It often sounds corny to some people when you proclaim your lofty goals.  People are commonly skeptical, not necessarily because of negativity, but because they just don’t see the vision like you do.

Creating art is like that.  It’s why people often tell artists that they’re amazed by talent.  They themselves don’t have the skills or they cannot see the vision in the first place.

Those are the two ingredients to achieving lofty goals – having the vision and executing it.

Our lofty goal: Zingerding will ignite a revolution in online comic strips.  We’re going to be the ones who do it right and do it big!  There have been a lot of challenges for cartoonists as their art form moves from print to the internet.  Though some have been successful, the best solution has yet to materialize.  Zingerding is stepping up to provide new opportunities to cartoonists where they haven’t existed before.

We’re starting the comic strip revolution and we mean it!  Join the cause.

We’re launching a new initiative to garner momentum for the Comic Strip Revolution.  Join the cause on Facebook to declare your support for comic strips on the internet.  If you’re on Facebook, simply click to become a member of Free the Comic Strip!

You’ll then be able to invite your own friends to spread the word.  This isn’t only about Zingerding.  It’s about showing that you, as a cartoonist or a reader of comic strips, want a better experience online. That’s the larger cause!

Click the image below to view or join the cause.

A few hundred comic strip cartoonists (who knows how many) entered the Comic Strip Superstar Contest sponsored by Amazon.com, Andrews McMeel Publishing and Universal Press Syndicate.  The entries were pared down to 250, then 50, then 10 by a panel of professional cartoonists, before a singular comic strip was chosen by the public.  Only the top 10 were publicly announced.  A strip titled Girl was deemed the winner yesterday.

At the start of the contest, there was a lot of buzz forming within the cartoonist community.  It sounded like a grand new opportunity, a new path toward syndication.

I’ll say though, yesterday’s big announcement seemed quite anticlimactic.  I don’t mean it as a criticism of Girl, rather a criticism of the contest itself.

I previously compared the contest to American Idol, but for cartoonists.  However, the level of hype and excitement behind the popular television show was exactly what the Comic Strip Superstar Contest lacked.

Amazon, Andrews McMeel and Universal Press Syndicate did little to publicize the contest.  There was an air of mystery shrouded around the judging as each level of finalists were announced.  Months passed in near silence from the contest officials and the only clues came from cartoonists themselves.  Nobody got to share the experience of those who were cut or moved ahead (outside of family or Twitter followers).  Amazon published a very rudimentary page to showcase the contest and eventually the 10 finalists.

There was no drama, no tears, no fanfare.  I think the creators of the contest intended to do for comic strips what American Idol does for singers.  But the mood around Comic Strip Superstar was nothing like it.  Of course, a TV show about music and a web contest about comics will have different atmospheres.

But there’s something to be said about fanfare and creating big anticipation.  It’s important not so much for the sake of showiness, but to rally people around the winners.

Dana Simpson, creator of the winning comic strip, Girl, has won an impressive contest.  On the merit of her talent, she rose to the top.  From what I could find with a moderate search on Google, Twitter, some blogs and forums, nobody is talking about it much outside of the cartoonist community.

When a performer on American Idol triumphs in the end, a nation of fans explode in cheer.  The amazing thing is that this fan base is brand new.  Before the show, practically nobody knew the talent of the winner.

Now who’s celebrating Girl?  Where are the fans?  Where are the people already pining for the book release and the possibility of reading it in their local papers?  Yeah, I’m sure some exist… somewhere.

Do you realize how rare it is for a comic strip to make it in today’s newspaper climate?  It’s one of the most challenging fields to break into because the space on a newspaper page is severely limited and old strips don’t die easily.  A single comic strip now has a chance at joining the ranks of Peanuts, For Better or For Worse and Get Fuzzy.  Few strips earn the opportunity to touch the lives of people on such a scale.  Girl has an opportunity.  If you ask me, she deserves fanfare.

What Amazon should have done was created a marketing engine behind the contest.  There should have been a blog, tweets to follow, a Facebook page, sharing features, etc.  These staples of today’s internet are what creates hype.  These aren’t small companies with minimal resources.  Major corporations ran this contest.  The internet – beyond cartoonists – should be celebrating, signing up on Dana’s email list and buying copies of her past comics.

What we’ve learned is that quiet competition neglects fans, which in turn neglects the cartoonist.  Now Dana will be working hard to push her strip to the level of newspaper syndication (if it’s not already).  By next week, many of us will have let Girl slip to the back of our minds.  Perhaps in a year from now, she’ll be popping up in some papers here and there.  Maybe the public will remember the contest – most will never have heard of it.  The result will be that Girl will be in the same position as any new strip trying to build a readership from scratch in a struggling newspaper industry.

The saving grace might be Dana herself.  If she can build momentum from this point forward and create her own fanfare, she might have a good chance at success instead of just a chance.

Following the contest has been an eye-opening experience for those of us who want to launch the next set of great comic strips.

It’s been a long road for many cartoonists the past two and a half months since submissions opened for the Amazon Comic Strip Superstar Contest.  But today, Andrews McMeel Publishing and Amazon.com announced the winning comic strip, Girl, by Dana Simpson.  We send a big ZING out to Dana!

Girl gets a book publishing deal, a spot on gocomics.com, and a development contract with Universal Press Syndicate for a possible future in the newspapers.  From what I’ve seen of the examples, I think she’s got a great chance to take the strip far!

Not that success couldn’t be found on newsprint but I don’t think syndication is really where cartoonists want to head these days.  See our previous post about the launch of the Comic Strip Superstar contest.