Also, my strip was described as edgy by Kenosha News managing editor Craig Swanson, a twenty-year veteran of the newspaper game. I’ll take his appraisal of my work over “Kenosha Resident” any day. As far as the remark about my doing a joke about a local resident that fell into a wood chipper, it never happened. It’s a lame attempt to smear me in front of my peers.

But to comment on the topic at hand, local cartoons of any type are becoming rare and endangered species. That might be quite an understatement as it seems print cartoons of any type are in a state of flux.

Editors blame readers for complaining about edgier material, but even the most controversial comics only elicit negative responses from a tiny percentage of readers. Most readers, it seems, shrug their shoulders and turn the page.

And cartoonists blame syndicates for not taking chances, but cartoonists are the ones turning in the blame cartoons they claim to hate.

I don’t know where the blame lies. But who cares? What’s far more interesting and relevant to me is the fact that bland is not working for dailies, whether with comics or news coverage. The word readers from age six to 66 keep consistently use to describe their local paper is “boring.” Boring doesn’t build reader loyalty, especially not when there’s 500 channels on TV and the Internet.

Speaking of the Internet, which is a relatively democratic medium, most readers tend to gravitate toward the most outrageous and controversial material. I’d bet my last cent that a print newspaper that ran hard-hitting editorial cartoons, news articles that used the F-word when the vice president utters it, and grizzly photos of torture, war and other mayhem would outperform its competitors.

You may think your comic is considered ‘edgy’ but from my experience as well as hearing from others- it is mostly bland, unhumorous, and sometimes tasteless. Was it really appropriate to do a local ‘comic’ about a local resident who was killed in a woodchipper? Really?

I’m surprised it is even published in the Kenosha News. Your ignorance amazes me.

I’ve been doing Captain Zero weekly since 2001, in addition to five editorial cartoons per week.

The syndicate model will be around for longer than other paradigms like local strips, unsyndicated editorial cartoons, and gag cartoons because the model is almost depression-proof. The cost to each paper is not substantial, and people need to laugh when the economy is dire.

Anne also mentions advertisers, again they play a significant role. In Chomsky’s model a newspaper is simply a device to deliver customers to advertisers. You can see by the adverts a publication runs whom it believes its ideal readers to be, and their sophisticated reader-profiles will include what comic-strips that reader will likely enjoy, it’s their job to know – although to be honest you can probably stereotype the readers of some publications fairly easily.

Over here the Murdoch owned Sun has a topless model on page 3, you’ll probably be able to guess they don’t run Doonsbury on the comic page.