I have wanted to be one of these quirky comic strip artists since I was kid reading Garfield and Peanuts in the papers. The problem was, in pre-internet days, how do you even know what to do do get there? You read some books you can find in your local library but trying to get the info you really need always seemed impossible to me. To actually see the faces and hear the interviews of Jim Davis, Stephen Pastis, Bill Amend and of course, the legendary Bill Watterson and others is just so sought after for a nobody cartoonist like myself. (The only other similar documentary I know of was Dear Mr. Watterson and that one's really good too). There are just a few scenes of the artists actually drawing and this is something I have been dying to see for I-don't-know-how-long.
It's sad that it's really a documentary about the death of newspapers and therefore the end of the printed newspaper comics as we used to know them. It does shine a little light of hope in the direction of web comics - but I'm finding, at least for myself that it's nearly impossible to get seen and heard in a world where any kid can post a meme on social media and call it a "comic". I still think to myself, there has to be another way to aggregate all of us old-school ink & paper cartoonists outside the web...Like a yearly...or quarterly...no weekly...well heck, how about a daily printed volume or something...I don't know. We could call this printing something like "The Funnies" or "The Funny Paper"...yeah that'd be funny.
Anyway, this is a MUST SEE for anyone who draws comics (of the funny variety) or who who just loves them.
