Freelance-Star editorial cartoonst Clay Jones interviewed fellow cartoonists Scott Stantis, Joel Pett and Matt Davies to talk shop about various aspects of cartooning. Topics covered include: state of today’s cartoons, disagreeing with the paper’s positions, how does winning the Pulitzer affect your work, impact of blogs, and receiving hate mail.
On that last topic, here is an excerpt:
JONES: People always ask about hate mail or incidents from a cartoon. Can you describe an example that sticks in your mind?
STANTIS: When you started in this business, you would get something once every two or three months and call your friends and laugh about it. Now it’s daily and it’s ugly. I have two sons, and I’ve had some e-mails where the writer went to the trouble of reading my bio and would mention my sons by their name and write, “I hope your boys are drafted and killed in Iraq.”
PETT: That’s really harsh.
DAVIES: The first really good death threat I received resulted in my getting a premium parking space near the building, so whoever wrote that one, thank you.
Another guy was calling me obsessively and hounding me, calling me names. He left his phone number so I returned his phone call at 2 o’clock in the morning. I think that’s the best revenge.
PETT: The funniest threat I ever got was right after the start of this war, some guy called me up and said his brother was a Marine and his brother was going to come down and kick my ass.