May Update: Unfathomable

Thanks to Simon Rich‘s words of wisdom when I saw him speak at Tulane last month I kept to a pretty consistent drawing routine the past few weeks. His advice was to just put in the time, commit to a certain number of hours per week and just do it. You may produce a little, a lot, terrible stuff, or great stuff. What matters is just putting in the time. I committed to drawing 30 minutes a day and so far I’ve held myself to it and then some. 

Last year around this time I had the pleasure of sitting down face-to-face with New Yorker cartoon editor, Emma Allen. Reflecting back on her advice, I’d say I’ve followed up fairly well. I gathered from talking to her that selling a Daily Cartoon has better odds than selling one to the magazine, and I have sold a couple Dailies this past year. She also suggested I try Daily Shouts, the longer form comic pieces that come out online and in the Humor newsletter. I submitted 2 rough ideas and she took one! I really should try to come up with more of those. She also told me that every now and then I could send her some of my favorite rejected cartoons and ask for her feedback on them, kind of an email version of our face-to-face meet up. I’ve taken her up on that twice and every kernel of feedback has been insightful.

My school year teaching Art and Comics to high school students is winding down. It’s been a solid year, but I’m also pretty darnn tired and looking forward to the end. I shouldn’t really say the end though, more like a change of scenery, because four days after my job at the high school ends, I start up my summer job working at an arts summer camp for kids. It’s a totally different vibe, different kids, different environment, and I get to exclusively teach comics, so it’s pretty fun. It’s also nice that my kids attend the camp and my wife also works there too, so it’s a family affair.

This cartoon was the Daily Cartoon for the New Yorker on Earth Day. Someone get that planet to rehab!

I submitted these two alternate versions of this cartoon to the New Yorker as a Daily Cartoon for Record Store Day, but they didn’t bite. I posted them both on Instagram and they went semi-viral - at least viral for me. 1000 likes and 50,000 views each is a lot more than most of my cartoons get.

I was thinking how back in the 90s when I used to make photocopied zines and trade them through the mail, I would be stoked if I made a run of like 25 of them and got them sent out to 25 people across the country. Now there are thousands of people seeing my stuff? It’s unfathomable.

The Aboveground Zine Library has been around in New Orleans for, I don’t know, like 15 or 20 years? It comes and it goes. It’ll find a home for a while, then it will go into storage for a while. Well, it’s back, and Robb, the guy who runs it, asked me to draw something up for it. Looking forward to maybe getting some stickers or a T-shirt with this on it.

This cartoon ran around Easter in the Funny Times. I got a very encouraging comment from a favorite cartoonist, Bob Eckstein, saying that he thought it was great and it’s the kind of cartoon that, when you see it you wish you had thought of it yourself. Is there any higher compliment?