Unseen Cartoons

Above: Brandweek magazine bought and paid for the above "Gap Store" progression cartoon, with Baby Gap, The Gap, and finally, Geezer Gap. I think they printed it, but I never saw it.

It's always great to sell a cartoon. When you get the email or phone call or whatever from an editor telling you that they want to pay you for your doodle with the words under it.

And then the following week, you pick up a copy of The Magazine They Told You Your Cartoon Is In and ... the cartoon isn't there.

Above: "Another Nutso Cartoonist," a true life adventure drawn with a dying Micron Pigma pen in a new sketchbook last night, freehand, no pencils. There are a number of people who I've met who look at my like I'm crazy because I draw funny pictures for a living. "No one does that," they think to themselves. "People put up drywall, run retail or food industry franchises, or drive a big rig, up and down the highways and byways of this Great Nation -- they don't get paid to sit and doodle! That's preposterous! Outlandish! Balderdash!"

Anyway ....

I remember calling Charles Preston one time and asking when a cartoon of mine was going to run in the "Pepper ... and Salt" spot in the Wall Street Journal. Charles is a nice guy. He really is. But this time, he uncharacteristically laughed in my face. He told me -- and, as we all know, Charles Preston is the editor and creator of the S&P feature -- the guy that's been doing editing it for over 50 years -- even HE, Charles Preston, himself, was never told which cartoon was going to run which day.

Here are a couple of cartoons that I've sold, but to my knowledge, they have yet to run (and may never run) in the publication that bought them.

Above is a wordless cartoon starring our beloved real-life orange multi-toed kitty Opie, who has since passed away. Reader's Digest bought the above cartoon about six years ago and so far as I know it has not run. If you click on it and make it a wee bigger, you can see the gag.

"No, you're not interrupting a damn thing. We're just having our usual argument about who came first."

Above is a cartoon that was rejected by The New Yorker and Playboy, until finally getting snatched up by of all things The Chronicle for Higher Education. I thought it was risque and maybe completely out of character for this weekly journal, aimed at working faculty and administration at postsecondary institutions.

To the best of my knowledge, they never ran it.

"If you can't learn your parts, you'll have to deal with the repercussion section."

The above cartoon was sold to BBC Music Magazine five years ago which published it and now York College is using it in a music publication of their own. I think I saw it in BBC, and but I know I'll never actually see it in the York College book.

So, there ya go. I have some more cartoons like this, but that'll be all for today.