![](\"https:\/\/libraryofamericancomics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/DickTracy-flat-1.jpg\")
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In the early 1960s, a group of French intellectuals formed a club with a singular, seemingly strange mission: to preserve American comic strips.<\/p>\n
To the average American, these strips were disposable: cheap, ink-stained newsprint meant to be read once and tossed into the bin. But for avant-garde filmmakers like Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais, these strips were something else entirely. They admired the atmosphere and rhythm. They obsessed over Dick Tracy, fascinated by how a few ink lines could perfectly capture the tension and language of the 1930s criminal underworld. They saw art where the world saw trash.<\/p>\n
This distinction, between the disposable and the enduring, is the hidden divide in copywriting.<\/p>\n
Most sales copy is treated like junk mail or spam. It is a flood of poorly-targeted noise designed to be ignored. But beneath the surface of the “awful” lies a profound level of craftsmanship.<\/p>\n
I encountered this firsthand in the late 90s. I found a 16-page sales letter that felt different. I didn’t know what copywriting was, but I found myself reading it repeatedly. It didn’t just list features; it built a world. It used stories, testimonials, and a specific sequence of claims that expanded my sense of what was possible.<\/p>\n
I eventually discovered the mechanics: the ad was a “swipe” of the structures used by Gary Halbert, the legendary master of direct response. To the uninitiated, it was just a long sales pitch. To me, it was a revelation.<\/p>\n
When copy is written with this level of intent, it ceases to be “junk.” It becomes a narrative engine. It stops being something people throw away and starts being something they can’t stop reading.<\/p>\n
RW
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In the early 1960s, a group of French intellectuals formed a club with a singular, seemingly strange mission: to preserve American comic strips. To the average American, these strips were disposable: cheap, ink-stained newsprint meant to be read once and tossed into the bin. But for avant-garde filmmakers like Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais, these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copywriting"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}