Some of the biggest names in indie cartooning are sounding alarms over various alt-weeklies shedding their comics (I recently wrote about how we were, sadly, ahead of the curve on that one). Max Cannon of "Red Meat" calls it a "comics apocalypse" and says that if the "humble $10 to $20 that I generally get paid for a...strip is going to bring the whole operation tumbling down, then the alt-weekly industry is already dead on its feet."

Lloyd Dangle, who draws "Troubletown," says he was "shit-canned" from the Seattle Stranger and Metro Silicon Valley. The papers, he says, "said that they might bring Troubletown back when things get better, but for newspapers, I don't know anybody who thinks it's going to get better."

Derf, author of "The City," who we dropped last year, is very kind to the "desperate" editors he's worked with over the years. Still, he doesn't buy the wisdom of such cuts: "I believe Weeklies should be ADDING features and content, especially cartoons, which are both popular and inexpensive. Instead the strategy seems to be "let's give our readers LESS to read!" Yeah. Wonder how that will work out?"

He also has some choice words about our situation:

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In November 2007, faced with budget targets that we'd walk over hot coals to have to hit now, we decided to cut most of our comics. It saved us a little bit of money and earned us no end of pissed-off letters from fans of our onetime back-pages mainstays. Today the Minnesota Independent is reporting that Village Voice Media, the former New Times chain of alt-weeklies, is cutting its comics.

This is obviously a gut punch to comics artists reeling from cutbacks at smaller chains like ours (Washington City Paper is owned by Creative Loafing Inc., which owns five other papers and declared bankruptcy last year).

And yet: Now we look like visionaries!