From Sketch to Finish

Here are

• some business cartoons I drew in my sketchbook,
• and then the finish
• ... and then we shall have a guessing game.

No one gets to see my sketchbook. I mean, until now. It's really just a thing I have for myself. I mean, the writing is near illegible and the people are simple, bald doodles. Look at all those Little Orphan Annie eyes. I draw a lot of business people with glasses and the blank eyes seem to add to the cartoons.

Here's a finish of the cartoon. By "finish," I mean a cartoon that is ready for publication. I simplified the gag line. (Georgette? Was I thinking of Ted Baxter's girlfriend or what?) I still made the gorilla look a little cheesed off, but he's not as threatening as I originally made him. Maybe that was a mistake. Ah well. If I do say so myself, I like the gorilla hair.

Now you see just how messy my sketches can be. And you can also see that I couldn't decide on the line. I knew I wanted a bunch of boss-types v. poor little worker ...

... Except I changed my mind. Now we have some fellow businessmen half-way coming into an office to deliver the bad news. One reason I changed the initial idea is that you don't always sell a cartoon with a mean boss. I mean, aside from Dilbert. You couldn't do up a batch of cartoons showing bosses as evil people and expect to sell them to, for instance, Forbes. Now these people coming into the office may or may not be colleagues of the poor fellow who will be frozen. The one speaking looks upset, so it looks like I recognize the fact that business can be tough and unfair and hard on the people in it. This is more humanistic.

Ooookay.

And here's another one from the sketchbook. This time the boss type, with those soulless no-eyes glasses, is actively accusing a cubicle dweller.

The boss here is almost deformed. He looks a little withered under his suit.

OK, wrapping up: so there are some sketches and some finishes. Now, here's the game:

Which cartoons sold and which ones didn't? HINT: 2 of them did sell, but another, after being submitted to all of the major business cartoon markets, utterly failed.

I'll post the answer soon.