It’s All Gary Larson’s Fault
Posted on June 24, 2008
Around 1986, I was a happy-go-lucky tv producer and playwright in Washington, D.C. I wore the gratuitous gray pinstripe suite and red or yellow power tie. I lived on Capital Hill, just a few blocks from the Smithsonian. I never went unless I had out-of-town guests.
One day, my friends Julie and Beverly called me and told me to get dressed, that we were going to a Gary Larson Far Side exhibit at the Smithsonian. I didn't want to go.
Don't get me wrong, I loved and still love The Far Side, but at the end of the day I was usually exhausted and the though that went through my head was, "Why wait in a long line for an exhibit, when I can simply open the Washington Post the following day and see the cartoon?"
They were persistent and I got dressed. They picked me up and we were on our way. The lines, though long, moved quickly and the exhibit was beyond my wildest imagination. The panel cartoons had been blown up onto 5 or 6 foot poster boards and were hanging from the ceiling. Many of them were my favorites from the past.
The increased size added a whole new dimension to my favorite cartoon.
Suddenly a feeling came over me that I can't explain. It was an odd one and not very comfortable. Though I laughed and chatted with my friends about our favorites throughout the event, I remember the discomfort that I couldn't seem to shake.
I went home that night and still wondered what the problem was. Then it hit me. When I had been a college student, in Dallas, at about age nineteen, I wrote close to a thousand offbeat single panel cartoons (this was in 1974), many of them in a similar spirit to The Far Side.
I remember making the mistake of showing them to my mom, who told me to "throw them away and do my homework". I continued to do my homework, but I never through away the cartoons. They remained in my closet until that very night.
I remembered sharing them with mom and her negative response, but, I remember thinking, "Even if Mom is not around, I would still be scared to launch such a project for fear that people had thought I lost it". It was then that I realized Gary Larson was not just a cartoonist but a brave pioneer in the world of print journalism.
Ten years later, I launched Londons Times Cartoons with one other artist. Since that time I have worked with numerous artists and I've continued writing and assigning the cartoons. The site has become the biggest of its kind on the Internet and certainly the most visited (over 8.9 million visitors since 2005 when we began counting). The cartoon itself is nearly 11 years old. We have seven cartoon merchandise stores.
The motto of this story is "build it and they will come"; though that was not my favorite Kevin Kostner quote of his movie career. But the concept is true. If one focuses hard enough on a project or profession, sooner or later, something will break. The secret is being patient enough to hang in there until it does.
Rick London is a cartoonist and e-tailer. He founded the Internet's most visited offbeat cartoon site, Londons Times Cartoons http://www.londonstimes.us and numerous peripheral gift and collectible stores including http://www.ricklondoncollection.com and http://www.ricklondonwear.com
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