I’m not a cartoonist myself, but I can’t pretend James Sturm’s The Sponsor didn’t hit home for me. It’s childish, it’s stupid to feel envious of people who do better than you, you should always focus on your own achievements rather than measure them against other people, art is not a zero sum game, but damn if I don’t feel that sting of despair sometimes. Even in something as ephemeral as blogging, it does hurt now and then not to have a little bit of pretend internet fame like blogger X.

And then I read my own posts back and I realise why that is.

There’s been a bit of controversy about this comic though, as some people felt this wasn’t a gentle satire of creative insecurity, but rather an attack on a specific young, upandcoming cartoonist. Unfortunately this seems to have mostly been alluded to rather than actually discussed, with this debate mostly happening via various back channels, leaving those of us not plugged in clueless as to why this was problematic.

I posted this comic to MetaFilter partially to see if somebody could enlighten me and Narrative Priorities at the very least put her finger on why there was a bit of unfortunate undertone to the strip, something I noticed myself as well:

There is some not-so-great subtext to the particulars of how this specific comic was executed. The dismissive comment about “online crap.” The fact that these are two male cartoonists referencing another male cartoonist while they try to bear up under the weight of a woman cartoonist’s success — which is treated like some kind of tragedy that these men have to suffer through. The fact that this isn’t just about how this particular young male cartoonist is having a rough time and not getting the attention he’d like, or how there’s some larger trend in comics that’s bumming him out, but rather a single woman’s life and work and accomplishments trotted out as if they’re slaps across his face, when ACTUALLY her life and work have nothing to do with him.

But I think that the gender of the rival is incidental, if unfortunate, to the comic’s main point, which is more to mock this angst than it is to validate it, even if it’s done sympathetically. If Sturm had set out to mock or attack the more successful rival, he would’ve been meaner about it.

As to who would’ve been the cartoonist supposedly targeted by Sturm, Narrative Priorities reports says most people seem to think it’s Lucy Knisely, which I can sort of see as she is young, very successful for a cartoonist and deservedly so. It just seems such a roundabout way to go about attacking somebody.

And the discussion about it has annoyed me, because it has been so coy and been the same sort of whisper networks and back channels that have been so problematic in other contexts. These sort of things need to be done out in the open, both so that readers can make their minds up based on all information available and so Sturm can defend himself against the accusations, rather than have it hanging over his head as something “everybody knows”.