Category Archives: Cartooning

A Cartoonist’s Experience With the Police in a Muslim Country

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In 2007, not too long after the Danish cartoonist who drew Muhammad was threatened, I lost my passport while in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

I made this unfortunate discovery as I was about to go through security at the airport. I called the hotel I’d stayed at, the last restaurant I’d eaten at, and the bus service that drove me to the airport, and nobody had reported finding a passport. Big surprise. A U.S. passport is worth more than its weight in gold.

It was a weekend evening and the U.S. embassy had no one on duty that could help until morning. In the meantime, the person who answered the phone said I needed to report the loss to the local police. Continue reading →

What Political Cartoons & Photography Cartoons Have In Common

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I don’t draw political cartoons for various reasons.

The main one is that they don’t make much sense a few years, if not a few days, later. Half of my current income comes from commissions. The other half comes from reselling old cartoons.

Would you buy a cartoon about Edwin Meese? “Who?” I assume most of you are asking. He was Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General. I hope most of you at least have a vague notion of who Ronald Reagan was. Anyway, even though I’m the one who drew these two cartoons about Meese in the 1980s, I can’t tell you what incident they’re about. I’m assuming they were once funny. I was paid for them. Continue reading →

The Komic: Where Does the Cartoon Go From Here?

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My blog posts over the last five days have been a rough outline of The Komic’s origin story. The Komic is a graphic novel about a super hero comedian I hope to someday to draw and write.

Where does the story go from here? I have oodles of ideas.

One story line involves a spate of people dying from heart attacks in Odd Port. Or are they heart attacks? No one can prove The Komic is killing people, but many believe she is. Whenever there is a suspicious death someone asks, “Was it natural or was he a victim of The Komic?”

Continue reading →

One Hour of Cartooning Down, 9,999 To Go

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How to Become a Slightly Warped Cartoonist: Part 11

If you’ve tried all the techniques I’ve mentioned, and still can’t come up with funny ideas, don’t give up immediately. Like other muscles, the humor muscle takes time and practice to build. I had a five-year-plan when I quit my secure well-paying government job and started cartooning full-time in 1981. Continue reading →

Trade Journal Cartoons

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How to Become a Slightly Warped Cartoonist: Part 10

Gag-cartoonists call the big magazines most have heard of The Majors. That’s where everyone wants to be published. I don’t know how many Majors there are now. Maybe fifty.

The odds that someone starting out will have a cartoon selected from the first batch of cartoons she’s drawn is – well, I don’t know what the odds are, but I believe the odds of winning the lottery are better.

There are hundreds of other magazines and trade journals to submit to, though.

Continue reading →

Gag Writing While Doing the Mundane

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How to Become a Slightly Warped Cartoonist: Part 9

In an earlier post I said that I draw very few cartoons about things that happen to me. That isn’t to say I don’t get ideas while going about my daily life. Here are some ideas I generated on a shopping trip, along with my thought process and what was happening when I came up with them.

Motor homes going 40 MPH are the bane of coastal Oregonians’ existence. I’m stuck behind one of the most enormous ones I ever seen. It’s so enormous, I’m amazed it doesn’t have a “Wide Load” sign on it. What’s the opposite of a wide load? Continue reading →