I’ve mentioned before, I think, that I put together some cartoons with Carlo Bertocchini in hopes of syndication. I still think the cartoons were pretty good, but I now also know that we were submitting a magazine-cartoon style feature on the heels of the end of The Far Side, which ruined the genre for a lot of prospective customers (I mean that in a good way toward Gary Larson)
The syndicates, which were also quietly starting to have their own major troubles around the time, didn’t show any interest in the feature. Too bad.
Anyhow, I’ve pulled out these two as a Cartooning Lesson.
The lesson is “Turn your idea around and around. It’ll be funnier one way than another.” You still have to decide when to stop turning it, and you have to decide which version is best. It’s hard to be objective after you’ve filled your frontal lobe with these things, and often you don’t feel you’ve got a week to let them stew before you come back and decide what’s what.
Other times, you trot them out years later, and you STILL can’t be completely objective. Anyone want to express opinions about these two? The obvious theme was ‘Party Games In Hell’ with an emphasis of a sort of sadistic form of apple bobbing. What do you think of the efforts? One of them better than the other?
I prefer the first one, it feels less cruel and sadistic than the second.
I know it’s hell and all, but still, my opinion skews more toward the Tom & Jerry violence than the Itchy & Scratchy violence.
I’m with won… the first one is better. The reversal of roles might work better with “Donkey’s Pin the Tail on the Human”, or having a dude hanging onto a rope with his shorts full of candy and a bunch of little devils with sticks and blindfolds.
You might be able to make the second one work by changing it to a slightly bigger tank with multiple smaller guys floating around, get rid of the speech balloon, and change the caption to “Piranha bobbing for Bob”.
Ah! Insight.