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Ed Stein ends Denver Square
Rocky Mountain News editorial cartoonist Ed Stein has announced that he will be ending his local daily comic strip Denver Square on May 21st. The feature, which first appeared in January of 2007, was an opportunity to explore an average middle-class family living in Denver without getting into politics, according to Ed.
Regarding the reason for ending the feature, Ed writes on his blog,
Other reasons are more personal. When I started drawing Denver Square, my children were in elementary school. They are now college students, and I’ve lost my insider knowledge of Denver Public Schools. My father-in-law and my father, two models for the irascible Irv, are no longer with us. Many of the strip cartoonists I know tell me that, despite the longevity of Dagwood, Beetle Bailey and Peanuts, 10 years is the functional lifespan of a comic strip. I’m beginning to understand why. The grind of producing a daily strip is starting to tell. I both love and hate the characters. Some days I’m so sick of drawing them, I daydream about doing terrible things to them. Liz joins a polygamist cult. Sam is eaten alive by giant mutant pine beetles. Nate is abducted by cattle-mutilating space aliens. This alone should tell me that it’s time to move on.
If you haven’t noticed lately, the newspaper business has changed. We are now a multimedia information source with an increasingly dynamic Web presence. I can no longer think of myself as just a newspaper cartoonist. The Internet gives me a chance to write as well as to draw, to blog and to podcast, to add motion and sound, to make videos, to create a comic world I never could have dreamed of making in print, to interact with readers in new and more intimate ways. I have plenty of new ideas for projects to fill the time that drawing the comic strip takes up now.
And with that announcement, the last daily local comic in America will come to a close. The local comic strip is a rarity for sure, and with last year’s passing of Phil Frank with the San Francisco Chronicle and the letting go of Leo Garza at the San Antonio Express-News, an era is coming to a close. In addition to the inherent qualities of story-telling and humor that are innate to a comic strip, the local comic has characteristics that may not be recognized or appreciated. It is a recorder of community history, it’s an visual voice in a community’s dialog, and it’s an opportunity for a newspaper to offer something completely unique to its readers. For that reason, Denver Square’s end comes as sad news.
UPDATE: Dave Astor has written about the end of Denver Square and has reposted an article he wrote about local comics that was first published in 2001.
Correction: The beginning date mentioned above is incorrect. Ed began Denver Squares in 1997.
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Community Comments
May/8/2008 @ 6:55 am
Did he have it published somewhere else before Jan 07? He seems to say that he did it for 10 years…
May/8/2008 @ 8:56 am
We in Kenosha are fortunate to have a local strip in our paper done by Dan Pavelich. It doesn’t qualify as a truly daily strip as it is in ony 3 or 4 days a week. It is a great addition to our paper and truly has its finger on the pulse of our local life and politics. Are there others out there that may not be daily but are at least regular contributers?
May/8/2008 @ 9:18 am
Rob Rogers does Brewed On Grant in Pittsburgh. It may not be daily but it’s a great local strip. I don’t think the “era” has entirely closed yet. Besides, newspaper trends aren’t making Ed end this….he’s just tired of doing it.
I did a local strip for five years in the 90’s. I totally understand burnout.
May/8/2008 @ 9:27 am
Rex Babin does (did?) a weekly strip for his paper, Sacramento Bee. I can’t remember the title, tho…
May/8/2008 @ 9:52 am
As many are pointing out, there still exists cartoonists doing local cartoons, but that’s different than what I’m talking about.
Comic strips are an American creation to sell papers and in the beginning all comics were local. Their focus might not always have been local - but they were produced specifically for the newspaper that employed them. With the rise of syndication (which, for better or for worse, sanitized and generalized the comics), we slowly lost the local dailies that were unique to a community. That is what I’m lamenting with the end of Denver Square.
May/8/2008 @ 10:15 am
This is quite sad. “Denver Square” and “Farley” in San Francisco were ENORMOUSLY popular strips with readers, and captured the essence of life in those communities in ways that nothing else quite did. Newspapers just don’t “get” how valuable such local strips are in connecting with and retaining readers.
I made several attempts myself at such strips in Seattle, the Bay Area and L.A., with the proposals always receiving praise from editors but never with a financial commitment to making it happen (sample strips can be seen on my website link).
I understand why Ed is ending his strip, and he certainly enriched Denver readers with it. Too bad so few newspaper editors can comprehend the great value of such strips.
May/8/2008 @ 10:50 am
Steve York does a wonderful job with his weekly local comic strip, Captain Zero, for The Daily Journal in Kankankee, IL.
May/8/2008 @ 11:03 am
“with the rise of syndication (which for better or for worse, sanitized and generalized the comics)”
Did the syndicates create this G rated sensiblity or are the paper editors and readers responsible for it? As I understand it a syndicate will push any property it thinks will sell. The sales team at a syndicate has an enormous amount of pull in what features get developed inasmuch as they think there is a market for it. If newspaper editors won’t buy anything “edgy” than syndicates are wasting their time developing edgy material. If readers make it known to their paper that they don’t like “edgy”, then papers are not going to waste their $ buying strips that lose them readers or advertisers.
Speaking of advertisers, I suspect they play a greater role in this equation than anybody as they have more financial clout with a newspaper than the readers. Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s I seem to remember a lot of “moral majority” boycotts of businesses that sponsored any TV shows that offended their sensibilities.
May/8/2008 @ 11:38 am
Speaking to Anne’s points about “wholesome” comics versus “edgy” ones, I’d like to say that it’s not all about profanity. You can make a modern, relevant comic strip without getting all R-rated about it. Some of the most political Calvin and Hobbes strips were pointedly not topical; that is, they didn’t mention Reagan by name or any particular news item from that week. Yet an alt. weekly cartoonist, such as Tom Tomorrow or Ted Rall, may very well share Watterson’s opinion.
There are lots of ways to be edgy. Not all of them are flashy, and some are very G-rated. In fact, I’d say it’s even more subversive to be G today than R.
May/12/2008 @ 12:18 pm
Coming in a little late here, but Denver Square started in January 1997, not 2007. That’s a healthy run for a syndicated strip, and practically unheard of for a local.
May/12/2008 @ 12:29 pm
Yes, you are totally right regarding the beginning date. Correction issued.
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