This recent cartoon is not really correct – the hieroglyphics are not numbers.
The ankh, the cross symbol is an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol meaning “key of life,” used to represent the word for “life” it’s a symbol of life itself.
And the eye symbol – the Eye of Horus, in ancient Egypt, symbol representing protection, health, and restoration.
Numbers are shown here, as an example you can see the year 2765 is written as shown above and here are the Eye of Horus and the Ankh, the cross symbol.
But the Egyptians didn’t count the years as we do. The ancient Egyptians counted the years starting at the year a Pharaoh started his reign (called Regnal Years). So back then they started over every time they had a new Pharaoh.
Other than all that, I think it’s a cool cartoon.
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Someone posted a question on Facebook on a comics/cartoonist-related page. He was asking about seasons. He said, “I’m thinking about doing a TV-style release schedule for my comic. What I mean is this: instead of following a schedule the whole year (like XKCD does for example), divide my comics into “seasons” (i.e., Season 1, Season 2, …) and follow a schedule for a few months before going on breaks for a few months or so between seasons.”
I brought this subject up a couple of years ago in a post called, “Can a comic strip have seasons?” where I bring up the fact that comics should have seasons and why. As long as you are creative and can keep your audience, why not take a break and enjoy seasons.
I have one cartoon that I haven’t published for awhile, but every day it gains dozens of followers on Facebook. It has a life of its own. So even though it isn’t being published right now, people are still interested, so I believe if a cartoon is on hiatus, fans will still be there when it returns to publication.
Also, regarding the process, someone mention that they are having an issue coming up with gags for their comic and also they cannot relate to the characters. They can’t find themselves (the characters, not the cartoonist).
I’m doing my panel now, so I don’t deal with characteristics, it’s a quick, in and out gag, but in the past when I did strips and recurring characters, they sort of found themselves fast. One who was in the background, would sort of take over the strip by default, he just popped out of the shadows. Others in another strip would easily pick up their characteristics as I drew and wrote for them. They defined themselves. In one instance, they almost wrote themselves, what I mean is, they sort of wrote their own gags and dialogue.
As for my Tomversation single panel cartoons, one thing that stands out for me is the names. I don’t wrestle with names, they just come out, like, “this one is called this and this one is called that.” I don’t sit and think of names, the names just fit the drawing or personality and I use the first one that pops into my head.
I don’t use names often, but some years back, it seem the thing to do in gag cartoons. Like this Santa one which ran recently, In the past I might have given the lady a name, the gag would say, “Is it me, Martha, or does it seem to get more commercialized every year?”
I did two things there – I named her and I gave her the name Martha, which actually popped into my head as I was looking at the cartoon.
With this one, “Jane” popped into my head when I looked at it, and it could be, “The tree is up, Jane!”
I like not having names now, it seems less pretentious.
In this instance, for some reason, maybe to emphasize the doctor’s concern, I think a name was need. “Mr. Reynolds,” seemed to fit as s name for some reason.
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I eat an avocado daily. Sometimes the whole thing, sometimes a sliver in a salad or sandwich or something.
One of my friends said that I’m going to turn green from eating all those avocados. That’s where I got the idea for this cartoon.
One of my neighbors has avocado groves, so sometimes he gives me fresh avocados. He always punctuates all of his texts with three avocado emojis.
I eat a lot of things daily – extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), cinnamon, green tea, apple cider vinegar, chia seeds, flax seed, etc. I’m not sure how I fit it all in, but I add a little to my food during the day. When I travel, I don’t have all this stuff – only at home.
When I have the avocado at home, I slice it open, remove the pit and then sprinkle sea salt, black pepper, oregano and EVOO, and I eat it with a spoon.
The green face made me think of this guy who used to have a blue face, Paul Karason. His face was blue due to taking colloidal silver, for medical reasons.
He passed away in 2013, but I remember seeing him on the streets of NYC one time. I think it was on Park Avenue, near Union Square. I was walking downtown and he passed me by. His hue was not really that noticeable unless you looked right at him. What I mean is it wasn’t neon or glowing.
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When I look at today’s cartoon it reminds me of that Below Deck tv show on Bravo. It’s a franchise, there’s all sorts of Below Decks. There’s the original Below Deck and there’s Below Deck Mediterranean, Below Deck Sailing Yacht, Below Deck Down Under, and Below Deck Adventure. Sort of like the Real Housewives – one for every city.
I don’t watch any of the Below Decks, even though they seem to be very popular and my reasoning is quite stupid. The reason? I can’t understand how the full crew, including the captain and his staff and all the guests, along with the film crew, fit on the yachts. Seriously.
I live on the water, there are many yachts like that in my area, and I tried to look them over and figure how a large crew and a large bunch of guests, along with the camera men, sound men, etc. all fit below deck, let alone above deck!
Just the crew on Below Deck, not counting the guests and film crew.
And that’s why I can’t watch the show. I get too technical in my head to enjoy the story. I keep trying to figure out where everyone is sleeping, how they maneuver in the galley/kitchen, how they store all the food and drinks and how they all live aboard for a whole week or however long each outing is.
By the way, when I came up with this cartoon idea, I didn’t have Below Deck in mind, it just made me think of it after I looked at the cartoon.
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With The Beatles’ new song out, “Now and Then,” there seems to be a lot about The Beatles online now. I’ve seen a bunch of memes along with news stories. One meme, shown below, reminded me of this old Paul McCartney cartoon I did awhile back. Tube vs. Tube.
I guess it should really be is he on the “tube,” meaning subway or “telly,” meaning television? But tube and tube seems to work.
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This Tomversation cartoon ran today. It started out as a similar image which was almost identical to a New Yorker cartoon by Sara Lautman, which you can see here.
Sara’s excellent idea.
I drew the original cartoon last week, thinking it was a funny image, with the jack-o-lantern smiling with big white teeth, but I couldn’t think of a gag. So it just sat for a few days and then I came up with the candy corn teeth and I played around with that, making various images.
Sara came up with an excellent gag. You can see my original smiling one below without any text, since I couldn’t think of anything funny. I just thought it was never done before – a smiling, big toothed jack-o-lantern.
My smiling jack
I hate when similar ideas happen regarding cartoons, which is quite often. It always looks as if one person got the idea from the other. Great minds . . .
Here are a few more of my candy corn variations without the text. There are more, too, believe it or not.
I’m glad I went with the top one. It fits in with the Halloween theme this week, perfectly.
A couple more of my candy corn ideas.
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The major hit was in Australia, where so many popular strips, including the 100 year old Ginger Meggs was dropped by hundreds of newspapers, all owned by Rupert Murdoch and Nine Entertainment – a problem and monopoly right there. By the way, Murdoch also owns the NY Post. I guess he just doesn’t like comic strips.
He is replacing them or enhancing puzzles and games in the newspapers rather than print the comics.
Ginger Meggs is printed on GoComics daily, and I like some of the others that were dropped, which, like Ginger, you can read online now.
Swamp cartoon by Gary Clark
Swamp by Gary Clark is a favorite of mine – when it would pop up online somewhere. You can read that online at swamp.com.au and Snake by Allan Salisbury can be seen here: snakecartoons.com/snake.htm.
I read the comics online at various sites – GoComics, Comics Kingdom and other websites and I think the majority of readers do that these days.
After so many years of trying to be syndicated in newspapers, I don’t think that’s where I want to be now. For one thing, I think it’s a precarious place to be to make a living. Every day you may be losing clients (and money), not gaining new ones and it seems that the readers are mostly online anyway.
But I do agree that newspapers should carry cartoons and comics pages for those that read them there. It’s part of life, it’s been part of all of our lives – everyone that is alive today has lived with comic strips and panels as part of their daily newspaper. As long as the newspapers are still printed and published, why not include them? They are pop culture, part of everyday life.
Snake cartoon by Allan Salisbury
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Went to the first day of Comic Con on Thursday, it was a beautiful day, sunny, cool and perfect. The usual cosplayers took over the Javits Center.
I walked around for a long time looking for the National Cartoonist Society booth, the program provided by the convention, didn’t show their location. Finally found it after an hour of walking around and there was Jason Chatfield, right in the center, doing his thing, which I think was drawing and giving out autographs.
I didn’t get too close to the booth – too many people. But I’m always tempted to “talk shop” with him. I interviewed last year for my 10 With Tom column and that would be a good ice breaker, but I didn’t introduce myself last year and I didn’t do it this year.
You can see him in the group of photos above, chatting away at the booth.
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I got a t-shirt recently with the Peanuts characters and Charlie Brown is shown saying that as the kids go trick-or-treating. I plan on waring it at NY Comic Con on Thursday.
I was wearing the shirt the other day and one of my neighbors, who reads this blog, by the way, asked me what it meant. She didn’t get it.
She’s not big into pop culture. But this cartoon been playing non-stop every October since 1966, so I don’t understand how she didn’t understand it. She’s about my age, so we have had plenty of years to see the tv show. It was funny, because I was explaining the scene to her. She asked, “You mean every time he went to another house he just got a rock? Why?”
Looks like Apple tv still has the rights to the Charlie Brown specials unfortunately. I miss having the shows on CBS with Dolly Madison and Coca Cola sponsoring them.
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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.
tomversation.com 