This column originally appeared in Whitmire’s newsletter, Alabamafication. Sign up here for free.
Shortly before he died, the late New York Times media columnist David Carr predicted this day would come.
One day, we will have to explain to our children and grandchildren what newspapers were, he said, and they’re not going to believe us when we tell them.
That day came sooner for me than I had expected — earlier this week and nearly a year after our transition to all-digital news at AL.com. But it wasn’t the anniversary that triggered the question from my five-year-old. It was a book now sitting on our living room coffee table.
“This looks like a children’s book!” my five-year-old said, with an accusatory tone.
“It’s not … well … kinda … but not really …” I wasn’t doing a good job explaining it to her. “They’re comics,” I finally managed. “And these were some of my favorites.”
“What are comics?” she asked.
I’m not sure I gave a satisfactory answer. Our son, who is eight, listened from the dining room table where he was finishing a bowl of cereal. After a few failed attempts on my part to explain what comics were, he interjected.
“You’re not old enough,” he said to his sister. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Can I read this?” she asked, ignoring her brother.
“Yes,” I told her. “Just don’t get food on the pages.”
Calvin and Hobbes was a favorite of mine, but I hadn’t bought the collection for the drawings. “The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book” had been a manifesto by the author, Bill Watterson. The first 25 pages are mostly word — an essay on the struggles cartoonists faced in an industry already showing signs of decay.
It was first published in 1995, the year I started college, and it was my college roommate who first showed me his copy. He knew I was an aspiring newspaperman, and he insisted it was important.
I remember where I was when I read this book the first time. I remember being troubled by its message. I bought the book recently to revisit that memory — not with nostalgia, but the way we look back at the Cassandras who prophesized doom when no one was listening.
The signs were there — before the internet.
The industry, Watterson argued, had homogenized comics so that nearly every comics section in every newspaper looked like every other. Comics that once stretched across pages of newsprint were then confined to a format mandated by the syndicates to make composing pages easier for their client papers.
They all looked the same.
Many old successful strips had outlived their creators and were drawn by artists hired to keep someone else’s work on life support. New comics were rare and seldom were artists given the opportunity to try fresh ideas.
Watterson tested the industry, at one point refusing to draw in the modular panels and demanding more space on Sundays. His syndicate warned he’d lose half his clients, and they were right.
Newspaper comics had become calcified and discouraged creativity.
The late Lewis Grizzard said it’s impossible to read a newspaper from 1941 without wanting to shout, “Look out for Hitler!” I can’t look back at Watterson’s thesis, 30 years later, without wanting to scream, “Here comes the Internet!”
But great art can outlive its medium.
“Surprise is the essence of humor, and nothing is more surprising than truth,” Watterson wrote. “When cartoons dig beyond glib punch lines, cheap sentimentality, and tidy stories to deeper, truthful experiences, they can really touch people and connect us all.”
“As frustrated as I am by the way this business works,” he wrote, “I continue to believe that comics are an art form capable of any level of beauty, intelligence and sophistication.”
Perhaps, I should have read that to my daughter this week instead of stammering about newspapers. Yeah, she’s five and maybe her brother’s right that she’s not old enough yet to understand. But one day she will be.
She likes to draw.
“I’m going to be a great artist,” she reminds me daily.
And I’m going to leave this book for her, right here.
Kyle Whitmire is the 2023 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. You can follow him on Threads here and subscribe to his weekly newsletter, Alabamafication.