I’m still finding things as I clean out my old room. In among to the school newspapers were newspapers that published my cartoon panel.
In the 1990s, I was part of a thing King Features called “The New Breed.” It was a different cartoon every day sent in by various cartoonists. They were grooming us at the time for better things. So many of the cartoonists that were part of the The New Breed are professional cartoonists today, with their cartoons published daily in newspapers.
I started a marketing biz at the time and sort of stopped after having so many cartoons published. I sometimes regret it now, but I guess that was my fate to go in another direction.
What I would do is send in a batch of cartoons and they would buy the ones they liked and have them published in hundreds of subscribing newspapers as part of the feature. This sample shown hre is from the Kansas City Star. I like how they have the feature at the very top of the page. There I am with Family Circus, Dennis the Menace, Marmaduke and Peanuts! Mine is the Santa one.
King Features would send back the ones they wanted changes on, after editing the cartoon – simple things like, “change this word to this,” or “take the shading off this.” I don’t know why they just didn’t make the changes themselves, but I guess they didn’t want to touch the art and they had the cartoonists make the changes on their own work.
This was all done by snail mail. I would mail in a batch and they would mail back the edited ones that needed changes. I would make the changes and snail mail the cartoons back and they would appear in the newspapers a few weeks later.
While I’m trying to grow my audience on my current work today, I don’t think I want to be published in newspapers. It’s too restrictive and most people read their cartoons online or on social media.
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