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I think you answered your own question. > Peanuts somehow is still around 22 years after Schultz died, how!? In the past, when authors died, a space was creat

I think you answered your own question. > Peanuts somehow is still around 22 years after Schultz died, how!? In the past, when authors died, a space was created for new authors. Today, even when an author dies, they continue producing content, which has the effect of crowding out space for anyone else. Not only do you have to compete with the best comics of our time, you have to compete with the best comics of all time. What would it mean for today's classical composers if Bach and Beethoven were still making new music (probably with AI they soon will, if they aren't already). If you keep running Peanuts, then there's no room for the next Peanuts to grow. Writing a comic isn't about social commentary anymore, it's about growing an audience to the point where you can lock them in for 50, 70, maybe 100 years+. No matter if what you have to say in your comic is irrelevant and not funny. It's a business and there's money to be made.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Aren’t they just recycling old comics since there are so many of them? Or did some smart ML researcher create a language/ comic model based on a corpus of comics he wrote when he was alive, and some editors just generate and curate? I’m guessing we aren’t at the latter…yet.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  I taught a senior capstone group who were generating new Calvin and Hobbes cartoons using AI in 2019. They weren’t great, but I’m sure today the results would be 1000% better. What they did was run sentiment analysis on the corpus of comics, and then categorized all the panels by a number of emotions (anger, joy, surprise, confusion, etc.) then they wrote some jokes, specified some constraints about the panels, and then the algorithm assembled a comic. Today I imagine they could generate entirely new panels from the corpus, and maybe ChatGPT could be trained on the text to write jokes closer to the style of Calvin and Hobbes.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    This gives me a brilliant idea: maybe we could make an AI to make new movies based on old ones, and train it on the first 2 Alien movies, so we can finally get a decent sequel to that franchise. Humans post-~1990 have proven that they're completely incapable of the task. Then do the same with Episodes 4-6 of Star Wars.
    - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      Let's just train it on 4-5. RTOJ opens well, but the shark has jumped before the end of the movie.
saalweachter 4y ago
> In the past, when authors died, a space was created for new authors. Has that ever been the case? Little Orphan Annie kept going for 50 years after the author's death; Dick Tracy is still going. Tarzan, the original multimedia syndicated empire, is still going strong 75 years later, although the comic wrapped up 50 years after the death of the author.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

Aren’t they just recycling old comics since there are so many of them? Or did some smart ML researcher create a language/ comic model based on a corpus of comics he wrote when he was alive, and some editors just generate and curate? I’m guessing we aren’t at the latter…yet.

ModernMech 4y ago
I taught a senior capstone group who were generating new Calvin and Hobbes cartoons using AI in 2019. They weren’t great, but I’m sure today the results would be 1000% better. What they did was run sentiment analysis on the corpus of comics, and then categorized all the panels by a number of emotions (anger, joy, surprise, confusion, etc.) then they wrote some jokes, specified some constraints about the panels, and then the algorithm assembled a comic. Today I imagine they could generate entirely new panels from the corpus, and maybe ChatGPT could be trained on the text to write jokes closer to the style of Calvin and Hobbes.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  This gives me a brilliant idea: maybe we could make an AI to make new movies based on old ones, and train it on the first 2 Alien movies, so we can finally get a decent sequel to that franchise. Humans post-~1990 have proven that they're completely incapable of the task. Then do the same with Episodes 4-6 of Star Wars.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    Let's just train it on 4-5. RTOJ opens well, but the shark has jumped before the end of the movie.

saalweachter 4y ago

> In the past, when authors died, a space was created for new authors. Has that ever been the case? Little Orphan Annie kept going for 50 years after the author's death; Dick Tracy is still going. Tarzan, the original multimedia syndicated empire, is still going strong 75 years later, although the comic wrapped up 50 years after the death of the author.