Cox & Forkum bowing out of the blogosphere

Having been offline and out of the internet loop for the better part of the last three weeks, I was sad to learn that my favorite editorial cartoonists, Cox & Forkum, have taken their final bow, as illustrated above.

In Allen Forkum's own words:

With mixed emotions I announce: John and I will no longer be producing editorial cartoons. John will continue posting his work at his blog, John Cox Art, and he and I will continue working together on various projects, but there will be no more regularly scheduled editorial cartoons. The Web site will remain running indefinitely, as a means to market our books and as an archive of our work.

Forkum had some other things to say with which I can relate:

For better or worse, I've always had to approach the editorial cartoon work as a "part time" career. I never quit my "day job" as co-owner of a small newspaper publishing business. The editorial work, though intellectually rewarding, is not very rewarding financially. Furthermore, researching the cartoons, writing/designing them, managing the blog, publishing the books, marketing them, and running the business side all take an enormous amount of time.

All of that comes with the territory, of course, and John and I have done pretty well over the last six years. We're fairly well known on the Internet, we have a few newspaper and magazine clients, we've self-published four books, and we've made some money, if not a living. But lately, for reasons I won't go into here, I can no longer afford to divert so much time and attention away from my publishing business and other personal concerns, such as my family.

I also want to stop focusing so much of my creative energy on negative aspects of daily life. There's still an ideological battle to be fought, not to mention an actual war, and I will stay engaged in some form and medium. But at this point, anything seems more appealing than immersing myself in the sewer of daily politics.

That said, I imagine we won't be able to resist creating an occasional editorial cartoon. And if we do, we'll post it here.

I'm going to miss these guys, but as you will see when you visit their site, they're not going into seclusion...they're just refocusing.

God bless both of you, Allen Forkum and John Cox. You all are major talents and I hope you make a ton of money with your books.