Both Chris Muir’s “Day by Day” and “Cox and Forkum” editorial cartoons have become staples of the blogosphere. Increasingly, however, I’ve noticed that the strips seem aimed specifically at bloggers.
Here are today’s strips, for example:
These are both quite well done. But, aside from bloggers–who created this story and have followed it obsessively over the weekend–who would have any idea what these strips were about? Let alone find them funny?
Muir, especially, has had many bloggers actually appear in his strips. Here’s one from last week:
Aside from a handful of bloggers, who knows anything about “Rightroots”? And the lovely and talented Mary Katherine Hamm isn’t exactly a household name quite yet. Indeed, although I’ve met her several times, I wouldn’t even recognize her unless I’d seen the previous day’s strip.
I wonder whether the cartoonists hope that appealing to bloggers will get their strips out to more people so that they can eventually break out into the mainstream or if they are banking on their ability to support themselves simply from advertising on their websites? If the latter, it is surely one of the best examples of narrowcasting that I’ve seen.
