Thursday, July 12, 2007

This Toon is Your Toon


THIS TOON IS YOUR TOON is a handy pocket-sized collection of cartoons that Stephanie Piro and John Nolan edited. You can only get it this week at the 10th Annual Woody Guthrie Festival. The book is a fund raiser for the Oklahoma Chapter of the Huntington's Disease Society of America.

Steph and John are at the festival now, enjoying the event after their long, dusty long cross-country drive from New Hampshire. (Actually, it probably didn't take them too long what with the way John drives.) My friends Patricia Storms and Rod McKie have more information about THIS TOON at their blogs.

I'm not that familiar with Woody Guthrie, and I had to reveal to the aforementioned editors my absolute ignorance. What kind of cartoons are you looking for? "Woody was concerned with social injustice," I was told. Well, I have some of those kinda cartoons.

Since you may not get a chance to get to Oklahoma before the book sells out -- and it's not on the Web or in PDf format or appearing in the Diamond Catalog or on eBay -- below are some of my cartoons that appear in the book:


Above: The first cartoon I sold to a national publication (National Review) way back when.


"Sanders, I just sold your soul. You weren't using it were you?"

This is what Sanders gets for not reading that contract! First published in Prospect Magazine (UK).


"Come in, Thompson. But before you get any time with me, you'll have to watch a short advertisement."

Another evil bald boss. Originally published in Harvard Business Review.


"Ten more minutes of media manipulation and then it's off to bed."

In my mind, I hear my mom's voice in this punchline. First appeared in Wall Street Journal.

"Hopkins deserves to be fired, but we can't touch him since that endangered owl began roosting in his office."

This cartoon was originally in The Ladders.com Web site, and an original of the cartoon was just sold at the Art for Animals auction for Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary.

I want to let everyone know that Steph and John put a ton of work into this great book. They really deserve recognition for their efforts. And the cover is by my friend editorial cartoonist Tom Stiglich, who donated the original cover drawing to be auctioned off at the Festival.

2 comments:

Cartoonizen said...

Hi Mike, I love your gags..they crack me up...I just discovered your gags today..love your blog..I just started a comic blog and am very much into single panel cartooning...Check out my blog:
http://soufflelivejournal.blogspot.com/

Please feel free to comment!

Regards,
Amaan

Chris Schweizer said...

I've been a fan of Woodie Guthrie's music for a while, but he was surprised to find out that, in addition to being an accomplished musician, he was also an amateur cartoonist himself - there's a relatively recent book that's assembled a bunch of his gags, sketches, and the like.

It's always interesting to look at the body of work of someone who never cartooned professionally, or had aspirations to do so, but still had the drive to create them.

It's called "Woodie Guthrie: Artworks." You might like it, Mike!