Comic Strip Retirements this week (January 4-5 2020)

Cafe Society
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The Pajama Diaries and Shagg E. Dawg have announced that their last strips were this weekend.

I’ve occasionally seen strips sign off with a last strip. (Bloom County, Far Side, and others), but it’s generally kinda rare. It’s weird that you’d see two signoffs on consecutive days. Is something going on?

Teri Libernson (Psjama Diaries) says it’s just overwork, and that her other oprojects are ctaking up her time* – Terri Libenson ending The Pajama Diaries – The Daily Cartoonist

Peter Guren (Shagg) only says that he’s ending (after a 42-year run). I kinda like that the “featured” dog in this week’s strip is Shagg E. Dawg himself.

http://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2020/01/04/ask-shagg-ends-caption-it-begins/

Is there something else going on in the cartoon world? I know that artists have long complained about diminshed space, and the shrinking number of newspapers, but that’s not new. And Gary Larson is starting a Far Side website with new and old content.

*I gotta wonder – What new projects? What else do cartoonists do?

I once asked this about the artists from Mad – Mad magazinbe seemed to be the only place that I saw most of their artwork (except for the incredibly prolific, like Jack Davis, Paul Coker, Mort Druucker, and Sergio Aragones) – and the Board responded with examples of artwork from the Mad artists in other venues. But that wasn’t my point - I knew they had published elsewhere, and had already seen most of those examples. My point was that what people were posting was nowhere near enough work to support those artists over all the years they were contributing to Mad. These guys clearly have other sources of income. So what are they doing outside their well-known work? Is it “invisible” because it departs from their popular style? (some artists, like “Mobius” and Jack Cole notably had multiple completely different cartooning styles) or because much of it is in places not normally seen? (Paul Coker contributed to advertising magazines and the like, in addition to his work for greeting cards; I was surprised to find George Woodbridge’s distinctive style in a non-humorous setting at a museum exhibition, explaining the displays)

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When a newspaper starts making cuts, comics are the first thing to go and editorial cartoons are the second. (I worked at the Washington Examiner when they dropped their comics page in favor of Suddoku, and I recognized it as a portent of things to come.) The cartoonists who are still at it are doing the same amount of work for significantly less money.

The ones in high demand go online or to television when possible. The others go into some unrelated field, like food service.

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Terri Libenson is likely going to focus on her series of middle grade children’s novels. That’s another (often more lucrative) realm cartoonists have been transitioning into.