Michael Maslin, Sandra Boynton, Dishonest John, and others.
Michael Maslin has a fun, short essay about Fridays for New Yorker cartoonists and those same Fridays when The New Yorker hits a two week double holiday issue (Christmas/New Year’s in this case) and the routine is disrupted.
Fridays for New Yorker cartoonists is usually the day we hear that we sold a cartoon or didn’t (out of a batch submitted the previous Tuesday). If you’ve submitted a batch, chances are you’ve spent some time on Fridays glancing at your inbox, hoping for an email from the magazine’s cartoon editor, Emma Allen. By day’s end, no news is bad news. No news means you did not sell (The New Yorker doesn’t email you when you did not sell. Silence is the notification).
The extra time I have today (due to not glancing at my inbox more than usual) has left me sentimental about the whole Friday experience…
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The Saturday Evening Post online features a weekly classic cartoon page grouped by topics.
A week ago they presented our “favorite cartoon sets of 2023” that includes magazine cartoons by Joseph Farris, Chon Day, Rowland B. Wilson, Ed Fisher, Martha Blanchard, Al Johns, John Gallagher, Don Tobin, Paul Perter Porges, Henry Boltinoff, George Gately, Stan Hunt, Salo Roth, and many more.
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Wisconsin Cartoonists
Museum of Wisconsin Art is proud to issue a call to Wisconsin visual artists to submit comics about today’s political climate for an exhibition at its Milwaukee location in Saint Kate—The Arts Hotel in downtown Milwaukee.
Scheduled to coincide with the Republican National Convention, July 15–18, 2024, the exhibition, which runs from April 12 to July 24, 2024, will attract considerable national attention thanks to hundreds of political reporters descending on the city and its prime location in one of Milwaukee’s finest hotels.
The Museum of Wisconsin Art wants your original political cartoons. Details here.
Participating artists are encouraged to offer their work for sale with proceeds to the artist, and a ten percent donation to the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin.
Interested parties may submit up to five works including a brief artist statement by February 23, 2024.
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Illustrator Sandra Boynton: The Queen of Cards
She may be the mother of all greeting card designers: Illustrator Sandra Boynton, whose delightful animal characters have helped her build a publishing empire of cards, children’s books and, coming soon, an album of Christmas music featuring an all-star lineup of singers, including Lyle Lovett and Patti LuPone. Correspondent Tracy Smith reports.
A six minute segment from CBS with the wonderful Sandra Boynton.
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While we’re talking music…
The 1960s Cartoon That Inspired the AC/DC Classic “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”
In 1949, Looney Tunes animator and puppeteer Bob Clampett created the puppet show Time for Beany, which ran on television through 1955. Clampett later revived the characters as an animated cartoon, Beany and Cecil, which was broadcast on ABC in 1962. The cartoon featured the characters of Beany Boy, Cecil, Crowy, and Captain Horatio Huffenpuff, along with their nemesis Dishonest John.
The villain was always up to no good and carried around business cards that read “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. Holidays, Sundays, and Special Rates.” The first portion of his adage stuck with AC/DC guitarist Angus Young and the words resurfaced when the band began working on their third album.
Tina Benitez-Eves for American Songwriter notes the origin of a famous song.
Speaking of AC/DC, if you remember their 1976 song “T.N.T.” they borrow a line from the famous Australian Mortien bug spray TV commercial jingle sang by Louie the Fly: “I’m bad, I’m mean, I’m might unclean!” – in one part of the song lyrics.