newyorkette

I had forgotten about this till now, when I got to the last page of my magazine this week, but here you go—my TNY Cartoon Caption Contest appearance, with the winning caption by Mr. Phelps (not related to the Mr. Phelps of “Good morning, Mr. Phelps, your mission, if you decide to take it…”): “I’ll walk, you shovel.”

This cartoon, which appears in this week’s TNY, is inspired by my own total incompetence in the realm of time management.

(The signs say: “Employees must wash hands,” and “Non-employees really ought to wash their hands, too.”

This article in Reuters is what made me think of this old cartoon. And all I can say is, yuck!

(Funny how I got tired of kissing people on both cheeks in France and decided I’d only shake hands! Now I think I’ll simply salute people.)

That’s my subway/style cartoon in this TNY “Style Issue.” Today is night before deadline for all TNY cartoonists, so that’s all I have to say for now! Back to work!

(This cartoon was published in The New Yorker this week. Click on the image to go to the cartoonbank.)

So true. Don’t be sad! It’s gonna happen to the best of us!

That’s what a friend says I should call my as yet unwritten modelling autobiography.

This cartoon appears in this week’s TNY. Apparently it has the honor of being the first cartoon in the issue, which I’m extremely pleased about. I’m not sure why, though—this is due to the fact that I haven’t received my TNY for the last two weeks. Ahem! Is it in keeping with the theme of the magazine this week? I can’t say yet. I’ll know tomorrow!

I started this cartoon with the majestic image of the multi-antlered buck in the background. I felt compelled to come up with a cartoon for him, and this is what came of that compulsion. As you can see, I’ve resisted the urge to put in a lot more shading, which often gets me accused of getting “muddy.” No more mud.

I kind of miss the mud. Perhaps someday I will figure out a way to bring it back without incurring any wrath or distaste. In the meantime, as I come up with my new, and improved not-so-muddy-but-not-TOO-darn-unmuddy style, I am happy to demonstrate an unsuspected ability to “adapt” and “work with others.”

Now, back to work on other cartoons! Till later!

(Click on the image to get to the newyorker website.)

At 4 a.m. one of the things you can do is come up with one sellable cartoon, and one unsellable one. This week’s TNY has a cartoon I sold in one version, that was rejected in another. Above is the sold version. Below is the unsellable version. Both were perfect expressions of my ironic feelings about what you have to face on TV at 4 a.m., however.

The unsold version, which, besides being a little more depressing, is also a little “muddier” than the above, since it’s the “rough”:

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(Cartoon: carolita johnson. Click on the image for newyorker.com cartoon coverage. To see the image on Cartoonbank.com, a link will be posted as soon as it exists!)

I’ve always wanted to do an Easter Rabbit cartoon as well as a Thanksgiving one, and here is the fruit of my labours! (I may yet post a photo of my crucified Easter Bunny on Sunday. TK.) And yes, this cartoon was rejected in another version once before, where the turkey was smoking crack in front of a brownstone stoop littered with beer cans and hypodermic needles.

PS - for my non-american readers who may not be aware of the custom, the tradition is that just before Thanksgiving, the President of the United States (the Leader of the Free World, as they say), pardons a turkey. That is, this pardoned turkey will be spared from becoming someone’s dinner, and basically “retire” from the food chain.) Other pardoned turkeys include President Nixon.

(Click on the image for the cartoonbank’s page.)

I was pretty surprised to see this week’s “new arrivals” already up on a Monday! Snappy work, Trevor!

About the inspiration: it seems whenever I do a cowboy cartoon, I start out with an image (usually based on a movie, since that’s where I get my cowboys—this one was came from a John Wayne movie), that looks good till I do something to ruin it, like give the curtains a ridiculous polka-dot pattern, and then one of the cowboys gets sassy with me thus providing the caption. I like it when that happens.

The printed version is a lot less contrasty in the shading, by the way, and looks a lot smoother.

(In this week’s The New Yorker magazine, click on the image to reach the cartoonbank.)

I don’t even know when I came up with this one, it just sort of came out under my pen without me thinking about it. I’m one of those people who will say to you, if you are sitting in my window seat, even if you are pretending to be asleep, “Excuse me, you are in my seat!” And when you say, “Oh, what does it matter?”, I will say in a no-nonsense, take no prisoners tone of voice, “I went to a lot of trouble to get that seat, and it matters to me, thank you.” There will be no blushing on my part, either. I will not be shamed out of my seat, no matter how long you take to grudgefully gather your belongings and move to your assigned seat.

So, watch it.

(Click on the image for the cartoonbank’s website.)

I don’t always remember to post about my published cartoons, maybe because the unpublished ones are more on my mind. But here’s one that has a story behind it.

Last summer I got a job selling subscriptions to the Washington Symphony Orchestra for a month or two, which made me very little money but forced me to overcome my shyness. It was worth it just for the new ease with which I can now make a cold call (not that I have to make any lately, but I always feel one can never have too many skills). It also gave me an insight on how it must feel to be a man trying to pick up women on the street (I forget, why do they do that?), and how they keep going even through the scorn and disregard.

This is progress: when I worked in a software company a few years ago, they made me do cold calling and you know what I’d do? I’d hang up before anyone answered, and then write “no answer,” or “not interested,” or “will call back later” in my log book. I did not make a cent, either for myself or my company. (I suppose the idea of selling this software was made all the more daunting by the fact that I knew without a doubt that it came with a serious defect that would eventually cause the loss of entire databases of images. The thing was, I was also the technical support person they’d be calling with their “where’s my database?” queries. It felt like I was pulling my pants down for a spanking, really.)

Anyway, at this call center, one of the supervisors had a sweater that was full of pulls and snags on the back and shoulders. I asked him, “Do you have a cat?” He looked at me like I had telepathy—“Wow! How did you know?” I kept a little pad by my Purell-soaked telephone in which I wrote unusual names and addresses (like Jade Lightbody, or 2434 Dogue Run Lane), and wrote that idea down. I sold the cartoon that week!

I forgot to let you know that I had a cartoon published in The New Yorker last week! It’s not that I like to toot my own horn, but I love to tell the stories behind a cartoon that has struggled a little to get onto the pages of TNY. Formerly rejected in several versions of itself, this cartoon was finally bought after a few re-draws and several re-workings of the caption. (The accepted caption is actually the first version of the caption that I went back to).

Once I sold it, illustration editor Owen Phillips (now at Mens’ Vogue), who had been placed in charge of making sure the cartoonists didn’t slack off—no missing fingers on hands, no blobs in the place of feet, no weird proportions that could just as easily have been not weird—made me re-do the arm on the bride several times. (I’m going to give Owen the Golden Arm award!) He didn’t like the arm being one continuous line on the outer silhouette. I, of course, did like it. Particularly because continuous lines are hard to achieve with the kind of pen you need to dip into ink several times a minute, like the one I use.

Then, once I’d redone the arm to his satisfaction, he noted that the peripheral figures (best man, and maid of honor) weren’t as nicely drawn as in the first, bad-armed, drawing. I decided to push my luck, and pleaded with him that chances were there would always be a shifting of good points every time I re-drew it, and that the peripheral figures were just that—peripheral. He magnanimously let me keep this last version. (Phew!)

So, please note the line break near her elbow. It took all my self-restraint to pick up that pen and start again where I could have kept going and not wasted any ink or movement of my own elbow! And thanks Owen, for making this cartoon very pretty. We miss you! (But you look so good in a tie!)

For an interesting variation on the campfire story of The Golden Arm, see here.