In class, we watched a documentary called "Stripped." It is a documentary about comics directed and written by Dave Kellett and Frederick Schroeder. The documentary discusses the problems that comic artists face today. There was over 70 interviews done for this documentary. When they first started, some drew because they were confined in their houses or because they were bored. Others grew an interest for drawing and would find anything to draw on, like Christmas cards. Eventually, they started submitting comics to newspapers to publish.
If your comic was accepted, you wanted to get syndicated.
"Syndicated means a television program being shown on a different television network than the one that first showed the program." - https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicated
If you had a daily strip that was syndicated, you would need to produce comics for the newspapers everyday. But even syndication had it's issues - one being there was no room for new talent.
Eventually, newspapers began to close. 166 newspapers closed since 1988, meaning comic artists needed to find another place to publish their comics.
So they turned to...
THE INTERNET
Comic artists were free to do whatever they wanted on the internet. They could publish all the comics they wanted...they would just have to pay for web hosting. They could also build a following online as well: Followers on Twitter, friend requests on Facebook, even emails. Another thing they could do to make money off of their comics was to post ads online.
In this documentary, Dave Kellet did an interview with Bill Watterson. For this film, Bill Watterson allowed his voice to be recorded for the first time. His face was not shown.
It was discussed that a lot of the artists don't know what the future is going to look like for newspapers. Maybe they will come back...Maybe they will die. Same applies for comic strips and books.
Even though they are unaware of what the future will hold, they still remain positive, and talking positively about their jobs.
