Open Call for Cartoonists

I haven’t been keeping track of any stats on this site, like how many views I get per article and such. I’m just crossing my fingers that there is a large enough critical mass of you that at least one of you is a fine upstanding cartoonist or willing to dip your foot in the cold, cold water of cartooning.

I myself have cartooned before, a political cartoon in my university days called Jacques O’ Christmas Tree. If you are thinking by name alone that the title character might be a jack o’ lantern head on a Christmas tree body then you would be right. I am retooling right now and hope to start doing a Jacques O’ Christmas Tree comic strip.

The transition from political to straight humour isn’t a perfectly clean path. A couple strips I developed for Jacques (the new strip) were straight political humour involving the International Olympic Committee. I even came up with one for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

It would be ideal to publish these now, with all the buzz of the upcoming Olympics. But I still haven’t compiled my scanner and still don’t know how to use it. So I am trying to reach out to any of you who are cartooning inclined and have a scanner. I will provide the 3 jokes. Just please draw the cartoon and scan it into jpeg format. Then email it to me with the jpeg being the body of the letter and your name can either be on the drawing or list it in the title of the email and I will put it up at this site with accreditation.

I’m not offering any compensation for the work I’m requesting. So let it be known, if I end up with no nibbles from this it just proves that being a cheap bastard doesn’t pay. But also let it be known that I haven’t received one scrap of compensation for this site as of yet. So come on, be a victim with me. The email to send your work to is larry@larryrusswurm.com .

IOC Cartoon #1:

Panel 1 :

The back of someone’s head looking at the outside of a store. Up above it says “Cubehead’s Furniture Warehouse”. There are two signs in the window. The first one says “Coffee tables $200”. The other one says “Wrecked Coffee Tables $250”.

Panel 2 :

Same person talking to an obviously cubeheaded individual. “I don’t get it Cubehead! How come the wrecked coffee tables are more?”

Panel 3 :

Close up of Cubehead speaking. “Well someone didn’t use coasters and left rings…”

Panel 4 :

Cube head still speaking. “…5 rings in a pattern the IOC would get upset about!”

IOC Cartoon #2

Panel 1 :

Man talking to a woman. “Did you hear about the latest crop circles?”
Woman, “No, why?”

Panel 2 :

Man, “They’re rings in the shape of the Olympic symbol!”
Woman, “So?”

Panel 3 :

Man,”The IOC must be in a useless manic state right now…”

Panel 4 :

Man continuing “…who are they going to sue? The farmer? The aliens?”
Woman, “Maybe the farmer will sue the IOC!”

VANOC Cartoon

Panel 1 :

Commentary bar at the top of the panel reads, “Meanwhile VANOC was annexing culture…”
Normal looking man talking, “I’ve got something that might help us stay in the black!”
Man in conical hat, “What’s that?”

Panel 2 :

Normal Man, “We’ll trademark “A Christmas Carol” all except the first word and last!”

Panel 3 :

Normal Man, “Then we can sue all the publishers of that book for violating our trademark!”

Panel 4 :

Man in conical hat, “Hmmm! After all Dickens did set it in winter. It’s like he was asking for it!”

UPDATE: Both IOC cartoons were published in a July post using the online service Bitstrips. They can be seen here. The VANOC cartoon’s effectiveness died with the Vancouver Winter Olympics. The IOC cartoons can live for other Olympics. London 2012 for instance.