Cartoons On the Way - First One Above

I’ve always wanted to be a cartoonist. I admire the hell out of guys like John Callahan and Jack Ohman for putting their gig together. And if you ever want to read a magic story, check out how Gary Larson landed “The Far Side.” Summing it up, he was doing cartoons for a small paper in the Seattle area, and they fired him. However, he didn’t get the letter prior to a car trip to San Francisco, during which he pimped his cartoons to a big syndicate. I believe it was the Chronicle. He went to pick them back up and the receptionist said wait, and an editor came running out to meet him. We all know what happened next. By the way, in the same book, he has a hilarious section about various cartoons of his that ran in a newspaper somewhere with the wrong captions. They had mixed the captions up adding quite a surreal twist to his work, and generating a lot of letters from puzzled readers of the paper.
And speaking of letters: He said if he had gotten his termination before leaving it might have discouraged him, and none of this would have happened. Don’t you love turns of fate like that? So I guess really, we owe “The Far Side” cartoons to a slow post office. Actually, the name wasn’t his, but you get it.
So how does this apply to me? I once sent my cartoons to a syndicate in Kansas or Kansas City, and it said to allow 6 weeks for a reply. I over-nighted them and they returned in around a week. So no magic stories for me. I had my first published cartoon in the Tribune, and then last year I had some in a book called “Oh For Smart.”
Through the miracle of blogging, and a new scanner I am now a cartoonist again. Or at least I’ll have a way to get them out there.
A few of the cartoons are ready. Of course, I have to install some software, etc…and figure out how to do it, but I’m predicting the first cartoon on the blog within a matter of months.