It should come as little surprise that I'm always in search of comics I can read online. Not only am I finding new comics to enjoy but I'm also finding new sources that I can use to find more new comics. It was through one of those avenues (and I honestly can't remember which) that I came across a series of politically-oriented comics.

Now, political humor in comics is nothing new. As I recall, the very first instances of what we might recognize as word balloons were created for a political cartoon. And, of course, editorial cartoons frequently point out some of the absurdities of politics, to the point where several cartoonists have had very real death threats on their lives because their caricatures were published in the "wrong" country. About once every four years any more, there's usually a handful of semi-obligatory discussions with then-prominent cartoonists about capturing and exaggerating the likenesses of the day's politicians.

But what's interesting about political comics is that there's an inherent ideology behind many, if not most, of them. Take a non-political strip like Calvin & Hobbes or Garfield or Peanuts. Yes, those strips absolutely reflect the views and interests of the creators, and their humorousness is (like all humorousness) subjective. But they're also not reinforcing the beliefs of a specific group. (Sure, there's been some argument that Charles Schulz was promoting a decidedly Christian world-view, and I can see that in some strips, but his humor was largely not religiously allegorical.)

On the other hand, you can take a Doonsebury or a Slowpoke and the creators take a pretty decisive political stand on any number of issues. Gary Trudeau regularly points out the awfulness of Trump, and Jen Sorenson is usually even more pointed with what a shitstain he is. (Although I don't believe she's actually used the word "shitstain" yet.) And in both cases, I chuckle to myself because they both are promoting an ideology similar to my own by poking fun at those with opposing ideologies. When you really boil it down, even the forward-thinking, generally more high-brow approach Trudeau takes is essentially just a means of validation for my own beliefs.

"Ha ha! He's so stupid because he has different opinion and that makes me a better person!"

Not all political comics are quite so blatant about it, of course, but that's the basic message a lot of them carry. There's no idealogical validation in Frazz or Bob the Squirrel because the characters are fictional, and the only ideology they represent (largely) is the one imposed on them by the reader. By taking the leap into politics through political caricature, the creator is obliged to bring with him/her the ideology -- or at least an approximation of the ideology -- of the person(s) they're caricaturing. A drawing of Kamala Harris or J.D. Vance will inherently be imbued with some aspects of the character because they're already public figures with much of their character known and disseminated via news outlets. That includes their ideology.

But here's the thing: even knowing that, I was still struck by some decidedly right-wing comics of Carl Moore's (now-defunct) State of the Union. "That's not funny! He's citing specific criteria that doesn't begin to represent Barack Obama accurately!" Well, of course not! Because Moore was trying to do the exact same thing from an opposing ideology. He's validating the beliefs of people other than myself. It still took me a minute to calm down after my initial reaction. It's not a comic for me because I'm not the audience he's aiming for; he's attacking many of my ideological beliefs for the benefit of people who disagree with me. He's validating their beliefs just as Gary Trudeau validates mine.

People of all stripes try to knock down their opponents, whether or not the candidates themselves agree with them. That comes out on talk shows, blogs, op. ed. pieces, and comics. However, while everyone is entitled to their own opinion, if that opinion includes de-humanizing other people... if that opinion includes dismissing an entire class of people because of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability... if that opinion includes actively trying to make their lives worse or even entirely forfeit... if that opinion includes doing any of that while denying you're doing so or, worse, claiming that you're doing it for the betterment of your in-group... You can fuck right the fuck off! Even the most openly right-wing cartoonist* -- Bruce Tinsley of Mallard Fillmore -- has pulled back on the political messages of his cartoons, realizing how corrupt and downright cruelty-is-the-point evil his historical political party has become.

My point is that, if you find a cartoon that suggests more taxes should be spent on roads as compared to the electrical grid, you can have a civil disagreement about that, but don't lambast the cartoonist over it. That's a difference of opinion. Save it for the assholes who say immigrants are all rapists and murderers who eat puppies. (Damn, I wish I was just exaggerating for effect in that last sentence!)

* While some may claim Scott Adams and Ben Garrison also fall into the right-wing cartoonist camp, I would argue that Adams is no longer a cartoonist since Dilbert got axed, and Garrison... well, he draws pictures but I wouldn't call him a cartoonist. Cartoonists poke fun at political figures and situations using illustrations, and rely on visual analogies and iconography to get their points across. Their job is to know (and thus be able to draw) symbols. That is the very heart of their job. To convey ideas to readers using symbols. And Garrison has repeatedly shown that he is phenomenally inept at drawing symbols, sometimes getting them so wrong that his cartoons wind up making a point that is 180° opposite to what he intends. So I would not consider Garrison a cartoonist at all. Just a racist asshole who draws racist images.

Back in 2020, I took a look at my history in backing projects on Kickstarter. How many were successful, how many of those delivered on what they promised, and so on. I thought I might take some time to revisit the notion.

I backed my first Kickstarter project in 2011. Since then, I've backed a total of 337 projects; four are currently still running and all but 24 of the remainder ended successfully.

Of all the successful projects I've backed, thirty-seven have not yet been fulfilled. Fourteen of those, however, have an estimated delivery date sometime in the future anyway, so I wouldn't expect those to be done yet. And two of the projects were not fulfilled but the creator provided a refund. That leaves twenty-three projects that ended successfully, but have not been fulfilled despite passing the expected delivery date. That means 92% of the projects I've backed that have supposed to have been fulfilled by now have been.

Of those twenty-three that remain unfulfilled, five have provided updates within the past month. Another four have offered updates at least sometime in 2025. I get it; there are wrinkles that crop up in the best of circumstances and this year has seen some massive, unpredictable disruptions for everyone. I'm not at all upset that they passed their 'deadlines' provided they keep me informed and tell me what's going on.

Of the ones left, there is one confirmed case of intentional fraud. Seven of the projects provided at least some element of their reward, and in one of those cases, the "some" was due to the post office losing a unique/irreplacable piece of original art. That leaves six campaigns that have never been fulfilled and I just have no information about. With that one case of fraud, that makes seven campaigns that I feel I've been burned on. A shade over 2% of all the ones I've backed.

If you compare this against my 2020 numbers, they're definitely improved. I pointed out then that most of those projects I feel burned on were ones from 2017 or earlier, and that continues to hold true. Any more, I largely limit the projects I back to ones that don't require unique productions. You can take a comic book or graphic novel project to any of a huge number of printers and they can run it pretty easily, but if you're trying to build something that requires custom tooling, I'm going to be pretty skeptical and you're going to need a proven track record before I even consider backing a project like that.

I mentioned last week that I suspect we're going to see more KS campaigns fail as we fall into a recession. What I suspect that will also mean is that KS campaigns that are successful will also have a harder time hitting their deliveries, either running later than expected or not providing quite everything that was promised. Previously, I said any of the problems I experienced weren't on Kickstarter's shoulders, but on creators who basically got in over their heads. With everything going on in the world these days, I'm sure you've already found it's much harder to keep your own head above water, and the same will likely hold true for creators as well, so try to cut them as much slack as you can!

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Rafael Navarro and the Sonambulo Solution
https://ift.tt/PefVCha

Jack Kirby Collector: Incidental Iconography
https://ift.tt/YfBjqaU

Kleefeld on Comics: Fantastic Four Anagrams
https://ift.tt/w3bt4HN

Kleefeld on Comics: My Short Career as a Letterhack
https://ift.tt/CJTE5rU

Kleefeld on Comics: Twice the Chance for Errors
https://ift.tt/gKbuzv4

Kleefeld on Comics: Sign of the Coming Times?
https://ift.tt/hd5K4Rl

It's been a few years since I've mentioned Kickstarter on my blog, but I continue to back projects that look/sound interesting. There's four currently running that I'm backing and I've backed 312 "successful" projects to date. (Success here meaning that they got to their funding goal. Offhand, I don't know what percentage of those have been delivered. I did a breakdown study of that several years ago; I should do that again to get some updated stats.) The vast majority of those projects have been comics or comics-related, although there have been a few outside that realm.

But something interesting caught my eye this past week. It was actually two somethings. Individually, neither are especially noteworthy but that they happened within a few days of each other, it's got me thinking.

The first something was a Kickstarter campaign that failed. The campaign ran to its full conclusion and only wound up getting 13% of its relatively modest $12,000 goal. I'm a little disappointed, but not surprised. The two creators did -- as far as I could tell -- very little promotion of the campaign after it launched, and it heavily overlapped with San Diego Comic-Con. So a lot of the potential audience had their attention elsewhere to begin with, and they didn't do enough to re-capture it. Also, I don't think they were even targeting what should have been their audience in the first place.

The second something was a Kickstarter campaign that was canceled by the creator with a smidge over a week left in the campaign. It was about three-quarters of the way to a $10,000 goal. He'd been doing regular updates and outreach, so it's possible it could've been successful but it likely would've only squeaked by if that happened. He noted that there were a number of canceled pledges over the past couple weeks, which obviously hurt, and there would no doubt be some percentage of backers whose credit cards wouldn't process if the campaign were successful. (My understanding is that there is ALWAYS between 1% and 5% of backers whose payments don't process properly.) I expect this creator had factored that in when setting his initial goal, but depending on what his actual printing costs might be -- and the estimates are likely changing for that daily thanks to the jackass-in-chief throwing all the wrenches into the economy -- that might be the difference between making a profit and eating it.

And that's sort of what struck me: that in the space of a few days, I saw two different projects fail. The last project I backed that ultimately failed was in 2022. Prior to that, I was seeing, on average, one failed/canceled campaign per year. Now I've got two in one week. Now you could argue that, if the last one I saw was in 2022, that I was statistically overdue and that they both happened in close succession was simply coincidence.

Or you could look at the apparently-noteowrthy number of canceled pledges as regular people seeing the prices of everything skyrocket because of unnecessary tariffs and layoffs because companies are investing absurd amounts of money into AI so they don't have to pay as many workers and people's friends and neighbors being illegally kidnapped by federal agents because their skin was a little darker or they had a vaguely foreign-sounding name. People are justifiably terrified right now. They don't know what's going on because some jackass in the White House drops new, random fiats every day, so they're holding on to more of their cash because they can't plan for anything.

My guess is that these (and other) failed Kickstarter projects are the canaries in the coal mines. Not many economists have openly predicted a recession yet because they're seeing these bat-shit crazy pivots every day as well. "Will tariffs have an impact? Maybe. Depends on if they're in place tomorrow or not." But whether or not a recession formally kicks off later this year, the point is that no one knows what's going on with anything and so people are holding on to what they can as a way to hedge their bets.

And unfortunately that probably means more failed Kickstarters, and more creators not being able to make the work they want or -- more significantly -- be able to earn a living by doing so. Keep your eye on those KS campaigns; I think they'll be more broadly telling that you expect.

Niklas Eriksson started Carpe Diem in 2007, but it only began getting syndicated from King Features in 2015. Like many syndicated single panel comics, it has no regular characters or continuity, and just trades on gags. Here is the strip that ran this past Saturday...

Setting aside whatever you think of the joke itself, you might find yourself scratching your head a bit trying to parse the dialogue. The problem with it is that it's missing the word "from" as evidenced by the vertically oriented version of the strip...

It's pretty obvious that, in re-working the strip from one format to the other, the word balloon had to be re-sized and re-placed, and in changing the word-wrapping, the word "from" accidentally got deleted. These strips -- or at least the lettering -- were handled digitially, so dropping a word is extremely easy to do. An unfortunate accident, but not overly detrimental to the joke. It almost still works as is since it's not an uncommon trope to portray cavemen speaking in broken English anyway.

I'll point out, too, that I don't know what language Eriksson works in natively and, if it's not English, whether or not he does his own translation work. It's entirely possible the strip was written in Swedish and translated/re-lettered by an employee of King Features. In fact, it's possible Eriksson has never seen this English version of the strip.

But I'd like to point out the different issue in the vertical strip. The smoke rising from the volcano in the background is drawn in almost the exact same way and follows a similar parallel path to the word balloon. So it almost looks as if there's someone behind the volcano saying the exact same thing at the exact same time as the strip's actual speaker. The horizontal strip avoids this problem by A) not overlapping the word balloon with the volcano at all and B) depicting the word balloon in a different style, using a dashed line to convey more of a whisper.

Here again, I don't know precisely how Eriksson works. I know I've seen other artists who do similarly formatted strips -- notably Wiley Miller of Non-Sequitir -- draw their single panel comics in a kind of plus-sign format that allows for two sets of cropping. (See right.) This gives the artist a fairly high degree of control over what the multiple formats look like. But it's also possible that Eriksson draws his strip in a single format and, again, a King Features employee digitally re-crops it to fit an alternate format. That would explain why we're seeing two different styles of word balloons above. In fact, between that and the poor word balloon placement in the vertical format, I'd guess that Eriksson normally draws in the horizontal format and it's a graphic design intern or something handling the modifications.

(Look closely at the top of the volcano smoke in the the vertical strip. You can see a small glitch or "bump" in the line width where the original top of the horizontal panel crossed through, and someone had to extend it upwards to meet the word balloon.)

I don't point all this out to fault either Eriksson or King Features. I don't think Eriksson himself had anything to do with the "errors" to begin with, and trying to re-format a daily strip to a format it's not designed for... well, I get they're trying to work with different cultural/societal standards, and doing this on a daily basis is going to be a grind. And of all the possible things that could go sideways with this kind of situation, this is minimally problematic. But it does showcase how just the simple, regular production processes can impact a comic. Not every strip has to deal with precisely these issues, of course, but I point all this out to highlight that there are frequently unseen-to-the-casual viewer ways that a strip's humor or even basic legibility can be compromised at no fault of the creator!

There was a period, back in the late '90s/early '00s, when I considered the notion of writing comics professionally. I did eventually realize that I'm simply not that good writing fiction, and what I'm interested in saying with my writing can be better expressed without using broad metaphors like superheroes or sci-fi or whatever. But while I was toying with the notion of becoming a pro, I used a few tactics to increase my visibility. One of which was letterhacking.

This was back in the day, of course, when publishers still regularly ran letter columns. (They still do, but it seems more sporadic these days, I think.) Each issue they'd print between four and six letters from fans, and often a short response from the editor. I knew that editors weren't reading my submissions -- I'd actually called and asked for critiques after sending in several; the editors I talked to were nice and polite but flatly admitted they don't read unsolicited submissions -- but I knew they read all the letters. So my goal in submitted letters was to get my name in front the editors, and show that I could at least string together a series of coherent sentences.

To a degree, it worked. I heard second-hand later that my name was in fact recognized around some of the publisher offices, and was once even brought up out of the context of letter-writing. Of course, that never panned out to a job as a comic author, but that's partially due to both DC and Marvel discontinuing publishing letters around that time and my realization that I wasn't actually good at fiction.

But that said, I did wind up with a number of letters published over the years. I even had a string of a few months where I was averaging a published letter every other week! I was almost a celebrity at my local comic shop of the time.

Anyway, in being reminded of all this, I thought I'd throw up a quick cover gallery of the issues I know I've been published in. I might be missing a few as I didn't bother keeping track at the time, and I think there's a couple more issues in which I'm referenced on the letters page without actually having my letter published. But, if you're curious, here is in no particular order where you can find a few of my 20+ year old thoughts on various comics...

For some reason, it popped into my head to come up with some anagrams of "Fantastic Four." I've tried iterations of my own name before with nothing of note, but some of these FF anagrams seemed much more interesting...

Raincoat stuff
A tariff counts
Fanatic of rust
Fruit of sancta
Nut cost affair
Strict of fauna
Snot cuff tiara
Air nut castoff
Fat runt fiasco
If tuna factors
An outfit scarf
Our faint facts
Fact fan suitor
Fun fact ratios
Fast fur action
If toucans fart
Unfit oaf carts
Fair act futons

Why did I come up with these? I don't know. But if you happen to be doing a spoof or parody of the Fantastic Four, there are some interesting title options there. A steampunk version called "Fanatic of Rust" for example. Maybe one that focuses on long-time enemy/associate the Sub-Mariner called "If Tuna Factors..." Political intrigue in "A Tariff Counts." How about a homage to FF #1 called "Fat Runt Fiasco"?

Next Month: Susan Richards goes to the mall in search of... "An Outfit Scarf!"