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?
