So it all started when my friend Matt Sullivan decided to start a newspaper. An extremely intelligent and educated man, he has also a tendency to be... "impulsive." As his good friend, I felt obligated to comment on this new idea.
"Why don't you just give me a check every month?" I suggested. "I'll cash it, keep half, and throw the rest in the Potomac River. You'll accomplish just as much."
As he usually does, Matt gave this the thought it deserved and one-upped it. He asked me to start doing a political cartoon. All of a sudden Matt's project seemed like a good idea. I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed some paper and drew my first cartoons. They stunk.
Matt ran them anyway, and I started to churn out my doodles on a regular basis. Matt stopped being my friend and became my editor, so we would yell and insult each other, just like real political cartoonists do. Finally after five years, I felt like I was starting to get the hang of it.
"This is your last cartoon" said Matt. "We're closing down."
The Rock Creek Free Press, "A Fiercely Independent Newspaper" was successful and self sustaining, but Matt was tired of all the effort that went into production and distribution. Fine for him, but what about MY needs? After my attempts to get him to keep the paper open so I could continue drawing proved futile. I took to hanging out on streetcorners, mocking public figures in crudely rendered marker on the blank pages of the Apartment Hunters Guide. I also sold some cartoons (five, to be exact) to TIME.com, then THEY decided to stop publishing cartoons.
Faced with my newfound skill being reduced to an interesting hobby, I began to consider other options. I had explored the technique of developing "graphic narratives" to report on non-fictional stories using sequential art. In all these cases, I was reviewing positive, fun or even silly events as my subjects (http://joesutliff.com/BOL2-14-16.html) but that didn't seem to fit what I wanted to accomplish. (to be continued...)
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