HOW TO BECOME A CARTOONIST - Washington School of Cartooning

HOW TO BECOME A CARTOONIST, a booklet from the Washington School of Cartooning, Washington, DC. Copyright 1923 by same.





































My thanks to John Klossner for this. Thanks, John!

Video: Editorial Cartoonist Jim Morin

The Miami Herald's Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal talks about the paper's editorial cartoonist Jim Morin and the difference between a cartoon and an animation.



Jim Morin's Miami Herald animations are here.

Video: Young and Uninsured: Cartoonist Julia Wertz

Don Flowers: STANDING ON CEREMONY

Successful gag cartoons do their work in seconds. First, the picture: the reader has to know what the situation is and who is talking. Then, the words: a brief glance to a (preferably) small gag line at the bottom and -- (hopefully) SUCCESS! -- the gag cartoon is funny. It worked.

The big names in gag cartooning -- the names people remember -- are the ones who spent time crafting entire worlds. Case in point, Don Flowers. OK, not a household name -- but there has been a recent collection of his work and he was prolific in his day. Just look at the flowing lines and elegant folds in the bride's dress, the well thought out composition of the art.

Comicrazys has lots of Don Flowers today. Go see! And psend more than a few seconds looking at each cartoon! They deserve to be lingered over.

MAD Magazine Parody by NATIONAL LAMPOON

The Easily Mused Blog scans in a 1971 NATIONAL LAMPOON parody of MAD Magazine.


Hat tip to my friend Sean Kelly! Thanks, Sean!

Video: Tom Gammill "Learn to Draw #24" with Special Guest Mell Lazarus (Again)

Mell returns to be tortured by cartoonist everyman Tom Gammill. Chaos and hilarity ensues.



My thanks to Tom for letting me know as soon as these are available.

BBC One DOCTOR WHO Christmas Ident

Hat tip to Bully via Dorian Wright. I agree with Bully that it just "makes me so happy."

Snow Snow Snow

Up to a foot of snow. 26 degrees F with a 16 "real feel" temperature. First big snowstorm of the winter. And this song is in my head.



From WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954)

Happy Birthday, James Thurber

From THE YEARS WITH ROSS by James Thurber (1894-1961):

"It was [E.B.] White who got the mad impetuous idea that my scrawls should be published, and, what is more, paid for with money. I didn't think he could make it. It is true that, a dozen years earlier, I had filled up a lot of space with dogs and an improbable species of human being in the Ohio State Sun-Dial, but I was its editor-in-chief then (one of my predecessors was Gardner Rea, a New Yorker artist since its first issue), and nothing could be done to stop me. Some of the Sun-Dial drawings were about the same as those I had done when I was seven and the ones I did for the New Yorker, but others were elaborate arrangements of solid black and cross-hatching. When White caught me trying the same style again one day, he spoke a sound word of warning that has gained a small deserved fame: 'Don't do that. If you ever got good, you'd be mediocre.'"

Copyright 2001 by Rosemary Thurber.

Allan Holtz Stripper's Guide: "Obscurities of the Day: Comics of DBR Media"

Allan Holtz who runs the Stripper's Guide blog (a heartfelt lovesong in prose to comic strips) reports on DBR Media, announcing that he is going to "knock off a whole syndicate company in one post today!"

"DBR Media was formed in 2000 by a group of folks who had previously been at the helm of the King Features Weekly Service.

"... Weekly syndicates typically offer a complete package of features, and as far as I know DBR supplied not only comics, but all the rest of the typical goodies -- puzzles and columns to suit a wide range of tastes. As best I can tell, when they started their package included a group of five comics. I say as far as I can tell because I did not find a paper that ran the syndicate's offerings until much later. Which is a bit of a story in itself..."

It was run by Diane Eckert, Brad Elson and Richard Wilson -- whose first names formed the company's initials.

DBR continued to do business through March 2008, when it closed up shop, stating there was no money to pay its contributors.

Allan has a description of all of the comics that were offered by DBR, with samples for most. These include:

• George by Mark Szorady
• Stormfield by Wes Alexander
• The Dinosaur Circus by Elena Steier
• Hamster Alley by Polly Keener
• The Leftersons by Collin T. Hayes
• Jet News by Bill Murray
• The Golden Years by Bill Murray
• Night Lights and Pillow Fights / Your Angels Speak by Guy and Brad Gilchrist
• Marvin the Calf by Ralph Hagen

Jason Thibault's Submission Guidelines for Every Comic and Manga Publisher in the Universe

comic-submissions-guidelines
Originally uploaded by OptimumWound.com

Just in case you haven't seen Jason Thibault's much-linked-to Submission Guidelines for Every Comic and Manga Publisher in the Universe, here it is. The guide is designed for cartoonists who want to break into comic books, graphic novels and manga.

Happy Birthday, Elzie Segar!

Happy Birthday, Elzie Crisler Segar! Born in Chester, Illinois on this day in 1894. Which is why, when you use Google today, you'll see the above image of his creation, POPEYE.

Segar took the W.L. Evans correspondence course in cartooning. Spent $100 for it! Mark Anderson has some links to the Evans course, as well as this promo letter:

"A cartoonist is a power. His audience is the boundless public. He is talked about. His work is admired in society. He meets the most prominent people, and becomes personally acquainted with them."

I was in back in Brooklyn a while back, at the home of a cartoonist friend, and we were talking about POPEYE and Segar. We love those new Fantagraphics POPEYE oversized reprint books, full of the crazy story telling, the mad sequential art adventures of the Sunday strips, etc. Yeah, here it is in the 21st century, and POPEYE is still being talked about by a boundless 21st century public!

Go and browse Bruce C Schults' THIMBLE THEATRE pages for much POPEYE goodness.

STRANGE ADVENTURES No. 237 "The Skyscraper That Came to Life!"

Above: obviously, a mint collector's edition, huh? This well loved comic with an anthropomorphic Empire State Building was one of the first comics I bought. I got rid of it in 1986 when I sold a lot of my comics and, seeing it for sale years later, bought it back again for 2 1/2 times its 20 cents cover price at a NYC comic book store.


This is STRANGE ADVENTURES No. 237, July-August, 1972. It's copyright 1972 by National Periodical Publications. Now, this story, "The Skyscraper That Came to Life!" by John Broome, is by no means a classic in literature, but it had a unique take on alien invasion.

The 7 page story is actually a rerun, having been originally published in STRANGE ADVENTURES #72 in September 1956.


You can see the serious spine roll in this read and re-read comic book.



So, here's the "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" moment: the invading aliens have CGI (or, at best, really, really good PowerPoint animations). 1950s Earth does not!


After seeing that uninvited couple crash the White House event last week, the idea that any slob (human or alien) can walk into a movie producer's office and get a Hollywood deal is more believable.


All of the aliens look like they work at Sterling Cooper.


"The invasion of Earth is cancelled!" Well, there you have it. 7 pages of fun and, for me, happy memories.

And, of course, what's a comic without the ads!



I wonder if this "Cartoon for Money" correspondence school ever had any famous grads?


Oh, and it looks like there's this little convention in San Diego. Might be worth going to. Hmm.

Postscript: Reading this comic in Lawrence, Kansas, I never thought that one day I would actually know one of the guys who drew it. I'm glad to say that I've known Joe Giella, who now draws MARY WORTH, for years now -- having first met him at a Long Island Chapter National Cartoonists Society lunch -- and many lunches and get togethers since!

Small cartoony world! I think I'm growing to love and admire this planet!

Power Records: STAR TREK

Above: a Neal Adams cover adorning one of the Power Records' LPs.

In the 1970s, if you were a TREK fan, there was nothing beyond the original 79 episodes. No TNG, no DS9, etc. So, if you wanted to quench your thirst for new adventures with the crew of the original Enterprise, you had to either go and read a book (like James Blish's 1970 Bantam paperback SPOCK MUST DIE!) or go to the toy section of the Sears store (the 1970s are pre-Toys 'R' Us) and find one of the Power Records original STAR TREK stories.

Power Records had a series of comic books with 45RPM records inserted in the back sleeve. The stories were all new, and the art, drawn by the Marvel stable (Buscema, Kane and other heavy hitters) was good. If you were a kid of a certain age, then you may remember these record/comic book combos. Power Records also had license to do these same comic book/audio adventures for all of the Marvel and DC characters. SPACE:1999 too. Later on, Power put a couple of the TREK 45rpm adventures onto a larger 331/3RPM LP, but the versions I saw had done without the accompanying comic book.


Above: a page sample from the Power Records blog.

I remember buying a couple of these and the stories were so-so, and there were off-model mistakes (Uhura was white in one of the stories, Sulu was black, for instance). The unnamed actors did a decent job, and the whole thing was done in radio drama-style, with music and sound effects. But, here too, it wasn't the music from the show or the specific sound effects. These things bothered nerdy little me. What was the point of doing TREK if you didn't care to get every little nitpicky thing right?!

So, here is the closest thing to YouTube that we had in the 1970s: a Power Records STAR TREK comic book/audio adventure story titled "A Mirror for Futility:"



Check out YouTube and that Power Records blog if you need to gorge on more of this.

Video: DOCTOR WHO "End of Time" Promo

Here's a new promo from BBC One today, promoting an animated program called "Gruffalo" (which looks to be a very short special) and the final DOCTOR WHO episodes, "The End of Time." The WHO segment contains several new clips and, yes, a mild spoiler about who the villain will be -- but I think everyone knows who that is by now. This runs over a minute.



Hat tip to the Doctor Who news Page!

Jim Salicrup Interview

Jim Salicrup and Mike Lynch from a 2007 comics event at Rocketship in Brooklyn

Jim Salicrup's life and career is the focus of an encompassing interview by Kyle Willis for Imaginedaily.com.

"When I was an 11 year-old kid growing up in the then-very hostile environs of The Bronx, my two dreams were to work for Marvel Comics and to live in Manhattan. By the time I was 15 years old, I was working for Marvel Comics, and not that many years later, I was living in Manhattan. It’s as if I had decided I wanted to join the Beatles, and woke up one day alongside John, Paul, George and Ringo! For me, to be a part of the legendary Marvel Comics Bullpen for 20 years was beyond incredible. Too many highlights to mention, but winding up in the Guinness Book of World Records for editing the best-selling SPIDER-MAN comic book ever was a thrill!"

Jim is one of the nicest fellows you'd ever want to meet. He's not only a big time editor and publisher, but he's a fan as well. Take a look at some of the best selling Papercutz books.

Never Underestimate the Power of a Cat on the Internet

This is the number one video this past week, the "surprised kitty" video. I had actually heard about it, but not watched the thing until it was showcased in today's Guardian. This is a really tiny kitten, reacting in a unique way to his/her owner. It runs 17 seconds. And, yes, it's really cute and I (obviously) now want to share the thing with many people.

Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival

Charles Burns great poster for the event.

This Saturday, December 5, 2009 is the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

The site has a list of exhibitors and speakers. An amazing group! There will be music at night. And there's good places to eat all over the place in Williamsburg.

The nice thing will be, if you are do inclined, to actually go up to some of these cartoonists whose work you enjoyed and tell them so. Some of them will have original art to buy. Please consider spending some money, if you are able, to help support the creators you like.

To borrow Tom Spurgeon's phrase, If I was in Brooklyn, I would be there.

Henry Syverson Cartoons

I missed this: There are a handful of the many, many Saturday Evening Post cartoons and spot ilustrations that Henry Syverson drew over at the SMALL ROOM blog. And it reminded me of the fine detective work involving the cartoonist behind a seminal office poster.

Henry Syverson was (experts agree) the guy who drew that ubiquitous "You Want It When?" cartoon poster. You know the one:

Like I wrote on the old April 14, 2006 edition of the Mike Lynch Cartoons blog:

The other day, Mark Evanier posted [the above] iconic image on his blog.

Anyone who's done any office work in North America in the past couple of decades has seen this widely reproduced little poster of the laughing "You Want It When?" guys.

Mark asks: Who drew it and what is its origin?

I'm a magazine cartoonist. I've always been interested in cartoon history. And I've always wondered who drew it. It sure looks like a 1950s style. Most of my colleagues don't know where it came from. But a lot of cartoonists agree that it's Henry Syverson.

And Mark Evanier provides the post mortem proof here.

The Best Comic Strip: Brooke McEldowney’s 9 Chickweed Lane

I may have gotten as giddy as Bob Harvey. And then I got ashamed.

It was really fun to read his glowing review of Brooke McEldowney's 9 CHICKWEED LANE newspaper comic strip. The opening paragraph:

"I should be prudent and say that Brooke McEldowney’s 9 Chickweed Lane is one of the best comic strips now appearing in the nation’s newspaper funnies. But I have ever been foolhardy in such matters rather than prudent, so I say: 9 Chickweed Lane is THE best comic strip now appearing in the nation’s newspapers."

And it reminded me that, shamefully, I'm not up on my comic strips. There is no excuse, since I can go back as far as the November 6, 2000 strip and read every single succeeding 9 CHICKWEED LANE installment (daily and Sunday) until I'm up to date. No wonder the Comics.com site is called the "free online comic strip library." I better make the time to get caught up. After all, he's a neighbor and all -- lives just over the border in Maine. And, R.C. Harvey is right: the "storytelling daring of cartoonist McEldowney" is right there. Just go look.

Related: In addition to the excellent 9 CHICKWEED LANE, Brooke creates an ongoing Web comic "Pibgorn."

Hat tip to Journalista!

Dexter the Stray Cat -- NO MORE! Updated

From last month: Dexter yawns as we bring him food in his hay house, which is outside in the front yard:


S l o w l y coming out for kibbles:


A rousing shake of the head to begin the day:


As you may know, we have been trying to get this friendly but elusive cat into the house for months. We named him Dexter and he knows his name. He always came by for food and would play and "talk" to us. He would follow me around the garden. But he was ever so cautious and wary. He did not want to be touched. Five months and no pats. Frustrating!

A live animal trap did not work. He was not fooled. However, a different stray cat was caught.

Well, anyway, good things happen to those who wait ....

Good news: Dexter, this shy, stray cat, was, finally, thanks to my wife singing Cole Porter tunes to him (Dexter loves Cole Porter tunes -- and treats), lured into the house and down the stairs to the basement. He is safe and sound, and out of the cold weather and away from wolves, fisher cats and hunters.

He now has his own space inside. He purrs and LOVES to receive pats on his large orange head. Yes, even though he was SO afraid of getting pats when he was outside, he is now an official pat-hog. Our guess: he WAS someone else's kitty and now that he's inside, he's decided getting pats is just fine, thank you very much. He even leans into pats.

Although it's early days yet (it's only been 18 hours since his arrival), I am hoping he'll make a wonderful addition -- as soon as I can lure him into the cat carrier and to the vet's for the full check-up.

And I can clear away the cat hay house before neighborhood property values drop ....

My thanks to everyone I asked for advice about trying to catch him. Many treats and Cole Porter tunes to all of you!

Update: the tunes are not by Cole Porter. My mistake. The songs were written by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Comden & Greene. The most sung tune is "A Little Bit in Love" from the Broadway show Wonderful Town. Mea culpa.

Max by Chuck Jones

Original model drawing of Max by Chuck Jones, mixed media on 12 field (12.5" x 10.5") animation paper. TM & copyright Ted Geisel and Turner Entertainment Co.

The Chuck Redux blog shares the above drawing and a video from the DR. SEUSS" HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS for its Image of the Day. If there was ever a cheery drawing that reminded me of the holiday season, it would be the drawing of Max the dog!

Also posted today and related: my inky pal Mark Anderson asks, What if the Grinch and Scrooge were hanging out in a bar -- in one of his latest gag cartoons.

© Chuck Jones Enterprises, and Chuck Redux, 2008-2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts, photographs and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Chuck Jones, Chuck Redux and all film studios with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

SPACE: 1970 Blog by Christopher Mills

The STAR TREK communicator from a 1974 Penney's catalog.

Christopher Mills, at his SPACE: 1970 Blog, remembers being a kid in the 1970s and consuming science fiction TV shows and movies like SPACE:1999, UFO , GALACTICA, QUARK, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, and others. OK, some were good, but some were pretty bad. Regardless, all are now part of the memories of being a kid. And if you're a little older or a little younger, then Chris's essay on, for instance, ARK II or JASON OF STAR COMMAND won't be of any nostalgic wallowing kinda interest. If it is, then welcome to the club.

These times are gone, along with those Penney's and Sears' big Christmas catalogs. But it sure is fun to see some of these items and recall wanting all that stuff!

"I can't even begin to tell you how many hours I spent pouring over those pages, dreaming of getting every single Mego Star Trek and Planet of the Apes action figure under the Christmas tree... not to mention the Enterprise bridge playset! (Never got that, sadly.)"

Another reason to like Christopher Mills' blog: Spacebabes!



The painted cover to the first issue of the SPACE: 1999 comic book by Joe Staton. Yeah, I bought this when it came out!

Video: SNAKE 'N' BACON by Michael Kupperman

Did you know that indy cartoonist Michael Kupperman's Snake 'n' Bacon comic book characters had an Adult Swim pilot? The animated and live action show aired on May 10, 2009. The series was not picked up.

In Search of ... Al Kaufman

Michael Maslin, at his Ink Spill blog, asks for help in getting biographical information about prolific gag cartoonist Al Kaufman.

"Al Kaufman, who published in The New Yorker from December 13, 1947 through July 10, 1978 is the first name I'll offer up to Ink Spillers. If you have any information regarding Mr. Kaufman please write to me through this site by going to the Contact button on the right side of this page. Many thanks."

Al was a popular, post-war gag cartoonist, who signed his full name nice and clear at the bottom of all of his cartoons. I know his work through those Lawrence Lariar BEST CARTOONS books.

Harry Green has blogged about Mr. Kaufman, showcasing a large selections of gag cartoons (including the one above) from YOU'VE GOT ME IN THE SUBURBS Copyright © 1957 Lawrence Lariar.

And I have shown some of his cartoons before, like the one above from BEST CARTOONS OF THE YEAR 1964 © 1963 Lawrence Lariar.

But we do not know that much about Al Kaufman. Harry has asked, and gotten a couple of replies in the above link to his blog. But Mr. Kaufman remains an elusive fellow.

New Book: "It's All About You" by Tony Murphy

My friend and fellow cartoonist Tony Murphy has collected his newspaper strip "It's All About You" into its first paperback book collection, on sale now at Lulu.


I asked Tony if he would mind telling us more about himself, how he got his strip syndicated, his cartooning routine and where he sees newspaper comic strips 5 to ten years from now.

He didn't mind -- and here are his candid answers to my questions:


Did you always draw?

Pretty much. By second grade I thought of myself as drawing cartoons and not just drawing. My father drew cartoons sometimes to entertain my sisters and me and I was trying to emulate, then surpass him.

Is "It's All About You" based on your life?

Nah, Michael is nothing like me. WHERE’S MY COFFEE?

What is your creative work week like? Do you have set times when you draw, when you write?

Ah, “set times.” What a lovely concept. Since having a syndicated strip requires having a day job, there’s not much room left over and I’m not disciplined about it. But I gotta get those strips in every week. I do have a little book in my back pocket where I write down things I think are funny. (Like, I just wrote down “set times”). So at some point each week I sit down and go through the scribbles and figure out how many I can turn into strips. If I start doing that earlier in the week, I’m less of a wreck on Friday. Frequently, though, this isn’t done until Thursday night. So I guess the answer is that I’m more deadline-driven than adhering to set times.

How long did it take to get "It's All About You" syndicated? Did the strip evolve from conception to print?

In the nineties I was drawing a six-panel strip that I felt would be good in alternative newsweeklies. Mostly it only got published in “The Funny Times” because I was too lazy to send anything out unless I knew it was going to get published. This is a terrible marketing strategy. But, I did enjoy seeing it in “The Funny Times.” It went through a variety of titles, from “Murphy Slaw” to “Love Litters” to “Ouch.” There were no regular characters, just people talking about their lives. I stuffed a bunch of strips in an envelope one day and sent them to syndicates. Jay Kennedy, then the guru at King Features, called me three days later. With such a short response time, I figured I was in. That was in 1999. His call prompted me to create a daily, three- and four-panel strip that I called “Love Junk.” It had the same basic characters, minus a few, that are now in “It’s All About You.” Jay promptly lost interest, but I was hooked on the idea that I could get syndicated, and kept trying over and over again with all the syndicates. In 2001, Creators Syndicate offered me a contract for “Love Junk,” then changed their mind at the last minute. I was left at the syndication altar.

So it took from 1999 to 2008 to get syndicated. But in the meantime, in 2004 “It’s All About You” started running in the New York and Boston editions of Metro, the free commuter paper. So I had a daily, widely seen strip in two major cities before it got syndicated. The weird thing is, it got dropped from Metro in June 2006 but about 2 months later I started my development deal with Washington Post Writers Group.

What are your drawing tools?

I use a variety of tools to produce my strip. Some are more important than others. I’ll start with the most important: I use Chemex bonded, unbleached square filters to make my coffee. For a creamer I use organic half-and-half, and I sweeten it with agave nectar, though sometimes I throw in a dash of regular sugar.

And, you know – paper and pens and stuff.

How long does it take to draw a strip?

It can take forever if I feel I’m not drawing well or not getting the effect I want, but a good average is about an hour per daily strip – that doesn’t count scanning, lettering in Photoshop and fixing up in Photoshop. Sunday strips take longer.

What strips are in the new book? Why did you choose those particular cartoon strips?

The strips in the new and first collection are simply the first strips that I drew once “It’s All About You” started national syndication, so they go from January 2008 to October 2008. The book therefore features a unique historical snapshot -- right before the economic meltdown and bank bailouts, and before the layoffs and foreclosures really took off. While “It’s All About You” is not a political strip, in the book’s introduction I make a connection between these events and the chronic anxiety that many of the strip’s characters feel.

How do you predict most people will read "It's All About You" 5-10 years from now?

Good question, since it’s so much harder to get carried in newspapers these days. I don’t really know, but newspapers won’t die out completely. The corporations that run this country will still need some way to lie to us. FOX can’t do ALL the work.

"It's All About You" © 2009 by Tony Murphy