It's All Downhill From Here

You soon learn, in gag or magazine cartooning, that you don't really know what is funny. The cartoons that make you laugh while you are drawing them, almost invariably don't sell, at least not right away. They probably sell eventually, or after the punchline has changed, but by then you certainly don't find them funny anymore.

I think the average strike rate for cartoonists is quite low; around 10 or 20%, so most cartoonists reckon on selling only 1 or 2 cartoons from a batch of around 10. If you sell more than that, its a good feeling, swiftly followed by a feeling of impending doom. Back in 1982 or 1983, I sent a batch of only 6 cartoons to Punch, and they took 3, or 50%. I knew it was an ill-omen; things could only go downhill from there.

There is something comforting in Cartoon Editors picking only 1 or 2 of your ideas. You have the impression of things ticking along just nicely. As far as you are concerned they are possibly just taking one every week because you are dependable - there isn't too much pressure on you as you sit down to knock out the next batch. Now, you take just one cartoon out of that equation, and you really are under pressure. When you submit regularly to a market that takes one cartoon every time you send and suddenly they no longer take any, then you really begin to panic. Oddly, the reverse is also true; they take three of your cartoons when they usually only take one, and suddenly you are under a whole load of pressure. What does it mean, does it mean you have to raise the bar this late in your career? Can it be that you've peaked, and it is all downhill from here?

So here is a batch I put together back at the end of 2008, before I took ill, and which I really didn't punt much, but which failed to sell. I just wasn't feeling it. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to drawing the next batch, which should be an interesting exercise as I think I'm drawing differently; again.

You'll notice that these are mainly pencil and some wash and colour; that's because I tend to send roughs, or at least I did last year but I think in the current climate most publications will prefer finishes, so I'm likely go back to sending the finished article.

Although I haven't rushed back into drawing cartoons, I have kept myself busy drawing a strip and redrawing a couple of Tales from Lepertown stories and I'm currently cooking up one or two indie pieces for a couple of projects out there in the wild. Just the other day though, an idea for a cartoon came to me and I scribbled it down and I had another idea earlier today, so I'm pretty sure I'll have 10 over the next day or two and then, with luck, I'll start chucking them out again.

Old Coren is dead.

I wonder sometimes if manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.

The thing about working for Punch during 'Old Coren's' reign, from around 1978 - 1987, was that as a cartoonist one had achieved two things; you had made it as a cartoonist because it was the satirical magazine that gave birth to the cartoon, the pinnacle of cartooning; Punch was, after all, the magazine on which The New Yorker was based, but it also meant something else, something equally important, that one had met with Alan Coren's approval. Perhaps, even, that one had made Alan Coren laugh, and that was really, really some achievement.

I don't know how you might compare this to another profession, perhaps if you were a painter and you visited Picasso and found he had a painting of yours on the wall, or you were a singer and maybe heard Sinatra say in an interview that he listened to your songs. I think that's the sort of yardstick it was, to many of us cartoonists. It really meant more than any payment or associated fame or contracts that might result from appearing in the famous tome. Now, how often can you say that, nowadays?

I have to say I always enjoyed reading Punch. Of course, nowadays, give me an issue from that period and I'll read it from cover to cover, but even back then I enjoyed Coren's piece, it was effortlessly clever, and always fiercely funny, and I loved the fact that this clever, funny, man enjoyed cartoons so much, and enjoyed some of my cartoons. I suppose, like many of my peers, sending cartoons to Punch was as much about seeking approval from Alan Coren as if was about getting into that magazine.

In more than one interview his love of the cartoons came over and that is unusual even in a humour magazine where the editors like you to think they are doing you an enormous favour by publishing your work - Coren was the exact opposite. He said, '...the writers like me, knew it was the cartoons that sold the magazines'.

Alan Coren (1938 - 2007) will be missed. I wish I could think of something funny to say, I can't.

RIPs All Round - Bud Handelsman and David Myers.

I started drawing cartoons for Punch Magazine in the 1980s when I was about 20 years old. In that respect I am still moderately young, but old enough to have been around when my cartooning heroes were being published. Sadly, within the last 7 days, two of my favourite fellow Punch Old Boys, cartoonists with whom I would imagine, in those fledgling days, talking endlessly about cartooning, have passed away; British cartoonist, David Myers, and, American cartoonist, Bud Handelsman .

Handelsman was the sort of cartoonist I aspired (and still aspire) to be, he was sharp, witty, sophisticated, political, socially observant, and laugh out loud funny. I wouldn't just read Handelsman's Freaky Fables, I would actually copy it, from the magazine, onto a page of blank paper. I also copied his gag cartoons and tried (unsuccessfully) to catch his use of tone. He was to me, the perfect cartoonist. I spent hours and hours trying to draw as well as, and to be as effortlessly funny as Bud Handelsman. I didn't succeed, but I learned a lot just trying to be like him.

David Myers on the other hand, inspired me in an entirely different way. His drawings were awful, but they were so funny that I had to flick through the magazine to see if he had any cartoons in it, and if he did I wouldn't eat or drink while I was reading the thing. I kid you not, I have jettisoned food and liquid through my nose at the same time,from looking at a Myers cartoon; especially if it contained a dog, because they are just so funny. His humour not only carried the drawing, but caused you to realise that the drawings were in fact perfect and shouldn't be any other way. From studying David's cartoons I realised that as long as I was daring enough to try, I might just get by as a cartoonist by being myself.

I'll try to find my favourite David Myers cartoon and post it. I'll also look out some full page Freaky Fables so we can enjoy some authentic Bud.