I remember talking to a cartoonist who, once he wrote down all of his ideas for magazine cartoons that week, he logged onto Cartoonbank.com to double-check to make sure that none of his cartoons were unconscious copies of previously published cartoons.
Regardless, there are times when magazine gag cartoons repeat themselves.
Obviously, if you think that the Great Cartoon Idea you have is not really most likely YOURS, then you should not draw it.
I try not to worry about it. Duplication happens. Even the places that can afford an entire fact-checking department, like The New Yorker, can't get it right.
For instance, you type in the words "cat heaven" into the Cartoonbank.com search engine, you will see identical wordless cartoons of a cat entering the heavenly gates via a small cat door. One was in the 7/22/91 issue, drawn by the UK cartoonist Kenneth Mahood, and the other in the 10/14/02 issue, drawn by Gahan Wilson.
Harry Bliss has a cartoon in the new Playboy that is exactly like a pretty famous editorial cartoon of Pulitzer prize winner Clay Bennett's (Clay drew Clinton wearing an "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt, with the pointy finger pointing down; Harry Bliss drew the same shirt on a jaunty lookin' dude).
And then there's Zach Kanin's cartoon in a January 2008 issue of The New Yorker that is an exact echo of a cartoon Don Orehek drew for Playboy a couple of years ago. (This one has a woman looking on as a plumber bends over -- and we can see he's wearing frilly underwear.)
I don't know for sure is these are intentional swipes. Only the person who drew the cartoon the second time could tell you.
Sometimes, though, you know for sure, deep down, that a cartoon has absolutely been pilfered. For instance, here's a 1952 Virgil Partch cartoon from True Magazine:
And here's one from the 1963 Cartoon Classics booklet:
Same angle, same phone, etc. as the later drawing above.
It's a rip off. You know it like you know a good melon.
Or rather, a rotten melon.
Another Pulitzer Prize winner, Mike Peters, did the same cartoon with Bill Clinton wearing the "I'm with stupid" t-shirt pointing down - not sure who came first. I saw it on the fairly recent YouTube video of a recent chalk-talk of his.
ReplyDeletePaul
I trid to do an 'I'm with Stupid' cartoon with a guy at a Schitzophrenics Conference, but decided it was in bad taste. Besides, a 'A Schitzophrenics Conference' how ridiculous, they'd always be in two minds about turning up. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteIt was just a lazy idea of mine. And I think these cartoons are the product, sometimes, of lazy ideas. That VIP cartoon looks to have been ripped off, but I think Harry Bliss recasts the idea by making it a testosterone-feulled youngster. Then again I really like the way his drawings look, so I'm maybe a bit of a fan.
I don't know, sometimes it can be accidental I think.
I'm very confident that Mike Lynch's cartoons are always new ideas. I've always liked the way they look contemporary, something I think he has in common with Bliss, and the way they are about today's social mores. They are very now.
And then life rips off art, as evident when CNN's Kyra Phillips had her microphone on in the ladies room, reminiscent of Jack Cole's Playboy cartoon of TV reporter exiting men's room, camera dangling from neck, as frantic control room technician says, "John, your creepy-peepy is on."
ReplyDeleteBennett's 'I'm with stupid' cartoon came first.
ReplyDeleteMike Peters drew his during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Bennett drew his four years earlier when the Paula Jones sexual harassment allegations first surfaced.