Reject du jour: super tuck
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008
Very, very silly.
Archive for the 'rejected cartoons' Category
Carolita and Diffee on NPR!
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Friday, Dec. 14, 2007
I was on the radio this morning with Diffee, discussing a couple of rejected cartoons! More specifically, on NPR’s Bryant Park Project, which is direct from the web!
Here is their blog post with our cartoons on it.
And here is the show, of you care to listen!
Be forewarned, that is definitely my morning voice. Cheerful, but not quite fully of this world yet.
For more of Diffee, see Emily Gordon’s interview for Print, here!
Reject du jour: meow!
Posted in rejected cartoons on Thursday, Oct. 25, 2007
I did not do my “batch” this week, mainly because I couldn’t even find a place to sit and draw in my apartment since last batch. Without going into details (the emotional ones are all documented in my “status” on facebook), a two-day paint job offered by our building manager turned into a two-week ordeal. My sofa will be wondering where I am tonight. My bed will be saying, “Where ya been, baby?”
Anyway, here’s a reject from last week’s call for “reverse caption contest” cartoons. Someone had suggested the caption, “For a number of reasons, this probably won’t work.” So I came up with this. Since Bob didn’t take it, the proud owner will be Emily Gordon from Emdashes, who is partial to cat cartoons.
And on the subject of cats, let’s hear from Minor Tweaks.
Reject du jour: one sold, six rejected! A bumper crop!
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Friday, Oct. 19, 2007
Talk like Yoda Carolita lately likes to do when she sells a cartoon. (Ask don’t.) Happy I am.
Rejected cartoon from same batch here is, to celebrate. Bumper crop two sales in two weeks that is.
One sold, six rejected! Reject du jour.
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007
I handed in seven cartoons this Tuesday, and was informed today that I sold one! That’s 100% better than last week! And one out of seven is better than one out of ten, which is why I don’t submit ten every week anymore! That’s the secret to my resilience, a smaller proportion of rejects! And the secret to feeling well-paid? My “finishes” only take about fifteen minutes to do, once I get around to them. Those that spend hours on their finishes get paid proportionally much less than me, even though technically they get twice as much per cartoon than me, being contracted (I’m freelance, half-price! But not really, when you think about it).
Happy Carolita is today.
Do you like this cartoon? Well, it was inspired by an idea that Emily from Emdashes provided. If it sold, we were going to have drinks at Bemelmans!
Reject du jour: the cockroach lady
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007
(This rejected cartoon was inspired by that particular cöinkydinky.)
When I stayed with a friend for a few months upon my repatriation from Paris, her apartment was undergoing a years long cockroach plague. (It really says something that I prefered the cockroach plague to my parents’ house.) It’s a miracle the entire apartment didn’t just crawl away. You’d never seen quite such an array of cockroaches—surely all the different subtypes were represented. They were everywhere, and got into everything. They were aggressive—they chased me out of the bathroom many times, running at me instead of away from me. The culprit, I always said, must be the old lady next door whose apartment smelled like a giant litterbox. You smelled it as you walked up the stairs to my friend’s apartment door, where you gagged a little as you got your keys out.
“When she dies, you’ll see.” And sure enough, she got hit by a bus, her apartment was gutted and renovated, and voila! No more cockroaches.
When it comes to plagues of cockroaches being due to one’s neighbor, it seems to always be an elderly lady. What does it mean? Sometimes I wonder if the cockroaches become their only friends. Are they good friends, or greedy, uncaring friends? Sad!
Reject du jour: see you in Hell!
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Thursday, Oct. 4, 2007
(Click on the map for a larger version.)
I thought I’d had a hellish week, so I wondered what I would think Hell would be like if I thought it really existed.
Reject du jour: quality time
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Thursday, Sep. 20, 2007
(Rejected cartoon by Carolita Johnson.)
This cartoon is somewhat embarrassingly perverse, and yet I’ve always loved it. It’s been rejected for the last time today. (Sorry for the scan of a photocopy, but the original is still in the reject pile at the magazine—which, hearteningly enough, means that it actually was considered.)
Reject du jour: But I thought I was the only one!
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Friday, Sep. 14, 2007
(Rejected cartoon by Carolita Johnson.)
This one goes out to all those sweet, naive souls who think God’s job is to help them get a raise, or a car, or help them pass an exam. Snap out of it! Let him get on with his work—it’s not as if the world is taking care of itself!
And here’s a cartoon not by me that I like very much, for all you temp workers out there, from Pictures for sad children.
Today is…
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Thursday, Sep. 6, 2007
(Dancing flowerpot, by carolita johnson)
Today is “Carolita sold a cartoon day!” So, to celebrate, here is a dancing vase of flowers—this scan is all I have left of it now, as I gave the original as a wedding present. It’s one of my very first ink and brush drawings, and the little guy got me through many rough days, always made me smile. I hope it’s not slacking off just because it’s in a happy new home! It must keep on its toes. Goodbye, little dancing vase!
And below is a rejected cartoon, for good measure! It is truly hideous, sorry! But we all have a hideous cartoon or two (or ten) in us, at any given moment. The best place to get rid of them is slipped furtively amongst better efforts. It’s our editor’s job to take this crap from us, to know our best and our worst.
Reject du jour: mouse in the house
Posted in rejected cartoons on Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2007
(Rejected cartoon by Carolita Johnson.)
There is a mouse in my house, which is what reminded me of this old rejected cartoon. Not that there are any crumbs under my sofa cushions! Nein! My sofa is as crumb-free as any other obssessively mouse-avoiding person’s sofa should be.
I have placed humane traps – which I went to great trouble to procure – in places that I thought were guaranteed to score a live capture. I imagined myself freeing the little mousie in the alley downstairs, gently admonishing her not to come back to my house, watching her scamper gratefully away. After setting the traps, I filled every hole in my apartment with steel wool. For three weeks, I thought perhaps I’d locked the mouse out while she was out on an errand. I haven’t heard an odd scratchy noise, or any pitter-patters of little feet in my oven. But last night, I nearly gave the mouse (who had perhaps been away on vacation) a cardiac arrest.
I had been sitting in the armchair in my kitchen when suddenly to the left of me came trotting the little mousie, as if at the end of a long day, minding her own business. Involuntarily, I let out a very loud scream and jumped up on the armchair (how pathetic is that?—to be fair, seen out of the corner of my eye, I was afraid it was a giant cockroach). The mouse literally lost control, much the way a car would on an oil slick, sliding and sprawling sideways, doing a one and a half turn in the air before zipping this way and that way, not sure which way to flee. I felt almost sorry for it.
But why didn’t the peanut butter in my humane traps work? Because it’s “crunchy” and not “smooth”? The friend I shopped for the bait with figured mice would like “crunchy” better. So, I did some research today, wondering if there was something mice like better than peanut butter. Apparently they like peanut butter, oats, water, chocolate, and “nesting materials” equally well. I’ve come to the conclusion that my mouse is just finicky.
“Mouse in the house” reminds me of “bats in the belfry,” which reminds me of the “crazy astronaut lady,” who I think makes her first appearance in music video culture in the clip you’ll find on S/FJ’s blog, here. (I’m grateful she’s made her appearance in a spacesuit and not diapers.)
Unbought cartoon du jour: aroo!
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Friday, Aug. 24, 2007
(Un-sold cartoon, by Carolita Johnson)
Here’s a cartoon that was bought, then un-bought! Yes, it happened again. It should be noted that most of the time we cartoonists are unaware of such un-sales. Farley (the new assistant to the cartoon editor) does not call up and say, “Hey, you got an okay,” and then call back a little while later and say, “Scratch that.”
The sales go to the notoriously bully-like fact-checkers (ha ha), where they make sure they haven’t got another cartoon in their database that’s too much like the one they’re vetting. A cartoon must be original, or at least not resemble a cartoon published in recent history by a famous cartoonist. It might pass if the cartoon resembles a really old cartoon by a cartoonist who isn’t a household name.
Anyway, here is the cartoon (by Lee Lorenz, no less! It was hopeless!) mine resembled way too much. I only knew about its un-sale because I discovered the doppelganger myself, only after submitting the above. Sigh!
Speaking of “okays,” here is Mick Stevens’s compilation of “first okay” stories. Mine is among them, accompanied by a caricature that I have only myself to blame for, since I drew it myself in the morning before drinking enough tea. Do I look like that in the morning? Possibly.
Reject du jour: the rainbow had a beard…
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007
Above is the sign I put in the elevator when I first moved in. I’d got tired of calling the cops, and thought: “Hmmm. Maybe all I have to do is ask.”
It’s worked many times for me before!
I’m not sure if the subsequent decreased population of crackheads in the hallways was due to the crackheads reading the note, or the super reading the note, but here is a rejected cartoon inspired by those days:
It’s a first version of a cartoon that was eventually bought. Here you can see what’s buyable, and what’s not, in basically the same cartoon.
Reject du jour: temper, temper
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Friday, Aug. 17, 2007
(rejected cartoon by Carolita Johnson)
My dad, who was a sound engineer at Columbia Recording Studios (later absorbed into Sony), used to regale me with stories about Glenn Gould not allowing his off-key humming to be erased from the recordings, and refusing to play while sitting on any other piano bench than his own. Said piano bench apparently held together by bits of tape and string, Gould reportedly said he’d quit performing when that stool broke. We wondered who would go first, the stool or the pianist. One day my dad came home and announced that Glenn Gould had decided not to perform anymore. The fate of that stool and its influence upon Gould’s decision remained a mystery to me.
The Well-Tempered Clavier was in any case one of the pieces I loved to hear interpreted by my two favorite performers at the time (I was about 9): Glenn Gould, and Walter/Wendy Carlos. Walter/Wendy was also part of the mythology of my childhood. When my father told me that Walter was now Wendy, due to a scientific breakthrough (that’s how I understood the operation), I was amazed. How cool was that? Science could do anything, and Wendy’s “Well-Tempered Synthesizer” seemed to reiterate that amazement to me every time I thrilled to a newly noticed synthesized sound.
This cartoon, therefore, was a long time coming, conceived in early childhood. It needed to get out of my system, and so there you go. Out with the old! In with the new!
Reject du jour: very silly
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Thursday, Aug. 9, 2007
(Rejected cartoon, Carolita Johnson)
Today is very silly rejected cartoon day.
(For background info on the gag, see J. Peterman’s catalogue of disembodied clothing.)
Reject du jour: gentrify genteely
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Sunday, Aug. 5, 2007
(Rejected cartoon, Carolita Johnson.)
(The post that was here was simply much to grumpy! It has been removed by the author!)
Reject du jour: baseball bodies
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Wednesday, Jul. 25, 2007
Rejected cartoon, Carolita Johnson. (Click on the image for a larger version).
I’ve always been fascinated by the bodies and poses of the baseball players, neglecting to learn the rules of the game. Still, it’s a lot more interesting to compare buttock size (what is it about baseball that gives players such meaty butts? It is all muscle, or all tucked-in shirt?) and pitching stances, so I celebrated my esoteric interest in baseball with this cartoon.
Reject du jour: made in China
Posted in TNY, rejected cartoons on Sunday, Jul. 22, 2007
Rejected cartoon by Carolita Johnson. (Click on the image for a larger version.)
Rejected three weeks ago, by now it’s already old news, if it’s on NPR and in the Times! Still, don’t go buying your toothpaste at the 99 cents store again yet!
Rejected women’s humor & a couple a’ nudes
Posted in in the wringer, rejected cartoons on Tuesday, Jun. 26, 2007
(“female humor” cartoon by carolita johnson)
The Author has been exhorting me to recommence activities on newyorkette, so here we go. Today’s reject du jour is what would be called “women’s humor,” mainly because you really have to be a women (or a creepy guy) to understand it. Which must be why it was rejected!
Many of us dames know very well that perplexing moment when a male of the species decides to give us his gratuitous appraisal and benediction. It begins with, “Hey, beautiful! Nice (insert body part/s here)!” which appraisal is bizarrely capped with a “God Bless You!” upon your refusal to acknowledge it.
It makes you wonder what the perceived-as-ugly girls have to hear. (“Hey, you’re ugly! God damn you!” ??) Every time I hear this “God bless you,” I wonder who the outspoken little man thinks he is! Blessing me? Is he the pope or something? Is it translatable to “So, not interested? That’s okay! Vaya con Dios!” I guess it’s better than the alternative, which goes something like, “Hey, say thank you! Hey, you bitch! Say thank you, bitch!”
And I like men, that’s what’s kind of ironic!
Anyway, for you men who want nothing to do with the discourse above, here’s a couple of nice, naked ladies! (Actually the same lady, below!) I went to a figure drawing meet-up, and got to do some figure drawing from a live naked model for the first time in… 20 years? More! Not since foundation year at Parson’s! It was a pleasure. More to come. (Both are 6B or 8B pencil on 11×17 sketchpad).
(This was a 20 minute pose. I didn’t really get to spend much time on her face, because I got caught up in working her lone sandal—which I’m pretty happy with.)
(And this was a 15 minute pose.)
Things to do at 4am
Posted in CAJ in TNY, rejected cartoons on Wednesday, Apr. 18, 2007
(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”:
