The mailing material for the posters arrived yesterday, and today I sent out the first batch (to people who ordered the poster on 1/18 and 1/19. I’ll send out the next batch tomorrow, and I’m hoping to have it all shipped by Friday. If you’ve already ordered a poster, you should have it in 5-10 business days.

Almost all the posters have now been sold. There are only 19 left from this print run, and once they’re gone, any new orders will have to wait for a second print run (so the turnaround time will be about three weeks). So, if you haven’t yet ordered and you’d like to get the poster sooner rather than later, order today!

U.S. Domestic Orders: $15 Shipping included	International Orders: $25 Shipping included

Candorville’s on the chopping block in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, so if you live in or around St. Louis or you don’t but you still somehow read the paper, they want to hear from you. Just go to their website, scroll down to the Candorville strip, and choose “Keep it” on the pulldown menu next to the strip. You can also comment in their comments section below, if you’d like.

It’s far easier to KEEP a comic strip in the paper than it is to get it back in after they’ve cut it, so go to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch comics poll now and make yourself heard!

Chris Matthews has been increasingly willing to call Republican politicians out on their childish attempt to rename the opposition party. I take credit for this. I didn’t hear a single Media personality even mention this pathetic trend until my 2007 cartoon on the topic ran in the Washington Post (& everywhere else). Oh, and some other obscure comic called “Doonesbury” (you’ve probably never heard of it) may have also run a similar cartoon on the very same day as mine.

The Rocky Mountain News ends today, and Candorville’s one of dozens of cartoons that’ll disappear tomorrow. But Candorville’s only a click away! Continue to follow it right here, at Candorville.com. If you subscribe to Candorville’s RSS feed, you’ll get a link to the day’s comic in your inbox every day.

Every once in a while I feel like putting together an extra-long story. It’s fun to do, and for people who like long storylines, it’s fun to read. But there are some people – and you know who you are – who have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to comic strips. Some people like a quick, self contained joke, and even if every strip in a long series has its own self-contained punchline, if there’s even a hint that it’s part of an ongoing storyline, some people get itchy, they get a nagging urge to pull their hair out at the root, and they feel like a little kid is holding his finger a centimeter from their ears saying “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you…” I’m a Babylon 5 fan. I’m a Farscape fan. I love long, ongoing stories. I don’t get you people at all, but I do grudgingly acknowledge your existence.

Today, I counted the responses to the vampire story arc and – using my way-too-rusty math skills – about .05% of you fit the above description. I never shorten my stories for the sake of the impatient, but the last thing I want to do is piss you off. So if you just can’t take it, you’d be better off waiting a week or two ’til it’s over. Then come back and read through the whole thing in one sitting, as if it’s a comic book. It won’t feel excruciating to you, and I guarantee you’ll enjoy it more.

For the 99.95% of you who tell me you can’t wait to see where this is going, read on…

A reader just sent me this, in response to this week’s strips on Michael Steele’s “hip hop” makeover of the Republican National Committee. I post this because, of all the e-mails readers have sent about this week’s strips, this was the ONLY one that took issue with it. But I’m sure this reader isn’t the only one who felt that way, so to answer anyone else who shares his opinion, I thought I’d post both this reader’s e-mail and my response to him:

Mr. Bell,
You have an impressive ability to analyze life and point out the irony and humor therein, such as you did in the strip about credit limit and APR. However, when you use your strip as a soapbox to express your political views with personal attacks, the result is not clever, entertaining, or funny. I assume that you’re not interested in my political views and I’m not interested in yours.

You can do better. There are plenty of ox’s to be goared on both sides of the political aisle and you will gain a broader audience.
[Name Witheld],
Woodbridge, VA

…and my response…

“Mr. [Name Witheld],

I appreciate the compliment. I have to ask, though, are you a new Candorville reader? Your “both sides of the aisle” comment leads me to believe you may be. Just a few weeks ago, Candorville lampooned the Obama administration for an entire week, depicting the press secretary as a burning bush dispensing wisdom from on high. Months ago, during the primaries, it went after Hillary Clinton, depicting her as the last survivor of a doomed alien planet who came to earth with the power to become whomever she happens to be speaking to at the time.

I am interested in other people’s political views, and my strip is intended for people who enjoy politics and social commentary. If reaching a broader audience were my goal, I’d have created a strip about a talking cat or dog. Everyone loves talking cats and dogs. But I created Candorville as a vehicle to comment honestly about my view of the world, the people in it, and the individuals who run it. That’s what Candorville is. Candorville has never spared politicians, and there’s no way to lampoon politicians without someone considering it a personal attack. I disagree with you on that, by the way. To me, a personal attack would be, for instance, to go after Al Franken’s or Rush Limbaugh’s past drug use when that has nothing to do with the rest of us. Commentary on the actions, policies, and aspects of politicians’ personalities that DO affect us is not a personal attack, it’s fair game. Incidentally, the politicians themselves seem to agree with me. Often, when I give one of them the Michael Steele treatment, someone from their offices contacts me to ask for original artwork or frame-ready prints. That happened again just yesterday. I have to believe these people wouldn’t be hanging personal attacks on the walls of their offices. I know I wouldn’t.

And I have to take the “not clever, entertaining, or funny” part with a grain of salt. Over my 14 years as a cartoonist and an accompanying 14 years of reading fan-mail and hate-mail, I’ve learned one thing in particular: people rarely think satire is clever, entertaining or funny when they disagree with it. When they do agree, they often think it’s brilliant.

You might be interested to know I received my share of negative mail from people who work at banks. These people felt last Sunday’s credit limit/APR strip was hitting below the belt. They felt it was a highly personal attack. I’m fascinated by how some of the responses are practically *mirror images* of your e-mail, as if they were written by you in a parallel universe. Here’s a clip from one of those e-mails. I hope you find it as interesting as I do:

“Dear Mr. Bell,

I generally enjoy Candorville. I think you’ve got a great eye for hypocrisy in our leaders and a great talent for deflating our politicians’ egos. I’m getting a big kick out of this week’s Michael Steele series, and I loved what you did with John Edwards. But with all due respect, these personal attacks against the institutions that make our democracy possible (namely, banks) have got to stop. It’s unseemly, undignified, unfunny, and more than a little childish. It’s kindergarten name-calling, and if you’re looking to turn off your readers who believe in the capitalist system (i.e. most of America), you’re well on your way to doing just that.

I don’t call you up at home and tell you that I think cartoonists are evil and trying to wreck the country, so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t show up on my doorstep every morning telling me that I’M responsible for other people’s reckless borrowing habits.

Keep up the good work (and when it’s good, it’s really good), and cut out the bad, if you want to keep me and the millions of other ‘capitalist pig’ Americans as readers.

Sincerely,
[name witheld]
Direct Merchants Bank”

I think you can see, from all this, why I appreciate comments such as yours, but why I can’t let them influence what I do in my strip. Candorville is what it is. I can’t please everyone, and in fact, no matter WHAT I do (even inoccuous comics about aging), people tell me I’ve offended them. So the only way I know to do my job is to have my own standards, hold myself to my own standards, and write comics that I enjoy writing. If other people enjoy them, great. If not, well… that’s why there’s more than one comic strip on the comics page. There are a lot of other offerings on the comics page that would be more to their liking, and I encourage them to seek out those comics.

Thanks for reading Candorville, Mr. [Name Witheld], and especially for taking the time to write.

A St. Louis reader just posted that the PD has changed their feedback address. So if you want to ask them to return Candorville to the comics page, you should write to feedback@post-dispatch.co and/or call 314-340-8222″!

They had to drop four comics so they could physically shrink the paper (bad economy), and Candorville was one of them. Usually when a paper drops Candorville, reader response brings it back. So if you want to see Candorville returned to your paper, you’ve got to let them know right now.

This is not a good time to be working for the newspaper industry. The Detroit Free Press has cut several comics, including Candorville, because of the economy. If you want to see Candorville returned to Detroit, you’ve got to let them know right now by writing to features@freepress.com and/or calling 313-222-6400!

The Free Press is essentially merging with Detroit’s other paper, “The News,” and scaling home delivery back to only three days per week. The rest of the week, they’ll have skeleton versions of the papers available in racks in the metro area only. They’re cutting expenses every way they can, but because the comics page is generally cited as the main reason people pick up the paper, cutting back on comics is the best way to lose even more readers. If you’re in Michigan or you read the Free Press via mail or online, write to the Free Press and tell them you want Candorville back, and there’s a good chance they’ll listen to you.

Times aren’t good for cartoonists, yours truly included. The Seattle Times cut comics a few months ago, including Candorville. Reader response changed their minds and they brought it back. St. Louis cut back on comics (including Candorville) just a couple weeks ago, and now Detroit. In the alternative comics world, the best alternatives out there (e.g. “This Modern World”) just lost dozens of clients as a major alt chain decided it couldn’t afford to carry comics anymore. Publishers and editors don’t know how to stem their losses, so they’re slashing costs wildly. Blindly. You’ve probably noticed your favorite newspaper isn’t the paper it used to be. It’s smaller, lighter, less significant, and increasingly less relevant to your life. I worked for the Daily Californian (UC Berkeley’s student run paper) back in college. College papers have always been a pale shadow of major metropolitan papers. Yesterday, while I walked a few blocks to pick up some Thai food for lunch, I looked in the LA Times and LA Daily News newsracks. They were about the same size as the Daily Cal was ten years ago.

If you want to keep “Candorville” and other features in your local paper (or return it if it’s been cut), you have to write to them and tell them now, or you’re going to lose it. It’s only a matter of time, and time’s running short in this industry.