A great little article — with lots of cartoons — from James Sturm.
(Here, buy some of his books
.)
August 24, 2011
"If making graphic novels felt like a staid long-term relationship, then doing gag comics is like playing the field."
"One day I could draw a fortuneteller; the next, an astronaut. I went from sultans to superheroes, robots to rabbits. I felt liberated. I refused to get bogged down or fuss over the drawings. I spent no more than an hour with any one cartoon, and many took far less time than that. For the first two weeks I was feeling my oats. I already had a half-dozen keepers and was confident there were plenty more winners on the way. It was at this point that I started dreaming of actually selling a cartoon to The New Yorker..."
A great little article — with lots of cartoons — from James Sturm.
(Here, buy some of his books.)
A great little article — with lots of cartoons — from James Sturm.
(Here, buy some of his books
.)
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8 comments:
He ought to channel Charles Addams a little less.
But his point is well-taken. You have to be able to withstand a lot of rejection.
PS Is that why you went from art to law, Madame?
Or just you needed the money?
It's even easier to sell comics when they don't have to be funny.
"PS Is that why you went from art to law, Madame? Or just you needed the money?"
I went to law school for 2 reasons:
1. I wanted to have children.
2. I was starved for verbal stimulation.
(No one else in the history of the world ever went to law school for those 2 reasons.)
And by "no one else"... I mean no other woman.
I read somewhere that Peter DeVries used to write the captions of many of the cartoons. Verbal and visual humor are not homogeneous gifts.
It's even easier to sell comics when they don't have to be funny.
Bingo.
The New Yorker is now a hip magazine. Do hip people ever laugh out loud? And let down their guard? The guard of being superior and in the know? Of course not. But a knowing chuckle is allowed, ergo the cerebral mildly amusing cartoons that fill the rag.
It's exceptionally hard to sell cartoons to the New Yorker. I tried several times in the 80's without success. And mine weren't the least bit funny.
Unfunny cartoons.
He should try the WSJ's Pepper and Salt, which runs those exclusively.
Bizarro has an occasional good one.
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