I've Been Sanitized

Yesterday I set a record of 67 visitors in one day thanks to one of my cartoons being linked by Dr. Pat Santy, AKA Dr. Sanity. What would be the proper blogging term to use, Sanity-lanched, Psycho-lanched? I'll go with Sanitized.

I originally drew the cartoons about eleven years ago while bed ridden, waiting, 1) To see a surgeon-(7 weeks), 2) to get an MRI, (13 weeks), 3) to have surgery, (3 weeks). At the time, Gary Larson [The Far Side] had just announced his retirement. I submitted thirty single panel cartoons to seven big publishing houses in North America, and subsequently received seven rejection letters. They all said it was too difficult to work single panels into a newspaper page and preferred the four panel strip format [sigh]. By that time the surgery was over and I was busy learning to walk again and had no intention of starting over with the cartoons. I even got a rejection letter from the good people at the Toronto Star, [Ouch] have you ever seen their comic’s page?

My friend 'Dutch' was an IT guy at the Financial Post when the new National Post started up. He took my cartoons to the appropriate people who all said they liked them but they were contractually obligated to buy all their stuff from the Spectator. I couldn't GIVE them to the Post. They had the lamest cartoons in the industry, assuming you accept that the minimum requirement for a cartoonist [funny is subjective] is the ability to draw.

So I'm giving them away on the 'net. My current challenge is because they were drawn before computers became everyday annoying household appliances, and I used 'Letra-Tone' for the shading, which is a peel and stick type of shading paper. The problem is with the lighter shades which have smaller dots. The dots get clipped when scanned, leaving a weird hatching pattern which just get worse when looked at through a browser. I'm also trying to include the text with the artwork so when they're printed you get everything.

Posting will be erratic for a while, while I work out the software solutions [I have no idea why the prison one is narrower than the others]. I also have to add copyright marks etc. Thanks to everyone who left kind comments, those are more rewarding than getting paid.

Italics Mine