blog: reader participation

In late 2006, the satirical newspaper The Onion launched a comics page in its print edition (currently available free on newsstands in 10 metropolitan areas). I was thrilled to feature Wondermark on that page in every market, and for about two and a half years, the comic ran in 700,000 papers every week.

Now, however, the Onion comics page is going away. The issue appearing on newsstands in a few days will be the last to feature a Wondermark strip.*

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed — it was wonderful to attend conventions in cities like New York, San Francisco, Austin, and the D.C. area and have people recognize the strip from the paper, thrilled to discover things like book collections and the email list. It was always a kick to pick a paper off the newsstand and see my work in print, and knowing that bored people on the subway would be reading my comic helped give me perspective — and kept me from making too many internet-nerd in-jokes. The whole time, the editors at the Onion have been uniformly gracious, accommodating and supportive, and I am deeply indebted to Tasha Robinson and Joe Garden particularly.

But the financial realities of the newspaper-publishing business are what they are. (That is to say, miserable.) Moving forward, my goals are twofold — both of which heavily involve you:

> First, I want to make sure that people who enjoyed Wondermark in the Onion know that the strip itself is still very much alive and continuing online. If you have friends who regularly read the comic in the paper, remind them that they can sign up for email delivery of comics and not miss a beat. In fact, they’ll get twice the comics! (Since the Onion only published one comic a week, but I post two a week here on the site.)

>> Second, if you attend or work for a school (high school or college) with a newspaper, let them know that Wondermark is now available for syndication through MCT Campus, the same syndicate that offers comics such as “K Chronicles”, “Brewster Rockit”, and “Bliss” to schools. MCT is offering Wondermark on a trial basis, which means that it lives or dies based on newspapers electing to participate and reader feedback — both things that I can’t provide, but you can.

Yes, you (in the aggregate) have the power to make Wondermark available to millions of students and faculty (in the aggregate) who might enjoy them. With the loss of the Onion audience, this opportunity for additional exposure is very precious, and I’d love to make a good showing. Please contact an editor at your school paper, share a few words about why you enjoy Wondermark and why it could be a good fit for your school, and ask them (very kindly) to contact Tony Regan at MCT Campus about syndicating the strip.

And if the paper picks it up for syndication — tell me about it! I’ll send a personalized thank-you gift to anyone who sends me a scan of Wondermark in their school paper.

Thanks so much, everyone! And to any fugitive Onion fans who’ve found your way here, thanks for making the leap online. Here’s the email subscription list, the RSS feed, the website’s Twitter feed, the LiveJournal feed — pick your flavor. It’s nice to have you around.

*If you live in Madison, San Fran., NYC, LA, Austin, Chicago, Denver/Boulder, the Twin Cities, Milwaukee, or DC, pick up an Onion late this week. You might be glad you did, hint hint

Anyone with a copy of Beards of our Forefathers has seen the 10 or so colored comics that it contains — similar to this comic from a few months ago. They were tons of fun to make, and I planned to do the same for my next collection, Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death. But thanks to a wonderfully busy holiday shipping season, I haven’t had the time to do so.

That’s where you come in! I’m inviting you to color one, two, three…up to six of my comic strips. The best entries will be printed in Clever Tricks (scheduled for release by Dark Horse Books in May 2009), and will be credited to you and, if you like, your website. The best colorists will also receive payment for their work — I’m not looking for free labor here.

The catch is that I need them soon. I’m hoping that you’ve got some days off this week, because I’ll be accepting entries only through this Sunday, January 4 (11:59 PM Pacific time). 

Details are below the jump! Good luck to all. 

Read more

My challenge to you: send a holiday card to a stranger from the phone book.

I was addressing our family’s holiday cards this year, and I had a couple left over after my list was done. So I found the White Pages, opened to a random page, and found a couple’s name and address. I wrote them a nice note in the card, enclosed a copy of our annual newsletter, and sent it. Then, again. The cards went out yesterday, and I suppose that’ll be the end of it.

Why am I bothering to tell you about it? Because I think you should do it too. Here are the reasons why:

• It’s fun. A little bit of minor mischief is exhilarating. For example, I think it’d be cool to work on an Improv Everywhere mission, to play a small part in making the lives of strangers more surreal, but those guys usually operate on the other side of the country from me. This is my very small way of doing the same thing.

• It’s cathartic. I watched a lecture once about the types of programming that we all undergo simply to interact functionally with society. For example, we obey driving rules, in the interest of the greater good, and usually that gets us where we’re going without a hitch.

Occasionally breaking out of those bounds, however — doing things that are “wrong,” even if harmless — keeps us cognizant and gives us perspective.

Examples (these are all things I’ve done): In the dead of night, with no cars for miles around, stopping the car on the highway and touching the ground outside. In a deserted building, using the “wrong” restroom. Asking for a hamburger in a hardware store, or a hammer in McDonald’s.

Why would we hesitate before doing any of these (ultimately harmless) things? Because social roles are very powerfully conditioned into us. Usually, as mentioned, that’s good — it keeps us safe, and allows strangers to interact smoothly so the world can work. But when you order a hammer at McDonald’s, you add a hiccup into the routine, and thus become very aware of it. Sending a card to a stranger is similar.

• It might touch someone. Probably what’ll happen is, the recipient of your card will be a little confused, then figure that either someone made a mistake or they’ve been placed on some mailing list. Whatever explanation settles their unease more, they’ll accept, and then they’ll either keep the card or throw it away, the end.

But maybe the person is lonely. You don’t know. Maybe a little note saying “All the best, warm wishes,” etc. would be a nice pick-me-up.

Of course, maybe a lonely person would get even more depressed if the only card they received seemed like a mistake. I guess this is an inherent risk of the plan.

• It could lead to something. You might get contacted by the person you sent the card to! You might even become fast friends. Now, it should be noted that you might also be ax murdered in your sleep — but again, inherent risk.

SO. All that being said, here are my tips for sending cards to strangers:

• Pick your names randomly, but wisely. I opened the phone book to a random page, but then searched that page for a married couple with their full address listed. To cut down the risk of unduly confusing people, I also tried to choose names that weren’t obviously seniors (“Elmer & Agnes”).

I’d advise sending holiday-neutral cards, but if you do have overtly Christian cards, say, try to avoid the Cohens and the Goldbergs. Just to hedge your bets.

Oh, and you can find a ZIP code for any U.S. address here.  Leave off the +4, it’ll look like you got the address from a mailing list.

• Don’t make a big deal about it. The perfect situation is if you have one or two bulk cards left over from a pack — the cheap ones you probably got at Rite Aid are great. Don’t buy a $4 Hallmark card, or it’ll seem too planned. And I wouldn’t use Wondermark cards, for two reasons: firstly, they’re kind of expensive and if you’ve bought them, I’d hate for you to waste them; secondly, they’re branded with ‘wondermark.com’, and the recipient, looking for clues to the mystery, might find this website, with this post, and then the jig is up.

This was the one thing I did wrong. I send out Wondermark cards every year (special exclusive designs not available for sale!), and between the branding on the card itself and the mentions of my books in the enclosed newsletter, it would be easy for the strangers receiving my cards to write the whole thing off as a viral marketing gimmick. Remember, when confused, folks search for whatever explanation they can hang their hat on — anything that looks like marketing, or a prank, or out-of-the-ordinary at all could cause them to make those assumptions.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with them thinking whatever they like — it’s not like there’s some specific response we’re trying to provoke here. We’re just trying to make people wonder.

• But do have fun with it. I recommend writing a warm, perfectly normal note (no “Thanks for the backrub last night” or “The aliens are after you”), and for maximum puzzlement, enclosing a brief family newsletter. Again, the aim is to be perfectly banal and typical, with nothing to show your hand that you don’t know these people.

A touch of the weird is fine. Your newsletter can talk about your accordion concert tour across Bulgaria. But keep it subtle.

• Don’t expose yourself unnecessarily. Absolutely feel free to omit a return address, if you want to avoid any chance of it getting back to you — in fact I’d recommend this for the majority of cases. Don’t take chances, for the aforementioned ax-murderer reasons. Or, if you want to leave the door open for a response, perhaps you can use a real address (a P.O. box?) with a fake name.

THAT’S IT. Now let me hear your ideas, and also tell me your stories — will you try it? Did you? Against all odds, did you get a response? Share your thoughts with me and other readers on the Wondermark forum.

This holiday season…let’s everybody waste 42¢ together.

* Special note for kids under 16: “Phone books” are what we used to look up phone numbers before the Internet, back when residences had single shared phones for an entire household. The book itself listed all the numbers, and sometimes addresses, for the residents in a given geographic area. Your local library may have archival examples.

** A “library” is a place where … oh, forget it.

Thanks so much to Cory at Boing Boing for a very kind mention of the Wondermark holiday cards! We’re packing and shipping items as fast as we can, over here. Hey, here’s a wallpaper of the key element from the recent Back to the Future comic:

Right-click the link to save. Enjoy!

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