This week’s Tomversation toons.
Subscribe via email to my cartoons and my blog here – the toons will arrive each Friday plus 2 short blog posts will arrive during the week.
Subscribe via email to my cartoons and my blog here – the toons will arrive each Friday plus 2 short blog posts will arrive during the week.
This cartoon was published this morning. But it replaced the one below it, at the last minute. It was a quick change of Santa, as you can see.
I kept thinking after the cartoon was published that it needed something else, and it seemed that if Santa was lying back on an easy chair, it would be the thing.
So after the first one (the close-up of Santa cartoon here), was published, I quickly drew a new Santa sitting back on an easy chair, and I had the published cartoon changed to the easy chair one.
I do this often – not usually changing the whole cartoon, but finding a typo or something minor and I change it before people hopefully see it. After the cartoon is published, it gets passed around the internet quite quickly, so sometimes the “wrong” one gets shown around.
I really like the close-up image of Santa, but I think the other one conveys the message better.
Anyway, that’s it. A quick change on Christmas Eve morning.
I’ll be with my family tonight and tomorrow, hope you will be, too. But I am thinking of Italy and I saw something about Christmas in Rome on the news this morning, and I sort of willed it, you know, manifested it, that I’ll be in Rome for Christmas next year. I’m really feeling it, you know. As I thought it, I felt it. And that is really how manifestation works.
Let’s see if that plays out!
Till next time . . . Merry Christmas!
Subscribe via email to my cartoons and my blog here – the toons will arrive each Friday plus 2 short blog posts will arrive during the week.
I’m not getting the readership I want. I want millions of followers and readers. To be fair, some of my cartoons do get millions of eyes on them. Most of course, don’t.
I read one time when the comics were revered, I guess in the 1940s and 1950s, Al Capp would get 80 million readers a day for Li’l Abner. If he got that size readership, I’m sure most of the big name strips at the time, did, also – Blondie, Moon Mullins, Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, etc.
While many cartoonists get many views, many don’t. If you look at sites like GoComics.com, those big cartoonists who you would think have a lot of followers, don’t.
I am resigned to the fact that I have fans that get me. I like to think my cartoons are more cerebral. Not on purpose, it’s just how I think. I’ve noticed when I have a silly cartoon, something that plays to the lowest common denominator, well, that’s when I get all these eyes on my work.
A lot of my cartoons are “stolen.” What I mean is that they are picked up and used in anthologies without permission. These jerks at one publication one time picked up 60 cartoons and published them without permission, then other sites similar to their site (clickbait sites) picked up the cartoons and published them and so on and so on.
When I complained about the 60 cartoons being picked up and rerun, they reduced it down to 30. Guess they don’t know the word plagiarism.
Recently, a friend sent me a site where one of my cartoons was published, it was there along with some others which were illegally picked up and reused. My name and copyright were removed from the cartoon, but I was impressed that my friend recognized my work. He knew my style.
When I complained to the site editor, they said, “We did link back to you!” I had to tell them that they linked back to another site that illegally swiped my cartoon. I guess this is journalism today – anyone can publish anything without anyone editing or checking them. Sort of like I do here on my blog.
But it’s nice to know people think the work is worthy of stealing, or maybe it’s just that they need clickbait and anything will do.
I like to create my cartoons thinking of cartoonist Jason Chatfield’s quote: “Don’t curate your art to what gets likes. Curate it to what you like.” So I’ll keep on doing it that way.
By the way, if you are not subscribing, you can subscribe free via email to my cartoons here – five (that week’s worth) will arrive each Friday plus two short blog posts are published during the week.
Till next time . . .
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Read my blog: Tomversation.com
Subscribe via email to my cartoons here – they will arrive each Friday plus 2 short blog posts during the week.
Subscribe to this Tomversation blog by clicking here – it’s free! Receive my five cartoons each Friday and 2 blog posts during the week!
It’s calendar season and I’m part of it this year.
Many years ago, I published a calendar based on our village and it sold like crazy. Now I have a 2026 “Tomversation” cartoon calendar, based on my cartoon work.
It’s a wall calendar, 11″ x 8.5″ in size when opened. There are over 25 cartoons covering the 12 month calendar pages. It’s a limited edition.
They matte finish allows for writing on the calendar for notes and such.
I based the calendar on animal cartoons – mostly dogs, some cats and even snakes and other animals like lions and fish (are fish animals?).
I don’t charge for my blog or cartoons published online and people are always asking how to support me, so I put this together where you can purchase a calendar or two and support me that way. It will keep me from charging for subscriptions for this blog and my Tomversation comics online.
I’m selling it through Etsy here, if interested.
No calendar? That’s fine, you can subscribe to this Tomversation blog by clicking here – it’s free! Receive my five cartoons each Friday and 2 blog posts during the week!
Till next time . . .
All cartoons via TomFalco.com
Subscribe to this Tomversation blog by clicking here – it’s free! Receive my five cartoons each Friday and 2 blog posts during the week!
All comics By Tom Falco
Subscribe to this Tomversation blog by clicking here – it’s free! Receive my five cartoons each Friday and 2 blog posts during the week!
Nancy the comic strip is going through some changes.
You remember Nancy, don’t you? Well, it has been in production all this time.
The Ernie Bushmiller comic, started in 1925, went on until 1982, when he passed away. Mr. Bushmiller wrote and drew the comic. It started out as Fritzi Ritz, who is Nancy’s aunt and then morphed into Nancy when she was introduced in 1933. So yes, it goes way back.
From 1982 to 2018, after Bushmiller’s death, the strip was written and drawn by various people.
Mr. Bushmiller took Fritzi Ritz over from a cartoonist named Larry Whittington, who started it in 1922. I only mention it because it’s been in quite a few hands over the years. For the last seven, it’s been written and drawn by the mysterious Olivia Jaimes, but currently it’s in reruns.
Another change. And therein lies the rub.
I remember reading Nancy when I was a kid. I mostly remember it at my grandmother’s house, so maybe it wasn’t in the newspapers we got at home and was in something she subscribed to.
Since 2018, there was a “new” Nancy. It was the same old Nancy and Sluggo, but in a new way. As I mentioned, cartoonist Olivia Jaimes wrote and drew the strip, now she is retiring from that and Caroline Cash is taking over. New strips will appear in the new year. Currently old Ernie Bushmiller strips are running.
When Olivia first took over, I tried to interview her for my 10 With Tom column, but I received no response. Olivia Jaimes is a pseudonym and she, or is it a he? likes to remain unknown.
I find it quite careless to just take on a well-known strip, make it your own for a few years and just “retire.” But I guess that was the case from 1982 to 2018 when the strip was run by others, sort of passing it around until Olivia took it over in 2018. And now she is passing it on. And who knows, perhaps she needs to leave for personal or health reasons.
I know that if I was given a legacy strip, I would guard it and cherish it like so many other cartoonists do.
I was reading comments on The Daily Cartoonist blog, where I found out about this Nancy change and there are those for it, and those against it.
One commentor feels as I do, saying, “I find it highly insulting that Andrews McMeel just passes this classic comic strip over to others willy nilly. And Olivia had a plum position that people would kill for. She just went through the motions. Didn’t she take off a long period of time last year, having others fill in for her?” He went on to call her “blasé” about it.
Andrews McMeel runs GoComics.com – they syndicate the strip along with so many others.
But again, since we don’t know who Olivia is, perhaps she was ill in the summer and needed the break and maybe that’s the case now.
One guy says in the comments at The Daily Cartoonist that it isn’t a “plum” assignment. But I beg to differ. As a cartoonist myself, I think having a nationally syndicated comic strip is a “plum” assignment. He called it a “zombie strip,” but it was alive when Olivia produced it. And thousands, if not millions of people read it over the past seven years.
Another comment on the Daily Cartoonist: “I miss the original Bushmiller style Nancy. I shudder to think what would have happened if Peanuts had been continued after Schulz’s death. I guess, however, things change and time marches on. And maybe I’m a little envious of a working cartoonist.”
Other strips have changed hands and changed the look and feel, which sort of makes it the cartoonists’ own. In the beginning, Ernie Bushmiller took Fritzi Ritz over from Larry Whittington, so there right there it shows that a person can take over a feature and really put their stamp on it.
Anyway, the new Nancy starts in January, we’ll have to check it out.
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I came upon this new show (new to me), called “Under the Vines“. It’s a drama-comedy from New Zealand. It just started showing on one of our PBS channels here in Miami, but I think it’s a few years old.
I had seen the commercial and it looked good, almost a Green Acres sort of thing – a fish out of water plot line.
Two people, a step daughter and a nephew inherit a vineyard. They don’t know each other and are told they are “sole heirs” of the vineyard.
To make a long story short, they meet each other and find out the quandry, of both being owners, but they end up both wanting to sell the place and get out asap. But it’s such a charming place, that by the end of episode one, they stay and attempt to work it out, and therein lies the show. I’ve only seen the one episode, but I love it.
I guess there are not many actors in New Zealand because the actors seem to move from show to show. One guy, Pana Hema-Taylor, I’ve seen on “Under the Vines”, “800 Words” and “Brokenwood Mysteries.” He has small parts on every show, and I laugh whenever I see him pop up. It’s almost a requisite to have him on a show based in New Zealand.
Anyway, I got the idea for this cartoon from the show. When the barrister told the characters they were the “sole heir” of the vineyard, the cartoon is what popped into my head.
In my head, my cartoon had a different scene – they were in a lawyers office and were being read the will, but it ended up being this.
I like to put little Easter eggs in my cartoons – things that regular fans would notice.
I’ve used scenery from other cartoons over, sort of like they do in tv and movies – just redressing the scene and using the same sets. And I’ve used the same people at times – just giving them different dialogue.
In this case, you can see the storefront, redressed, and used in two cartoons.
Sure, I can easily redraw the scene, but I think it’s fun to do this, just to give the audience something to enjoy if they find the “Easter egg.”
Here’s a quick little video of the single panel cartoon. There’s no sound.
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