Rob Ullman's posted on The Comics Journal message board and on his own blog that he's been dropped from illustrating the Washington City Paper's Savage Love column. Rob's cute drawings are one of the best things about the City Paper and I encourage you all to write to them. All of these illustrations are from recent issues of the CP - great, aren't they?The following is the letter I sent to them at mail@washingtoncitypaper.com earlier this evening:
I am very sorry to hear about the decision to stop using Rob Ullman to illustrate the Savage Love column. Ullman's illustrations are a large reason that I pick up the City Paper and recommend it on my blog about comics in Washington. Combined with the much smaller size of the remaining columns, this gives me much less reason to read the Paper or to recommend it to people. I hope you will reconsider this decision promptly and return Rob's illustrations - they make a column that can be a bit over the top much more amusing.
The managing editor has written in with a comment below, and suggests you write your own letter to have more of an impact so please follow his advice. Hopefully Rob will be back with no interruption and we can raise a glass in thanks.
Hi, I'm the managing editor of the City Paper. While we welcome any letters you might write, we won't run any that obviously come from a template. So please take the time to write your own.
ReplyDeleteI should add that we're all quite upset about the loss of our illustration budget for columns and wish Rob the best. It's been great working with him, and we hope to still hire him when we can.
Mr. Beaujon - thanks for writing in. I'm hoping that enough people will write to you to influence the new corporate owners.
ReplyDeleteAlso thank you for explaining that it's being driven by the loss of a budget - I assume this means that Sean Belschwender will no longer be doing News of the Weird either, after what... twenty years?
Hopefully you can use some of the letters to try to convince the Creative Loafing owners that UNIQUENESS and DISTINCTIVENESS make an alternative weekly - otherwise it's not alternative.
Talk about short-sightedness. Rob's illos really completed the column. It was a pleasure to enjoy the drawings and the text. Since the management change, I've felt the paper has become more "corporate" in it's approach. It's really not an alternative newspaper anymore. Too bad cause it was a wonderfully cool newspaper. There's no reason for me to read it anymore. Maybe the folks in Atlanta will figure it out and allow for a little local flavor, but it may be too late.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid that's correct--we won't be running Shawn's illustrations either. Each artist has graciously agreed to take a commission for a permanent illustration to accompany their old columns, so a little bit of the old magic will be there. Also, we will still illustrate some of our cover stories, so we hope to use the guys there, too. Thanks for caring and for reading.
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