How to Weather Change
Added 2025-03-24 08:00:07 +0000 UTCOf course, this is exactly the kind of comic someone would post just before AI puts them out of work.
The thing is, I am semi-serious about this. If and when AI gets good enough to write comics, they are going to try to emulate the most polished mass market properties, not weirdos like me. And, yes, there is a lot more money in the mass market if you’re successful, but almost nobody is. And success for a syndicated comic means generating enough readers and revenue to satisfy papers in multiple markets, a national syndicate, a book publisher, and a few companies that market plush dolls and calendars. I think there might be room to survive out here on the edge of sanity, where all you need to earn is your share of the mortgage and the bills. I’m already a known quantity. People know my comics and novels are made by a human—a strange human, but a human nonetheless—who produces work no artificial intelligence could (or WOULD WANT TO).
Comments
I'm not that surprised. I would argue that no cartoonist has put more text on the internet then I have.
Scott Meyer
2025-04-10 10:23:06 +0000 UTCI wouldn't be so sure! I asked ChatGPT to write the text for a comic in your style, and it did it. It wasn't terrible. It wasn't good, either, and the jokes may have been plagiarized. But it did understand your style though ('dry, sarcastic, and structured in four panels, each with a helpful-but-slightly-unhinged “How to” title. ') and produced four panels worth of text with captions that approximately fulfilled the brief. I would find the idea that ChatGPT knows about me, specifically, by name, without having to do a web search kind of disturbing, but I guess that's the price of fame.
Angzarr
2025-04-09 21:26:21 +0000 UTCI especially enjoyed the "I write big walls of text" speech bubble buried inside the wall of text. It's those little wins that make me happy.
Steve Billingsley
2025-03-25 05:23:24 +0000 UTC
