Categories
Business of Cartooning

The Business of Cartooning

Updated on 4/16/2021

The following are resources and articles in regards to the business side of the cartooning profession. It’s culled from various sources that I’ve found helpful or informative over the years. It doesn’t cover everything, but it can be used as a starting point.

1. Comic News Blogs:

2. Contracts:

3. Resources/Articles:

4. Print On Demand Publishers:

5. Self-Publishing Resource Articles:

  • JasonThibault.com
    The Definitive List of Comic Publisher Submission Guidelines
    Jason Thibault – Circa 2019

6. Convention Resources:

7. Cartooning Schools and Organizations:

8. Financial Aid:

  • The Writing Center – Grant Proposals
    Source: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • The Jay Kennedy Scholarship – Yearly award for best college cartoonist. Applicants must be students at a 4-year college in the United States, Canada or Mexico.
  • Kickstarter – Funding platform for creative projects.
    Every project creator sets their project’s funding goal and deadline. If people like the project, they can pledge money to make it happen. If the project succeeds in reaching its funding goal, all backers’ credit cards are charged when time expires.

For more info you can check out my Resources page. It includes all my work related posts on cartooning – Pricing your Work, Tools of the Trade, Recommended Books on Drawing & Cartooning, and much, much more…

Categories
Ramblings & Reviews

Motivational Misinformation

  • Post author By Jim
  • Post date

Just saw this recently on Facebook…

Rickman

I HATE memes like this.
Like Rickman woke up on his 46th birthday after being a plumber all his life and decided to become an actor.

WRONG…

angry

Here’s the real scoop…

As a teenager Rickman won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School in London, where he appeared in several school plays. He then studied graphic design at Chelsea College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art. After graduating, he started a graphic design company, Graphiti, with some friends. He met his lifetime partner Rima Horton at age 19 while in the amateur Group Court Drama Club.

At age 26, Rickman decided to apply to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Rickman supported himself through his two years at the RADA by taking freelance design jobs and by working as a set dresser.

At age 32, Rickman joined the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in The Tempest and Love’s Labour’s Lost, among others. Moving on from the RSC, Rickman spent much of the rest of the 1980s acting in BBC serials, radio dramas and repertory theater.

At 39 Rickman had the starring role of Le Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a part that playwright Christopher Hampton (who adapted the script from an 18th century French novel) developed with the actor specifically in mind – Rickman then performed the unforgettably villainous role first in London and then on Broadway, earning a Tony Award nomination.

At age 46, Rickman was tapped for his first Hollywood film role as the evil terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988). “I got Die Hard,” Rickman later recalled, “because I came cheap. They were paying Willis $7 million so they had to find people they could pay nothing.”

All info from Biography.com – Alan Rickman

Then, if you are aware of Rickman’s prior work there’s the added insult that none of that mattered until he “made it” on the big screen – Tinseltown – HOLLYWOOD!

mary

They do the same meme about Jack Kirby…

kirby

Skipping over co-creating Captain America at the age of 23, and his wealth of work and artistic innovations in the 1940s and 50s.

Drives me CRAZY! – makes me want to find whoever wrote such simplistic drivel and knock some sense into them…

hulksmash

Marvelmasterworks.com has posted a sequential timeline of Jack Kirby’s comic book work. It’s too long to post here, but just for fun check out Kirby’s published work prior to the 1960s and the Marvel Age of comics (the images don’t seem to load, but the list is all there).

JACK KIRBY: A By-the-month Chronology 1938-1949
JACK KIRBY: A By-the-month Chronology 1950-1959

The lesson to be learned?

8144e51f09707c66d6990a45c053769a

No, that’s not it either…

Just try to remember that it’s a lifetime of work that goes into a career, not necessarily the fleeting moments the public remembers.

Also there’s the old “one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration” saying of Thomas Edison’s. (Just try not to think about that whole Edison/Tesla debate too much regarding that.)

That’s all for now as deadlines are looming. But before I go I want to leave you with these words of wisdom from LinkedIn…

LinkedIn

My link to what I think of that line of gibberish can be found here.

Categories
Joe Kubert

Joe Kubert – The Nutcracker

  • Post author By Jim
  • Post date

The Nutcracker
by The Joe Kubert School aka Joe Kubert
Click on images to see larger.

Nutcracker.01

Nutcracker.02

Nutcracker.03

Nutcracker.04

Nutcracker.05

Nutcracker.06

Nutcracker.07

The dailies shown above were originally published December 2-25, 1985.
I don’t know if Sunday pages were also produced.
If anyone knows please drop me a line!

-Jim Keefe

– Update – 

From George Hagenauer:

“I talked to Joe right before his death about this as I own (among other Kubert originals ) a Big Ben Bolt original that looked like his work.
Basically over the years he would get commercial projects (The Winnie
winkle comic strip, various comic related catalogs

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etc.) with the idea that
they would involve the students and get them some needed experience and
practice. These projects look like Kubert but usuall
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y are not signed by
him. They are often a mix of his direction and the students art .

How much is Kubert and how much is students depended on the students
skill- and sometimes it didn’t work or as Joe said they couldn’t handle
“Big Ben Bolt so I ended up doing it all myself”

From Sam Kujava:

“When

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I was at Kubert’s School the first year, he offered me a week’s worth of Big Ben Bolt dailies to work on. Joe had already laid
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out the panels, and I went over them and tightened the pencils, making the art look a little more like my “style”. When I finished, on time, Joe took them back to ink. He showed them to me before he sent it off to the syndicate and it more or less totally looked like Joe did it all. No complaint, just observation.”

From D.D.Degg:

“You probably know by now that the NEA Christmas strips were daily only.

Joe Kubert and School did the seasonal strip from 1982 through 1985.
(Weren’t you a freshman at The School in 1985?)

The Owosso (Mich) Argus-Press ran the 1982 (The Christmas Carol)
and 1983 (Gifts of the Magi) strips.

Unfortunately they switched over to the Disney/King Features Christmas strips in 1984, so I hadn’t seen The School’s Hans Brinker (1984) or their 1985 The Nutcracker – until now (thanks again).

Yeah, they all look like Joe Kubert was deeply involved.

In 1981/82 the Joe Kubert School drew the Winnie Winkle strip. Some of those look like Joe took on more of a role of layout/art director and let the young’uns go at it.

These were actually signed J.K.S., for Joe Kubert School.

winnie

D.D.Degg mentions “they switched over to the Disney/King Features Christmas strips” – which coincidentally I colored in the 90s when I was on staff at King

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.

Examples of Disney holiday strips I colored for King Features.
Examples of Disney holiday strips I colored for King Features.

Many thanks for the added info – greatly appreciated! If I find out anything more (like students who helped work on them) I’ll be sure to keep you posted…

-Jim Keefe

Categories
King Features

King Features – Frank Chillino

  • Post author By Jim
  • Post date

When I was hired to work on staff in the Comic Art bullpen at King Features back in 1989 my immediate boss was Production Supervisor Frank Chillino (1920-2007).

Frank_Chillino
Frank Chillino

Frank worked under a number

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of Comic Art department heads. Among them…

Sylvan Byck (1904-1982)
Head of the Comic Art department from the 1950s until 1978.
Bill Yates (1921-2001)
Head of the Comic Art department from 1978 until 1988.
Jay Kennedy (1956-2007)
Head of the Comic Art department from 1988 until 2007.

Frank Chillino was the guy at King Features who made sure the trains ran on time. He also devised and implemented the standardized system to format strips for newspapers that’s still used today – a template where a strip drawn in a half page format could be reformatted to a third or quarter page quickly and efficiently. It helped streamline the process saving countless hours of production time (and money) for King.

He was there with the pioneers of the industry – Chic Young, George McManus, Harold Foster, Alex Raymond, Jimmy Hatlo, Roy Crane, Milton Caniff, Fred Lasswell and Bela Zaboly just to name a few.

In a feature piece in Cartoonist Profile he recalled, “When I joined the bullpen in January 1944, I was twenty four years old. Brad Kelly, who was the comics editor, hired me and placed me at a drawing table next to Bud Saggendorf who was then handling production. For my first assignment, Bud sent me to the supply room for a bucket of benday dots which were used on daily strips for grey to

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nes. Being young and naive I did what he requested. Irving Winters who handled supplies said, “Hey kid, he’s pulling your leg! There’s no such thing as benday dots, only a benday acetate sheet with dots printed on it.” Was my face red! When I brought back the sheets and an empty bucket we all had a good laugh. This was the beginning of a lasting friendship between Saggendorf and myself… About a year later Sag was assigned to draw the Popeye comic books. With his suggestion to Brad Kelly I was appointed comic art production supervisor.”

Some other of Frank’s recollections…

“King had a room set aside for visiting cartoonists then, which offered us the opportunity to watch them at work. These guys could ink their strips without penciling. Roy Crane worked on craft tint paper and when he brought the tones up with his brush on backgrounds, the strips would virtually explode with action.”

“Jose Luis Salinas was brought up in 1950 to pen The Cisco Kid which I lettered for 18 years. He was one of our finest illustrators. Alex Raymond, also a great illustrator, idolized Salinas work. Whenever Alex came to KFS he would sit and watch Salinas pencil and brush through his Cisco strips for hours at a time. Jose worked in our bullpen for about six months before he returned to Argentina.”

“There wa

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s an aura about them (the cartooni
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sts) when they visited the bullpen. They were fun guys always playing jokes on one another.”

Frank

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once wrote of his job at King, “I always believed that maintaining a rapport with our (King Features) cartoonists was of utmost importance. Letting them know we cared, and knew that they were out there doing their thing for us – drawing cartoons.”

When he retired in 1990 he had 45 years at the Syndicate under his belt.

Frank Chillino – Truly one of King Features’ greats!

1993 King Features Christmas party in New York City Left to right - Jim Keefe, Frank Chillino and Jerry Craft.
1993 King Features Christmas party in New York City
Left to right – Jim Keefe, Frank Chillino and Jerry Craft.

-Jim Keefe

The following piece ran in Cartoonist Profiles #88, December 1990 (cited above) and pretty much encapsulates the history of the syndicated newspaper strip.

Categories
Ramblings & Reviews

Sidebar – Signing Off

  • Post author By Jim
  • Post date

From left to right, Dwight, Swain and Adrian.
From left to right, Dwight, Swain and Adrian.
Dragon Con – 20

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10

All go

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od things must come to an end, and so it is the case with the comic art and pop culture podcast, Sidebar.

Hosts Swain, Dwight and Adrian’s strengths as interviewers came from the fact that they didn’t just ask questions of their guests – they would have actual conversations.

The interview which I discovered Sidebar was with legendary cartoonist, Bernie Wrightson.

The interview that got me hooked was with artist George Pratt.
The first half of the interview covers Pratt’s comic book and teaching career (fascinating in and of itself), but then by the second half the interview just takes off. You travel deep into the Mississippi Delta as Pratt des

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cribes research for a novel (See You in Hell, Blind Boy) and meeting Blues men like Jack Owens and Mississippi John Hurt.
If interested, here’s a link to an excerpt of the documentary.
See You in Hell, Blind Boy.

But I digress…

I met Swain, Dwight and Adrian at Dragon Con 2010 when I was lucky enough to table next to them – and then t

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hey were generous enough to interview me.

What made that con really memorable was that our tables were right across from Neal Adams. This made for some very memorable sightings.

Stan Lee having a quick chat with Neal Adams. DragonCon 2010
Stan Lee having a quick chat with Neal Adams.
Dragon Con 2010

Later that same con Sidebar moderated a Batman panel featuring Neal Adams, Paul Dini, Tim Sale and Brian Stelfreeze – it just don’t get much better than that.

I could go on and on, but best you check them out yourself if you haven’t already. HIGHLY recommended.

sidebarnation

And to Swain, Dwight and Adrian – Thanks for all the hard work you put into your show. It was greatly appreciated. Wishing you guys all the best – onwards and upwards!

-Jim Keefe