Cassandra of the Comics Page

Photo of a magazine page:

You know who the syndicates are looking for? They're looking for the dissatisfied stockbroker, sitting his office right now, he's about 30 years old, thinking how funny it is, there's all these office things going on around him, with computers and stuff. And he can draw a little bit. *A little bit*. He's got the gags in his mind because he lived them. He's going to start drawing comic strips, and he sends the stuff off to the syndicate. Even though they're badly drawn, it doesn't matter because they're all reduced down to sub-microscopic size. And they start the comic strip. I have seen so many of these come across my desk in the past five years, and I've seen them syndicated as well. They never last very long. But they hit fast, they've got a good gimmick, they've probably got a hook that sounds good to editors. Syndicates can sell them fast. These guys aren't artists, they're dissatisfied stockbrokers who scribbled a little bit in high school, and can draw it just enough—the expectations are so low artistically on a comic page—that they're being hired.