Mike Lynch Cartoon in December 10, 2007 Wall Street Journal

"Remember to ask about Santa's needs."

Above is the finished cartoon of mine as it appears in today's Wall Street Journal. This is a redraw of a cartoon that I submitted to the Journal a few months ago. I had to redraw it for them because my original was horizontal, whereas their space is square. They asked me to do the redraw. I hate redrawing. Hate it. Just am not interested in redrawing at all and hard to pep myself up to do it. Bored silly, I am. I guess that's why I had to put in the one kid sticking out his tongue (bottom left), which was not in the original version. I wanted to put something fresh in it.


Above is the original; the one I first mailed to them. I drew this in 2003, and I submitted it a couple of times a year to various markets. I don't know what made me draw those really big candy canes on Santa's chair!

I like the sentiment of the mother. Poor Santa! One of the occupational hazards of being him is having to listen to all these dang kids tell him their selfish wants all the time! What about him?!

Related: Richard Thompson talks about redraws at his Cul de Sac blog. You would be a fool not to bookmark Richard's blog! A fool!