Mike Lynch Cartoon in January 15, 2011 WALL STREET JOURNAL

"Billy's opinions do not reflect the view of the Andersons, their affiliates or subsidiaries."

The nice thing about having my cartoon in the Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal is that it tends to be read more casually than the daily. It's thicker and there are more feature articles. It tends to be taken home to be consumed in a more leisurely fashion (by more people). So ... more readers might take the requisite three seconds to look at the Pepper ... and Salt cartoon.


Above: the original of the cartoon (before the WSJ redraw).

The "Billy's opinions" cartoon was created in the last week of May 2003, and was subsequently turned down by every major market. After a year of trying, I mothballed it. In 2006, it was picked as one of a number of my cartoons in the book LAUGHTER THE BEST MEDICINE II. But it still had not sold to a magazine market.

The original is now framed and was shown in a couple of gallery shows.


A closer angle of the original, which is much more illustrative than the smaller redrawn version.

I resurrected this golden oldie in December 2009, and sent it to WSJ, as part of a batch of fresh cartoons. The cartoon was held, and sold about 60 days later, in February 2010. I did a small redraw of the original to fit the WSJ's specs.

The choice of the family's name, Anderson, is a gentle wink to my pal, fellow cartoonist Mark Anderson.

My thanks to Gregory Kogan for the heads up on this! Thanks, Greg!



Billy does look like a handful.