Pictures For Sad Children

About

Pictures For Sad Children is a webcomic series by artist John Campbell known for its dark, absurdist humor. The comic ended abruptly in 2014 following several controversies surrounding a crowdfunding campaign for a Pictures for Sad Children book.

History

In 2007, the Pictures For Sad Children^[1] site was launched, featuring webcomics focusing on the protagonist Gary, an office worker suffering from social anxiety and low self-esteem. Other characters included the ghost Paul Cho, Gary’s roommate Jeremy, Gary’s cousin Sara, Sara’s Husband Afsheen, their daughter Maddy, Gary’s coworker Mariana and her ex-boyfriend Simon.

Reception

In 2008, the webcomic was a 2008 Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards finalist in the “Outstanding Newcomer” category.^[3]

Kickstarter Campaign

In May 2012, Campbell launched a Kickstarter campaign for a printed collection of Pictures for Sad Children comics.^[2] The page listed several unusual perks provided to backers of the campaign, including the receipt of an original comic drawn by Campbell while under the influence of the psychedelic drug DMT. On May 26th, the project was successfully funded with $51,615 pledged of the $8,000 goal.

On September 19th, Campbell updated the Kickstarter^[4] page with a post titled “I’ve been pretending to be depressed for profit and I’m sorry,” in which he announced he had faked sadness to mimic other artists suffering from clinical depression. On September 21st, Campbell posted another update titled “I’ve been pretending to be pretending to have depression for profit and I’m sorry,”^[5] stating that the previous update was false and that he was actually suffering from depression. On February 27th, 2014, a final update was posted to the Kickstarter^[6] page, announcing that 25% of the rewards for the campaign would not be sent out and that he would be ending the comic series. The post included a video in which Campbell is shown burning a pile of books, 127 copies of his book, claiming that he had burned one book for every message asking or complaining about the Kickstarter project and would continue to do so if more inquires were done (shown below).

Along with the video, Campbell posted a message expressing how he saw the crowdfunding proyect to be a harming way to promote and support capitalism, the concept of money being a “joke”, and how his actions would work to give a lesson about the true value of things. This accompained by insults and claims of indiference towards some of his proyect supporters and what they might think of him, all of this among some insight to the justification behind his actions.

The situation caused a serie of reactions from the backers that ranged from anger and frustation to understanding and even sympathy, and earnt Campbell the attention of multiple sites involved in the book publishing and comic industry, such as Mediabristo^[7], BleedingCool^[8], Comicbookresources^[9], Slushpile^[10] and even DnaInfo^[11], a local news site that covers ocurrences on New york and Chicago, and Business Insider^[12] an online business news blog.

As of February 27th, the comic’s page^[1] is just a blank space which marks the apparent end of the comic just as Campbell had announced.