I had the chance to interview Tom Toro, New Yorker magazine cartoonist who has a new comic strip published at GoComics.
It’s part of my 10 With Tom column, which you can read here.
Cartoonist Tom Toro
Category: art
Google it
I have a friend who worked in an info booth in town for years. Whenever I wanted to go to lunch or whatever, I would say, “Put a sign on the booth and let’s go. Tell people to Google It!”
Actually, the city sort of did that. They removed the info booths and put in something like those LinkNYC things they have in NY, only they aren’t as sophisticated, you can’t go online or use the internet, it’s more of an advertising thing. I have another friend whose beautiful art is on the info link things as part of the City of Miami’s project, I would love to get some of my cartoons on them.
A few years back I was in New York and a Nor’easter was coming. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I asked the concierge about it, “What should I do Michael? Stay? Go home?” He told me he would let me know in the morning. I gave him my number and figured that being a concierge, he had some sort of in with the weather service.
I asked him, “How are you going to get the weather?” He said, “I’m going to Google it,” to which I laughed.
In the end, the airline contacted me and had me change my flight and I came home early because of the oncoming storm. Michael did contact me the next day about the weather, but I took an early flight and was already home in Miami by then.
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Van Go Moving and Storage
Today’s comic made me think of the real thing. What if there was a moving company called “Van Go” and and all of the movers looked like Vincent Van Gogh? We’ve all seen people in real life who look like Van Gogh, right?
But I guess it would be hard to gather a bunch together and have them work as movers, right? But it’s an interesting idea.
Or another idea I had was a arts and antiques moving company that used people dressed as or look-alike artists or art subjects. Like for instance you had the Mona Lisa delivering a painting you won at auction or Monet delivering a vase you got at a tag sale.
I remember years ago there was a restaurant in town that gave you famous names as you walked in along with your table buzzer. When your table was ready they would call out, “Marilyn Monroe, table for two!” “Clark Gable, table for four,” etc.
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Some cocoa butter . . .
Amazon Prime Day is over and I’m gonna miss it. Not for the bargains, for the Jon Baptiste commercial!
It’s the song of summer! I can’t get it out of my head – the line that says, “I need some cocoa butter and camping supplies,” makes me laugh every time. I actually would wait for the commercial, which was not hard to do since it seemed to be on every few minutes. It’s short and sweet and catchy.
I had written it down to use in a cartoon and I couldn’t come up with anything. Them I remembered a cartoon I used for a past Prime Day and I added the text.
Now to be honest, the 1000 times I’ve seen the commercial, I thought he was singing “Cold, Cold Butter,” but a reader corrected me so I changed the cartoon early this morning before most people saw it.
Butter made sense to me because I thought they were trying to show that Amazon/Wholefoods, delivers food, too.
I did take advantage of Prime Day and I bought a new Surface Pro 8 computer so you’ll be seeing my new cartoons created on that.
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Matisse’s – The Red Studio
I checked out the Matisse exhibit at MOMA yesterday. Henri Matisse’s The Red Studio (1911), depicts the artist’s work space in the Parisian suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux.
Of course I had to add Starry Night here. Since I was at MOMA, I had to visit my favorite painting.
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Bringing Up Father
I’ve been reading a lot of old Bringing Up Father comic strips on Facebook, they pop up daily. If you click on these, they will open larger.
What gets me is the detail. I can’t understand how George McManus, the cartoonist, drew the same characters day after day, multiple times in each strip with such precise detail. His linework is amazing.
Brining Up Father featured Maggie and Jiggs, the two main characters. It ran in newspapers for 87 yeras, from 1913 to 2000.
Jiggs is an immigrant from Ireland who comes to the U.S. and wins $1 million in a sweepstakes. So now he is up in the world but prefers his working class life. His favorite food is Corned Beef and Cabbage, which he gets often at his friend Dinty Moore’s restaurant.
The art has an Art Nouveau/Art Deco design, which makes it stand out. When McManus passed away in 1954, other artists took over the strip until its ending in 2000.
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Cartoons that hit home
I found these to be some of the best political cartoons this week related to the Texas school massacre
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Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the gang on sneakers
Peanuts characters are featured on a new line of sneakers from Converse.
The collection will include the Chuck 70 ($100), One Star ($90), and Chuck Taylor All Star ($70) styles.
There are also matching t-shirts, shorts and other items.
I’m tempted to buy this read pair, but I don’t wear high-tops and I’m not sure I would actually wear them. Although I might.
The collection is available Tuesday, May 24. You can see them here.
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Wordle showoffs
I love this cartoon because I love the characters. I drew this months ago and it had different text and context. I don’t even remember what it started out as, but I changed it so many times over the past few months.
I didn’t change the drawing, I changed the wording. It reminded me of something someone said on social media about the New Yorker cartoon I wrote about the other day – that “they draw the images and then figure out what they are saying later,” which of course I don’t think that’s the case, but maybe it is, because this Wordle gag ended up that way.
One part of love about the cartoon is that the thought Steve is thinking “Ouch!” as a Wordle answer is not really an answer because it’s only four letters. But it almost makes it seem like his whole life is Wordle, including all his thoughts.
I find it silly that people post their Wordle scores on social media every day. The silly part is that you don’t see their answers or the way they got to the final word of the day, it shows blank boxes. It doesn’t show what the previous word tries are or even what the word is.
Maybe people just hit a “share” button on Wordle somewhere and it posts your final score without you even realizing what it looks like on Facebook or wherever.
It’s like saying, “I’m great!” everyday.
One friend of mine posted his score every morning and I actually appreciated it because it reminded me to play the game. But posting your score without any concept or content is like saying, “I won an award for something,” and not saying what the something is.
It’s annoying when people post this online, but then again, it gave me the idea for this cartoon, so it all worked out.
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My cartooning styles and ideas
A friend came up with the concept of today’s cartoon.
He kept telling me to do something with “intense” and “in tents.”
“Get it?” He asked. Yes, I got it, but I didn’t know how to put it together. It took a couple of weeks and a couple of different drawings, text and concepts until I came up with this. Lots of changes to come up with this.
This one is self explanatory. Not to put down New Yorker comics lovers, but I wonder if they just pretend to get most of the gags just to be part of the “in crowd” or whatever you call them.
Not being sour grapes here, it’s just a gag and I do admire the cartoonists a lot who do work for the New Yorker. I have interviewed many, I have gone to some of their talks and showings, went to a Roz Chast exhibit a few years back at the Museum of the City of New York.
I’ve submitted stuff to the New Yorker and I know it’s a numbers game to get your first cartoon published and then become “one of them.” But the thing is they take too long to respond to your submission – sometimes eight months! And they have first rights of refusal. So imagine me sending them my fresh work, unpublished, and then waiting months for a reply. The work I publish daily would be eight months old after getting the rejection from the New Yorker, and then is it work publishing “rejected” work?
I have two cartoon styles – one was designed to be a “New Yorker style” and the other is the one I have used all my life, I call a Hanna-Barbera style, or “Flintstones style.” So I have accommodated my work to fit in with the New Yorker, and I like it. I go back and forth, depending on the gag, to see which drawing fits.
Like this one here I call the New Yorker style.
And this caveman one is my “Flintstones/Hanna-Barbera style.”
By the way, this caveman one, speaking of Flintstones, has been one of the most shared, viewed and liked cartoon of all of mine, so who knows what style is best. I just go with my mood that day. Same with the borders. Sometimes there is a very think board, sometimes a wild fat freestyle border, other times no border.
I think the fat, freestyle border works with this chicken cartoon.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to say today!
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