Festival of Cartoon Art 2007 Photos

More here.

Photo: the one and only Mike Peters!

H/t to Comics Reporter!

BUNCHY by Joyce Lankester Brisley

I just saw that a children's book illustrator has been told NOT to draw a fire-breathing dragon so as not to incur liability lawsuits. Political correctness has gone cuckoo! If it was up to the watchdogs, Lewis Carroll, the Brothers Grimm, L. Frank Baum -- all of 'em -- would be cold, destitute and on the breadlines!

You wanna see unpolitically correct? Well, here is BUNCHY, written and illustrated by Joyce Lankester Brisley.


The cloth cover of the book shows a scribbled character. This is not Bunchy. Bunchy is "a little girl whose name was Bunchy ... who lived with her grandmother in a cottage in the country."

"There was only one thing missing, which was that she had nobody to play with."

I don't know why her name is Bunchy. No publication date given (!), but I've seen it given as 1951. But the style that Ms. Lankester chooses seems older.



The book is comprised of 10 stories, all of which are about this nice little girl who makes up stories to amuse herself. She will make little dolls out of wooden clothes pegs, make up stories about the buttons in a button bag, and so on. In the above drawing, Bunchy has set up a little shop while grandmother looks on. The stories all get out of hand as soon as grandmother is out of view, with characters coming alive and Bunchy no longer in control. Bunchy's absent parents are never mentioned. Perhaps they just couldn't handle our protagonist and abandoned her to her aged relative.



Grandmother is frequently leaving the cottage, letting this underage child with the hyperactive imagination all alone. The girl has no toys, so she has to invent them.

For instance, in "Bunchy and the Scribble Family," her drawings come to life, and she gets swept up in their world. Mr. and Mrs. Scribble invite her to their house, and Bunchy has to run ahead to hurriedly draw their cottage. When they can't get in, she realizes she forgot to draw the doorknob. Their voices sound funny because she carelessly has drawn their mouths crooked.



Each story has a title drawing and an introduction to our format. In "Bunchy and the Pastry Dough," grandmother leaves for the market. She has left a bit of pastry dough for Bunchy to play with. That's it. No Nintendo, no cell, no Facebook; just a cold, stiff wedge of dough left over from pie-making.


Bunchy makes a dough girl, and

"the little pastry-girl pulled her legs from off the table and jumped down with a soft thud on to the kitchen floor!

"... The little pastry-girl began stretching her self as if she were doing exercises, but Bunchy soon saw that she was trying to get her arms and legs more to the same length, for Bunchy had really made them rather odd."

Bunchy realizes the pastry-girl has no eyes, so she places currants for eyes and, with a spoon, makes a line for the mouth.

Bunchy makes a pastry-cat and a pastry-house. And then they go in the pastry-house ... and the inside of the house has a kitchen, rooms, furniture, which surprises our title character since she didn't "make" any of the inside of the house.

They go to the kitchen, where

"the little pastry-girl picked up the pastry-cat and set it on top of the stove. Bunchy was afraid it would be too hot there, but it settled down quite contentedly ...."

And that nice little pastry-cat, who never did anyone, pastry or human, any harm, turns

"a golden brown colour. The next minute the pastry-girl had taken it from the stove, broken it in crisp pieces, and piled them on the plates on the table.

"Then she signed to Bunchy to draw up her chair and eat, and in some surprise Bunchy did so."

OMG!!!!!

But wait, there's more.

"When the meal was finished, the pastry-girl led the way up some funny rubbery soft stairs to the little bedroom above.

"Here was a white pastry-bed, with a thick pastry-coverlet; and the little pastry-girl at once pulled her buttons off (which were the only things she could remove) and got into bed, making room for Bunchy to get in beside her.

"But Bunchy didn't want to get in -- the bed-clothes looked so cold and sticky. Still the little pastry-girl kept beckoning and patting the lump of pastry which served for a pillow."

Call the religious right! Call the CIA (both of 'em: the Central Intelligence Agency and the Culinary Institute of America)! This book is twisted and outta control!


Thanks to Rob McGrath for the news article which reminded me of this little known book on my shelf!

Gahan Wilson Interviewed by Bob Mankoff

"Just the slippers is fine."

Cartoonist Gahan Wilson talks with New Yorker Cartoon Editor Robert Mankoff in this The New Yorker Out Loud Podcast titled "Freak Show." Subjects covered: Wilson's early days, his cartoon sensibility, and Charles Addams.

“[Back in the 1950s my first sale] the first one… the big breakthrough… was Ziff-Davis Publications. And Ziff-Davis printed these wonderful pulp magazines, and they had amazing stories and fantastic stories, which were great thick pulp things, and they had fabulous covers of women with tremendous breasts and things with many, many tentacles reaching for those same breasts.”

Huge ten gallon hat tip to Dirk Deppey at Journalista!

New Yorker cartoon-related: What's So Funny About Being Red?

H/t to Comics Reporter too!!!

First (?!) PLAYBOY Cartoon to be Auctioned

"Jeannie -- what's the past tense of 'virgin'?"

Hugh Hefner, via Heritage Galleries & Auctioneers, will be auctioning a cartoon from PLAYBOY #1. The cartoon, reproduced above, is by Ben Denison. Click to get a huge, giant size.

From the press release:

"It's impossible to overstate the importance of Playboy magazine to the modern cartoon field," says Ed Jaster, Heritage Auctions Vice President, "and Ben Denison's was the very first cartoon commissioned and published by Hefner in the pages of Playboy #1, the December 1953 debut often dubbed the 'Marilyn Monroe issue.' This was the cartoon that set the stage for all that followed, and as such, it holds a hallowed place both in Playboy lore and cartoon history."

Thanks to Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter!

HARVEY by Mary Chase

Thought of the Day.

My favorite quote from HARVEY is at the end of this 47 second clip from the 1950 movie version.

There's a reason why playwright Mary Chase won a Pulitzer!

Cartoonist Sandra Bell-Lundy's Work Schedule Revealed

Professional syndicated cartoonist Sandra Bell-Lundy shares her work schedule habits at her BETWEEN FRIENDS blog.

BETWEEN FRIENDS has been syndicated by King Features since 1994 and is carried in over 130 newspapers.

Advice for building a career as a freelance artist and/or paid cartoonist by Dave Roman

Illustrator Dave Roman (that's him on the left, in his room, on his bed, drawing comics, with the inspirational images of Batman, Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes and a Bloom County Anxiety Closet in the background) offers a mountain of good, solid advice about becoming a person who draws professionally.

There's a lot of good stuff here. I'm still reading it -- and will have to reread it to digest everything. I was nodding my head in agreement a couple of times, particularly the "learn PhotoShop" and "get a business card" tips Dave passed along.

Thanks for spending the time to do this, Dave!

Link via Dirk Deppey's Journalista! via Drawn! via Flight. (Poor flight has no exclamation mark in its moniker.)

UPDATED Mike Lynch Cartoon in November 2007 Harvard Business Review

Above: my cartoon "How the hell am I gong to spin this?" from the November 2007 issue of HBR.

There comes a time when a little cartoon goes forth in the world and gets rejected, rejected, rejected. And every time the above cartoon was rejected, I would pick it up, dust it off and send it back out ... where it would be rejected again.

This was drawn in March 2003. It was mailed out 28 times, to markets in the US and Europe. Rejected 27 times; and then, finally, a sale.

What else was rejected 27 times?



The book THE FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS was rejected 27 times. Harshest rejection: "No one wants to read a book about old men weeping into the telephone." Yikes.



27 rejections for AND TO THINK I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET by Dr. Seuss (according to the National Education Association site).

Not that a gag cartoon has the shelf-life of a book, particularly the above very good books, but you can see what I'm getting at: talent is cheap, notoriety is fleeting, persistence is the only way to succeeding.

From the Nibs newsletter by Kathryn Craft (PDF link here):

10 rejections: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

14 rejections: The Good Earth

15 publishers/30 agents rejected A Time to Kill by John Grisham

18 rejections: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

21 rejections: M*A*S*H

22 rejections: Dubliners

25 rejections: Gone With the Wind

27 rejections: And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street

27 rejections: Steps by Jerzy Kosinski — after it won the National Book Award!
Chuck Ross, convinced that unknown writers had little chance of having their novels accepted, tested his theory by retyping the book and submitting it under a pen name to a total of 14 publishers and 13 literary agents. They all rejected it—including Random House, the original publisher.

40 rejections were received by Mary Higgins Clark before she made her first sale.

121 rejections: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

123 rejections: Chicken Soup for the Soul

350 rejections were received by Louis L’Amour before he made his first sale

600 rejection slips were received by Jack London before his first sale

A big tip o' the hat to Pletch, who let me know that my cartoon was in the magazine weeks ago. Thanks, Pletch!


Above: Dead, dead, dead. Like those red shirt guys in STAR TREK, sometimes good cartooons go out and killed in their mission. What to do? What to do?

UPDATE: Some rejection-oriented links from the Mike Lynch Cartoons blog:

Gag Cartoon Rejection and Persistence

Rejected by THE REJECTION BOOK

Mike Lynch College of Gag Cartoon Knowledge -- Rejection, Rejection, Rejection

Winsor McCay's Influence on Filmmakers

Joshua Glenn, writing for the Sunday Boston Globe, presents a slide show juxtaposing images from the recent Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend book (gorgeously put together by Ulrich Merkl) and images from movies since then, from Bunuel to Disney.

This claim was originally made in the book by Merkl, and Glenn has some striking visuals. The case for Bunuel is strong, and I've heard that Bunuel, as well as Dali, were McCay admirers. But some of these examples are mere coincidence. It's certainly possible that a number of people who were involved in the movies might have had some McCay reprints. The first collection of "Rarebit Fiend" appeared within a year or 2 of the 1905 strip's debut. But, look here, I don't think that you can necessarily draw a straight line from, for instance, Mary Poppins' bottomless handbag to McCay. But it is a fun slideshow.

After watching, talk amongst yourselves.

More from Mr. Glenn here.

Big hat tip to Mark Mayerson's Mayerson on Animation blog!

Science Fiction Links

OLD TIME RADIO SCI FI: Free Science Fiction radio shows/readings on the Web. Well, not that old. They're from the 1970s and 80s.

SCIENCE THAT IS FICTION: Science in TV drug ads so much fiction, says this new "Adwatch" video feature at Consumer Reports.

SCI FI COMICS: The Monster Blog presents unreprinted Jack Kirby classic monster comics. These have great titles like I Accepted the Deadly Challenge of Zarkorr and The Mystery of the Tax Collector From Space!

FANTASY COMICS: Here's Archie's Mad House #22 from 1962, which has the first Sabrina, the Teenage Witch story by George Gladir with art by the one and only Dan Decarlo. Scott Shaw! (whose cartoon style, he confides, was influenced by fellow Mad House contributor Orlando Busino) has tons more about all this at his Oddball Comics site.

FICTION NOT SCIENCE: Blogger John Scalzi visits the Creation Museum.

US ECONOMY SO MUCH SCI FI: so says new book THE SQUANDERING OF AMERICA by Robert Kuttner.

H/ts to Boing Boing and C-SPAN's Washington Journal and Journalista!

Above pulp illustration by Charles Schneeman from the January 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction from Mike Lee's Curious Lee blog.

IT'S BETTER WITH YOUR SHOES OFF by Anne Cleveland Part 2

Continuing a look at the book IT'S BETTER WITH YOUR SHOES OFF by Anne Cleveland. Part one is here. This book shows us what it was like for well-to-do Westerners living in Japan.






Above: one of my favorite gatefold illustrations. The reason I bought the book.



Thanks to all for your kind comments. Glad to scan more ....

ALL IN A LINE Cartoons by Saul Steinberg

Before Sacco and Rall, there was Steinberg, drawing another war from another generation.

Below are some of his sketches from ALL IN A LINE, Copyright 1945 by Saul Steinberg; first Penguin edition 1947, reprinted by arrangement with Duell, Sloane & Pearce, Inc.

The first half of the book are (mostly) wordless cartoons and humorous drawings. The second half appears to be taken, with little or no redrawing, straight from his sketch book.


I love the POV drawing on the right hand side. Who knew you could have an open bottle of ink inside a military cargo plane?




His line work always impressed me as a combination of Sempé and Van Gogh.





Some great drawings to linger over, and I wish there were more books like this today. The 2000 PBS documentary They Drew Fire was about the formal hiring of artists to cover the war, and why it was done. To my knowledge, Mr. Steinberg was not among these fellows, but moreso an ordinary Navy grunt, jotting down his impressions, which makes him just as valuable.



Perhaps best known for his 1976 "View of the World" cover to the New Yorker magazine, Mr. Steinberg was one of those guys whose cartoons were just a beginning of what would be a life of fine art. The Saul Steinberg Foundation link here.

Kevin McVey Receives Tim Rosenthal Award

Cartoonist Kevin McVey, in recognition of his outstanding service to the National Cartoonists Society, was honored with the Tim Rosenthal Award on October 24, 2007. The ceremony took place at the "Monthly Munchers" meeting of the New Jersey National Cartoonists Society Chapter.

The Tim Rosenthal Award* is given to an NCS member who has gone above and beyond, recognizing a spirit of outstanding service and volunteerism at a chapter level. And Kevin has; a former NCS Membership Director, Kevin actually started the NCS NJ chapter in the 1960s. He spearheaded cartoonists' visits to military installations and veterans hospitals. And he worked with the USO on a national level to entertain the troups with cartoons and cartoonists.

This Bronx-born ink slinger is also an NCS Award winner. More photos and information at the NJ NCS site:

"As an over 40-year member of the NCS, Kevin won the 1984 Special Category Reuben Award for Theater Art, beating out such peers as Sam Norkin (NY Daily News) and Al Hirschfeld (NY Times)."

Big hat tip to Tom Stemmle for the heads up.

Congratulations, Kevin!

*The Tim Rosenthal Award is named for the late, great Tim Rosenthal at American Color, who helped pioneer the innovations in newspaper strip coloring; see Wiley Miller's Non Sequitur's Sunday Color Treasury for the full story. Wiley talks about it all in this interview at Comic Book Resources from September 26, 2007.

Harlan Ellison -- Pay the Writer

Ellison is a force to be reckoned with. Sometimes I think he's wrong, sometimes I think he's right. This time, he is spot on. I could not agree more. Although he's talking about writers and Warner Brothers, this is applicable to cartooning.

The video runs about 3 1/2 minutes, and is part of a larger documentary about the man titled Dreams with Sharp Teeth.

December 2007 PLAYBOY Juxtaposition

I read PLAYBOY for the cartoons. That's what I tell people. Well, the cartoons and the ads. At least that what I'm talking about today.

Just got the December issue of PLAYBOY, and boy oh boy -- there's some whacky, wonderful stuff in there. PLAYBOY continues to be a very cartoon friendly mag. Not only is there a never-before-seen Dedini cartoon, but there are a lot more other cartoons by the usual suspects (Gahan Wilson, P.C. Vey, Marty Murphy, Jonik), as well as some by relative newcomers (like Roy Delgado, not a newcomer to cartooning, but a new regular PLAYBOY presence, who had an excellent gag in this ish). Sorry to say that my fave PLAYBOY cartoonist, Don Orehek, was not in this one.

PLAYBOY was, and still is, a premier cartoon market. It took me a long, long time before I got my first sale. Let's look at some of the cartoon-related items in the new PLAYBOY (available for download at its Web site).


Here's an ad that uses a foursome of previously published PLAYBOY cartoons in its copy. Nice to see this, although the ad badly cropped a number of the cartoons. They guillotined good ol' Glenn McCoy's signature right down the middle.


Leroy Neiman gets a page, along with an announcement of a book of his "Femlin" (the girl on those Party Jokes page) drawings titled FEMLIN 50TH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION. Yeah, he's been drawing the girl for 50 years! Why "Femlin?" Because, way back in 1957, when Neiman showed Hefner some of his drawings, his reaction went something like this:

HEF (looking at sketches): A gremlin.

NEIMAN: Strictly feminine.

HEF: Femlin.

A cartoon centerfold of great old Christmas cartoons (Dempsey, Erikson, Buck Brown, Kliban and Dedini). It's great to see these wonderful color bits of cartooning. If you're a fan of great cartoon art, these guys are worth the purchase price.

PLAYBOY has a lot of ads, and I want to talk about a very odd insert that came with my copy. But before that, I want to let you know that I want to avoid the below Blogger warning image:


So, I'm going to be using this image:

Please do not feel infantilized. Thanks.

OK, so I got the below house ad with a nice lady inviting me to visit their Web site:


And so I turned it over and saw the below. This is all one side of the card, with one side telling me to Give the Gift of Literacy ... and then ... get a Free Nude Celebrity Video ... ?!?!?!


So, remember: if you got some bad nudity, give equal space to a good cause!

H/t to my wife who noticed this advertising juxtaposition with a comment, "This would be a good blog entry."