahold of the newspaper's grim fourth quarter earnings report. Plaster that thing with revenue-generating ads, STAT!

Blast From The Past!

Way back in 1999 my pal KW Monster and I collaborated on a comic strip called Shrunken-Head Joe that ran in the local free paper. You can read all about that and see the strip here.

Once that particular SHJ story was over we ran a few filler comics while trying to come up with a new adventure. This was one of them. Obviously it's based on those old Johnson Smith ads found in the backs of comic books. And obviously you'll have to zoom in to read it.

The whole time we were doing the Shrunken-Head Joe story the editor of the paper never once complained or demanded any changes. Then one day he actually read the strip and suddenly he was nitpicking every little thing and refusing to run that month's comic unless we bowed to his capricious whims and changed it.

He especially hated this particular strip for some reason. His main beef was with the "Anal Kazoo" in the upper right hand corner. Apparently in his mind the word "anal" was the most vile and horrific word a human could ever utter (never mind that it's a medical term), and demanded we change it. We did, and changed it to "Wahoo Kazoo," which we thought was not only better but funnier as well. Oddly enough he hated that name even more! I can't remember now for certain, but I think he went ahead and ran it (because he was up against his deadline and didn't have anything else to run) but told us that our services would no longer be needed. Yes, we were fired from the free newspaper.

Enjoy this rare piece of journalistic history!

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: The Plane, The Plane

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability, and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle of Hell.

When I worked for the newspaper I had a very, very, VERY Michael Scott-like boss. In fact I couldn't even bring myself to watch the first two seasons of The Office because I was living it every day. Why would I want to relive it at home as well?

This boss wasn't the least bit concerned about anything that went on in his department. We got absolutely zero input from him, forcing us to pretty much run things ourselves. His top priority each day was where he was going to eat lunch, which he would begin planning around 9:30 am.

One particularly chaotic day there was an airshow in town and the pilots were practicing flying low over the city. The roar of their planes was incredibly loud and distracting inside our office. 

Suddenly I received a frantic phone call from the prepress room upstairs. They said that the machine that made the printing plates was down. As you might well imagine, that was a bad thing. Without that machine, there would be no ads in the next day's newspaper, and that was most definitely a very bad thing. 

I looked up and saw my boss running by. I called to him and told him the bad news about the plate machine and asked what he wanted us to do about it. His response? He kept right on running past me and said, "I don't have time for that right now." He said he was going up on the roof so he could watch the planes fly over the building and not to bother him with boring newspaper stuff. 

Eventually a veteran pressman with decades of experience (who's since been laid off, no doubt) figured out how to fix the plate machine and the paper came out after all while the boss stood on the roof, jumping up and down and clapping his hands at the sight of airplanes zooming overhead.

Things I Worry About

Here we see one of the most iconic images of the last century. This photo worries me though, because I just know it's going to confuse the people of 2511.

Hell, it's probably confusing most of the people of 2011.

Still More Old Stuff

As I mentioned in the previous post, I worked at the local newspaper for seven years. Occasionally I would need some art or a character for an ad, and most times I found it was quicker for me to just draw what I needed rather than search through endless pages of clip art for a couple of hours and still not find what I was looking for.

So here's some more of the art I did during my time at the newspaper.

Turkey Shoot. Again with the turkeys! This was for a Thanksgiving Sale, obviously. For some reason I drew a lot of turkeys for auto ads during my stint at the paper. Maybe because the dealerships would give away turkeys if you took a test drive?

All I have to say is that this particular turkey is a turncoat and a Judas. What do you traditionally shoot on Thanksgiving? Turkeys! So what's he doing holding a musket? What else are we to think but that he's gone over to the other side and is hunting down his own kind? He's even garbed himself in the trappings of his mortal enemy, the Pilgrim. I hope the reward they promised you was worth it, sir... and I hope you can live with what you've done.

Penciled, scanned into Photoshop where color and shading was added.



Sweeping Lady. Yet another drawing for an auto ad. She's "Sweeping Away High Prices!" Get it? Every car dealer in the country thinks they're the first to ever come up with that one.

She owes more than a little to Carol Burnett's Charwoman character, but when the client says they want a frumpy woman in curlers sweeping with a broom, there's only so much you can do.

Penciled, inked, scanned into Photoshop where color & shading were added.



Uncle Sam. Auto dealerships loooooove running holiday themed ads. Hopefully Uncle Sam got a permit or an OK from the authorities before lighting up that illegal sparkler.

Drawn in pencil, scanned into Photoshop where color & shading were added.



Truck vs. Truck. It's like "Spy vs. Spy," but with trucks! This was drawn for a Chevy dealership's auto ad that was talking smack about the inferior quality of Fords. I bet the local Ford dealership loved that.

I remember it being tough to draw cartoony, yet still recognizable models of trucks.

Drawn in pencil, scanned into Photoshop where color and shading was added.



Trunk Monkey. This was drawn for an ad campaign for a local auto dealer, but was ultimately not used.

I think the reason it was scrapped is because there were actual Trunk Monkey commercials and the makers didn't take kindly to the local dealer using it in his ad without their permission. To be honest I don't even know what Trunk Monkey is. Some kind of anti-theft device? I'm not even sure it's an actual product. I think it might just be a series of humorous commercials.

Whatever it is, it was drawn with pencil, then scanned into Photoshop where color was added.

More Old Stuff

As I mentioned in the previous post, I worked at the local newspaper for seven years. Occasionally I would need some art or a character for an ad, and most times I found it was quicker for me to just draw what I needed rather than search through endless pages of clip art for a couple of hours and still not find what I was looking for.

So here's some more of the art I did during my time at the newspaper.

Junk Car. This was for an auto ad suggesting that it might be time for you to replace your old vehicle. This was a fun one to draw. I think we've all had a car like this at one time or another.

Drawn in pencil and scanned into Photoshop where color & shading were added.



Crowded Car. This was for another auto ad (for the same dealership), suggesting it might be time to ditch your carpool and enter the wonderful world of monthly car payments.

As usual, there was an extremely tight deadline for this drawing. In order to save time I retooled the Junk Car drawing into this one.




Early Bird. This was for an "Early Bird Sale" auto ad. Get it? Early bird sale, and he's a bird who's up early! Comedy Ahoy! Apparently Yakov Smirnoff writes copy for auto ads in his spare time.

Drawn in pencil, scanned into Photoshop where color was added.



The Price Slasher. This was for a "We're Slashing Our Prices" auto ad. You'd think an auto dealership would not want people associating their four wheeled death traps with the Grim Reaper, but what do I know?

I actually had time to pencil and ink this one before scanning it into Photoshop where color & shading were added.


Too Much Inventory Guy. This was for a "We've Got To Reduce Our Inventory Before The Tax Deadline" auto ad.

If I remember correctly I think he started out as "Reeling From Sticker Shock Guy." The paper in his hand originally read, "Bill" or "Invoice." Hey, there's nothing wrong with re-purposing drawings when you've only got half an hour to make an entire ad.

Drawn in pencil, scanned into Photoshop where color and shading was added.

Old Stuff

I worked at the local newspaper for seven years. Seven lonnnng, soul crushing years, that seemed more like decades. The deadlines were grueling and brutal, but it turned out to be great training. If you can design a full page newspaper ad in two hours with a press foreman standing behind you, arms folded and waiting for you to finish, then you can handle pretty much anything a client can throw at you.

Occasionally I would need some art or a character for an ad, and most times I found it was quicker for me to just draw what I needed rather than search through endless pages of clip art for a couple of hours and still not find what I was looking for.

So here's some of the art I did during my time at the newspaper.

Turkey Bowler. This was for, not surprisingly, a Thanksgiving ad.

When I first started at the paper I would always draw the characters in pencil, then carefully ink them with a pen, erase the pencil lines, then scan them and add color & shading in Photoshop.

Then one day I didn't have time for inking and I just scanned the pencils directly. I liked the look and began doing it that way from then on, as seen here. I got pretty much the same result and it saved a lot of time.

I think the bowling ball came out a little too light, but whaddya gonna do?

For some reason this is THE all-time champion most-viewed illustration on my Flickr site. At the time of this writing it's at 1,950 views and counting. I don't quite understand why, but I'm glad everyone enjoys it.

By the way, this was for a"Turkey Bowl" promotion that a local car dealer was having at Thanksgiving. They set up a small makeshift bowling alley in their showroom and urged customers to bowl with actual frozen turkeys (not live ones, so settle down, PETA people!). If you got a strike you won a prize. Luckily they were only bowling with the turkeys, not dropping them from a helicopter.

Vacation Santa. This was for a Christmas in July auto ad. EVERY summer, EVERY auto dealer in town would run a "Christmas in July" ad, and EVERY one thought they were the first who thought of it.

Drawn in pencil, scanned & colored in Photoshop.

No Bull Sale. One of the local auto dealers wanted a "No Bull Sale" ad, featuring a bull inside an "anti" symbol (you know, red circle with diagonal slash in the middle).

Drawing the bull was simple, but the diagonal line was trouble. If I drew the line over the bull, then it blocked his face. If you put the bull in front of the line, then you couldn't see it. The client eventually said to get rid of the line altogether. So now the whole thing makes no sense. Why's the bull in a red circle? Who knows? Even the bull doesn't know; see how he's shrugging?

This is the kind of thing you can't let get to you if you're going to be a designer.

Drawn in pencil, scanned & colored in Photoshop.

Cowboy. A character I drew for some Western-themed auto ad. I think he was "branding" cars with low prices or something like that.

Penciled, scanned into Photoshop where color and shading was added.