I Had a Secret...

I had a secret...but not any more.

A long time ago I posted a long, drawn out rant about what I would do if I were President. I prefaced that rant with the statement that I was the most apolitical person in the U.S. Then for some odd reason I started drawing and posting political cartoons. Did anybody catch that? Anybody wonder about it?

Well, there's a story behind that and I'm fixin' to give you the long-winded version.

When I was drawing the hotdog cartoon series, Booda kept after me to shop them around for publication and she suggested the small local newspapers. I tried that and got the same response from all: We buy our cartoons through the national syndicates. Not interested, thanks.

Not deterred, I pondered a while on what I could possibly offer them that they would want but couldn't get from the national guys. I hit upon editorial cartoons with local content. There's always something worth lampooning in a small southern town. It's rife with colorful characters doing things they shouldn't oughta.

Our local newspaper has an on-line blog for breaking news. That's kinda funny since this is a small town and they have to dig up news for the daily print edition. Not a whole lot of breaking news going on.

After a while the guy in charge of the blog ran out of steam trying to keep it up. Right about the time I hit upon the local editorial cartoon idea, he posted an open call for readers to submit their own stories of happenings around town.

I sent in a story and also sent a cartoon about the decaying state of the local economy. He loved it, the editor loved it, and it was promptly published on the blog. No money in my pocket, but it got several nice comments from the few loyal deranged readers. A few more were submitted and published, all with more comment love.

Then, out of the blue, the local arts center director lady called. They, in conjunction with the local paper, were sponsoring a political cartoon contest for the general public. The cartoons would be on display in the arts center gallery for all the world to see. "Yeah, OK" I thought, "is she asking me to enter cartoons in the contest or what???" No! They wanted me to do the graphics for all the promotional material!

Woot! A commission! Once again, no money in my pocket, so maybe it's not technically a commission, but there *is* a happy ending to this. She wanted three different cartoons. One would be on the entry form and the other two would be in consecutive editions of the arts center newsletter promoting the contest. She said the entry form with my cartoon would be published in the print edition of newspaper!

Today is the day! I'm somebody! I'm somebody! Here it is....

(click to embiggen)

Yes, the formatting is way more than squished up; it's supposed to be square. Trust me the original looks soooo much better. At least you can still make out the donkey and elephant. If you squint really hard, you can see my signature down in the corner.

So that's my secret I've been keeping all this time; I was fixin' to be published. I didn't want to jinx it by saying it out loud.

I'm a published ar-teest! Woot! Woot! Woot!