Someone’s Having a Party

This cartoon ran last week as the Daily Cartoon for the New Yorker on Earth Day. To be honest, I was kind of surprised when I got the email that it sold. I was frustrated pretty much the whole time I was drawing it. Looking at it now, I guess it’s perfectly fine, but it felt like a struggle: the proportions, the shading. I was sitting on my couch drawing it thinking, “This drawing sucks.” It was partly because I also thought the joke sucked. I thought to myself, “Is this just totally hack?” It’s kind of an obvious joke. You could use it in a variety of situations, any character who is not doing well in life, or bummed about something, buying a ton of booze or being an alcoholic. It felt too obvious. But hey, it sold, so shows what I know.

I guess I did still submit it, so some part of me thought there was some shred of something redeemable in it. I’ve come to not trust my judgment much at all. Cartoons I love don't sell, and ones I doubt do. I just feel like I have to throw everything out there and see what sticks because half the time I don’t even know.

This actually wasn’t the first iteration of this cartoon. This was actually my original idea:

Same image, but instead of the clerk speaking, the Earth is speaking, explaining/justifying why he’s buying this stuff. I think this caption actually is a little more hack and obvious than the one that sold. It’s a little “see say” as cartoonist Jason Chatfield says. It’s like the caption is saying what’s already in the image, so it’s redundant.

Putting them side-by-side I realized that they basically are before and after moments in a conversation. The Earth walked up with all the booze, the clerk eyed it then teased, “Someone’s having a party.” Then the Earth, feeling the need to explain his somewhat embarrassing purchases explained it’s for, “Earth Day.” 

It got me thinking that I could apply this to all my cartoons. Draw out the original idea and caption, but then think, what would have been said before? What would be said after? Perhaps those might work better and leave more to the imagination of the viewer.