Hilary Price is known for her cartoon “Rhymes With Orange,” which is published daily in newspapers all over the country as well as online in various locations. Just recently, Hilary won Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year at this year’s 78th annual Reuben Awards, presented by the National Cartoonist Society – it’s like the Oscars for cartoonists. The winner is chosen by fellow cartoonists by secret ballot.
It’s a very high honor won in the past by famous cartoonists like Gary Larson, Richard Thompson, Al Capp, Chic Young, Charles Schulz, Chester Gould and so many more.
She is featured in 10 With Tom this week. I ask her where the title, “Rhymes With Orange,” came from and what her work space looks like, and why she likes to work with a partner, among other things. You can read it all here.
A sample of Hilary’s cartoon, “Rhymes With Orange”
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I don’t know how you read this blog, whether it’s online or via email subscription, but if you see it online, you may notice a different look.
Me in my new tee
I was changing some things around and screwed up and ended with what you see. Basically the same thing, but a little cleaner, I guess.
It’s the same with the 10 With Tom site. That was unintentionally cleaned up a bit too. What happened was, I was trying to clean up one blog and the I had the other one online instead, so in the end, they both got the “clean-up” treatment while I was experimenting.
No big deal, it’s the content that counts.
I have some new 10 With tom and Tomversation shirts. I wore one around town yesterday, trying to drum up readers. I actually wore the darker one, which I like better. You can see them here.
I’m looking forward to wearing them on the subway in NYC in a couple of weeks. And probably at NY Comic Con, too, but it’s such a cacophony of people there and so many cosplayers, that I don’t think I’ll be noticed. I’m looking forward to that yearly event.
Speaking of 10 With Tom, I’m working on new interviews. My recent one was last week with Elizabeth and Jonathan who produce the War and Peas comic strip, I’m sure you’ve seen that comic. You can see the 10 With Tom interview here: 10withtom.substack.com/p/meet-elizabeth-and-jonathan-of-war .
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I got my first paying subscriber on my Tomversation Substack account and I’m all excited. It’s $5.00 per month. The sad part is that it’s me. I signed up for my own subscription.
I was setting up the payment system and wanted to try it out to be sure it was working right. I don’t plan on charging for any of the stories until I build up a large subscriber base. I’m Substacking along.
Someone had asked me how I made money on my local news publication when I was editor and publisher. It would have been great to have Substack back then, I had thousands of subscribers, but there was no cost for reading. I made money through ads. The first year or so I didn’t take any ads, but people kept asking, so I eventually started running ads and I made quite a good living at it.
I turned down big developers though, even though there was a lot of money in their ads, but I couldn’t be a sellout. I wrote against over-development and greed all the time, there was no way I could make money off of the developments.
I did take ads from smaller building projects if they were in the same footprint as the buildings they were replacing. One time a very large condo building placed ads, we had discussed it for months, and I don’t know what I thought it was, but when the ad came in, it was for this humongous project, right at the entrance of Key Biscayne, it is still under development now and everyone who sees it can’t get over the size.
They were prepared to pay me a lot for a pretty large ad which would have run monthly. It would have been running over three years by this time. There’s a lot of money in development. That’s the problem.
I dream of moving up to the Hudson Valley one day, where nothing is really over-developed and those small little towns along the river look the same as they have for years. I’ll be up there in about a month doing the usual pumpkin and apple picking. So I’ll check out one of the small towns again to see if I feel a connection and feel at home there.
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For 15 years, I edited and published the local news in the village where I live. It was hard work, but I enjoyed it. I was the only source of news and information around here. People depended on it and read it daily. But after many years, I gave it up. I had to, I just burned out.
To this day, almost daily, people ask me when I’m coming back. It is sorely missed. It really was the voice of the village and everything that was happening was published. My stories were republished in the Miami Herald and the Huffington Post. I was interviewed by others about local issues.
I won awards over the years and I was given a great honor at the end of my run – the City of Miami made February 14 “Tom Falco Day.” All this is not to blow my own horn, it’s just to set up the next part of the story.
Well, a new publication started up a few years ago, I helped them start it by giving advice and explaining the ins and outs of publishing the news. I was all for it, as we needed a local news source. The publication has changed hands and I noticed they have a section called “Village People.” It’s where they talk about locals and what they are up to, etc. At the end of the article, they ask for submissions and provide an email address.
Well, since I started my new 10 With Tom blog (an extension of this blog) at Substack, I thought it would be a good opportunity to pick up some of my old subscribers. Also, people keep asking me what I am up to, so I figured it would be an interesting read.
I sent in a press release, not long, but informative and guess what? I was turned down. By someone I know! A guy who I know well is the new co-editor of the publication. And to add insult to injury, he asked if I would like to write for them – after turning my press release down! The irony of it all.
I told him, “I am writing for you. I just sent you a story. Publish it.”
He refused. He said it’s not what they are looking for. He said this, “We do not print submitted articles. The [last Village People profile] article is different from what you’ve proposed in that we (the editors) came up with the idea and we assigned (and paid) a writer to do it. We are always looking for talented writers to add to our stable but only for producing assigned content.” And in another email, he asked if I would be interested in writing for them.
Crickets.
Assigned content? Talk about a total idiot without a clue. If he was a news person, an editor, he would grasp at all news/articles that came in. That’s how news organizations work. They accept news tips, press releases and stories – newspapers, magazines, tv stations, especially online publications – that’s how it is done.
He might not publish them as-is, but he would get a story out of it some way. He would re-write it, he would call the person and do a fresh story, he would make something out of it. He would realize that unsolicited news coming into the office is where most news comes from. You take the news that is given to you and make it something. One one hand this moron is asking me to write for them, and on the other he says they don’t print submitted articles that I have written for them.
We live in a small village. Everything is a story. Joe Schmo painted a new portrait, that’s a story. Wilma opened a new bagel store, that’s a story. Ed bought a vintage house – that’s a story.
I published everything – I wanted everyone to be heard in the village. I published articles on subjects this guy was interested in. He would contact me and discuss issues and ask me to cover the event or the subject. And I did. Now I asked him and was told, “no.”
The one thing I would not post was lost animal notices. That would have turned into a 24/7 non-stop thing if I did that. One guy on the Village Council called me a prick once because I would not post his girlfriend’s lost cat. Ironically, I personally had to hand this guy an award a week later for winning “best car” in a classic car contest. Yes, I also covered the contest and his winning the award as news, pictures and all.
I’ve been publishing my work on Substack, since it seems like it’s the thing to do. I publish cartoons and my blog posts there and I also started publishing my 10 With Tom column there.
My 10 With Tom is now at Substack at substack.com/@10withtom . It started out at the Huffington Post some years back. I interviewed celebs and news people, athletes, all sorts of people you may know. I moved it to my own url at 10WithTom.com and now at Substack.
I interview people in 10 random questions. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and yes, a slew of folks you probably know. While I mainly covered famous people and celebs, I want to go back to my original purpose – interview people coming up in the world – everyday people. Everyone has a story, that’s what I would like to include in the publication – a new guitarist, a new author or artist; a teacher, the mailman!
I’m still working my way around Substack, but it’s a blogging, publishing platform, where you can make money from having people subscribe to your work, although at this point, everything I publish is free, even to subscribers.
There is a section called “Notes” which is sort of like Twitter/X, and there are long-form stories and published pieces. Many well-known people publish on Substack and they have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers. It seems like every regular contributor on these cable news shows, now has their own writing space on Substack.
I mostly follow other cartoonists and artists. I like that community. I am all in with this project, I even have a t-shirt, which is for sale on the site (and here).
Substack is slow going at first, but that is to be expected until the algorithm notices you. But I have noticed famous people get lots of subscribers right away. Sort of like the rich getting richer. This one guy made believe he was Keanu Reeves, he didn’t post anything other than introducing himself, and he got so many followers just for that reason. And therein lies the rub . . . .
Hope to see you at my new Substack for 10 With Tom, hopefully you’ll subscribe, which is free, and every time I post a new interview, you’ll receive it via email.
It’s been a minute since I did a 10 With Tom interview, but I’m back. There’s a comic strip I really like and I wanted to find out about the cartoonist, Jesse Atwell, and his strip TEX.
Eight-year-old TEX was “born” on GoComics.com a year ago.
After playing with various other ideas, including a single panel cartoon, Jesse’s TEX cartoon came to be. This year the strip was nominated for the National Cartoonists Society’s cartoon of the year in the online short form comic strip category.
I love the drawing style and the coloring technique.
My fascination of ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece and all sorts of archaeology goes way back. I studied it in college as part of Art History. My textbooks, which I still have, are in my living room and I glance at them every once in awhile. Guided tours of ancient Egyptian sites are part of my bucket list.
I do a lot of cartoons based on ancient times, I enjoy doing those.
And now that I think of it, if asked, what I would do if I wasn’t doing what I do now, I might say, “I’d like to be an archaeologist , digging around in Egyptian deserts. But not now, I think.
A MEME THAT POPPED UP THE OTHER DAY.
I was shocked into reality the other day while watching a tv show on Egyptian and Greece archeology. They were digging up ancient Greek tombs and relating them to Egypt at that time and one of the archeologists said something like, “We’re lucky to find this one in tact. The tomb raiders did not find this tomb, but we did through sonar (or radar, he said something like that.” And I was stunned. Why is a modern archeologist, digging up ancient tombs any better than ancient, or even current tomb raiders.
The main difference is that tomb raiders are taking gold and silver and precious items. Archaeologists are taking bodies; actual bodies. Why is this any better?
One lady archeologist, I can’t remember her name, has a life quest to find Cleopatra’s tomb. And do what with it when she finds it? Display her remains to the world? Another has a quest to find Alexander the Great’s and Cleopatra’s ancient Alexandria under present day Alexandria, I guess that’s ok, as they are looking for cities, not entombed bodies.
I can understand digging up and finding ancient cities, but I’m having second thoughts about digging up entombed, embalmed bodies.
So I have to think on it now. Is desecrating an ancient body permissible in the name of science? Is it ok to dig it up, pillage, analyze it and show it off in museums? I’m wondering. I’m sure I will still do ancient Egypt related cartoons, because in my cartoons the people are alive and in their time in their settings.
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I did my first interview for the new 10 With Tom site. I had the chance to interview Tauhid Bondia who is the cartoonist of one of my favorite comic strips called Crabgrass. I had written about them in 2020 here.
The comic is about two young friends in the 1980s. I felt it relevant now because Crabgrass is starting newspaper syndication on March 28. It will continue to be online as well.
