Why are cartoonists such poor reality show contestants?

While writing about the tragic death of former comics editor/reality show cast member Sarah Becker, it jogged a thought I’ve pondered over the years: why are there so few cartoonists on reality shows?

It could be some confirmation bias here – maybe there are just as few plumbers and insurance adjusters. But it’s also true that comic book based reality shows don’t last very long – or more commonly never get off the launch pad. 

While the concept of reality shows goes back to Candid Camera and game shows,  MTV’s The Real World in the 90s truly kicked off the trend: 

It was not until the 1990s that the characteristics that would come to be associated with 21st-century reality TV emerged—a house full of video cameras, a serial structure, “talking head” testimonial interviews, and casting intended to maximize conflict and dramatic potential—in MTV’s The Real World (1992– ), a show following a group of young adults selected to live together in a house where cameras document their behavior and interpersonal relationships. The Real World premiered to mostly unfavorable reviews but quickly transformed into a ratings powerhouse with a novel premise and relatively low production costs. Early seasons of the show are credited with frankly addressing some of the pressing social issues of the 1990s, including HIV/AIDS, abortion, and racism. A deluge of reality TV shows that remixed the core elements of The Real World followed. 

The Real World’s second season in 1994 arguably cemented the show in the culture of the time, with aspiring cartoonist Judd Winick at the heart of it via his friendship with the HIV+ cast member Pedro Zamora, who died soon after the season aired. Winick gained fame with his memoir Pedro and Me and went on to have a very successful career as a cartoonist, comics writer and AIDS educator. (I briefly worked with him at Vertigo on Blood and Water and he’s such a nice guy!) Winick married fellow cast member Pam Ling, and is currently best known for his HiLo middle grade graphic novel series. A big success story then, and certainly boosted by his reality show fame. 

Becker appeared on season Five of The Real World, so you could accurately say that comics people appeared on 20% of the first five seasons of the granddaddy of all reality shows. But then…wha hoppen?

Although I was a big fan of Survivor when it kicked off the still-going strong reality show boom in 2000, I stopped watching after a few seasons. The manufactured conflicts of such shows became tedious to me, and it amazes me that Survivor is still going strong – now up to 46 seasons! While most contestants seem to be fitness oriented these days, I was informed that cartoonist Erik Reichenbach, was a contestant on both Survivor: Micronesia and Survivor: Caramoan. Reichenbach almost made it to the Final Four in his first outing but made what is  “widely considered to be one of the dumbest moves in Survivor history” by giving away his immunity idol. In his second outing he had to be medically evacuated but made it to number five. I had no idea! Reichenbach has several books of Survivor comics out, and apparently made well-lettered signs for other contestants. 

Big Brother was another early trendsetter, with the hidden camera and confessionals becoming a trope all their own. Checking out the cast list, I see a couple of artists listed, cosplayer Ramses Soto (on season 1 no less!) and one fellow who listed his profession as Lightsaber salesman. He is now a local weatherman. 

Perhaps the best known cartoonist contestant of recent years is Sasha Velour, winner of Season Nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Velour attended CCS in Vermont (where I met her and she reassured me that my hotel wasn’t haunted), made and sold comics for a while, and worked briefly for Toon Books. She’s now a famed performer and seems to have put cartooning aside for now, understandably, although she did draw a New Yorker cover! 

There may be other comicksy folks who have been on reality shows, but none I can think of – so please feel free to educate us in the comments. 

As for shows ABOUT cartooning, there have been many attempts at comic book reality shows. I know because over the years many times I was enlisted into attempting to pitch one. They never got far though because a) (and I mean this) most cartoonists are inherently too nice for reality tv and b) sitting at a drawing board all day is just not visually appealing. It’s a problem everyone who makes documentaries about cartoonists has to deal with. 

There was one attempt, to my knowledge, Strip Search, a show funded by the creators of the immensely popular webcomic Penny Arcade, with creators Mike and Jerry as the judges. Contestants included some well known folks like Erika Moen, Katie Rice and Abby Howard. It ran for 12 episodes on YouTube in 2013 so it was a bit ahead of its time there. I watched quite a few episodes – which were mercifully short at 15 minutes. The show was funded by a Kickstarter, and in true comics-fashion, the prize was modest:

Strip Search featured twelve cartoonists, living together for the length of the show, competing for a grand prize of $15,000 and a year working in Penny Arcade’s offices, including its production resources. The show used progressive elimination to narrow down the initial group of twelve artists to a final winner. While living in a large pineapple-themed house, the artists were given challenges each episode ranging from creative to legal to physical, with the winner or winners of each receiving a prize.

Rice was the eventual winner; she currently has a very successful career in animation and worked on the webcomic “Camp Weedonwantcha” in collaboration with her partner/husband Adam Wallander.

I was pretty obsessed with Strip Search for a while, and even did a recap for it, mixed with a recap of The Ultimate Fighter because, that’s how I rolled in 2013. 

Perhaps the most disastrous attempt at a nerdy reality show was SyFy’s Fangasm, which debuted in the wake of Jersey Shore and attempted to replicate that show’s drama in a comic-con-esque environment. Stan Lee was involved somehow. The cast included several well known (to me anyway) convention personalities, (and just about everyone I know tried out for it) but to their credit, most convention goers are a lot more civilized (i.e. boring) than the bros and connivers of the Jersey Shore. The show has terrible ratings, and ran the last two episodes as a two hour special to finish it off. It doesn’t even have a wikipedia page. And apparently it wasn’t very pleasant for the cast members.  The word Fangasm survives as the title of a more successful podcast. 

SyFy channel has made several shows about geeky-types, notably Heroes of Cosplay which lasted one and a half seasons from 2013-14. The show featured several well known nerdlebrities, including Yaya Han, Chloe Dykstra, Holly Conrad and Meg Turney. The show was met with criticism, however according to Wikipedia:

Heroes of Cosplay was criticized by some for allegedly grossly misrepresenting cosplay, humiliating and frustrating the cosplayers who were not part of the show’s cast but were attending competitions at the series’ featured conventions, and hurting the community. According to Zac Bertschy of Anime News Network, the show is “just a really terrible, manipulative, mean-spirited reality TV series that completely misrepresents the entire hobby and craft of cosplaying, makes cosplayers look like a bunch of backstabbing harpies and generally does a disservice to the already widely-misunderstood world of people who just like making costumes and showing them off at silly nerd conventions.” Syfy and its owner NBCUniversal Cable were also accused of having used photographs of cosplayers without the permission of the photographers, one of whom threatened to sue. The second half of the first season (1.5) had an overhaul of the presentation formatting for the show with more emphasis on the crafting, group work, skit competitions and less manufactured drama.

 Perhaps the controversy did in Heroes of Cosplay, as it didn’t last too long, despite the inherently awesome visuals and striving. SyFy tried to revive the format with Cosplay Melee, which lasted just six episodes. To be honest, I never even heard of this show until I started researching this piece.  

But the most controversial – and successful – of all comic book reality shows has to be Comic Book Men, which ran for seven seasons from 2012 to 2017 on AMC – and often in the coveted spot following The Walking Dead. The show featured pioneering nerdlebrity Kevin Smith standing around a comic book shop talking about nerdy shit with four other middle-aged men, an experience that I am way too familiar with and don’t need to watch a TV show to undergo. The show took off on the “Pawn Stars/Antiques Roadshow” format, with people bringing in supposedly valuable comics in to Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, the Red Bank NJ comics shop owned by Smith, and the cast members telling them if they were actually valuable, along with lots of talky talk, as you might expect from Smith. The cast included Secret Stash manager Walt Flanagan, Bryan Johnson, Mike Zapcic and Ming Chen. A frequent guest was a guy who just hung out at the store, Robert Bruce – another person I used to run into at cons quite a bit. Sadly, he was found dead in his storage unit in 2022.

Comic Book Men attracted controversy for its very title – where are the comic book women and non-binary people? It also tended to promote the very worst stereotypes about comics and comics culture. I was actually asked to help find some women to guest on the show, but when I relayed the query to a group of female comic book pros, they all refused. 

That brings us to the weirdest comic book reality show of all: Who Wants to be a Superhero?  If you guessed that Stan Lee was also involved in this you would be correct. Concocted during Lee’s glory days as a pacter, and the early rise of comic-con culture, the show ran on SyFy (what else?) and featured actual people who dressed up as superheroes and were judged by Lee on their heroics. The winner was Feedback, who beat out the more popular Fat Momma. The show only aired for a single season, in 2006, and was almost certainly impeded by the fatal flaw in its concept: real people don’t have superpowers. 

Recently (2023) there was a show call House of Villains on E! That featured the most dastardly reality show villains competing for the title of America’s Ultimate Supervillain and $200,000. Much more than Strip Search. The show featured such infamous personalities as Omarosa and Jonny Fairplay. People may not have superpowers, but they can easily act like total shits, I guess. 

I may have missed a show or two or 100 here…feel free to make any additions in the comments. But my original point stands: you’re not likely to see cartoonists on The Bachelor or The Bravo-verse. They are just too nice and too busy making comics. And thank goodness for that.