Lots of great gag cartoons (by Chon Day, Ted Key, Richter, etc.) from THE NINE TO FIVERS, a Saturday Evening Post collection at the Hairy Green Eyeball blog.
And isn't it wonderful to know that a good number of these guys are still around, and still working -- Brad Anderson, Kaz, Shirvanian, Marcus, Porges and the one and only Orlando Busino. Peter Porges is the only one who told me that he is not cartooning any more. I routinely compete with Vahan Shirvanian when submitting to magazine markets.
I inquired once about submitting cartoons to the SEP, but they told me they bought all rights. That was the end of my interest. Shortly after that, (though I didn't find out until a couple years later) they had a few of my cartoons in the magazine - HALF page size. How did they do this? They had a national greeting card contest in which they wanted their readers to send in their favorite greeting cards. Guess who won? Yeah. A few times I won. I never knew about it and they used my material w/o my permission. I thought about suing them, and maybe I should have. It all left a bitter taste in my mouth and told me something about this magazine and who runs it.
ReplyDeleteWow! What a story! You would think someone at SEP or the greeting card co. would have let you know. Heck, Dan, it's free advertising for the greeting card co., free content for the mag and good publicity for you. It's a shame and mystifying that you were out of that loop when it happened.
ReplyDeleteI happened upon it myself one year a few years back when I was thumbing through some old SEP's in an office building. I almost fell off my chair when I saw them because I knew nothing about them.
ReplyDeleteThe greeting cards really act as advertisement in and of themselves as they are all over the country.
In my opinion, a national magazine that uses/buys cartoons should not be having a contest for their readers that involves the magazine printing copyrighted work of an artist without consent/payment. Otherwise, EVERY magazine could have a "contest" in this fashion (it wouldn't have to be just greeting cards) and could print cartoonists work for free all the time.
Now, was there a note of pride that my work was chosen by readers across the country a few times out of all the cards out there? Yeah, but that was fast fleeting. Pride comes before the fall, not to mention the poor house.
I have the tear sheets for these, btw.
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