The Daily Cartoonist

This is a well-deserved “promotion” for Argyle Sweater and a very smart move on behalf of UPS. Congrats Scott. I’m rooting for you.

Finally! I hope it does extremely well.

It’s great that Sherpa is acting as a launchpad for new talent. Every industry needs a training ground like that where beginning talent can hone their craft.

Congrats Scott!

Well deserved and VERY funny stuff. Congratulations Scott.

Well-deserved indeed. Good luck Scott!

Wow, a good comic that came from Comics Sherpa!!!

Good for him! It’s also great to see an example of Comics Sherpa paying off for someone.

I found the samples really funny. Best of luck, Scott.

Argyle was the first of a great batch of Sherpa strips to be “graduated” from Sherpa to GoComics. Here’s hoping that some of the other strips that followed behind it (like “Bleeker” and “Pinkerton”) soon follow suit!

Congratulations, Scott! Nice to see a fellow Sherpan make it to the big league.

Been reading “Sweater” since it joined GoComics. Great cartoon that is always funny.

Glad to see it expand.

Wow…looks like a more modern Far Side….looks awesome!

Congrats, Scott! I’ve enjoyed your toon ever since I included your comic about the single hump camel couple on the beach, and the husband says to the wife as a double humped camel babe walks by, “Don’t be silly sweetheart…of course I don’t want you to look like that. Those are way too big.”

That was the first of several of your toons to appear in my Sunday Funnies Review®. That comic still hangs above my drawing table…

I get Washington Post at my University’s library, so I should be able to see the first strip in print.

Let me join the chorus of “Congrats” to Scott.

“Wow, a good comic that came from Comics Sherpa!!!”

Heyyy, I’m on Comics Sherpa :(

PS: Congrats, Scott!

Nice!!!!! Another fellow Sherpa-ite gets promoted.

Sherpa has a lot of talent. Great place to browse for new comics to read.

Strange name, nice cartoon. Very Far Side like. Congrats.

Sherpa does have a lot of talent, and while some of it has “graduated” (Bleeker, 44UA, Mythtickle, Bird Brains) there is still a lot there that deserves to move up. One of the strips I would include in that territory is “Green Planet” by Ryan Pagelow. It is well-drawn and hilarious; also, the frequency is already 6x a week so it is pretty close to being ready for syndication. And even though story strips aren’t very popular these days, there is a weekly strip on Sherpa called “The Cardinal” (by K.J. Kolka) which is beautifully drawn. Both deserve to move up; there are others too, I’m sure.

Anyway, congratulations to Scott Hillburn for his achievement. “The Argyle Sweater” has been on the radar for a long time and has proven itself to be very funny almost every day. Just this week, there were about three panels which could be grouped among the best you’ve done. But then again, that group is getting so large that maybe it’s time to stop keeping count. Still, the one with the goose playing duck-duck goose comes to mind as particularly brilliant. Good luck in newspapers.

I wonder if Scott actually wears an argyle sweater while drawing Argyle Sweater. Congrats!

Wow – thanks everyone. Wish me luck. I’ll need it.
Thanks to all the Sherpa gang and everyone else that e-mailed from the beginning to offer advice and support. There really are a lot of talented people that have at one time or another used or still use that site.

Also, I’d like to give props to my editor(s) John, Clint and Lucas – all great guys. They will, hopefully, keep me out of trouble and in the papers. In fact, everyone I’ve met at AMU has been incredibly friendly, helpful and has made me feel like part of the family.

And let me just say that the sales guys at Universal are f’n incredible. They deserve a TON of credit.

Scott: don’t give them all the credit. Your stuff practically sells itself!

But WOW, they did a great job lining up launch papers for you. Launching a new strip in the L.A. Times? That doesn’t happen every day!

Scott, Are you doing Argyle Sweater exclusively as a panel or will there be a strip shaped version too?

Thanks so much Pab.

And Larry, we’re offering it in both strip and panel formats. However, as I understand it, the panel version has primarily been the preferred format with most papers so far.

Best of luck, Scott–and if gocomics is looking for someone to fill your vacating slot, tell ‘em to give me a shout, Sherpa is no fun since all you & Pat left!

Congratulations Scott, from another sherpa poster. The Argyle Sweater is a great strip and I’m looking forward to your first compilation book. Larry,

Larry: as for Sherpa being fun again, I might have a new feature going to Sherpa this summer, so I’ll see what I can do about making it fun.

Pab, As Queen Victoria would say, “We are pleased with this news”.

Pab,
This new feature of yours is “Omar, the Unborn Confederate Muslim,” I hope.

LOL! I had forgotten about that!

Ugh… I guess I’m the only one here, or at least commenting, about their displeasure. There are so many more comics out there more deserving. Argyle Sweater is, 9 times out of 10, a total ripoff of Far Side (ex - today’s comic about tinkerbell killed by a bug zapper was already done by Larson. The art is very similar too.
Then again, I guess its like movie remakes - give the audience what they already have.

“No one needs a weak Far Side.” — Lee Salem (from an interview in Hogan’s Alley).

I don’t see it as a “weak Far Side” (the artwork is better) or that Scott is intentionally ripping off Larson. All new panel cartoons are going to be compared to Far Side to some degree. Some of Arlgle may unintetionally have a similar or even same gag. But If you look at most strips out there you’d see over time gags resurface. In the past few years I’ve seen Non Sequiture, Brevity and another strip use the same gag (a Great wall of China gag).
Every cartoonist strives for originality but sometimes your original idea ends up already done by someone else.

Comparisons to The Far Side are understandable, but I’ve read The Argyle Sweater almost from when it first started and it’s always been funny and original. The comic has its own voice and if you follow it for a while you will realize that. Or you just won’t dig it. Not everyone has to.

I have to say, the number of positive remarks here is indicative of how good this panel is. And as a few people have already pointed out, Scott deserves this move into print.

Far Side comparisons come from surface scans of Argyle. Argyle Sweater is definitely influenced by Far Side…no doubt about that. But there are other flavors floating around the strip. All it takes is one or two reads to realize Scott isn’t ripping anyone off.

According to Art Spiegelman, Kliban invented the form of cartoon, popularized by Gary Larson and others, of a single panel with a third-person caption describing the action.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._Kliban

Everyone is ripping off Kliban. Everything since is a “weak Kliban”.

>>>I have to say, the number of positive remarks here is indicative of how good this panel is.

Um …34 comments validates a strip? You’re not serious…

I’ve never heard anyone refer to “The Far Side” as a Kliban ripoff.
Kliban may have introduced the form, but Larson made it his own.

“The Argyle Sweater” is a fairly okay cartoon, but it’s still a weak Far Side.

Gotta love those Kliban cats! I never saw a Kliban cat in a Far Side cartoon, and I’ve never seen a Far Side cow in an Argyle Sweater cartoon. Argyle is it’s own entity. If we were going to point fingers at cartoonists for building upon the style or format of another cartoon, then everyone here would be guilty.

I was poking fun at the silly “weak Far Side” comment/quote.

The Far Side certainly wasn’t ripping off Kliban anymore than Argyle is ripping off The Far Side. Inspired by? Sure. But ripping off?

Maybe Gary Larson could hold a press conference and announce that it’s ok if cartoonists inspired by The Far Side, Close To Home or the under appreciated Bizarro try and create their own wacky, zany, single panel feature without fear of being labeled a Farside-clone?

Maybe then peeps will cut some slack to single panel cartoonists?

“Um …34 comments validates a strip? You’re not serious…”

Actually, Rick, 17 positive comments on a public message board validates a strip. That’s the magic number to beat. Scott got twice that, so his comic is really good.

I don’t know Scott…using your logic, one could go to a number of neocon websites and get the impression that George Bush is a really good president. Doesn’t make it true.

Apples and oranges. Overall, people here are much smarter and have better taste. Can we stop now? I am buying you a beer.

Glad to see I’m not a lone voice on this.
For the record, I’ve been following Argyle Sweater since it was on Comics Sherpa, so I have as much experience in reading it as everyone else. Its not god awful, its just un0original (for god-awful, see Strange Brew).
That said, the single panel Sherpa alum I’d like to see get published off-line is Half Baked, as created by Rick Ellis (see his comments above).
Half Baked is almost completely consistantly amusing, the art is simple, yet better, and the jokes are pretty original (tho I agree when you said, Rick, that same jokes happen all the time… its happened to me I don’t know how many times).

While everyone is headed to Comics Sherpa, I hope you don’t overlook my cartoon strip. It’s called “A Golden Girl.” It’s about a celebrity gold digger and her Jamaican assistant who begin a new career reporting for an Internet website funded by a twenty something dot com billionaire.

Here’s the link to the strip which debuted January 1, 2008:

http://www.comicssherpa.com/site/feature?uc_comic=csipf&uc_full_date=20080101

Who need more proof than this…
Rip-off! Rip-off! Far Side Rip-off!

http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/?p=288

Some of the jokes are very funny, such a shame that the artist couldnt find his own way of expression. The comic seems just like a slight variation of Larson’s comic, like he didnt even try to cover the rip off. The style of the humor and minimalistic expression in the drawings is undeniably similar. (it might be an matter of opinion, but I find that the panels where he drift’s the furthest away from the larson style are also the least funny..)

I’m the first to say that there are only so many ideas, and that a number of cartoonists will think of a similar gag, but I’m afraid there is no excuse for the example linked by Lyle above, it’s a definite steal.

The Argyle Sweater artist doesn’t even “get” the gag he is portraying!! Larson had an orchestral conductor being shown into a room full of inbred banjo players, a very funny and original idea.

The Argyle Sweater version simply shows a conductor being ushered (in exactly the same manner as Larson’s) into a room of musicians.
I guess the phrase “warming up for you” is the gag?

Very VERY disappointing.

Oh, I do believe in the Tinkerbell cartoon alluded to previously, Larson did have her caught up in fly paper - not far enough removed from a bug zapper for Argyle Sweater to be original, I’m afraid.

Warmed-up Larson leftovers don’t taste the same.

I miss Gary’s work and humour since he hung it up and am glad someone is carrying on the tradition. Larson, Kilban, Gahan Wilson and so forth. They can all be proud of what they did and of Scott’s turn at the bugs and animals odd look at our world. Kudos! And let me know when the books start coming out! tommybiker@yahoo.com