For those who visit Cagle you are well aware of political cartoons. The whole genre of political satire has a soft spot in the American heart and to this day is considered the highest medium for comics. The question we ask here of course is how can we take advantage of this and exploit it for web comics? It appears the question was asked and answered by the guys over at JibJab. I’m sure all of us can remember the satirical and popular This is Your Land unleashed in the 2004 presidential campaign. This little animation had me laughing for weeks.

Wait a minute, I thought animations were not strips. Why should we care that some politicians are creating these mostly awful pieces of crap? Just take a look at the numbers. This Land was created for a few hundred bucks but pulled in an estimated 80 million hits. Now just imagine if the person paid was one of us and at the end of the animation it had your URL. Let’s be conservative and say 1% of the watchers who download the animation go to your site. That’s 800,000 or the admitted total hits for Penny Arcade for basically 20 hours worth of work. Now if you think we can’t do better all I have to say is Alpha-Shade.

I’m not telling artists to go out and sell their soul but at the very least a few of us can sleep with the devil and pass on some of the benefits. All we need is a few of us to do something wrong so well that the rest of the world wakes up and takes us seriously.