Cartooning Draws Expressive Individuals

For Matt Bors and many other cartoonists, drawing funny pictures is a serious way to make a living. "I've been into comics forever, and I never wanted to do anything else, really," says the 22-year-old author of the Idiot Box strip.

Mr. Bors, of Canton, Ohio, started drawing cartoons for his college student newspaper while studying graphic design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and now sells Idiot Box to alternative weekly newspapers in several cities.

Cartoonists get lumped with painters, sculptors and illustrators in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook, which counts 29,000 such workers in the U.S. About 63% of artists and related workers are self-employed, according to the BLS.

Aside from the obvious benefits of freedom and flexibility in a business that is usually home-based, cartoonists cite the ability to communicate their personal perspectives to a wide audience as one of the most meaningful perks.

"Cartooning is the one real art where you can express yourself and it can reach the public," says Arnie Levin, a longtime cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine who works out of a studio in his home in Sea Cliff, New York.

Although political cartoonists like Mr. Bors can be lightning rods for criticism, cartoonists as a group tend to be well-liked by their colleagues in publishing, reports Jerry DeCrotie, a Honesdale, Penn., cartoonist who draws five strips for online and regional publications. "I'm the guy who writes funny stuff," Mr. DeCrotie says. "They see me and say, 'Oh, it's the funny guy.' So when there is business interaction, it's very fun and positive."

Cartooning also helps him to see the entertaining side of everyday life, Mr. DeCrotie adds. "Doing comic strip work forces you to look for the funny, the ironic and the humor in things," he says.

Having any sort of business interaction is the challenge for most cartoonists. By all accounts, there are significantly more cartoonists and cartoons than the publishing world has any use for. "The competition is fierce for print, although for online it's not so bad," says Jeff Swenson, a Kirkland, Wash., cartoonist who pens several strips for online and print publication.

Competition is fiercest of all for sales to the big syndicators that distribute the majority of cartoons in newspapers. Signing on with a syndicator such as United Feature Syndicate, a unit of the E. W. Scripps Company, is seen by many cartoonists as their best chances to succeed like Charles Schulz, creator of "Peanuts," and "Dilbert" creator Scott Adam, both United Feature cartoonists.

Cartoonists often market themselves by setting up Web sites to display their work and by sending samples to editors at publications that print cartoons. But the number of print publications that publish cartoons has been shrinking for many years, according to Mr. Levin, who has been in the field since the 1960s. This leads to a great deal of rejection as well as being ignored.

"You need a very thick skin," says Stu Heinecke, a Seattle, Wash., cartoonist who specializes in cartoon postcards for marketing campaigns. "That's a big part of cartooning in the early stage, although once your work has become known, it's just a matter of sitting down and constantly writing new gags and working on material."

The well-publicized sabbaticals of high-profile cartoonists such as Doonesbury author Garry Trudeau and Bill Watterson, creator of the Calvin & Hobbes strip, highlight the pressures inherent in a craft that calls for being funny on command, sometimes daily or weekly for years on end.

Cartoonists clearly must draw well, but those experienced at the business say writing ability is equally important. For ongoing strips, character development is critical, according to Mr. DeCrotie. "Editors want to see consistency," he says. "They want to see that you've developed the characters and it doesn't seem forced."

Developing these skills is, for the most part, a business for autodidacts. While a few colleges offer degrees in cartooning -- including the New York School for Visual Arts where Mr. Levin is an instructor -- most cartoonists say they learned their craft on their own. Some have studied illustration, and providing illustrations for magazine articles and product packaging can be a lucrative sideline.

Cartooning tends to be a part-time venture for the simple reason that there's not always enough money in it. Mr. DeCrotie says he gets about a third of his income from cartoons and earns more by designing logos, mascots and similar work. Still, becoming a financially successful cartoonist isn't impossible. Mr. Levin has earned his entire living from cartooning for many years, and Mr. Heinecke says his business employs three people full-time and produces $1 million in annual revenues.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bors earns only about $75 a weekly from his Idiot Box customers. He says occasionally full-page cartoons sell for $100 to $500, but he relies on illustrations for most of his income.

"I'd like to be able to make a few hundred dollars a week from this instead of $75," Mr. Bors says. "Then I'd be pretty happy."

Indeed, in contrast to the dour behind-the-scenes image that some other humorists carry, cartoonists seem to be a pretty happy bunch. And they appear generally satisfied with their lot. Citing the adage that laughter is the best medicine, Mr. Heinecke says, "If you believe in that, then cartoonists have done society a lot of good. The landscape wouldn't be the same without them."

YAHOO! BUZZ   DIGG THIS MY SPACE   GET RSS FEEDS