Daily Inspiration Quote by Dan DeCarlo

DeCarlo’s numbers land like a deadpan punchline: an industry that once had room for eleven distinct tastemakers gets whittled down, almost casually, to “just the three of them.” The phrasing mimics the way consolidation often sells itself - not as a hostile takeover of culture, but as an inevitable sorting-out. “When it was all over” has the exhausted finality of someone who watched the door close in slow motion.

As a cartoonist who worked inside commercial entertainment, DeCarlo isn’t theorizing; he’s testifying. The specificity of “New York City” matters because it evokes a dense, walkable ecosystem: editors, artists, printers, rivals, all within subway distance. Shrinking that ecosystem doesn’t just reduce competition; it narrows the range of aesthetic risk that can survive. Fewer publishers means fewer editorial philosophies, fewer odd little projects that slip through because one house has a weird hunch and another has a different audience. When the “Big Three” arrive, culture starts to look like a boardroom strategy.

The subtext is a quiet indictment of how creative work becomes hostage to scale. Cartooning thrives on idiosyncrasy, on the specific voice and the slightly off beat. Consolidation pressures everything toward the most reliable, repeatable version of itself. DeCarlo’s understated cadence is the point: the loss isn’t dramatic in the moment. It’s administrative. Then you look up and realize the city that once held eleven doors now offers three gates.