I borrowed this recent cartoon from another one of my cartoons – it’s taken from Ollie and Jacomo. It’s popular, because people seem to like talking animals or inanimate objects. I’m not sure why.
I do cartoon on ancient Egypt and social events and cavemen and a play on words (but not puns) and the cartoons that get the most likes, shares and play are animals and inanimate objects.
Here’s the Ollie And Jacomo version. Interestingly enough, I haven’t published Ollie and Jacomo for quite awhile, yet it keeps picking up followers and fans around the internet. What do actors say about working with animals and children? Well, animals and inanimate objects seem to steal the spotlight, too.
I wanted to test the theory and that’s why I redid the cartoon for my Tomversation comic panel. And I was right, people love this cartoon. If I made the tree talk I’m sure it would be even more popular!
This recently “voted off the island” was very popular, too. Toast, salt, pepper, fruit, all in living form, what’s not to like?
I like to live by the quote: “Don’t publish for likes, publish what I like and the audience will follow.” But every once in awhile I’ll throw these animals and inanimate things because I need to grow my audience.
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I wasn’t sure what tv show to use for this cartoon, but I ended up doing “The Office,” in hopes that people are familiar with it. I don’t see how you can’t be since it’s on almost 24 hours a day on some tv channels.
I thought of doing Seinfeld or I Love Lucy, Gilligan’s Island or some other well-known show, but The Office seemed to work.
I’ve been watching The Office constantly on Comedy Central and while I watched it on it’s initial run every Thursday night, I never realized what a jerk and creep Andy is. I always liked him, but as I watch the reruns now, I don’t see any redeeming qualities in him. I guess he was always been a jerk, on purpose. Dwight is a jerk, but he doesn’t know he’s a jerk; that’s the difference.
My sister-in-law has a few dogs, their names are Lucy, Ethel, Desi and I think Carolyn Appleby, not sure if there is a Fred, but I remember on one Lucy episode, they had a puppy named Fred on the show.
My parents used to have a next door neighbor whose dog’s name was Richard. I never saw the lady, but when I would visit, I would often here her calling Richard – “Richard! Richard!” I asked my mother if the lady was calling her husband, and my mother, with a straight face, said, “No, she’s calling her dog.” And the fact that I never saw the lady made it even funnier.
This was some years back. My parents also had good friends who lived across the street – the Earps, descendants of Wyatt Earp, but that’s another story.
We had dogs named Daisy, Hans, Ginger, etc. The usual names i guess.
This is one of my favorite pictures It was taken a few summers ago. That’s Molly and Me (that’s a movie, isn’t it?) on our way to the Hamptons in the back seat of the car. Molly was my aunt and uncle’s pet, they were in the front seat. I don’t remember if one of them took this picture or if I took it as selfie. Molly is no longer with us and neither is my aunt.
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I wasn’t sure if everyone would get today’s cartoon, mostly the younger generations. Do people know who Larry Fine is? If you don’t he’s one of The Three Stooges. You know, Moe, Larry and Curley, or Moe, Larry and Shemp. When I was younger, The Stooges were all over tv. I remember in high school I worked in the stockroom at Sears and at 3 pm, everyday, we took our break to watch The Three Stooges on tv in the break room.
I noticed this image online, after I drew this cartoon and it made me feel a bit better, especially since I hate to explain cartoons. It’s a large mural of Larry somewhere in Philadelphia.
Not too long ago I was towed. I should have been fined/ticketed, but the City of Miami thought it was a good idea to tow me.
I was in a parking space that I had parked in for years. I paid the meter and wandered off. Apparently the city changed the parking hours at that space and rather than just ticket me so I would know the new rules, they felt a towing was in order.
I had visions of Parking Wars, the tv show, where people are towed and eight hours later they are still at the towing location, trying to get their cars out. But I was pleasantly surprised. I Ubered to the car lot and I was the only one there, which was surprising, since Miami tows anything at any time for no apparent reason. But it was just me. I was in and out in three minutes! Really! It made the whole experience less painful.
One thing did bother me though. On Parking Wars, a lot of the hold up is that people don’t have their insurance card with them. When I asked the attendant if she wanted to see my insurance card, she told me that was not needed. That explained Miami drivers in a nutshell. No car insurance proof needed?
As for the cartoon, I’m not sure where I came up with the concept of “Larry fine isn’t fine, etc.” It just popped into my head. I didn’t see Larry on tv or hear his name or anything, like where a lot of my ideas come from. It almost reminds me of these memes that show why the English language is so difficult for foreigners trying to learn English.
Like too, two and to, and he’s fine with the fine and read and read (Read to me, I read it).
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Have you ever done this? Or looked up the price of gifts you may have received online?
I got this cartoon idea because I was checking the price of something I bought and it just came to me. It wasn’t a gift. I bought a new mattress and went online to check to see if I got a good price after the fact. It was on sale at Macy’s. I did get a good price.
I’ve done this with a lot of things. After I bought my car a few years ago, I went online and checked the price of the car to see if I did the right thing. I bought a long overcoat recently, a trench coat. I checked that price, too; after the fact.
I did check the price of these things ahead of time, but I wanted to be just check afterwards, too. I’m not sure why, as I wouldn’t be returning anything, but I just get curious that way. I do check reviews ahead of time when buying things online. It’s funny, an item could have 1000 five star reviews, but I dwell on the one negative review and may not purchase the item because of that.
I do that with hotels. If someone leaves one bad review, something stupid, like the elevator noise kept them up at night, I’ll pass up that hotel and go to the next one.
But to be honest, I’ve never ever checked the price of a gift, or looked up ratings or reviews of a gift. After all, you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. There’s a cartoon in there somewhere.
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Some people call my cartoons memes. I don’t know why, and I’m not crazy about that, but I have been known to use #meme as a hashtag at times. But it’s a comic or cartoon. Not a meme.
I also have been described as having an “old school” or “old fashioned” style of cartooning. It’s called drawing, not A.I.ing or computer generation. I guess the future is that – A.I. generated or some sort of electronic design. Like an NFT-type image.
Then there are the people who don’t get some of the cartoons. That’s a whole different category. But I do find that different gags don’t work in different parts of the world, even if we speak the same language , things come across different or confusing at times.
I mentioned in a previous post that my method was called drawing in an “exposition box.” I looked exposition box up and it says: “An explosion box is an origami box that pops open and “explodes” as soon as the recipient takes the top off, revealingpictures, messages, and even gifts inside. It’s a bigger version of our Explosion Cards project.”
I hardly think I fit into that category.
Must we label it? If so, it’s a cartoon or a comic or a comic panel or a comic strip. That’s it. People used to call online comics “online comics,” now they are just “comics.” But there are categories for them when it comes to awards. The National Cartoonist Society Ruben Awards (like the Oscars for cartoonists) has categories like, “newspaper strip,” “newspaper panel,” “online long form,” “online short form,” “gag cartoon,” and so on.
The gag cartoon is a panel cartoon like mine. Online long form can be a comic strip or longer and online short form is usually a single panel like mine.
Categories and labels all for basically the same thing.
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This cartoon makes me laugh whenever I see it. It just really makes me LOL.
I know “Hugh” is pronounced with the “Hush” sound, but it seems to work here.
I redid it, adding “Em” to the group, as a reader suggested that. I also seemed to have left out Mr. T and CeCe. I guess it’s turned into a word game, which I like. And one person in a comment said, “Casey” which is KC, which I like.
I was watching tv one day and the guy says his name is Jay. And thought does he mean the letter J. like people use or does he mean Jay, the actual name. I thought to myself, “It’s confusing when people are named after letters,” and of course that how that came to this cartoon.
I started thinking of the alphabet and the various names that sound like letters and one thing lead to another.
Another way of doing this could have been the actual letters in a bar and have the letters say, “Hello D, hello, B, etc. But I don’t usually like doing inanimate object cartoons and I think it works well the way it is now.
On Reddit, I got lots of comments, many nasty. Apparently people don’t know Bea is pronounced BEE and Hugh is mispronounced U, but that seems to be a U.S. thing, because the cartoon was put down for being “an American thing.”
Other rude people on Reddit didn’t like the drawing style or that it was one panel. And apparently, this gag has something to do with Men in Black, which I’ve never seen.
Some comments from Reddit:
“It’s a shitty premise being in a shitty exposition box, but then it goes and gets greedy with Hugh.” Not sure what an exposition box is, maybe a single panel.
“Hugh has a brother, Double Hugh.” “Nah, his twin brother would be UE.” “Hugh is a stretch but passable.” “What about multiple letter names like Petey and Emilee?” “I suppose Elle is pronounced L?” “My friend Ivy is named after two letters?”
And it goes on and on. But people seem to be very hung up on “Hugh” being “U.”
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This actually happened. Not the kneeling part, but the barista calling out, “Neil! Neil!” for his coffee. Of course my mind got to working when I heard that and I came up with this cartoon.
One time in Starbucks in NYC, there were four of us in there waiting for our orders. It was about 8:00 pm and they were getting ready to close down. All four of us customers were men.
They called out, “Tom!” And I went to pick up the order, but it was for another Tom who was there. And the same thing happened a couple of other times – there were four Toms in Starbucks waiting for our orders. No other customers in there, just the four Toms.
That was some sort of Universe message or something. Not sure what but I’m sure that will never happened again anywhere.
Every time I pass that particular Starbucks at 26th and Broadway, I think of that Tom incident.
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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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tomversation.com 