Star Wars Deleted Magic part 1

Here is something interesting for those of you (like me) who haven't heard of this project. Filmmaker Garrett Gilchrist put together a version of STAR WARS (1977) incorporating alternate takes and filmed but deleted scenes. It's "a look behind the scenes at what didn't make it to the final cut of the Star Wars trilogy."

STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC

Submitted for your weekend viewing pleasure ....

STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC (2005?) is a version of STAR WARS (1977) that's full of filmed alternate takes, actors speaking through imperial soldier masks and c-3PO masks, and deleted scenes re-cut in according to early existing script drafts.

It's "a look behind the scenes at what didn't make it to the final cut of the Star Wars trilogy," put together painstakingly by fan and filmmaker Garrett Gilchrist. I was hooked early on. Here's the first couple of minutes via YouTube:




I'm not a huge WARS fan (more of a TREK guy, as ya'll know), so this was all new to me. Better watch this now as those YouTube folks tend to yank vids like this. It's in 17 parts:

1. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 1
   
2. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 2
   
3. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 3
   
4. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 4
   
5. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 5
   
6. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 6
   
7. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 7
   
8. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 8
   
9. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 9
   
10. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 10
    
11. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 11
    
12. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 12
    
13. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 13
    
14. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 14
    
15. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 15
    
16. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 16
    
17. STAR WARS DELETED MAGIC 17
    

Eldon Dedini Illustrations 1959

Via Goofbutton.com comes copious scans of a Dedini-illustrated 1959 paperback book.

And there's a book's worth of Dedini cartoons, from FEETS & CHEEKS, also scanned in by those lovely folks at Goofbutton, here.

H/t Comics Reporter!

Happy Friday

Above: a bit of the front yard & driveway when we got our first snow last week. More expected soon! Have a great weekend.

NEW YORKER Steals from FAR SIDE???

Above: Lee Lorenz's NYer mag cartoon of this week.

Similar ideas happen all the time in gag cartooning, but Newsarama smells cover up!

Personally, I don't think Lee Lorenz is stealing from an old Gary Larson cartoon.

Above: Gary Larson, FAR SIDE, 1984

The Gelflog has more here.

Mankoff explains that the sheer volume of cartoons produced by artists means that there is often overlap of ideas. "Often in the same week different cartoonists will independently come up with identical ideas," he says. "Other times cartoonists generate ideas that have been previously published in the magazine. This is not plagiarism; rather it is the result of very creative people developing many ideas from a few well-established, well-traveled cartoon settings"

H/t to Comics Reporter.

Jon Witcomb Famous Artist

My pal Leif Peng over at Today's Inspiration always, always, always has a great blog entry. Really great. Great, great, great. How I hate him.

Today, it's Jon Witcomb Famous Artist, and we get to see lots of great old magazine art and the above ad as well, with Mr. Witcomb, smoking Fatima (!?) cigarettes and -- what is that next to his drawing board -- a bowl of, uh, lemonade? No ... hopefully, it's paint thinner. There is also some how to draw lessons from Mr. W. too.

Note to the kiddies out there: open flames + paint thinner = KABOOM!

Holiday Presents Not to Get

So many sites will give advice about what to buy this year for your friends, loved ones and geeks this Holiday season. The Mike Lynch Cartoons blog will showcase the ones that should have hazard lights flashing around them. I'm your flagman, telling you to move along, move along, nothing good to buy here.

These items should have that Federation President guy from STAR TREK IV (above) saying, "Avoid the planet Earth at all costs -- but especially avoid these terrible gifts."


Under the heading of Strange Product Tie-ins, come this porcelain decanter in the shape of Mr. Spock. It was originally full of some odd liqueur. Now, if this was, let's say, the head of Montgomery Scott and it was filled with scotch, ooookay! Then, it would make sense. Thanks to John Kenneth Muir's Reflections on Film/TV blog!
Above image taken from Nostalgia Central's Give-a-Show page.

Kenner's Give-a-Show Projector was a little red projector for kids that would show a series of slides on the wall. This was big time entertainment in the 1960s. Jon's Random Acts of Geekness blog shares one slide show a week with us. Here is the most recent one with Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear. It's terrible, in a Leonard Pinth-Garnell* way.



Booksteve's Library parses a 1950s ad for guns for kids for unintended sexual innuendo.


Johnny C.'s A-Hole-in-the-Head blog shares the above scary advertising photo (among other things) for Bernadine's Wigs from a June 9, 1971 Las Vegas souvenir newspaper. I think Toby of Bernadine's Wigs is the devil and if you buy a wig from him you MUST DO HIS BIDDING!

* Leonard Pinth-Garnell was an SNL character first played by Dan Aykroyd in 1977. Here are some of his memorable quotes from Answers.com:

• "Stunningly bad!"
• "Monumentally ill-advised!"
• "Perfectly awful!"
• "Couldn't be worse!"
• "Exquisitely awful!"
• "Astonishingly ill-chosen!"
• "Really bit the big one!"
• "Unrelentingly bad!"
• "There... That wasn't so good now, was it?"

THE REJECTION COLLECTION 2

Monday night was the launch party for THE REJECTION COLLECTION 2 edited by Matt Diffee, and Neel Shah of Radar was there to blog about it.

"The guys who contributed to this book probably send Mankoff around 500 cartoons a week. He takes about 20. The odds aren't great," laments Diffee. "The good thing is, by the time you realize yours didn't make the cut, you're already working on next week's submissions."

H/t to Journalista!

CARTOONS THE FRENCH WAY by Jean-Jacques Sempé

Above: the back cover to CARTOONS THE FRENCH WAY with a wordless Sempé gag.

Yesterday, I blogged about CARTOONS THE FRENCH WAY and showcased some single panel cartoons by J.M. Bosc.

Today: scans from one of the cartoon masters, Jean-Jacques Sempé, from that same 1955 paperback book.


Sempé was in his early 20s when he drew these cartoons.

Best known today for his New Yorker covers, his depictions of Paris life are seminal. The New York Times, in its interview with him last year, called his work quintessentially French:

"His precise, elegant drawings are often set in a Paris that even Parisians dream of: a city of mansard roofs, high windows and wrought-iron balconies, where all the cars still look like Deux-Chevaux or 1950s Citroëns. Dwarfed by their surroundings, his figures - smallish men, balding, a little portly, with big noses and tidy little mustaches, their double-chinned, nicely coiffed wives in polka-dot frocks - are French Everymen, dignified and put upon at the same time. They nevertheless speak to the international human plight: the Thurberian power struggle between men and women, the daily need to keep up appearances, the unending cycle of tiny victories and middle-size defeats."

The composition, the rain, the look on the peoples' faces: all so well done, so seemingly effortless.


I like the look on her face.


Yeah, nude models really do get bored. And cold.


In the above gatefold, you can see his attention to a real sense of place.

"I showed her! I didn't touch a dish for two months!"


Above: clicking to enlarge will show you how good the composition is on this. At first glance, the squiggly, curly-cue line was, I thought, part of the store window -- but within a second, I discovered the gag.


A typical gag: a city scene with complex, busy ink work with a clear layout of who to watch to understand the gag.

Phaidon Press published a number of Sempé's works last year. Phaidon maintains a blog, The Nicholas Club, named for the title character in a series of children's books by Goscinny & Sempé.

Tom Spurgeon, he of the grand Comics Reporter site, posted a sumptuous preview of Phaidon's Sempé cartoon books here.


Again, the reason that so many cartoons are wordless is because you don't have to know French to "get" them. Selling cartoons is Europe is easier when no words are used. And that's pretty hard to do!


Above a lovely, dry gag line. At first, I didn't see him amongst the dancing natives!

More links:

Christopher Wheeler shares photos of Sempé memorabilia (which is where I took the above image).

Read Yourself Raw profile.

Mike Lynch Cartoons blog (Yes, you're soaking in it now!) has more on French cartoon books here.

Happy Birthday, Walter Berndt

Above: cool SMITTY sheet music from the Hogan's Alley site.

Happy Birthday to Walter Berndt -- the man who drew SMITTY for 50 years!

And don't forget about the Berndt Toast Gang -- the Long Island Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society!

"Berndt Toast?" What kinda name is that?!

Recently, Tim Lasiuta interviewed the one and only Lee Ames about the Berndt Toast Gang. Lee said:

When the Long Island group, Creig Flessel, Bill Ligante, Frank Springer, Al Micale, and I got together to work for Hanna Barbera [in the 1960s], we decided to have a Finnegan's (Bar) lunch every last Thursday of the month. During that period, Creig brought Walter Berndt to join us.

We fell in love with the cigar smoking old timer (look who's talking!), as he did with us. After a couple of years he passed away and left us grieving. Thereafter, whenever we convened on Thursdays, we'd raise a toast to Walter's memory. On one such, my big mouth opened and uttered, "Fellas, it's time for the Berndt toast!" I wasn't trying to be cute at the time but I'm not displeased that it stuck and we became the Berndt Toast Gang, one of the largest branches of the National Cartoonists Society.

More on the history of the Berndt Toast Gang here.

Big tip of the chapeau to Craig Yoe!!!!!

CUL DE SAC Review

No, not my review. It's Tom Spurgeon's, over at Comics Reporter, reviews Sunday's edition of the newspaper comic strip CUL DE SAC. Link to Sunday's strip here.

I can't add to Tom's excellent analysis -- he's one of the most articulate guys writing about comics today -- except to shine the Mike Lynch Cartoons Blog kleig light on his insightful writing. CUL DE SAC is the one to watch.

I would have run across this review, since I read Comics Reporter every day (as should one and all), but a big hat tip to Dirk Deppey's ever exhaustive Journalista! where I saw mention of it first.

Related linky: Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac Blog.

CARTOONS THE FRENCH WAY: Cartoons by J.M. Bosc

Here are some J.M. Bosc (1924-1973) single panel cartoons from CARTOONS THE FRENCH WAY ("Roguish - Raucous - Ribald") edited by Rene Goscinny, Lion Literary Edition, published September 1955. Copyright 1955 by Manvis Publications, Inc.


Cover art by John Sidrone. Some pretty women in the cartoons, yes, but it's not too ribald at all.


All of Bosc's cartoons are wordless in this collection. Wordless sells internationally, you see.


Bosc's drawings are both specific, when they need to be, and spare.


What I like about Bosc is the element of surprise. Above: a violin as defense against critics.



Again, struggling against the odds is the above motif. Jean Bosc struggled with what we may call shell shock for many years.

His sister Renée had the above cartoon rendered into marble in memory of her brother.


The cartoons dealing with death have another level to them after knowing that the cartoonist committed suicide.



Above: a good metaphor for cartooning!


There's a site all about cartoonist J.M. Bosc that I wrote about here. It's designed by his nephew, Alain Damman. You may gorge yourself on Bosc's cartoons there.

Alain, for some reason your email is not working for me -- otherwise I would have posted you a note about me posting some more Bosc on the Web.

Aunt Fritzi in My Sharona

This made me smile and reminded me that NANCY's Aunt Fritzi was, is, and always will be a hottie.

I got this bit of fun from Guy Gilchrist. You know Guy; he's the fellow who draws the NANCY comic strip with his brother Greg. Two of Guy's teaching assistants at his Guy Gilchrist's Cartoonist's Academy put together this music vid of Aunt Fritzi.

Oh, and don't forget that the Guy Gilchrist's Cartoonist's Academy store is now open for your holiday needs!

Diversify Your Newspaper Comics Like a Portfolio

... so writes Joanne Kaufman in today's Wall Street Journal (quoting Janet Grimley, assistant managing editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer). This is a thoughtful piece with a lot of quotes from editors, syndicate people and cartoonists young and old.

And the article goes on to cover the fact that it's so difficult for a new cartoonist to break through all the old "legacy strips."

"For their part, long-established cartoonists suggest a little perspective is in order. 'My father always points out in defense of his strip that when he started it he was competing for space with 'Little Orphan Annie,' 'Dick Tracy' and 'Pogo,' ' said Brian Walker, a cartoonist and comics historian who was referring to 'Beetle Bailey' creator Mort Walker. Other cartoonists see it purely as a marketplace issue. 'My feeling is if you can do what I'm doing and it knocks me out of the paper, do it. Do it,' challenged Lynn Johnston. 'I'll applaud you. But as long as the editors and readers want my strip, I'll keep working.'"

The only thing that doesn't get mentioned is a Web-based business model for making money out of comic strips -- something I think is pretty important, especially if Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos can get people to buy Kindle. My friend Mark Anderson has more on Kindle here.

The article is accompanied by a too-small-reproduced illustration by Martin Kozlowski that I really liked. I wish it was reproduced larger! Heck, why are there space considerations on the Internets, WSJ?

Best Cartoons of the Year 1957 UPDATE

Time to visit Lawrence Lariar's BEST CARTOONS OF THE YEAR 1957!

There is a lot of knowledge in this book. A lot of cartoon knowledge.


Here's what I mean. Here is an example of great composition and skilled use of wash. You get drawn in to the clunker of a foreign car due to the black spotting. I don't know who Keith was, but he's a pro.

Here's one by Huffine. Oh those darn office signs that people had in the 50s and 60s: THINK, SMILE, GENIUS AT WORK! They were a lot better than the once we have now with mountain climbers (ACHIEVE!) or eagles (SOAR!) . I like Huffine's style, and I wish (like so many gag cartoonists) there was more about him on the Web.

The expression on the kid's face in this cartoon by the one and only Orlando Busino just grabbed me. Here's the whole format for that FAMILY TIES TV series wrapped up in one cartoon.
Al Piane draws beautifully correct plumage and I'll be darned but that suit looks like it could work.
John Albano shows us that what's old is new again with this gag that is still applicable today.

Bob Weber gives us the hardest working bank robbers ever. Bob, along with Orlando and other cartoonists, meet every week in Westport and talk cartoons. It was my pleasure to bump into this book, with samples of cartoons by two guys I admire!

I'm including Serrano's gag. I think I've seen this gag many times before. I don't know who was first, but the theme was popular with editors.

The one and only Don Orehek with a fantastic desert island gag. Not only is our man upset (he's literally tearing his hair out!), that bunny does not look pleased either!

Another from Busino. A great gag on an old topic. I love his lines; always great, cartoony, fun line work.

Huffine (I'm not sure of the first name; I think it's Dave -- but there's a Ray Huffine who worked for Disney), whose scribbly style I admire, has a great gag -- but there's a famous Addams cartoon that's similar. No, I don't know which one was first since I can't find the Addams one on Cartoonbank. If anyone wants to do the research on this, please do! I'd like to know myself!

The "I hate my mother-in-law" gag, along with the "boss chasing secretary around the desk" gag has been consigned to the great gag cartoon out box in the sky. Still, I admire Hageman's ability to sketch this out so concisely.
Albano scores a hilarious (and mean) gag in the above cartoon. The look on the kid's face, and him holding onto his hat as he races away from the scene of the accident made me smile. This would not be politically correct today, so I could see that editors would not OK it. The times are a changin'. Heck, even 1970s era Sesame Street shows may not be appropriate for children!


Mr. Bernhardt will have the last word. Have a great Thanksgiving! And if you're drinking and driving, then please drive a dogsled!

UPDATE December 4, 2007: Orlando Busino was kind enough to email me and laboriously type in Dave Huffine's bio from THE BEST CARTOONS OF 1943:

"David Broome Huffine was born in Knoxville Tennessee in 1911. He left the University of Tennessee after his second year to become a surveyor and guide in the Great Smoky Mts. He left the Smokies to come to New York to attend the Art Students League which he left to become an apprentice to Dennis Wortman* whom he left after two years to become a free lance cartoonist...a field which he has not left as yet. He and his wife, Ruth Huffine. who is a painter have one nine month old son ( adopted). They hope he will share their hobbies of angling and hill-billy music. The Huffines live the year around in the Catskill Mountains. "

* I think he is referring to Denys Wortman who did a panel for United Features called EVERYDAY MOVIES.

I wanted to share his reaction to the similarity of Huffhine's cartoon with a famous/similar one by Addams. Here's Orlando once more:

By now you must have gotten a number of answers to the question as to when Charles Addams did his cartoon ("George! George! Drop the keys!") but on the chance that you haven't. I have found it in a collection of Addams' work, MONSTER RALLY, published in 1950. The gags in Lariar's book are cartoons published in1957. Huffine's gag has a similar caption but a different situation and I assume can be considered a legitimate switch.

I agree with you, Orlando! (Who am I to disagree?!)

Festival of Cartoon Art 2007 Photos

More here.

Photo: the one and only Mike Peters!

H/t to Comics Reporter!

BUNCHY by Joyce Lankester Brisley

I just saw that a children's book illustrator has been told NOT to draw a fire-breathing dragon so as not to incur liability lawsuits. Political correctness has gone cuckoo! If it was up to the watchdogs, Lewis Carroll, the Brothers Grimm, L. Frank Baum -- all of 'em -- would be cold, destitute and on the breadlines!

You wanna see unpolitically correct? Well, here is BUNCHY, written and illustrated by Joyce Lankester Brisley.


The cloth cover of the book shows a scribbled character. This is not Bunchy. Bunchy is "a little girl whose name was Bunchy ... who lived with her grandmother in a cottage in the country."

"There was only one thing missing, which was that she had nobody to play with."

I don't know why her name is Bunchy. No publication date given (!), but I've seen it given as 1951. But the style that Ms. Lankester chooses seems older.


The book is comprised of 10 stories, all of which are about this nice little girl who makes up stories to amuse herself. She will make little dolls out of wooden clothes pegs, make up stories about the buttons in a button bag, and so on. In the above drawing, Bunchy has set up a little shop while grandmother looks on. The stories all get out of hand as soon as grandmother is out of view, with characters coming alive and Bunchy no longer in control. Bunchy's absent parents are never mentioned. Perhaps they just couldn't handle our protagonist and abandoned her to her aged relative.



Grandmother is frequently leaving the cottage, letting this underage child with the hyperactive imagination all alone. The girl has no toys, so she has to invent them.

For instance, in "Bunchy and the Scribble Family," her drawings come to life, and she gets swept up in their world. Mr. and Mrs. Scribble invite her to their house, and Bunchy has to run ahead to hurriedly draw their cottage. When they can't get in, she realizes she forgot to draw the doorknob. Their voices sound funny because she carelessly has drawn their mouths crooked.


Each story has a title drawing and an introduction to our format. In "Bunchy and the Pastry Dough," grandmother leaves for the market. She has left a bit of pastry dough for Bunchy to play with. That's it. No Nintendo, no cell, no Facebook; just a cold, stiff wedge of dough left over from pie-making.


Bunchy makes a dough girl, and

"the little pastry-girl pulled her legs from off the table and jumped down with a soft thud on to the kitchen floor!

"... The little pastry-girl began stretching her self as if she were doing exercises, but Bunchy soon saw that she was trying to get her arms and legs more to the same length, for Bunchy had really made them rather odd."

Bunchy realizes the pastry-girl has no eyes, so she places currants for eyes and, with a spoon, makes a line for the mouth.

Bunchy makes a pastry-cat and a pastry-house. And then they go in the pastry-house ... and the inside of the house has a kitchen, rooms, furniture, which surprises our title character since she didn't "make" any of the inside of the house.

They go to the kitchen, where

"the little pastry-girl picked up the pastry-cat and set it on top of the stove. Bunchy was afraid it would be too hot there, but it settled down quite contentedly ...."

And that nice little pastry-cat, who never did anyone, pastry or human, any harm, turns

"a golden brown colour. The next minute the pastry-girl had taken it from the stove, broken it in crisp pieces, and piled them on the plates on the table.

"Then she signed to Bunchy to draw up her chair and eat, and in some surprise Bunchy did so."

OMG!!!!!

But wait, there's more.

"When the meal was finished, the pastry-girl led the way up some funny rubbery soft stairs to the little bedroom above.

"Here was a white pastry-bed, with a thick pastry-coverlet; and the little pastry-girl at once pulled her buttons off (which were the only things she could remove) and got into bed, making room for Bunchy to get in beside her.

"But Bunchy didn't want to get in -- the bed-clothes looked so cold and sticky. Still the little pastry-girl kept beckoning and patting the lump of pastry which served for a pillow."

Call the religious right! Call the CIA (both of 'em: the Central Intelligence Agency and the Culinary Institute of America)! This book is twisted and outta control!


Thanks to Rob McGrath for the news article which reminded me of this little known book on my shelf!

Gahan Wilson Interviewed by Bob Mankoff

"Just the slippers is fine."

Cartoonist Gahan Wilson talks with New Yorker Cartoon Editor Robert Mankoff in this The New Yorker Out Loud Podcast titled "Freak Show." Subjects covered: Wilson's early days, his cartoon sensibility, and Charles Addams.

“[Back in the 1950s my first sale] the first one… the big breakthrough… was Ziff-Davis Publications. And Ziff-Davis printed these wonderful pulp magazines, and they had amazing stories and fantastic stories, which were great thick pulp things, and they had fabulous covers of women with tremendous breasts and things with many, many tentacles reaching for those same breasts.”

Huge ten gallon hat tip to Dirk Deppey at Journalista!

New Yorker cartoon-related: What's So Funny About Being Red?

H/t to Comics Reporter too!!!

First (?!) PLAYBOY Cartoon to be Auctioned

"Jeannie -- what's the past tense of 'virgin'?"

Hugh Hefner, via Heritage Galleries & Auctioneers, will be auctioning a cartoon from PLAYBOY #1. The cartoon, reproduced above, is by Ben Denison. Click to get a huge, giant size.

From the press release:

"It's impossible to overstate the importance of Playboy magazine to the modern cartoon field," says Ed Jaster, Heritage Auctions Vice President, "and Ben Denison's was the very first cartoon commissioned and published by Hefner in the pages of Playboy #1, the December 1953 debut often dubbed the 'Marilyn Monroe issue.' This was the cartoon that set the stage for all that followed, and as such, it holds a hallowed place both in Playboy lore and cartoon history."

Thanks to Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter!

HARVEY by Mary Chase

Thought of the Day.

My favorite quote from HARVEY is at the end of this 47 second clip from the 1950 movie version.

There's a reason why playwright Mary Chase won a Pulitzer!

Cartoonist Sandra Bell-Lundy's Work Schedule Revealed

Professional syndicated cartoonist Sandra Bell-Lundy shares her work schedule habits at her BETWEEN FRIENDS blog.

BETWEEN FRIENDS has been syndicated by King Features since 1994 and is carried in over 130 newspapers.

Advice for building a career as a freelance artist and/or paid cartoonist by Dave Roman

Illustrator Dave Roman (that's him on the left, in his room, on his bed, drawing comics, with the inspirational images of Batman, Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes and a Bloom County Anxiety Closet in the background) offers a mountain of good, solid advice about becoming a person who draws professionally.

There's a lot of good stuff here. I'm still reading it -- and will have to reread it to digest everything. I was nodding my head in agreement a couple of times, particularly the "learn PhotoShop" and "get a business card" tips Dave passed along.

Thanks for spending the time to do this, Dave!

Link via Dirk Deppey's Journalista! via Drawn! via Flight. (Poor flight has no exclamation mark in its moniker.)

UPDATED Mike Lynch Cartoon in November 2007 Harvard Business Review

Above: my cartoon "How the hell am I gong to spin this?" from the November 2007 issue of HBR.

There comes a time when a little cartoon goes forth in the world and gets rejected, rejected, rejected. And every time the above cartoon was rejected, I would pick it up, dust it off and send it back out ... where it would be rejected again.

This was drawn in March 2003. It was mailed out 28 times, to markets in the US and Europe. Rejected 27 times; and then, finally, a sale.

What else was rejected 27 times?



The book THE FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS was rejected 27 times. Harshest rejection: "No one wants to read a book about old men weeping into the telephone." Yikes.



27 rejections for AND TO THINK I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET by Dr. Seuss (according to the National Education Association site).

Not that a gag cartoon has the shelf-life of a book, particularly the above very good books, but you can see what I'm getting at: talent is cheap, notoriety is fleeting, persistence is the only way to succeeding.

From the Nibs newsletter by Kathryn Craft (PDF link here):

10 rejections: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

14 rejections: The Good Earth

15 publishers/30 agents rejected A Time to Kill by John Grisham

18 rejections: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

21 rejections: M*A*S*H

22 rejections: Dubliners

25 rejections: Gone With the Wind

27 rejections: And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street

27 rejections: Steps by Jerzy Kosinski — after it won the National Book Award!
Chuck Ross, convinced that unknown writers had little chance of having their novels accepted, tested his theory by retyping the book and submitting it under a pen name to a total of 14 publishers and 13 literary agents. They all rejected it—including Random House, the original publisher.

40 rejections were received by Mary Higgins Clark before she made her first sale.

121 rejections: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

123 rejections: Chicken Soup for the Soul

350 rejections were received by Louis L’Amour before he made his first sale

600 rejection slips were received by Jack London before his first sale

A big tip o' the hat to Pletch, who let me know that my cartoon was in the magazine weeks ago. Thanks, Pletch!


Above: Dead, dead, dead. Like those red shirt guys in STAR TREK, sometimes good cartooons go out and killed in their mission. What to do? What to do?

UPDATE: Some rejection-oriented links from the Mike Lynch Cartoons blog:

Gag Cartoon Rejection and Persistence

Rejected by THE REJECTION BOOK

Mike Lynch College of Gag Cartoon Knowledge -- Rejection, Rejection, Rejection

Winsor McCay's Influence on Filmmakers

Joshua Glenn, writing for the Sunday Boston Globe, presents a slide show juxtaposing images from the recent Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend book (gorgeously put together by Ulrich Merkl) and images from movies since then, from Bunuel to Disney.

This claim was originally made in the book by Merkl, and Glenn has some striking visuals. The case for Bunuel is strong, and I've heard that Bunuel, as well as Dali, were McCay admirers. But some of these examples are mere coincidence. It's certainly possible that a number of people who were involved in the movies might have had some McCay reprints. The first collection of "Rarebit Fiend" appeared within a year or 2 of the 1905 strip's debut. But, look here, I don't think that you can necessarily draw a straight line from, for instance, Mary Poppins' bottomless handbag to McCay. But it is a fun slideshow.

After watching, talk amongst yourselves.

More from Mr. Glenn here.

Big hat tip to Mark Mayerson's Mayerson on Animation blog!

Science Fiction Links

OLD TIME RADIO SCI FI: Free Science Fiction radio shows/readings on the Web. Well, not that old. They're from the 1970s and 80s.

SCIENCE THAT IS FICTION: Science in TV drug ads so much fiction, says this new "Adwatch" video feature at Consumer Reports.

SCI FI COMICS: The Monster Blog presents unreprinted Jack Kirby classic monster comics. These have great titles like I Accepted the Deadly Challenge of Zarkorr and The Mystery of the Tax Collector From Space!

FANTASY COMICS: Here's Archie's Mad House #22 from 1962, which has the first Sabrina, the Teenage Witch story by George Gladir with art by the one and only Dan Decarlo. Scott Shaw! (whose cartoon style, he confides, was influenced by fellow Mad House contributor Orlando Busino) has tons more about all this at his Oddball Comics site.

FICTION NOT SCIENCE: Blogger John Scalzi visits the Creation Museum.

US ECONOMY SO MUCH SCI FI: so says new book THE SQUANDERING OF AMERICA by Robert Kuttner.

H/ts to Boing Boing and C-SPAN's Washington Journal and Journalista!

Above pulp illustration by Charles Schneeman from the January 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction from Mike Lee's Curious Lee blog.

IT'S BETTER WITH YOUR SHOES OFF by Anne Cleveland Part 2

Continuing a look at the book IT'S BETTER WITH YOUR SHOES OFF by Anne Cleveland. Part one is here. This book shows us what it was like for well-to-do Westerners living in Japan.






Above: one of my favorite gatefold illustrations. The reason I bought the book.



Thanks to all for your kind comments. Glad to scan more ....

ALL IN A LINE Cartoons by Saul Steinberg

Before Sacco and Rall, there was Steinberg, drawing another war from another generation.

Below are some of his sketches from ALL IN A LINE, Copyright 1945 by Saul Steinberg; first Penguin edition 1947, reprinted by arrangement with Duell, Sloane & Pearce, Inc.

The first half of the book are (mostly) wordless cartoons and humorous drawings. The second half appears to be taken, with little or no redrawing, straight from his sketch book.


I love the POV drawing on the right hand side. Who knew you could have an open bottle of ink inside a military cargo plane?




His line work always impressed me as a combination of Sempé and Van Gogh.





Some great drawings to linger over, and I wish there were more books like this today. The 2000 PBS documentary They Drew Fire was about the formal hiring of artists to cover the war, and why it was done. To my knowledge, Mr. Steinberg was not among these fellows, but moreso an ordinary Navy grunt, jotting down his impressions, which makes him just as valuable.



Perhaps best known for his 1976 "View of the World" cover to the New Yorker magazine, Mr. Steinberg was one of those guys whose cartoons were just a beginning of what would be a life of fine art. The Saul Steinberg Foundation link here.

Kevin McVey Receives Tim Rosenthal Award

Cartoonist Kevin McVey, in recognition of his outstanding service to the National Cartoonists Society, was honored with the Tim Rosenthal Award on October 24, 2007. The ceremony took place at the "Monthly Munchers" meeting of the New Jersey National Cartoonists Society Chapter.

The Tim Rosenthal Award* is given to an NCS member who has gone above and beyond, recognizing a spirit of outstanding service and volunteerism at a chapter level. And Kevin has; a former NCS Membership Director, Kevin actually started the NCS NJ chapter in the 1960s. He spearheaded cartoonists' visits to military installations and veterans hospitals. And he worked with the USO on a national level to entertain the troups with cartoons and cartoonists.

This Bronx-born ink slinger is also an NCS Award winner. More photos and information at the NJ NCS site:

"As an over 40-year member of the NCS, Kevin won the 1984 Special Category Reuben Award for Theater Art, beating out such peers as Sam Norkin (NY Daily News) and Al Hirschfeld (NY Times)."

Big hat tip to Tom Stemmle for the heads up.

Congratulations, Kevin!

*The Tim Rosenthal Award is named for the late, great Tim Rosenthal at American Color, who helped pioneer the innovations in newspaper strip coloring; see Wiley Miller's Non Sequitur's Sunday Color Treasury for the full story. Wiley talks about it all in this interview at Comic Book Resources from September 26, 2007.

Harlan Ellison -- Pay the Writer

Ellison is a force to be reckoned with. Sometimes I think he's wrong, sometimes I think he's right. This time, he is spot on. I could not agree more. Although he's talking about writers and Warner Brothers, this is applicable to cartooning.

The video runs about 3 1/2 minutes, and is part of a larger documentary about the man titled Dreams with Sharp Teeth.

December 2007 PLAYBOY Juxtaposition

I read PLAYBOY for the cartoons. That's what I tell people. Well, the cartoons and the ads. At least that what I'm talking about today.

Just got the December issue of PLAYBOY, and boy oh boy -- there's some whacky, wonderful stuff in there. PLAYBOY continues to be a very cartoon friendly mag. Not only is there a never-before-seen Dedini cartoon, but there are a lot more other cartoons by the usual suspects (Gahan Wilson, P.C. Vey, Marty Murphy, Jonik), as well as some by relative newcomers (like Roy Delgado, not a newcomer to cartooning, but a new regular PLAYBOY presence, who had an excellent gag in this ish). Sorry to say that my fave PLAYBOY cartoonist, Don Orehek, was not in this one.

PLAYBOY was, and still is, a premier cartoon market. It took me a long, long time before I got my first sale. Let's look at some of the cartoon-related items in the new PLAYBOY (available for download at its Web site).


Here's an ad that uses a foursome of previously published PLAYBOY cartoons in its copy. Nice to see this, although the ad badly cropped a number of the cartoons. They guillotined good ol' Glenn McCoy's signature right down the middle.


Leroy Neiman gets a page, along with an announcement of a book of his "Femlin" (the girl on those Party Jokes page) drawings titled FEMLIN 50TH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION. Yeah, he's been drawing the girl for 50 years! Why "Femlin?" Because, way back in 1957, when Neiman showed Hefner some of his drawings, his reaction went something like this:

HEF (looking at sketches): A gremlin.

NEIMAN: Strictly feminine.

HEF: Femlin.

A cartoon centerfold of great old Christmas cartoons (Dempsey, Erikson, Buck Brown, Kliban and Dedini). It's great to see these wonderful color bits of cartooning. If you're a fan of great cartoon art, these guys are worth the purchase price.

PLAYBOY has a lot of ads, and I want to talk about a very odd insert that came with my copy. But before that, I want to let you know that I want to avoid the below Blogger warning image:


So, I'm going to be using this image:

Please do not feel infantilized. Thanks.

OK, so I got the below house ad with a nice lady inviting me to visit their Web site:


And so I turned it over and saw the below. This is all one side of the card, with one side telling me to Give the Gift of Literacy ... and then ... get a Free Nude Celebrity Video ... ?!?!?!


So, remember: if you got some bad nudity, give equal space to a good cause!

H/t to my wife who noticed this advertising juxtaposition with a comment, "This would be a good blog entry."

IT'S BETTER WITH YOUR SHOES OFF by Anne Cleveland PART ONE

Let's visit pre-anime, pre-Naruto Japan ...!


So, the year before Raymond Burr played "Steve Martin" in GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS, this book of playful cartoons, IT'S BETTER WITH YOUR SHOES OFF, written and illustrated by Anne Cleveland, was published by the Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc. of Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo Japan.


"Here's a clever book filed with cartoons and punchy captions which recount the hilarious adventures of an American family during their semi-permanent residence in Japan," said the Honolulu Star Bulletin in its review.


Hanako-San is always laughing at "The Wests." Mrs West sports a flippy hairdo ala Catherina O'Hara in WAITING FOR GUFFMAN.

Above is our cast of characters. Hubby looks like a grown up frat boy Tintin.

I saw this book in an antique store near the Manchester, NH environs. I liked Cleveland's clean brush style. And I had never heard of her or the book, despite my copy being a 20th printing from 1970.
The above paragraph sums up the whole POV of the book. This is the Baby Boomer generation's Japan.
Some lovely layout, lettering and detail here. Easy to make fun of the content, but the form is solid.

Ooh! Lower right hand corner of page 11: is that proto manga the bespectacled teen is engrossed in?





Hanako-San: always laughing at us silly Americans!

Little information on Ms. Cleveland today. The venerable Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter has more bio information on her, a list of known books, here. And Mike Rhode mentions her in a response to Tom's essay.

There' s some more of this book to scan, and, if there's an interest, I will.

UPDATE: Gee whiz, there's interest! Part 2 is here.

CUL DE SAC by Richard Thompson

Bill Watterson has an official blurb at the Andrews McMeel Universal Web site endorsing Richard Thompson's talent and his strip CUL DE SAC specifically.

Big hat tip to Tom Spurgeon today, who writes most aptly:

"... Bill Watterson's endorsement is part of the sales package. That's sort of like getting JD Salinger to do a cover blurb."

Related: The Daily Cartoonist asks Richard to name his top fave cartoonist influences.

Making a Living as a Cartoonist

Above: a cartoon that I sold to PUNCH before it folded. It's gone on to make multiple sales to books, calendars, and other secondary markets. It didn't make me as much money as my friend Sam Gross' "Frog Legs" cartoon, but it did OK.

"Can anyone make a living as a gag cartoonist?" I was asked recently.

Not anyone, only those who are driven and maybe, just maybe, a bit mad ... as a hatter.

And not if you think that the only gag cartoon market is The New Yorker. And not if you think that magazines in general are the only way to go.

There are a lot more markets. I was chatting with veteran gag cartoonist Bob Vojtko and we were pulling some magazines off the racks at a grocery store. He was showing me some of the mags he was in. Bob was in a lot, as usual! I asked him how many publications he had been in, all together, in his career, and he said something like many dozen that I know about -- and then there are hundreds of other "hidden markets." And he did a little Groucho Marx eyebrow wiggle to let me know HE wasn't telling ME what those markets were!

After you've been cartooning for a while, you'll have a backlog of cartoons. These cartoons will have drawings of business people, cats, doctors, UFOs, etc. And there are publications out there (which may or may not use cartoons) that might be interested in seeing your work. Find out who the art director is by looking at the masthead and mail off some of your good work. Most of the submissions will hit a wall, with a best case scenario of getting a "thanks, but no thanks" note in your SASE. But some editors will be interested.

There is also the shark aspect. The idea that you keep moving your cartoons, keep seeking out new markets, carry your business cards with you at all times. And sometimes calling editors to ask where your cartoons are. Promotion, persistence, production! But this is something that is inside of you and something you have to decide to do every day, you know? It's easier just to have a "real job" and dream about it. Much easier.

Regardless, there is an organic progression in a cartooning career. For instance, sometimes my cartoons are cut out of the paper or magazine. Sometimes the person doing the cutting wants the cartoon for their article/textbook/presentation. Sometimes someone wants to buy an original of a cartoon they just saw. Sometimes a company asks you to contribute to a cartoon calendar. And so on. And this happens more and more, as you get published regularly and more eyes see your work.

Above: "My cello paid for a seat and my cello wants the veggie plate and another martini." I had sent this cold to BBC Music magazine. I didn't know anyone at the magazine and they did not publish cartoons. The AD, who had just been given a copy of CLASSICAL MUSIC FOR BEGINNERS when she came aboard the magazine, recognized my name on the credits. I sold to this UK magazine regularly for a couple of years. I then re-sold the cartoon a couple of years later to the local musicians' union in NYC for their publication.

One of the hardest things to do is to keep trying even though, inside, you feel like it would be easier to lay down and quit. Well, yes. But of course.

Mark Anderson has posted his first podcast. In it, we watch him do the most important work of a cartoonist: the writing part. This is the part that separates the pro from the am.

And it's not too action-packed (I'm not dissing Mark -- it's Mark's own admission). I mean, it's applying the butt to the chair and really thinking.

I was at a business function full of NYC business-types. This was to be expected since it was held on the fashionable edge of SoHo in a huge converted loft. One of the guys came up to me and asked what I did. I told him that I was the guy that did the cartoons for their Web site. He was intrigued, especially when I told him that that was the way I made my living. He told me, "It must be great to be creative all the time."

I smiled as pleasantly as I could. I told him that cartooning was a job. Cartoons don't flow out my hand like water from a faucet. They are work. But, like I always add, this is also a job I love.

Cartoonists can't just draw when inspired if hey want to make money. As for me, I have to produce marketable, salable work at a regular pace. I'm an assembly line, putting out good cartoons at a regular pace. I'm a marketer, aiming my product at clients large and small. I'm the R&D department, finding new ways to get my material out there. You wear a lot of hats, including that Mad Hatter one.

I hope this was helpful to some. Let me know. Thank you. Now stop reading and start to work!

Working with Jay Kennedy

At her Between Friends blog, syndicated cartoonist Sandra Bell Lundy recounts the selling of her strip and working with King Features' Jay Kennedy.

Happy Anniversary, Trout!

It's been a month since a little kitten came howling at us, begging for attention, during our Healthful Walk. I'm taking our new kitten, named Trout, for her second routine vet visit.

We'll talk cartoons later ...

Lynn Johnston Interview Videos

Here are two videos of FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE creator Lynn Johnston were recently posted at the "CBC News: The National" Web site:

Lynn Johnston - The Artist at Work

Life in a Comic Strip

She talks about the process behind the strip (she takes lots of photos and acts out the parts), and, in the Life in a Comic Strip vid, mentions her recent separation from her husband. The direction on The Artist at Work is a bit maddening. At one point she's drawing at her board and the camera does not move in for a close up on her drawing. We finally get some close ups of her pencilling at the end of the first video, with more of the same in the second.

A big hat tip to illustrator Patricia Storms ... and don't forget to check out her blog Booklust.

Oh, and here's a link to a 1979 lengthy video interview (that's mentioned in the new Life in a Comic Strip video) "Up Close and Personal."

Clay Bennett to Chattanooga Times Free Press

Pulitzer prize-winning editorial cartoonist Clay Bennett will be leaving his Christian Science Monitor post for a full-time position with the Chattanooga Times Free Press effective January, 2008.

H/t to Comics Reporter.

Syd Hoff

Above: "I have it on good authority, Peebles, that your blood pressure is down and your ulcer is inactive. Am I to conclude that you no longer care about moving up in the firm?" A cartoon by Syd Hoff from the book CARTOON CLASSICS FROM MEDICAL ECONOMICS, copyright 1963 by Medical Economics Book Division, Oradell, New Jersey.

Cartoonist and children's book illustrator Syd Hoff (1912-2004) may no longer be with us, but his niece, inspirational speaker Carol Edmonston, has put together a Web page about him (with more to come) here.

Syd dropped in on the Berndt Toast Gang from time to time; enough for him to be considered a member of the Long Island Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. Unfortunately, I didn't meet him. But Bill Seay, the Berndt Toast Chairman, was a friend of Syd's. Bill told me a story about Syd's very early cartooning career, back when he was a teenager. Like a lot of cartoonists, Syd was determined to be one and, like so many cartoonists, Syd's mother was dismayed at his prospects. Heck, the woman just wanted her son to have a normal life! But if he had done what his mother wanted, there would be no DANNY AND THE DINOSAUR, no 571 Hoff cartoons sold to The New Yorker!


The September 1930 College Humor Magazine cover from a page of College Humor covers from the Ellis Butler Parker site.

Here's the story I was told about Syd and his mother's three little words that signaled her acceptance of his career:

Bronx-born Syd sold his first cartoon at the age of 17 and didn’t waste any time joining The Cartoonists Guild. The Guild, run by then NY Post cartoonist extraordinaire Roland Coe, was founded as a union for its members. (This is before the existence of/no relation to the current animators' union, also referred to as The Cartoonists Guild.)

When Syd joined in 1930, the prevailing New York City-based magazine gag cartoon rate was between $3 to $5. The Guild had mailed a letter to all of its cartoon markets. The letter asked magazine editors to sign it, pledging a uniform pay rate of $15 per cartoon. Most of the magazine editors acquiesced.

However, College Humor magazine refused to sign. College Humor was an important, major cartoon market. So Coe, Ned Hilton, Colin Allen and other Guild members picketed in front of the College Humor offices. College Humor called the police. The cartoonists were hauled away.

That night, Syd’s mother was at home, oblivious to all this, cooking dinner. The radio, as usual, was tuned to the six o’clock news. She hear the announcer's voice: “There was a demonstration this afternoon. Among the demonstrators arrested was Sydney Hoff.”

And Syd’s mother fainted.

As Syd told it to Bill, it was many hours later; late that night, when Syd was released from the Manhattan holding cell. Syd took the long subway ride back home, and walked back to their dark apartment building. Upon entering, his mother, who had recovered and was waiting up, calmly announced to her son, “Your dinner’s cold!”

Bill would always laugh out loud at this moment of motherly resignation. Syd was, for better or worse, a cartoonist from that point on.

I regret not meeting Syd, but I'm so glad to hear that his niece has taken it upon herself to set up a site honoring him. Syd lives on in the Cyber world!

"You don't take 'em; you count 'em!"

From that same MEDICAL ECONOMICS book. Wow! Nice use of the seldom seen semi colon in a cartoon caption!

THE GUMPS & SAD SACK

From the Michael Sporn Animation blog ("Splog") comes a bunch of THE GUMPS, in 3 parts:

Part one

Part two

Part three

And (with a hat tip to that same blog) a great selection of SAD SACK cartoons, along with an article about George Baker.

Thanks, Michael -- and what a cool blog you got there!

The Saturday Evening Post, February 28, 1959 Part 2

We're finishing up our look at some of the cartoons from the Post! The first part, The Saturday Evening Post, February 28, 1959 Part 1, is here.

Great gag cartoonist, and children's book illustrator, Syd Hoff has an inside front cover, full-color ad. Mmm boy! Them Hoffs were able to serve meat on the table that week!


Below: Gardner Rea, whose work appeared everywhere back in the day, gives us a wordless bit of misogynistic humor.



Here is another wordless cartoon by Francis W. Dahl. More of Dahl's cartoons here.


Below: Stan Hunt and his breezy line and wash style -- with a cartoon that looks like it was taken from The New Yorker (which was probably Stan's first rejection for his one).

A Chon Day cartoon. Someday there will be a big collection of Mr. Day's work and he will be rediscovered by a new generation.
Below: not a gag per se, but I love Syverson's little people that would appear on the Post Scripts page. Will Flinn has more Henry Syverson at his blog here and here.
Arthur Murray's wife has a story in this issue about (What else?) being married to ArthurMurray. It's titled "Stop that Dancing and Mow the Damned Lawn." No it isn't. I'm kidding. Anyway, in there interest of cleansing the cartoon palate, here is Arthur Murray's Dancing Lesson: THE CHA CHA.


If Tom Henderson was cartooning today, then he would be the epitome of a good cartoonist: you can easily read his signature to Google the guy. But, like so many old gag cartoons, the humor is old now. Old and tired. And, since this is a pre-Internets cartoonist, he don't got much of a Web presence.

Anyway, I can admire Henderson's composition, line work, his wash placement -- it's all exemplary craftsmanship -- but so far as the real reason you read a gag cartoon -- for the funny of it -- well, that part fell off this cartoon way back in 1959.

Harry Mace gives us a goofy hubby gag. Purple crayon marks made by previous owner of this mag. Again, not a great gag. But, look at the background -- a bureau, a framed picture, a corner, an arch, another picture, a stairway -- all drawn incomplete; just a hint of their structure in as few lines as needed. Wonderful economy, deftly drawn.

Back when "magic markers" were new! Think "magic markers" and think "resurrection of Christ," huh? I guess if you inhale enough "magic markers" fumes, you'll think anything, huh?


The one and only Jerry Marcus made me laugh out loud with this lecherous hospital patient. I like how his black spotting (the patient's hair, her hair) draws us to the focal point.


Thus ends our visit with the SEP!

Mike Peters at 2007 OSU Festival of Cartoon Art

Via Mark Anderson comes some 7 minutes of the great cartoonist Mike Peters' presentation at this past weekend's OSU Cartoon Festival.

Mark was gracious enough to live-blog while at the Festival, and his words and photos to date are below:

Day One

Day One Pics

Day Two

And Mark wraps up his reaction in the aptly titled OSU Wrap Up.


Above: Mr. Peters as Superman.

From his Wikipedia entry:

As a joke, he once stood on the building ledge outside the Daily News building for thirty minutes wearing a Superman costume so that he could make an entrance to a meeting through the window in the manner of actor George Reeves entering Perry White's office on The Adventures of Superman.