On April Fools Day, 1984, not-yet-a-denizen Thom Zajac was driving over Highway 17 toward Santa Cruz, when he had an epiphany.
“I was a fan of editorial cartoons,” says Zajac from his home in Bonny Doon. Zajac had just looked at an entire book of editorial cartoons, and his mind began racing as he navigated the serpentine mountains. “I knew if I could put the editorial cartoons in a chronological order, that they would tell a story,” Zajac said. And thus, the inception of the idea for The Comic News was born.
Zajac found out that Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonists were available to print, cheaply.
“I could print a monthly newspaper of just political cartoons,” Zajac says. Not only would the budding entrepreneur be able to pull this off solo, with no writers (Zajac writes all the blurbs) and no photographers, he would also be able to sell the ads himself. With that idea locked and loaded, Zajac moved to Santa Cruz and started The Comic News, 40 years ago.
Good old, Benjamin Franklin, back in 1754, drew the first American newspaper editorial cartoon. Franklin’s “Join, or Die” cartoon was carried into battles. A century later, Thomas Nast, “Father of the American cartoon,” created the Republican elephant and even more culturally important, the image of the definitive Santa Claus. And 100 years later, Gary Trudeau’s comic strip, Doonesbury, which skewered college life and American politics with genius/stoner humor, won a Pulitzer Prize. Not to put too fine a point on it, but The Comic News is carrying the torch of an American tradition.
And while political cartooning is still as prolific as ever, Zajac wasn’t prepared for the 21st-century consumer culture attention span, when handheld devices would replace tactile, gritty newsprint. Luckily, co-editor John Govsky showed up at the right time and ushered The Comic News into the digital world. Without Govsky dragging Zajac into the future, The Comic News would have been a footnote in Santa Cruz’ publication history.
Editorial cartoons are important. The literacy rate of most Americans hovers between fourth- and seventh-grade levels, so cartoons can reach across a much wider aisle. If you make it through the 100 cartoons that Zajac and Govsky print each month, you will have a pretty good idea of what is happening in American politics, and that’s no small feat.
Selling subscriptions to newspapers has always been a hustlers game. And sometimes, something happens that the smart businessman seizes on. And in this case it happened to be an absurdist cartoonist named Gary Larson who changed everything for The Comic News.
“Distribution was down,” Zajac says. “Turns out there are a lot of people that are not that interested in editorial cartoons.” By printing a month’s worth of The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County, readers were able to binge-read their favorite characters, and it was a boom time for The Comic News.
The paper also helped launch the career of regional cartoonist Nina Paley.
“Print media was everything when I was a young cartoonist,” she says. “Getting published in The Comic News was genuinely a dream true for my 20-year-old-self. Back in 1987, there was no internet, or at least no internet that could support high-resolution graphics. Print was the shizz. My, how times have changed. Not only has the internet replaced most print media, but AI is now replacing most artists! I’m glad I’ve lived long enough to witness so many changes, even if they make my head spin.”
Since COVID, 2,200 American local print newspapers have closed. It is estimated that two newspapers in the United States go out of print every day. So take a moment to check out Comic News and subscribe. It’s an American tradition.
Find The Comic News in coffee shops around Santa Cruz County, or online at thecomicnews.com. Hard-copy subscriptions are $38 and yearly online subscriptions are $10.
