Ed Power, co-creator of My Cage has announced on his website that My Cage will end on October 31. The strip’s Twitter account made the announcement stating, “Well, that’s it. We’re cancelled. Thanks for the support guys.”
In another post, Ed wrote, “I feel like my childhood dream was shot point blank through the eyes.”
I’ll post more information on the cancellation when I get it.
So sad to hear of anyone’s dream coming to an end in the cartoon industry. I wish Ed Powers the best of luck in the future!
Dreams don’t die my friend… they get crushed all to heck but they are pretty tough skinned and always rebound if you work hard… well so I am told anyways!!! I only know the “hard work” part of that theory!
Too bad no Chicago newspaper picked up the My Cage strip. Sad to see it go on Halloween night October 31, 2010.
Wow, that’s terrible news. Sorry to hear this.
I would love to hear Ed’s analysis of how it went having both a web and syndicate presence. Did he feel like the syndicate made an important difference in increasing the popularity and awareness of My Cage? Has he thought of continuing the strip without the syndicate? Is this even allowed?
That is rough news. Looks like My Cage has a good web following and I wish Ed and Melissa all the best for the continued success of My Cage in an online format.
Maybe a My Cage comic book series focusing on the married life of Norm and Bridget?
Time to use the syndicated strip to promote the crap out of the webcomic while the opportunity’s still there!
Sell some moichandising!
My Cage is funny, fresh and appealing. Why IT has to go instead of the numerous legacy and rerun strips is beyond my understanding. What, do newspaper editors believe they simply cannot do without lame jokes about working-stiff Vikings/salesmen/cavemen or intellectual second graders with oversized heads, so they have to sacrifice a comic that offers actual humor and imagination?
This is a travesty.
I agree with Truman Fable.
My Cage was one of the few comic strips that actually made me laugh. The rest of them are tired old legacy strips that haven’t been fresh in years, if not decades.
My jaw dropped when I heard My Cage was being dropped – why?????? It’s one of the few really funny strips out there AND original. As others have pointed out, there are some old strips running that simply repeat themselves every few years – those are the ones that need to be dropped!
Why they would cancel a fresh and funny strip is beyond me. I enjoyed My Cage immensely and still can’t fathom that the papers would rather run RERUNS of old strips. (That, um, weren’t really that funny the first time around.)
Add my voice to the chorus. I?m appalled that too few newspapers will pick up a great, funny, quirky, entertaining strip like My Cage, and most of them would rather keep running tired, unfunny legacy strips that recycle their supposed jokes over and over. Best of luck to Ed and Melissa on whatever comes next ? I?m sure it will be great.
Add me, too, to all the people just upset by this cancellation. “My Cage” was really a breath of fresh air, creative & funny in an increasingly stagnant medium, and it’s rewarded for this with a very premature cancellation? Not fair, especially when you consider that legacy strips with no value (like Gasoline Alley) & strips that squandered their early promise in favor of rejected Lifetime plots (like Funky Winkerbean) will continue to run & run long after every sane voice has called for their end. I guess comics value originality & true talent even less than television.
Never name a comic strip after a trend, because once the trend is over, the comic may soon follow. Do readers even remember that the name “My Cage” was a play on the name MySpace, which of course was so popular with the target audience for My Cage? Of course MySpace was supposed to last forever, right? Should the name have been changed to Facecage? Believe me, as popular as Facebook is today, it’s still just a trend ? ask AOL!
Ed Power provides some details on a comment he posted on the Comics Curmudgeon blog: http://joshreads.com/?p=7344#comment-866409
Like many other CC readers, I’m shocked and upset about the news. My Cage is one of the best-drawn & written comic strips out there, good for a daily smile, chuckle, or outright laugh. The characters have really grown on me.
My experience with it was via online sources, though. It’s a shame that so few print newspapers carried it. I’m in New York City, which has three papers with comics sections, but no sign of it here. I wish comics page editors here and elsewhere could have found a way to make room for it. (I’ll leave it at that. I’m trying to avoid badmouthing other strips, that’s someone’s dream and/or livelihood, too)
I hope it’s not a situation where Ed Power & Melissa DeJesus signed all the rights away to King Features. I would like to see more My Cage somewhere down the line, either via another syndicate, the web, or, who knows, an iPad or Android tablet app.
In the meantime, sympathies for Ed & Melissa. Hopefully, this door closed in order for others to open.
I was so sorry to hear about the cancellation – it took me a while to appreciate MC, but once I did, I really liked its (yes, sometimes a little warped) perspective.
Why don’t more newspapers understand that the result of cancelling comics like MC is that once the older folks still reading the lgacy strips die off, there will be no new goneration to take their place? I’m sure I’m not the only person who developed my newsspaper addiction through the gateway of the comics.
Best of luck Ed and Melissa —-
*adds to the chorus*
My Cage was a major bright spot on the comics page, fresh, witty, inventive, with a nice meta-bite and some truly wonderful characters and art. How this strip dies and two dozen zombie recycled strips o drek continue is quite beyond me. Ed & Mel, if there is any way to take My Cage into the webcomic end of things, I hope that it happens. If not, thank you for a strip that obviously had some love in it’s creation. It will be sorely missed.
After the Houston Chronicle cancelled My Cage, it was one of three strips that I went out of my way to read on-line every day. Another of those stips was also cancelled and one is on hiatus. It’s too bad there isn’t a business model for keeping great new strips like this available.
If it’s not too late, I suggest an all-out effort to convince papers to put My Cage in the soon-to-be vacated Cathy place.
I don’t quite know what to say here. I know that syndicates have to consider the business side of things, but when a syndicate cuts a fresh, engaging strip like My Cage for not being in enough papers while simultaneously continuing to run the majority of the ancient legacy strips whose continued existence is keeping it out of the papers, they really ought to rethink their approach. This attitude of keeping the new, fresh content around only for the purposes of supporting the old is the exact thing that’s killing the newspaper industry.
That’s not even a “why aren’t you relevant to the kids of today” thing; it’s a simple matter of quality. There are legacy strips which are still good (Blondie, for example, still gives a damn, and has managed to avoid being overly dated without undue contortion,) but a vast number of them are quite simply phoned-in, their premises completely played-out. My Cage, on the other hand, has some of the best character interaction I’ve seen in the funnies for years, a good ear for dialogue, and absolutely terrific visuals that manage to stay good even at today’s print sizes. And this is the strip that gets dropped?
That’s just not right.
“Do readers even remember that the name ?My Cage? was a play on the name MySpace”
You know what’s weird? That’s only partially true. What happened was I did a strip while in development and used the name mycage to spoof myspace for that one strip. My editor at the time hated the strip, but we were looking for a name for the strip and that fit.
The name I originally submitted for the strip was “Not-So-Wild Life”, which apparently no one but me found clever.
As a member of the “older” generation one might think we would only enjoy the legacy comics and would spurn new “younger generation” comics such as “My Cage.” Think again, funny papers breath. Funny is funny no matter what generation it comes from. And “My Cage” is funny – enjoyable – cute – worth anticipating the next day. It won’t be the same without Norm and his crew coming into my life every day. Those legacy comics could learn a lot from “My Cage,” and dang it, I wish they would.
I don’t have anything to say that all those above me haven’t already.
My Cage is a wonderful strip, and I’m hoping some other syndicate/paper/whatever picks it up.
Thanks for the laughs thus far, Ed! May you get the chance to add many more.
I read a lot of comics every day, and My Cage is one of the few strips that is consistently amusing and interesting. It’s would be a shame to lose this strip while so many tired, stale legacy strips continue on. I sure hope the decision to cancel the strip can be reconsidered.
This is very sad news. I enjoy Ed’s sense of humor and Melissa’s art is truly top notch. And “8th Man Fan” thank you so much for linking to Ed’s comment – Ed, you are first class.
As far as the syndicate bashing goes, I would like to address two points. First, creators no longer sign away their rights to King features when they get syndicated. Creators own full copyright to their creations. I’m not sure when that changed from the old model but it is a wonderful thing.
Secondly, the syndicate has no power over what a paper will or will not run. That lies on the editors of the papers. If the syndicate hadn’t believed strongly in My Cage, they would never have launched it in the first place. I realize it is easy to take potshots at syndicates because they hold so many older properties, but they continue to search for new talent and, as far as I know, sell their new strips aggressively.
The issue of what is on any comics page rests more heavily on newspaper editors than anyone else. To the fans of My Cage who have been so vocal in their support – please don’t let these editors off the hook. If having My Cage in your paper would have meant that you would have subscribed to the print version of that paper – and you would not be interested otherwise – than you need to go straight to the paper and make sure they know it.
All young strips need aggressive reader support to survive in this horrible market.
After decades of enjoying daily strips, it’s sad that I now read most of them expecting to find, at best, an ironic smirk. I approached “My Cage” the same way, but was won over by the reality of the cast ? by which I mean the fact they remain true to themselves instead of violating their characters for a cheap laugh ? as well as the drawing and unexpectedly solid gags. There are a mere handful of strips this good in papers today. Most (thankfully, not all) seem to be zombie strips that were funny two cartoonists ago, painfully ‘hip’ strips that may have been funny three trends back, or weak imitations of Larson and Watterson.
It’s a shame there’s no room in newspapers for innovative, funny, well-drawn strips like this. It’s typical of the thinking shown by newspapers that they think they can save their sinking ship by jettisoning the lifeboats that might attract new readers. Newspaper editors seem to decide what to keep in their dwindling comic sections to suit the portion of their readership that’s going to die soonest. May they quickly reap the rewards of this policy.
I wonder if My Cage is simply too far ahead of its time. The writing is funny, the artwork is brilliant, and the humor is intelligent.
Considering those three assets, My Cage had virtually no chance of success on today’s comics pages, a newspaper loss-leader if ever there was one. We’d much rather see Peter Parker whine, or Funky mope, or the grass on Gil Thorp’s football field grow than to be intellectually challenged by anything more taxing than today’s Jumble.
Ed and Melissa are too great a team, and the strip is too sharp, for My Cage to simply disappear. The comics page is not smart enough to keep up with it, but there has to be SOME way to keep Norm and the gang around. (I want to see how the ultimate battle plays out!)
My Cage is better than the medium it has been serving. It’s too good to simply be “cancelled”.
Cancelled?! To quote Cathy, “Ack!” (Finally, she was useful.) How stupid can someone be to cancel a comic with such good pen & ink work, good coloring and great writing? Moronic behavior.
When you see how quickly newspapers drop the new guy, it’s no wonder that syndicates keep these legacy strips going as long as possible. It’s valuable real estate.
Anne, the creators own the copyright, but who owns the trademark? You must own the trademark to create more strips with this property.
@Tony
I’m not sure about trademark specifically, but if I understand the syndication contract properly, the creator may take the property elsewhere if they honor the terms of their contract.
By this I mean that, once the creator is no longer contractually bound to the syndicate, through cancellation or expiration, the creator is able to negotiate with another syndicate. This happens frequently – many strips are no longer with the syndicate that launched them. Bizarro and Crankshaft spring to mind and, most recently The Dinette Set.
Each day, I go the Seattle P-I site to read My Cage–one of the few strips I read only online. It’s worth the bit of trouble because of the strip’s smart, character-driven humor. There aren’t any other strips that are really like My Cage, and so it’s a loss that this strip is going away, when so many strips that tell the same jokes, the same way, every day (and have been doing so for years) will just keep churning away.
Unfortunately, when you have to depend on the free enterprise market, it’s about what sells, not about how good the product is. Don’t blame King ? they know how good the product is or they would never have offered it for syndication. Blame newspaper editors for not carrying the strip. The syndicate liked it… the end users (readers) liked it… but the customer demand wasn’t there. The truth is that syndicates make absolutely no money from readers (expect with King’s DailyINK). They make money from newspapers, websites, and licensing.
And one more thing… a syndicator like King keeps all of those legacy strips around, even those that have low newspaper circulation, because they are making money off of licensing the properties.
Bad news ? sorry to hear about this. It reminds me of when Big Top was discontinued. Best of luck to Ed and Melissa, wherever you go from here.
I can’t believe this. My Cage has been the best new strip since the end of Calvin and Hobbes, and the strip that drew me back into reading the comics pages. Emblematic of the whole demise of newspapers – a strip that is actually an attraction (i.e., one that pulls in readers) is dropped in favor of the multitude of placeholder strips that appeal only to the dwindling few.
Ed and Melissa, please consider maintaining the web presence of My Cage. When you have created characters with such fully formed personalities, they deserve to live on …
Amazing. So many appallingly bad comic strips have secure futures, including the so-called “legacy” strips that haven’t been funny in decades (or in some cases, ever), and yet they cancel one of the few funny ones. I’m disgusted.
I’ve never seen your strip ’til today, and I can already tell it’s TONS better than most of the comics out there. Too bad it’s canceled. I’d love to see it instead of BC, Marmaduke, Garfield, Beetle Bailey, etc.
Wow. Just wow. It absolutely makes me sick that a clever, well-drawn, consistent, FUNNY comic strip can get canned, while utter crap runs in hundreds of papers. I guess that’s why newspapers in general, and the comics in particular, are dying. You notice noone ever calls them the “funny pages” anymore?
It’s downright maddening that a new, funny and well-drawn strip is getting canceled, while old, stale legacy strips keep churning out the same old mush. I’d gladly give up Garfield, Shoe, Rex Morgan and a few others in the OC Register to make room for better, newer strips like My Cage.
A sad day for the comics. Melissa’s art and Ed’s writing work so well together-even more so when compared to the other strips I actively ignore. Thanks for your work and best of luck with all your new endeavors-sugarpie.
I will miss My Cage, although it isn’t carried locally, and I had to read it on-line. It’s funny, odd, and one of the best-drawn humor strips out there.
It’s interesting, I never thought “My Cage” was a play on “My Space”. I always thought it referred to the “cage” of the workplace. Either way, I don’t think the name had anything to do with it’s success (or lack of same). Hell, “9 Chickweed Lane” is still going strong, and who the hell knows what that means?
If I had to guess why it never sold, I think it’s that the humor was so character-based. and so (gasp) sophisticated, that (I found) it necessary to read at least two weeks (or more) worth of strips before I really “got it”. The problem is, newspaper editors are rarely going to take that time, and newspaper readers are even less likely. That’s also why the hated shorthand “Dilbert with animals” came up- it’s easier to sell something, or even think about something, with shorthand.
I look forward to all Mr. Powers and Ms. DeJesus’ next work (Santa VS Dracula is coming out soon, right?).
MY CAGE is a consistently funny strip with interesting characters & plots. Why this one is being forced into retirement when most other strips are unreadable is beyond me. I trust Powers & DeJesus will keep it going, even if they have to do it as a semi-weekly web strip. It really deserves more support than it’s received.
As it was said previously, this is a sad day for the comics indeed ! I really liked My Cage – it grew on me, eventually to become one of my (few) favorite. Thanks for your art and your humor, Mr. Power and Mrs. DeJesus, and good luck.
To echo something Anne wrote earlier … It would be wonderful if all of the comic fans taking their time to comment here would write to their local newspaper editors about their favorite funnies BEFORE they are cancelled.
It’s my understanding here that “My Cage” is not having its syndicate contract renewed, which is actually quite different from being cancelled by individual papers. Now, we can all speculate as to what the syndicate’s reasons are, but I’m sure that, based on the agreement that the creators signed, this was an option.
My point is, if you are passionate enough to vent your frustrations here (on the Daily Cartoonist), please take a moment and write to your local newspaper. Let them know what features appeal to you.
After all, if nobody writes to their editors, we may as well just mail them darts for their decision boards.
That’s exactly the point I made here, Mike:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/
Oh. And here:
http://joshreads.com/?p=7344#comment-866409
How does everyone feel about these legacy strips?
I guess Ed and Mel were never the next Frank “Liberty Meadows” Cho (Whose Liberty Meadows comic strip only ran from 1996 or 1997 until the end of 2001).
This is sad news! I think it is awful that original, fresh (and funny!) comics get pushed off the page in the interest of lame legacy comics that nobody reads anymore.
Best of luck in future endeavors!
@Mike Cope, speaking only for myself, I was a one-person MyCage e-mail campaign when the Freep was looking at changing their comics pages. Sadly, a few months later, everything crashed, and it wasn’t a matter of what to add, but what to keep, and they’ve never solicited input since. The Freep doesn’t run Cathy either, so that replacement option is out.
I’m an old guy, and strips like Pluggers are aimed at me. I have no use for Pluggers, but I love My Cage. It’s bright and witty with just the right touch of wryness. The news of its cancellation is most depressing — I feel like someone has just stepped on my pet amoeba. I hope that Ed and Melissa will be able to continue My Cage in some fashion, because they are a great team. Good luck, guys!
Ed and Melissa,
This is sad news. You have a great product. I just wonder if pulling the plug is the wrong idea. It seems like you have a devoted readership, and that can translate to revenue via the web if you were to decide to continue running it there. Ask Howard Tayler how to get it done!
My Cage is practically the only comic strip I read un-ironically. This is so sad.
My Cage is practically the only strip I read un-ironically. This is so sad.
Guy (#46), I’m curious — what prompts that question on this particular thread? Do you suppose that legacy strips had something to do with their syndicate’s decision to drop Ed and Melissa’s comic?
This is terrible news!
I love My Cage, and I’m surprised it’s not more popular – as fun and new as it is, it still uses standard comic strip set-ups.
I feel bad for never getting a chance to read it in the paper, but I read it online daily at a newspaper’s website.
(I doubt the Commercial Appeal in Memphis carries it.)
This is the best new print comic in a long time – its cynicism is not harsh, the laughs are real, and dangit, I love platypi!
Oh for Pete’s sake – something that is bright and funny and actually acknowledges the world as it is now (cell phones, work as meaningless hell, computers, fan geekdom, et. al) gets canned while dumb non funny joke a day strips go on and on and on – and get smaller and smaller.
I’d go off on a rant but i’ll stat cursing.
Drat.
I’m so sorry to hear this. My Cage is a bright spot on the comics page for me. It’s well-written and well-drawn; and its subject matter and humor are actually relevant to life in the twenty-first century.
Best of luck to Ed and Melissa. I hope that you guys will continue this strip in some form; and if not, I hope that it won’t be long before we get to see your work again in whatever new projects you undertake.
I think it is terrible that My Cage has been canceled. It is one of the freshest new strips out there, and Ed Power and Melissa DeJesus should be encouraged to continue instead of being dumped.
Hopefully, some other syndicate will pick them up. United Features, Charles Schulz’s syndicate might be a good choice.
I am sorely disappointed that newspapers would choose to run strips that have been all but dead on their metaphorical feet for years if not decades, and would allow a good new one to languish.
Don’t give up on Norm yet, Ed and Melissa!
My Cage isn’t in my local paper, I have to seek it out on the web, and I do, because it is good. The writing and art are very, very good. The characters ring true. The bonus visual jokes in the background add to the funny. I’m not in the same place in my own life – anymore – as are the main characters, but I feel welcome in their world. I enjoy their stories and will miss checking in to see how they are doing. I hope this isn’t really a closed door but the proverbial opened window for Ed and Melissa.
I’m very sorry to hear this. Its quite unfair how one of the best comic strips in the papers is getting canceled while some comics that havnt been funny in over 20 years are still around.
I hope you can find a way to continue your comic somehow even if its just a webcomic.
I think Marcy Chestnut at #15 summed up my thoughts as well:
“Why don?t more newspapers understand that the result of canceling comics like MC is that once the older folks still reading the legacy strips die off, there will be no new generation to take their place? I?m sure I?m not the only person who developed my newspaper addiction through the gateway of the comics.”
My grandmother bought the morning and the evening papers to get their comics. Those were the pages she went to first, and then the obituaries. I learned to read from her newspapers, and more than half a century later, I still buy dead trees to read the comics. My Cage was fresh and fun, and Grandma would have enjoyed it as much as I have.
newspapers are dead.
please try to keep it up as a webcomic if you can
MC is well-drawn, original and funny, a pleasure to read. I hope that Ed knows how many people appreciate his work.
Yet Marmaduke continues.
Heck, my paper still runs old Peanuts and For Better or for Worse. No offense at all to those cartoonists, but it’s time to give someone else a chance. I hope once Cathy is done they will drop that.
I did ask my local paper to run My Cage when they were asking for reader opinions, but they didn’t follow my recommendation. I think they made a mistake, because it could appeal to a wider age range than some of the legacies. (I like it, and I can remember when Smilin’ Jack was running.)
I think the editors sometimes classify strips, so there has to be a black strip, a woman’s strip, a Hispanic strip, a liberal strip, a conservative strip, etc. So if the “youth strip” slot is filled, in my paper’s case by The Knight Life, there isn’t room for another. I wish they would think more of “what is good and what is not good”. The Knight Life is good and My Cage is good too, but in entirely different ways.
What is not good is reprinting the same old stuff, either literally (For Better or For Worse), by stealth (Family Circus–strips from 30 years ago suddenly appearing), or by redrawing the same joke as three months ago (plenty of others). I read it already. If I want to read it again, I’ll buy the anthology
I only except The Lockhorns, which, like Rodney Dangerfield, can recycle the same 5 jokes indefinitely without getting stale. I’m not sure why I feel this way about it, really. I certainly don’t care for Howard Huge. Except for the name, but its relevance ended decades ago.
I hope Ed and Melissa find a way to continue their creative endeavours in some other arena.
“My Cage” will soon be gone while the Lost Patrol in “Crock” still stumbles across the page, poorly drawn and barely written? There’s no justice in the world. “My Cage” was funny, clever, and one of the few strips I approached with genuine anticipation every morning.
Y’know, I’d been meaning to write to my newspaper, suggesting they drop an amazingly unfunny comic and replace it with My Cage. Somehow, though, something else was always a higher priority. Now I’ve got nothing but regret. Sorry, Ed and Melissa – maybe if all of us who loved the strip had let newspaper editors know, this wouldn’t have happened.
So, a lesson learned for next time – talk to those comics page editors, and support good comics.
The two of you have so much talent, I’m sure there’s success in the future for you.
Well said Mike and Linda – talk to comic editors now about the comic strips you do like. That way, when the time comes for changes, they may spare your favorites.
My Cage is one of my favorite comics. It’s actually funny, one of the handful of comics that can actually make me laugh. Most of the legacy strips barely register in my brain – I read them, then forget them. But My Cage is one that I’ll tell my husband and friends about, laughing the whole while. So sad to see it go. Why drop such a good comic? Why not one of the hum-drum legacies?
“My Cage” has been one of my favorite strips since I first found it online (my paper doesn’t run it). It’s funny; it’s clever; the cast is interesting from top to bottom (by which I mean, they can’t be described with a single adjective (okay, Creepy-Janitor-Guy excepted, but that’s part of the joke)); the humor and stories are both character- and situation-driven; the jokes are fresh without being vulgar; it has a distinctive and appealing visual style (I don’t know much about comic strip art, but I know what I like).
If I didn’t already know that business decisions in this industry do not correlate with the quality of the product, I would be stunned by this news. As it is, I’m just sad. Kenny T. Unicorn, we hardly knew ye!
A world where MyCage dies is not in my top 10.
There’s a reason why people no longer use the term “funny pages” to describe the comics anymore.
Very sorry to hear about this and I agree with all who really enjoy this strip.
Best of luck on future endeavors, Mike!
Sorry, I meant Ed.
This is Not. Right. My Cage is actually fresh and (horrors!) amusing. No wonder print is dying. Death by a thousand (paper) cuts.
I hope a syndicate less mired in the past has the smarts to pick up My Cage and give it the marketing push it deserves. I love this strip!
I love My Cage, and the writer is such a nice guy! Always new, hilarious stories and characters who are multi-faceted and interesting to get to know. It’s such a shame that so many good things get cancelled…
Aww, sorry to hear this! I’ve been enjoying My Cage and I’ll miss it.
It took a little while for me to become addicted to MY CAGE, but now it’s one of my must-reads. I am really sorry to hear that it’s ending. I hope a way will be found for it to continue. It seems so unfair, when some much-worse strips drag on and on and on and on. The creators of MC deserve better.
Yeah, that’s just what the world needs….one less new, original strip, leaving more room for Marmaduke, Garfield and Mary Worth. Way to keep the newspaper business afloat, editors….as long as those decades-long Rex Morgan fans are still alive, the medium will stay alive with them.
Say what you will about so-called legacy strips, but I’m willing to bet that the newspapers carrying My Cage won’t be filling its vacancy with one of them.
Glancing at all the first-time posters on this thread, it would appear that this strip has a legion of fans. I’m just curious where all these people have been reading it, and how they found the Daily Cartoonist. Are they all online fans? If so, perhaps “therein lies the rub”? Some features that are popular online are just destined to struggle when they try and make the transition to print, for a variety of reasons. If not, and all these people are actually reading it newspapers, wouldn’t they be best-served by telling the creators in which paper they read the feature? At least that way the creators will have a better chance of convincing another syndicate that the feature is viable.
hate to see you go, wish it were not so…..
Wow. I just started reading My Cage, and couldn’t stop because it was … just really good! My newspaper never carried it, but I found it through somebody sharing it online. I guess we should have taken the advice of the author and writer when they appeared in the comic themselves and written a letter to our local newspapers. Sorry to see the comic go. I hope it’ll continue online, at least. Good luck to the creators!
I’m one of those first time posters here. I’ve been reading the strip online on a fairly regular basis for about a year or so.
My newspaper does a comics page shuffle every couple of years, and I’d been waiting for that to come around in order to suggest they pick up MC. In the back of my mind, I’d been wondering if it would be better not to wait, but to drop a line right now.
But, life being what it is, that thought stayed as a back-of-the-mind “maybe I should”, rather than a completed action. I really regret that now, as my newspaper is one that does not carry any legacy strips, and quite possibly would have given the strip a chance.
As for the transition from online to print being difficult, I don’t know if that really applies here. I read a lot of strips online, simply because they don’t appear in my newspaper and I want to follow them. That doesn’t make them “online strips” – they appear in some newspaper, and it’s on that paper’s website that I find them.
I wonder if comics editors track the number of hits the online version of their comics get, and if it factors into their decisions. I’m not going to subscribe to a paper from 2000 miles away just to get their comics page, but once I’m on their website I often noodle around there for a while, which is good for them, right?
Anyway, the point I wanted to make was to let this be a lesson – next time you find yourself thinking “I wish my newspaper carried this strip”, tell your newspaper.
Your paper carries no legacy strips? I didn’t think a paper like that existed.
What newspaper is it?
taya!
MIke McKeenan – don’t want to go too far off topic here, but it’s the Edmonton Journal, up in Canada.
noooooooooo! the first one I read every day!!!!!! please continue online!!!!
My Cage is one of my favourite comic strips. It is almost criminal to cancel it and keep printing old boring ones. Come on syndication decision makers – re assess and reverse this decision
Our local paper used to carry the comic and that was how I found out about it. It took a few weeks for me to enjoy it, but once I tried to read it just about every day. I loved the anthropomorphic twist to the mundane and the parody to people and daily struggles in the workplace and outside. I also liked the fact it did NOT involve humans. We have enough already. Animal comics like Garfield— I used to like Garfield, but I want to see new stuff from it that I am not seeing. I feel like Jim has run out of ideas and is going back to same old repetitive gags. Dilbert- I’ve seen comparisons, but I could never really get into the strip. It jumped the shark with me introducing characters like Dogbert, who I felt seemed out of place with the people focused strip. Like someone else mentioned. I liked My Cage much better than Dilbert. I felt the characters in MC had a lot more development to their personality and I could see them evolve over the year or so the paper ran it.
After reading many of the comments, I was inspired and took time to email my local paper about my disappointment (they actually dropped the strip and replaced it since the 10th) and made a request to bring it back. (also reminding them that our house is a daily subscriber of said newspaper company. I hope that helps in some small degree.
I’m sorry parts of my message came out choppy when I was trying to edit the post. Anyways, I am hoping Ed and Melissa continue with this strip and keep submitting it. I am sure some syndicate will pick it up. This doesn’t have to be the end of a “childhood dream” Just a road block.